A friend asked me a couple of weeks ago if I would still
believe in God if it wasn't for music. I'm not sure if he meant it as a serious
question or a teasing question, but it felt serious internally. Would I? Hmm.
Maybe not. And if not, is that entirely bad? Is it wrong that the way I
physically experience the divine is through an art form? I rather think not.
Last night I stayed after the Good Friday service for choir rehearsal and after rehearsal to hear what my dad is singing at the early service on Easter. Sitting in the sanctuary at that time, I was privy to a conversation between Bill, the senior pastor, and Scott, the director of music, about the choir processing in at the beginning of the 9am service on Easter morning. This, I know, means that we will not be in the sanctuary for Widor's Toccata. It wasn't my place, of course, to mess with the high-church plans the staff was making for EASTER SUNDAY. Plus, I'm all for pulling out all of the stops on Easter. Give me Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus. Give me a trumpet fanfare on "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." Fill the sanctuary with so many flowers their scent wafts out into the street. Let's have everyone wear their very best clothes and hats with ribbons and shiny new shoes. Let's eat chocolate while we worship! Let's clap and cheer and weep and throw streamers and hug and kiss and slap each other's backs and butts and hands. Let's take buckets of sidewalk chalk and hundreds of balloons and festoon every block of the downtown with color. So yes, by all means, let's have the choir wear robes and process. But, as I told Scott, half seriously, I will QUIT CHOIR if being in the choir means I miss the Toccata.
At first, I had a hard time believing the Good Friday service last night. My mind kept going elsewhere. I was fully present at the Maundy Thursday service, but it took a long time for me to get to Good Friday. The Bible readings helped, of course, but what really moved me to grief was the "Agnus Dei" Scott had written. I was blessed to get to sing the solo descant, and by the end, I was singing it for the death of my best friend, for the loss of all hope in a new world. Afterwards, there was darkness. There was regret. There was sorrow. And then on the last verse of the last hymn, Scott did something with the organ that made my heart break. I was crying, nearly weeping. I am a word person. I love the Bible. But music. Music. Music expresses what words cannot come anywhere near. Of all of the people in my church who have contributed to what faith I have, Scott probably has the single largest share. There maybe are not words enough make Good Friday real again, 2000 years later, on the other side of the globe, in a different culture. But there certainly are organ pipes enough. There are a capella choir pieces. I cannot fully describe a broken heart, but Scott can break your heart for you, make you feel it all over again.
Likewise, Widor's Toccata, for me, is Easter. It is the mystery and anticipation of seeing the stone rolled away, a high and quick obbligato. Then, underneath that racing heartbeat, it is a joyful proclamation, heard over and over and over. Surely the voice of an angel would replay in one's mind endlessly: “He is not here; He is risen!” Those two things: physical response and exclamation, right hand and left hand. It lifts the heart, or swells it. It quickens the pulse. And then.... Oh, the pedal tones! You can feel them in your rib cage and the soles of your feet. They shake the church. They are the sudden understanding of what all this means. Not a quick exuberant joy, not a sharp in-your-face kind of victory, but a dawning realization that the very foundations of civilization have been rolled away with that one tomb boulder. Oh, we had lost hope, but it is possible that Jesus was right all along, that his way is the way, and that you can't kill that kind of love with weapons or betrayal or armies or governments. God is bigger than that. Big enough to shatter buildings and institutions with the vibration of his voice and big enough and loving enough not to do so but rather to starve in the wilderness with us, to carry a cross with us, to drink defeat, to wear humiliation, to weep, to die and then still to live. I cannot describe the power of that emotion with words—certainly not better than the authors of the Bible and the thousands of saints and scholars who have written since—but I feel it in my body and my soul when I hear Widor's Toccata. For a few short minutes a year on Easter morning, I hear the voice of God, and God says “I AM.” Or, rather, God sings: this. This! Believe. Rejoice. Carry on.
Would I still believe if there was no music? Lord, I hope never to find out.
Last night I stayed after the Good Friday service for choir rehearsal and after rehearsal to hear what my dad is singing at the early service on Easter. Sitting in the sanctuary at that time, I was privy to a conversation between Bill, the senior pastor, and Scott, the director of music, about the choir processing in at the beginning of the 9am service on Easter morning. This, I know, means that we will not be in the sanctuary for Widor's Toccata. It wasn't my place, of course, to mess with the high-church plans the staff was making for EASTER SUNDAY. Plus, I'm all for pulling out all of the stops on Easter. Give me Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus. Give me a trumpet fanfare on "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." Fill the sanctuary with so many flowers their scent wafts out into the street. Let's have everyone wear their very best clothes and hats with ribbons and shiny new shoes. Let's eat chocolate while we worship! Let's clap and cheer and weep and throw streamers and hug and kiss and slap each other's backs and butts and hands. Let's take buckets of sidewalk chalk and hundreds of balloons and festoon every block of the downtown with color. So yes, by all means, let's have the choir wear robes and process. But, as I told Scott, half seriously, I will QUIT CHOIR if being in the choir means I miss the Toccata.
At first, I had a hard time believing the Good Friday service last night. My mind kept going elsewhere. I was fully present at the Maundy Thursday service, but it took a long time for me to get to Good Friday. The Bible readings helped, of course, but what really moved me to grief was the "Agnus Dei" Scott had written. I was blessed to get to sing the solo descant, and by the end, I was singing it for the death of my best friend, for the loss of all hope in a new world. Afterwards, there was darkness. There was regret. There was sorrow. And then on the last verse of the last hymn, Scott did something with the organ that made my heart break. I was crying, nearly weeping. I am a word person. I love the Bible. But music. Music. Music expresses what words cannot come anywhere near. Of all of the people in my church who have contributed to what faith I have, Scott probably has the single largest share. There maybe are not words enough make Good Friday real again, 2000 years later, on the other side of the globe, in a different culture. But there certainly are organ pipes enough. There are a capella choir pieces. I cannot fully describe a broken heart, but Scott can break your heart for you, make you feel it all over again.
Likewise, Widor's Toccata, for me, is Easter. It is the mystery and anticipation of seeing the stone rolled away, a high and quick obbligato. Then, underneath that racing heartbeat, it is a joyful proclamation, heard over and over and over. Surely the voice of an angel would replay in one's mind endlessly: “He is not here; He is risen!” Those two things: physical response and exclamation, right hand and left hand. It lifts the heart, or swells it. It quickens the pulse. And then.... Oh, the pedal tones! You can feel them in your rib cage and the soles of your feet. They shake the church. They are the sudden understanding of what all this means. Not a quick exuberant joy, not a sharp in-your-face kind of victory, but a dawning realization that the very foundations of civilization have been rolled away with that one tomb boulder. Oh, we had lost hope, but it is possible that Jesus was right all along, that his way is the way, and that you can't kill that kind of love with weapons or betrayal or armies or governments. God is bigger than that. Big enough to shatter buildings and institutions with the vibration of his voice and big enough and loving enough not to do so but rather to starve in the wilderness with us, to carry a cross with us, to drink defeat, to wear humiliation, to weep, to die and then still to live. I cannot describe the power of that emotion with words—certainly not better than the authors of the Bible and the thousands of saints and scholars who have written since—but I feel it in my body and my soul when I hear Widor's Toccata. For a few short minutes a year on Easter morning, I hear the voice of God, and God says “I AM.” Or, rather, God sings: this. This! Believe. Rejoice. Carry on.
Would I still believe if there was no music? Lord, I hope never to find out.
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