Fourth Easter - Music Sunday
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. Our Gospel lesson talks about the voice of the shepherd--the voice that we know and respond to, about the shepherd who willingly lays down his life for the sheep. Our Psalm, which we just sang as the hymn of the day, allows us to experience the peace and tranquility of the gentle shepherd leading and guiding us. Now I know that there are only some few of us who have ever had any experience with sheep and shepherds. Though Darlene Neumann has occasionally has shared stories about calling sheep For the reality of our lesson the closest most of us have come to shepherds and sheep is the petting zoo.
Numerous sermons have taken the opportunity to suggest that the Bible is obscure to our experience and that we need modern metaphors for our understandings of God and Christ. I'm not sure what that would look like--some suggestions have included the good lifeguard or good policeman or the good psychiatrist. Maybe those work for you. I personally think these images miss something that the gospel writer John and the Psalmist captured. Something that doesn't need to be concretized in our personal every day experience to have meaning to us. Sometimes it seems to me that the world is less about the eating, sleeping, grooming habits of sheep than it is about the poetic nature of sheep.
Why is the twenty third Psalm the most beloved of all scripture? Perhaps because the world is more about poetry and song than it is about cold reason and concrete detail. One of the most rationalistic thinkers of all time Immanuel Kant even said "there are limits to human reason alone." Indeed there are limits to reason, to what we know to what we have cognitively experienced. Out beyond the limit is what we have not yet experienced, it is mystery. The closer we get to the Christian message the more that that mystery envelops us. The mystery of God's continuing creation, the mystery of the incarnation, God made flesh and particularly the Easter mystery of the resurrection can not be categorized or codified, the heart of our relationship with God can not be parsed and defined any more than the love relationship of a parent to a child or a husband to a wife.
Poetry and music help us get closer to the heart of the mystery. Music is no mere accompaniment to religion. It is not an ornament. There was a time when some groups thought that music did not belong in church. They complained that people would only come to church to hear the music. . And what would be wrong with that. Perhaps music takes us to the heart of the matter with an immediacy that ideas can not. Perhaps music is God's way to get us in tune with God.
Joachim Ernst-Berendt, a deeply spiritual German philosopher and musician who is also one of the most influential European jazz recording and festival producers of our time, wrote a book titled, "Nada Brahma: The World is Sound". Listen to his conclusion: "Since the one thing we can say about fundamental matter is that it is vibrating and since all vibrations are theoretically sound, then it is not unreasonable to suggest that the universe is music and should be perceived as such." Ernst-Berendt contends that his conclusion is not new, but was already seen by Pythagoras, the ancient Greek philosopher and inventor of geometry, when he concluded, "A stone is frozen music."(2)
What we now know, of course, is that stones are not "frozen" music. The universe from the most distant stars to the depths of the oceans has sound and rhythm. Human beings are at base sound, an intricate pattern of dancing energy. Or, as Leonard Sweet says, "There is not an atom in our body that isn't singing a song."
Composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein, who died in 1990, long had a quarrel with the translation of Genesis 1. It is usually translated "And God said, Let there be light." What brought light and everything else into being, said Bernstein, is best translated "And God sang." Creation was more than speech, "Creation was a musical composition. And creation sings back its praise to God with every vibration in its being."
When I hear harmony, I am sensing through the ear those relations of number and proportion that resound throughout all time and space. Artur Schopenhauer put this better than anybody when he wrote; Music is the soul of the drama or liturgy. It expresses the true nature of the actions and words and makes us immediately acquainted with the innermost soul of the events...Music does not express this or that particular affliction, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment or peace of mind; but affliction, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment and peace of mind as they are in themselves.
And the substance of music, like the substance of the world itself, is mysterious.
And so the hymnal is our book of theology, our connection to a God we can not see. Our song is prayer and we are compelled to pray. I want to leave you on this music Sunday with this wonderful poem by Ann Weems entitled, "Good News Music."
How long will we come before the Lord
with tired spirits and droning voices?
How long will we sit in half-filled churches
and sing praise with noiseless songs?
How long will we worship with bored faces and dulled
senses and offer tin when we could give gold?
Do we or do we not believe the news is good?
O Lord, you love us!
Why aren't we shouting?
We don't have to earn it!
Why aren't we singing?
The stone's rolled away!
Why aren't we dancing
to your good news music?
O Lord, you love us!
Why aren't the bells pealing?
The victory's won!
Why aren't the drums beating?
And you forgave us!
Why aren't the harps resounding
to your good news music?
Why aren't the feet stomping
and the doves flying
and the bands marching
and the fingers snapping
and the tongues praising
and the hands clapping
and the trumpets blaring
and the choirs singing
and the cymbals clashing
and the children laughing?
And why aren't the people
coming
to
bow
down?
Why aren't the eyes smiling
and the knees kneeling
and the banners blowing
and the horns sounding
and the voices calling
and the crowds clamoring
and the arms waving
and the tambourines playing
and the hearts humming
and the old men running?
And why aren't we
crowning
Christ
Lord
of
Lords?
If the news is good...
Sing! (5)
Amen