They didn’t light the lamps this evening - not even the ones that aren’t broken. The streets are very dark. She’s soaked through. The rain is gentle, but constant. Everything is wet and slick.

The soldiers huddle and hunch behind whatever meagre shelter they can find. An overturned cart, a barrel, a doorway, the corner of a building.

They don’t see her. She makes her way along the secret paths of the strays - the dogs and cats and rats and children of the streets. Through a broken gate, over a wall. She’s at the barricade now, crouching in the shadows.

They’ve lit fires and torches - there’s flickering orange light beyond the barricade.

She climbs. Swiftly, keeping to the shadows. Silent. Don’t let them hear you! At the top now. Climbing over. Just for a moment she’s a silhouette against the light.

Someone shouts “There’s a boy climbing the barricades!” Why does everyone call her a boy? She’s not that small!

A mule kick to her chest. A flash of fire in the darkness. The crack of a musket.

She climbs - falls - down inside the barricade.

Lying on the cobbles, she feels strangely calm. Warm. When they lived at the inn she was kicked by a mule and it hurt for weeks afterward. She doesn’t feel anything now.

He’s here! He cradles her in his arms. He’s strong! He strokes her forehead, wiping away the rain and mud. He smells like wine.

She knows she’s dying - she can feel her life draining away onto the uncaring stones and into the mud and muck of the street. It feels like sinking into a warm bath.

She starts to sing…

Musicals are weird. Eponine, bleeding out from a gunshot wound in the rain on a cobblestone Parisian street, sings a tender, comforting song to her beloved Marius.

This is the most heartwrenching, tender scene in the whole two-plus hours of Les Miserables. Do you ever notice what the bass player is doing?

My first experience of playing in a pit orchestra, and first experience of playing under a conductor, was a ‘pro-am’ production of Les Miserables at the Quarry Amphitheatre in 1994. The director told us that ours would be one of the first productions of Les Mis by an amateur company anywhere in the world. Previously the show had only been licensed to professional companies.

From memory, I don’t think there’s any electric bass part in Little Fall of Rain, so I was able to enjoy the performance every night and not even have to count bars.

Musicals are challenging music. In some places Les Mis changes time signature, key, tempo, and dynamic nearly every bar. One-two. One-two-three. Key change - two sharps. One-two-three-four. Two-two-three-four. Key change - five flats. And so on.

Jesus Christ Superstar is billed as a ‘rock musical’, but it has those sections in 7/8 which get progressively louder and faster. I Don’t Know How To Love Him is in 5/4. It’s not easy music.

Pit musicians are expected to consistently play really challenging music to a very high standard. If they get it right you’ll enjoy the story, weep a little as Eponine breathes her last, and never notice them.

When we meet at church every Sunday, part of what we’re doing is telling and retelling the most important story any of us will ever hear. In word, song, movement, and even architecture, we’re telling the story of God the Rescuer, God the Ransom.

And somehow, more often than not, we’re worried that if we perform the music well, really well, it will somehow be a distraction from the story.

Really.

But does anyone seriously think the music of Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion is a distraction from the story? Or the music of the Hallelujah Chorus is a distraction from the libretto? Can anyone merely recite “And He shall reign forever and ever” and sound more glorious and triumphant than Handel’s chorus?

What are any of the great Mass settings but, if you squint a little and tilt your head just so, through-composed underscore for the incredible story of God giving Himself as the price of our redemption?

So why is striving for excellence in our service as musicians such a perennial issue in churches? Why do we so often feel the need to qualify excellence with some little piece of performative piety?

Mostly ignorance, I think. Most people just don’t have any precedent or any way of thinking about a musical performance which demands excellence from the musicians, but also renders them anonymous. Without that sort of structure, it’s easy to think that every performance is necessarily focussed on the performer.

And, though it’s uncomfortable to say, sometimes there’s a degree of spiritual vanity involved. There’s peer pressure - we rightly want people to think we’re serious about our faith, humble, good and faithful servants. But sometimes we’re so caught up in anxiety about what other people might think that we neglect the actual work of serving!

At the worst, you will very occasionally encounter people who mistakenly believe that to do their work of service badly is to demonstrate ‘humility’.

But what is the essence of service?

It’s actually very simple. It’s doing the work well. Not thinking about ourselves, not worrying about what other people will think of us. Like a reliable pit musician - turns up in their blacks a little before the call, plays well - as they do every night, is quietly satisfied with their work, is completely unbothered that no-one in the audience will know their name.

Just do the work well.