“I Have One Worth More than Any”
I will concede that this may be written in direct response to—or perhaps in grievance over—losing an orchestral audition. I’m feeling as though my life is passing by without doing anything meaningful.
However, I think that’s often how God’s Word works.
In our darkest moments, when we struggle the most, it is a healing balm applied to our souls and our hearts, giving us the strength and rejuvenation to get up the next day and live in light of the resurrection that won our freedom.
Midas
About four months ago, my beautiful bride offered me a proposition.
That is… if I lost a certain amount of weight by the time Christmas came rolling around—or if I was on track to lose that weight—we would begin searching for a double bass that I could play for the rest of my life.
Just thinking about that phrase…
The rest of my life…
sets my heart ablaze with anxiety.
However, there it was again: the ultimate search for worth, for new health, and for a new bass.
By the end of July, we had seen my weight-loss progress go so well that, in the midst of selling our house and moving to Saginaw, we began searching for a double bass.
I was ecstatic to find a bass made by my bass professor at CMU, Ed Fedewa.
What a special instrument…
Midas.
And a fitting name for him, too.
Midas was, according to Greek mythology, a king who was granted the ability to turn anything he touched into gold. What at first seemed like an incredible gift quickly became a curse. Food turned to gold. Drink turned to gold. And, in one version of the story, even his own daughter became a lifeless golden statue when he touched her.
The thing Midas thought would satisfy him ultimately robbed him of the things that actually mattered.
The metaphor is pretty clear.
And if it’s not… well, it wasn’t for me over the last few months as I nicknamed this bass Midas simply because I thought it was a cool name.
I mean, elaborate.
We spend our whole lives searching for meaning, searching for wealth, searching for purpose, and searching for anything and everything that might fill the cavity sin leaves in our hearts.
For me, my bride revealed something in my heart by encouraging me to buy a new bass. I began to realize how much I have desired to find meaning in myself as a human being through how well I play my instrument—whether people enjoy my playing, whether other musicians respect me, or whether I am good enough to play in a professional orchestra.
All of these things…
lead to a never-ending song that can’t be finished.
Like Midas, everything I touched, I wanted to turn to gold.
The first two years of Peter’s life have been turned to gold.
The first five months of Elsie’s life have been turned to gold.
The last three years of marriage with my bride have been turned to gold.
And I so wish they weren’t gold.
I wish they were here, present.
I wish I could be there when Jessica, my wife, walked down the aisle again. I wish I could see Peter put on his little white hoodie with the buttons again. I wish I could watch him walk for the first time again. I wish I could see Elsie’s smile for the first time again.
But I can’t.
And maybe that’s part of the problem with constantly looking toward the next accomplishment, the next opportunity, or the next thing that might finally make me feel like I’ve done something worthwhile.
While I’m trying to turn everything into gold, the things that are actually precious are passing right in front of me.
Rubbish
In the search for meaning and purpose in life, Paul—the apostle who wrote many of the books of the New Testament—gives us some perspective on how we should look at these things.
In Philippians 3, Paul lists his credentials. He was circumcised on the eighth day. He was of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, and, according to the law, a Pharisee. He was zealous enough to persecute the church. As far as outward righteousness under the law was concerned, Paul says he was blameless.
In other words, Paul had a résumé.
He knew his Bible.
He studied.
He was zealous.
He had all of the credentials that should have made him somebody.
Yet… here’s the word he uses to describe all of this stuff.
Rubbish.
Trash.
Not because those things were necessarily evil in themselves, but because compared to Christ, they could never give Paul what he actually needed.
Paul writes:
“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Insert scripture)
That’s so hard to think about.
Jesus, and the salvation won for us, has more worth than anything I could ever attain.
It has more worth than playing in the Detroit Symphony.
It has more worth than anything Edgar Meyer could play or write.
It has more worth than the Italian instrument that my instrument was made as a copy of.
Jesus has more worth than anything.
“I Have One Worth More Than Any”
Erdmann Neumeister, a German Lutheran pastor and hymnwriter, points the gold-seeking soul toward a simple truth found in God’s promises to us.
He wrote the words to the beautiful hymn God’s Own Child, I Gladly Say It:
God’s own child, I gladly say it:
I am baptized into Christ!
He, because I could not pay it,
Gave my full redemption price.
Do I need earth’s treasures plenty
I have one worth more than any
Baptism is God’s strength divine
To make life, immortal, mine.
Midas touched everything, and it turned to gold.
In Baptism, God tells me that I don’t need it to.
That may be the thing I have struggled to understand most. I keep wanting to take the things God has given me and turn them into something that proves my worth. My playing needs to become an orchestra job. My bass needs to become the perfect instrument. My work needs to become recognition. Even time with my wife and children can become something I desperately try to hold onto because I know it is passing away.
I want to touch it all and make it gold.
But Baptism opens my hands.
Because in Baptism, I am not the one doing the touching.
God is.
He takes a sinner who has nothing to offer Him and joins that sinner to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul writes in Romans 6 that those who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too might walk in newness of life.
That completely reverses the Midas touch.
Midas touched living things and made them dead.
In Baptism, Christ takes what is dead and makes it alive.
Midas grasped for treasure and lost the people he loved.
In Baptism, God gives me a treasure I could never earn and could never purchase.
Midas needed everything around him to become gold.
In Baptism, God tells me I already have something worth more than any of it.
“Do I need earth’s treasures many?
I have one worth more than any.”
That is the answer to the question I have been asking myself over the past few months.
Am I worth less because I didn’t win my last audition?
Am I worth less if I never sit in a professional orchestra?
Am I worth less if I never get asked to teach in a college someday?
Am I worth less if I don’t write worship songs like other contemporary worship leaders?
Am I worth less if Midas is the last bass I ever own? If nobody knows my name? If the greatest musical moments of my life happen in a church, a classroom, or my own living room instead of on the stage I imagined for myself?
No.
Not because those desires are meaningless. Not because music doesn’t matter. And certainly not because I should stop working at the gifts God has given me.
But because none of those things get to tell me who I am.
God already has.
I am baptized into Christ.
There is something wonderfully freeing about that sentence. It doesn’t depend on how I feel when I wake up tomorrow. It doesn’t depend on whether I think I am successful. It doesn’t depend on whether an audition committee likes the way I play a passage.
It rests entirely outside of me.
Christ died.
Christ rose.
Christ found me.
And in Baptism, He put His name on me.
So Midas can simply be a bass.
A beautiful bass. A special bass. An instrument made by someone who has meant a great deal to me as a musician, and one that I hope I get to play for the rest of my life.
But it doesn’t have to be turned to gold.
Neither does my career.
Neither does every moment with my children.
Neither does my marriage.
These things do not need to become monuments proving that my life mattered. They are gifts from a God who has already told me what I am worth.
And when my heart inevitably starts searching again—when I start wondering whether the next audition, the next instrument, the next accomplishment, or the next experience might finally be the thing that satisfies me—I pray that God turns my eyes back toward the water and the Word.
I am baptized into Christ.
Do I need earth’s treasures plenty?
No.
I have One worth more than any.
