Episode 29 - The Sacred Chorus: Music as a Bridge to the Divine

Ever wondered about the divine role of music in our lives and how it connects us to Jesus? 

From the rhythm of work to the melody of celebration and even the dissonant notes of war, music is a constant companion. 

We'll uncover the centrality of the Levites, God's chosen musicians in the church, and the profound significance of encountering Christ through the written word. 

Get ready to view music from a spiritual lens, as a tool that bridges the gap between us and the great High Priest, Jesus.

Now, imagine the language of music expressing truths that words can't capture. 

In our exploration, we dive into music's ability to stir the deepest emotions and unveil greater truths. 

We'll unravel the unique connection between music and our creation, along with the logic of Jesus. The discussion extends to how music can resonate beyond speech, especially when employed to glorify God. 

Prepare to be enthralled by the transformative power and extraordinary impact of music on our hearts and minds. Tune in, and experience the resonance of God's truth through melody and rhythm.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-centered cosmic civilization podcast. And we're continuing to think about music. Just this morning I was involved with morning prayer and some of the words were sung by a small choir, and the words which normally I would just say. But this tradition of singing the words goes deep in liturgy and throughout this medieval period, even the way of saying the Psalms is often done in a kind of chanting way and the idea of chanting and singing words, it's a way of trying to bring in a musical character, sometimes full on music sung, but sometimes this chanting method of finding a rhythmical, simple tune in which to say the words of scripture. It's kind of reaching for the thing that we thought about, reaching for a way in which all communication is musical and that we sense that that is what we were created to do. Just as birds only communicate through song and whales do and so on, so would we, and angels probably do as well. I don't know, they certainly seem to have a lot of musical work. But I just struck me deeply again how music is supposed to be part of our daily pattern of life.

Speaker 1: 2:43

And the biggest book of the Bible is the music book, the book of Psalms and though it has many moods and themes, the central theme is praise, and it has praise even in sorrow, joy, victory, repentance. Praise is woven into everything. Praise is when we acknowledge the reality and worth of the living God, seeing his hand in all things, marveling at his wisdom, being thankful for his help and bowing before his judgments. Praise, then, can become very monotone almost when it is simply the word praise used a lot, but in the Bible praise is usually attached to things that the living God has done, said, stands for, is, and especially in relation to the entire world. And we've thought before how, when the Psalms reach this great climax of in the 40s and up to 150, where you get this? The implementation of musical instruments, but also it's the uniting of the entire created order in this musical work and it's this way in which music reflects and possibly is woven into every aspect of reality. And therefore everything we do can be part of this act of worship, from the way we eat to the way we work, from the way we use our time to the way we use our love.

Speaker 1: 5:02

And Theodore Berg said, if we were able to step into the biblical world, we would find a culture filled with music, where people used music in their daily lives. And again, greg Strawbridge, in a Biblical Theology of Music, says this music sounded in every aspect of life work, play, celebration and even war. And he refers us to and I'll give this range of verses here Isaiah 16-10, jeremiah 48-33, matthew 11-17, luke 15-25, genesis 31-27, exodus 32-17-18, ecclesiastes 2-8, judges 11-34-35 and 2 Samuel 19-35. Well worth looking all those up, that way in which music, singing, is woven into every aspect of life work, play, celebration, even war. And that's what we're wanting to grasp in this time together, the way in which music is central to life and part of everything that we do. And it has this mediation. It mediates between us and reality and between us and the living God.

Speaker 1: 6:57

So in 1 Chronicles 15-16, the David appoints musicians from among the Levites to lead the whole church family. We need to reflect on that, because he could have appointed musicians from any tribe, surely, surely there were perfectly good musical musicians in any of the tribes. And yet the musicians are selected only from among the Levites. And there are these. There's a kind of three-fold system. There's the High Priest, then there are the priests that are a kind of support team around the High Priest, and then there's this wider priestly tribe of Levites, and it's from that wider tribe of the Levites, so that they are a priestly tribe, and he appoints them to be the musicians at the center of church life. So why are priests, these mediators, given such a musical role?

Speaker 1: 8:19

Well, music is so much more than mere accompaniment. Music does more than provide an interesting background to words or visuals. So it's not this is so key that music does something, communicates, even without words or visuals. Music can disclose reality, music can tell the truth, music can reveal life to us, but only because the whole creation is full of the glory of God and there's this way in which music was written in at the very beginning of all things. Music is constantly sounding out of the whole creation, and so music has this capacity to tell this truth.

Speaker 1: 9:21

The fact that music has such influence, the fact that it can touch us so deeply, is the constant reminder of the glory of the great divine director of music, the Lord Jesus, the great High Priest. See, the great High Priest, the divine mediator, is also the director of music, and the Psalms pay tribute to him. At the beginning of many of the Psalms, they're directly addressed to this chief choir master, the divine choir master, the one who holds everything together in this one harmonious symphony that includes such a glorious diversity of sounds and songs. And we've thought already how the whole creation has this vibration, the waves and vibrations of music trembling and thrilling through all things. All things have a tune that they are giving out, and it is the great musician at the center of all reality who tunes them.

Speaker 1: 10:46

And the Bible is the place where we meet with this great high priest. And this is important because it might be tempting to say, therefore, we access Christ musically, without his word, but it is in his written word, the written word of God, that we encounter the person who is the eternal word of God, and in meeting him we find life and light and logic, music and meaning. But he discloses himself in the scriptures, which are this beating heart at the center of our church life, this word that informs us, but it also is full of songs and music, and his training us how to engage musically, to sing new songs, to be inspired by all the songs that are in scripture. And it's if we imagine that we can simply access him only in music, without his word, we underestimate our blindness or our deafness. Our deafness, because in order to be tuned into, into the music of the cosmos, we need to be transformed and healed. We are not. We are essentially deaf to the music of creation. We are deaf to the instructions and leading of the great choir master, naturally speaking, and we need that healing touch from him to open our ears, to hear who he, as he himself says in the gospels he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And we need to be given those ears to hear. And it is that way in which his word transforms us. It's as our minds and hearts and lives are transformed by the Lord Jesus, so our experience of the world is renewed and refreshed and our ears are unstopped. So the explosion of musical expression and variety that accompanies churches all around the world and down through the ages shows the musical heart of eternal life. Thomas Merton, a monk of the 20th century, the mid 20th century, said this by reading the scriptures, I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet. I love that quotation because it's bearing witness to the way that, as we are healed by the word of Christ, by living as church, by learning how to be human, so our capacity or our, we, are tuned into the music of creation and we experience it so much more deeply in the world around us, and that in itself, as we hopefully will see, brings with it this musical energy and innovation to church life.

Speaker 1: 15:24

Let's just think what is truth? Truth in the ultimate sense is a person, the Lord Jesus. He is the full expression of the eternal being of the Father. He is the life, logic, light voice of the Father. Hebrews 1-3. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Now, theology sometimes focuses only on the logic or information that is in the word of God, but it is vital to remember that he is also the voice of the Father and therefore sound as well as logic is included in this encounter with him.

Speaker 1: 16:18

Truth is more than information. Truth has to do with connections, relationships, affections, knowledge and appreciation, meaning, if we can recite information but we do not know its significance or feel its relevance or beauty, then do we know the truth. If we talk about love, war, life and death without emotion, without affection, without heart, then do we? Can we know the truth of any of these things? Can we study anything if we have no love or passion for it? We might say that a computer contains a lot of information, but does it know anything because it has no heart? Is knowledge possible without personal knowledge, without affection, without heart? Is it ever right to speak words without music? Is it ever right to deal with mere information without engagement and affection? Is it ever right to try to handle truth with a hard heart or if we are dead to sensitivity? We know the truth of this, like in Ephesians when Paul is reminding us how we came to know the truth and that when we drift away from that, how we become dead and insensitive and our emotions are out of control and we spiral into these obsessions and things we can't know correctly, when we are disengaged from Jesus and our heart and our head become darkened and insensitive.

Speaker 1: 18:48

There is a tradition that assumes that the best thought has the least personal engagement. There's a long tradition of that and the idea that cold logic is the best logic, that it has a kind of disengaged objectivity to it that is superior, that we understand better when we take away the heart from the head, that logic is better if the passion is separated from the principles. Now, in fairness, we understand the seed of truth here. It sounds ridiculous, of course, and it's a kind of comedy thing. We think about the first generation of Star Trek, with spark versus bones, and it's just a silly thing in a way. And yet it's a kind of idea that is right at the heart, perhaps, of Western culture in many ways. And let's, initially, we appreciate the seed of truth that's in it.

Speaker 1: 20:16

If a person allows their emotions or passions to get out of control or to be in control of them in a way that they are ruled by their passions, that if their affections or their heart is disordered and out of proportion with the truth, well then thought and truth are endangered and action becomes unreliable. So we understand the seed of truth there and we can see how, when a person's emotions, affections, heart are out of control or ruling them, their thought is unreliable and their actions can be dangerous. However, just as dangerous is to have no awareness of the beauty of truth, just as dangerous is to view evil without horror or to view goodness without love. To try to speak of great truth without wonder and worship is dangerous, because great truth without love and without worship is falsehood and deception. It's poisonous and twisted. It leads to the Pharisees, the trap of talking about truth, engaging with scripture without obeying it, without understanding it, without loving it as it's in the right way. It leads to speaking about God without loving him or trusting him, and the greatest evils are committed when people do that, when they try to hold to the truth of God or the truth of some principle or idea or cause. Without the right love, compassion, affection, when the heads and hearts become disengaged, it can lead to the greatest atrocities in all of world history.

Speaker 1: 22:43

And Jonathan Edwards we had the quotation from him earlier explained that emotion should be felt in proportion to the truth. Truth and feeling or meaning or affection, or heart and head need to be always kept and united together in the right proportion. Truth is only properly understood by us when our affections are appropriately stirred. Music reaches the heart and can give us a proper sense of truth, of reality, of life. Music without words can stir us to feel or calm our hearts. They can awaken our passion or soothe us to sleep.

Speaker 1: 23:48

It's not just that. The truth is in the words and the music is merely background. A piece of music with no lyrics at all, no story, of no independent story, a piece of music without the words, can stir us, make us sad, cheer us up, make us dance, help us to concentrate, show us new things, new ways of seeing. And this can only be true because music is itself connected to the way we were made, to the logic of creation in Jesus, and we'll have that quotation again from Victor Hugo.

Speaker 1: 24:38

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. So, yes, sometimes music seems to reach beyond what we can easily say. It reaches to groans and sighs that cannot be expressed, to joy that is unspeakable, to a love that passes understanding, to half remembered truths, because I don't want to say that music reaches to things that no words could ever say, because I don't know what the capacity of speech can be, will be, when it's fully redeemed, fully empowered by the spirit in the new creation. But certainly for us, here and now, with our mumblings and mutterings that we think of as our speech, music seems to have a greater reach than that, certainly when it is done to the glory of God.