Before I entered full-time ministry, I was a musician…or at least I wanted to be. It’s hard to call yourself a “professional musician” when all you have is a college degree and the hope that one day you’ll make it big. But, it sounds better so that’s what I’m going with. I was a musician. By training, I was a pianist, but my time playing french horn in the local symphony kindled a love for orchestral music, so by the time my undergraduate days were drawing to a close I was pretty sure the next step in my musical training/career was to do graduate work in conducting.

Thus, my last summer of college…about the time I was applying to conducting schools…I was accepted to participate in a conducting workshop focusing on the symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven. The workshop was ten days long and led by the renowned Carl St. Clair, conductor of the Pacific Symphony and student of the late Leonard Bernstein. The workshop was to be held in the city of Sofia, Bulgaria. So in June 2004, with bags packed and music scores in hand, I boarded a plane for Bulgaria.

Obviously, Bulgaria seems like a strange place to hold a workshop, but it turned out to be a financially savvy destination. Normally, workshops of this kind held in the states cost an arm and a leg. Conductors need an orchestra…it’s hard to make music without one…and orchestras don’t come cheap, especially greedy American ones. Hiring an orchestra in western Europe isn’t much better. Fortuitously, the workshop organizer was close friends with a man named Rossen Milanov, who at the time was the assistant conductor of the famed Philadelphia Orchestra. Milanov is a native of Sofia, and his career was widely celebrated by the Bulgarian government. Additionally, he was also the conductor of Sofia’s New Symphony Orchestra, which meant that access to an orchestra could come at much less cost. Thus, off I went to a country I never imagined I would ever visit.

There’s a lot I could talk about concerning my time in Sofia. The workshop was spectacular and it was a privilege to work with St. Clair and with Milanov. I learned a lot, made a lot of great friends, and experienced a completely foreign culture (perhaps not as foreign as my time in Ethiopia, but that’s a different story). In the end, though, the most profound memory I have of that trip had nothing to do with music or conducting. At least not directly. It had to do with Bulgaria itself and with the history of that nation and its impact on the people.

One of the great perks of being a part of the “in crowd” with Rossen Milanov was that the workshop was allowed to be held on the grounds of a large complex known as the Boyana Residence. Located away from the city center of Sofia, this hotel complex sat at the base of Mt. Vitosha and Vitosha Mountain National Park. The hotel and grounds was enormous, furnished with all the fineries of upscale living. It was carefully guarded by armed security officers at its front gates, complete with mirrors for looking under cars for potential explosives. It was, in fact, a governmental hotel.

During the ten-day workshop, one of the highlighted events was an evening concert with the New Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven’s 5th Symphony under the baton of Carl St. Clair. The concert was held outside in a grassy commons area at the center of the residence. The weather was sunny and warm, fairly typical for June days in Sofia. It was perfect for a summer concert. For this occasion, the orchestra was allowed to invite family members to attend the concert. This was a rare privilege for these Sofia residents, who otherwise had never stepped foot past the security gates and armed soldier who guarded the residence.

As the time of the concert neared, I made my way down from my hotel room to join a growing crowd of people who had just arrived. The crowd, I soon learned, were the family members of the musicians who would be performing. As we entered through main doors leading into the massive hotel lobby, there were a number of sustained gasps that erupted from the crowd. We continued through the room, past the concierge desk and the velvet-lined guest seating, and one woman in particular was growing increasingly agitated, almost as if she had lost her breath. Curious as to what was going on, I asked one of my fellow musicians to explain. The answer was not what I expected. What I expected was a response of awe and amazement at the beautiful accommodations. In reality, this woman’s response was one of shock and repulsion.

As it turns out, this massive hotel complex was once the residence of Bulgaria’s communist head of state Todor Zhivkov and his entourage, who held power in Bulgaria for 35 years as one of Russia’s Eastern Bloc nations. This woman, who had grown up in communist Bulgaria, had just come face to face with the extravagant hypocrisy of the socialist state. Like so many other countries trapped in socialism, the people who were promised power and freedom from economic oppression became mud under the boots of a class of communist leaders who took the country’s wealth and used it for their own personal exploitation. The Boyana Residence was a tangible evidence of communist corruption at the expense of the ordinary citizen.

There’s quite a few lessons here. Sure, we could talk about communism and socialism and the ruin that it inevitably brings to the nations that embrace them. We could talk about the oppression experienced by those who lived through these times. But what I want to bring up and what I think is most instructive at the present moment is the generational issue exposed by this seemingly innocuous interchange in the lobby of the Boyana Residence in Sofia, Bulgaria. There was very little shock and bewilderment expressed by the relatively young members of the New Symphony Orchestra, who had been accessing the residence all week for our workshop. Most of these musicians were no older than I was, making them only seven or eight years old when the People’s Republic of Bulgaria collapsed and ceased to exist in 1990. They didn’t know communism the way their parents did. They didn’t experience its crushing, debilitating weight as they would have had they been their parents’ age. To them, Boyana was an impressive luxury hotel run by the state. To their parents, it was a symbol of the oppression, exploitation, and extravagant hypocrisy of communist Bulgaria.

What this means is that both sides of the generational gap need to pull each other towards the middle. If you’re part of the younger generations, it’s your responsibility to keep an eye to the past. Recognize what you don’t know and what you haven’t experienced, and learn. Don’t make the fatal mistake of thinking history doesn’t matter or isn’t important. Don’t let yourself drift away from the dock of human history so that the world you live in has no context anymore. Stay rooted and connected to the people who’s lives and experiences fill in the gaps in your own lack of experience. Believe it or not, things happened before you were born. And those things have consequences for how and why the world is the way it is now.

If you’re part of the older generations, it’s your responsibility to pass on the knowledge and experience you’ve gained to the next generation. Pull the boat back to the dock and keep it tethered to history. The culture and the times are changing so rapidly that we can’t afford as a society and as a church to let the generational gap get any wider.

There’s a passage in the book of Deuteronomy which illustrates this dual responsibility. Having commanded Israel to love Yahweh with all of their being, to teach their children God’s laws and statutes, and to post these commands as reminders throughout the house, Moses then plays out this hypothetical yet practicaly scenario:

“When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that Yahweh our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And Yahweh brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And Yahweh showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. And be brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. And Yahweh commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear Yahweh our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before Yahweh our God, as he has commanded us.” (Deuteronomy 6:20-25)

There’s more going on here than a curious question from an inquisitive son. There’s history being handed down. There’s context being given to the next generation. The son is asking his father about God’s rules. Maybe he’s asking why they matter. Maybe he’s asking because he’s beginning to feel like they’re just a list of do’s and don’ts. Whatever the reason might be, his senses that’s he’s missing something, that there’s more here than what he’s personally experienced. So he asks. And his father tells him what he’s too young to know or remember. God’s grace and mercy are why we have these laws. It’s because we used to be slaves…something you never had to experience. But God rescued us and made us his, and brought us into this good land that he promised long ago to give to us. That’s why we have these laws. Because they show us how a grateful, redeemed people live in light of the grace they’ve received.

That’s an Old Testament version of closing the generational gap. Ultimately, it takes an investment from everyone to keep that gap closed. It means investing in the future…but also investing in the past. Only then can there be a legacy that keeps on living in a generation that never forgets the past.