God Loves Music
Reflections of a Monk on June 7, 2009: Pentecost Sunday
Jl 2:23-3:5; Ac 2:1-11; Jn 7:37-52,8:12
Within the Trinity there is an unparalleled harmony: a harmony so perfect that this unity of persons can actually be described as one.
The angels – choirs of angels – reflect that music. In the book of Isaiah we hear the angels chant: Holy, Holy, Holy. And what are they doing? This isn’t merely, “Oh wow.” It is rather the reflection of the beauty of God – not just the power of God but the love expressed within that relationship and which pours over into and through everything else.
And God creates a universe. We speak of the harmony of the spheres. We talk about how it all works together so well. Even decay has its beauty: undecayed cheese is milk. All of this is harmony.
And God said, “I want to create an instrument of music which has the possibility of changing music. And God created the human heart. And God gave the human heart amazing power. We have the power to allow the Spirit of God to play the flute of the heart to make the music of God. We have the power to transform even the greatest of sorrows into a form of joy through hope and love. We also have the power to turn the music off. To take the music of God and turn it into a concerto for unaccompanied ego in the key of me by filling that instrument with sin, with death, with my concerns, with how important I am, with what I need to be. I can close down that great creation of God, that beautiful instrument, by filling it in with junk.
For there to be music, the heart must be empty. A flute that is filled in is a stick — the hollowed out is the flute. The emptiness is what is essential to what is human. It is only when we present ourselves as empty that God can fill us. The chalice can only be filled because it is empty.
God creates the human heart – and we fill it up. And God says, “Let me help you empty this.” And Jesus comes and shows us, in his kenotic (emptying) reality; Jesus comes to us and says, “I will set aside the fullness of divinity in myself. I will come to you – totally empty – and I will let God fill me. And I will let the Spirit play through me for you so that you can hear the music of God once more.
We listen to that music and we try to emulate Him. And that is great music.
We fill ourselves up again. And sometimes that filling is like filling the heart with concrete. And God comes and says, “I will give you things that will break your hear open. I will destroy that hardened heart for you if you but let me. And in my rising, your heart will be healed so that once again can the Spirit play.”
Are we willing to let God empty us? Are we willing to set aside our music for the music of God? Are we willing to set aside our raging for peace? Are we wiling to set aside our whining for responsibility?
Are we willing to hear the music of those around us? Can I rejoice with the music of rejoicing or do I set up the discord of envy and jealousy? Am I willing to harmonize with the music of sadness and loss – of mourning – or do I throw in the ratcheting of impatience? (“Why aren’t you over this yet?”)
God loves music.
Are we willing to be the instruments of God? Are we willing to reflect back with the angels that beauty — that harmony — presented to us as the essence of our nature?
In a few minutes we will recite the Creed. That Creed as Br Christopher pointed out last week is something that binds us together. In the Greek text of the liturgy, the invitation to the recitation of the Creed is not, “With one mind,” rather it is, “In harmony let us profess Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” In harmony! Because each of us is different and yet, as we listen, as we balance – we become harmonious with each other and with the One who made us.
This is work. If you were among those who had a chance to participate in the music workshop with Kevin Lawrence last week, you know: it was work. Getting us to stay on pitch — was work. Understanding how a true third really works as opposed to what we were singing as a third — is work! But it’s worth it.
The inner-life – is work.
To be in harmony with the will of God — is work.
To be in harmony with the people around me — is work.
To develop the intimacy, the awareness required, so that, so that in listening to each other we are together — is work.
Anybody here married, knows that when your marriage works — it’s work!
And yet, the harmony that is there, the beauty that is there, the growth that is there when we allow ourselves to be instruments of God through which the Spirit plays, makes the human voice prophetic: the voice of God comes through me to you and that same voice comes through you to me. And that voice is music because it transcends all language; it transcends everything in its purity, in its depth, in what it does to us. So that all of me is nothing but ear and voice: feeling – knowing – the love of God and reflecting that divine love back to divinity like the angels.
Christ, who heals and empties and raises, is in our midst.