Music

From time to time, I encounter a pop song that makes me reflect upon matters of faith. I first started paying more attention to the lyrics of pop songs when I heard a former bishop in a podcast describe the song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen as being almost a modern day psalm. The entire song captures well the brokenness of humanity embodied in David and Samson and the confusion of the faithful who despite experiencing failure and sorrow and darkness choose to lament rather than to despair - the cold and broken Hallelujah. The bishop was referring in particular to the lines of the final verse:

And even though it all went wrong,
I'll stand before the Lord of song,
With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.

Of course, it's not just the lyrics that are profoundly moving. The melody itself is profoundly beautiful. And beauty, of course, is one of the transcendentals of scholastic and classical thought. And God is Beauty itself. Thus artists, in seeking Beauty, are indirectly seeking God. The artist is adept at articulating the human longing for the transcendent. And pop artists are especially adept at articulating the popular human longing for the transcendent.

This leads me to the topic of this post. One of us. During lockdown, I borrowed our church's electric piano and have been using a phone app in order to relearn piano basics. One of the exercises is to play along to various pop songs, and so I came across the 1995 hit by Joan Osborne - One of Us. As I listened to the lyrics, I couldn't shake the feeling that the song struck very close to the truth of things. So below I have provided an annotated version of the original song lyrics, except for one line where I have used Prince's cover version instead.

One of Us

If God had a name what would it be?
When we want to know someone, we ask them what their name is. Their name reveals who they are and what they are like. 'Then Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM". And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"' (Exodus 3:13-14)
And would you call it to his face?
There's an interesting fact about the name I AM. It is unique in that it does not make grammatical sense unless God himself says it. No one who is not God himself can say "I AM" in the first person and mean it accurately. This is reflected in the fact that the "I AM" in God's speech to Moses is EHYH, which is in the first person. But the name YHWH is often understood to mean the same thing but in the third person, making it appropriate for those who are not God to refer to him as "HE IS". The name itself is considered so holy and ineffable that the phrase "the LORD" is often used instead to avoid uttering the name. So no. It seems that it would be prudent to avoid calling it to his face. At least for now...

If you were faced with Him in all His glory
The finite human heart longs to look into that transcendent glory, for God has put infinity into it (Ecclesiastes 3:11). 'Moses said, "Please show me your glory." And he (the LORD) said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The LORD'... But you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live."' (Exodus 33:18-20)

What would you ask if you had just one question?
I love this thought. What would your one question be? Would it begin with the word why? There are too many whys to ask, too many issues unresolved, too many theological difficulties, too many evils unexplained, too much suffering unanswered. And yet the best question of all in a world full of suffering might be the Psalmists cry, that begins instead with how long. 'How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?' (Psalm 13) This same question has been transfigured for Christians, "How long until your return, Lord Jesus? Maranatha!"

And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
And yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah
These three lines perfectly echo that it is not enough to know the "right" answers. Perhaps the right response to certain questions is not to attempt answering them at all (see the whole book of Job). Yeah, yeah, but...

What if God was one of us?
What if indeed? What if transcendent Being itself, Unity itself, Truth itself, Goodness itself was one of us? What if Light and Love came down and pitched his tent among us (John 1:14)? If you want to know the answer to this question, open one of the Gospels and see for yourself. '"And they shall call his name Immanuel" which means God with us.' (Matthew 1:23) Because this what if has not remained a pure conditional.

Just a slave like one of us
In Osborne's original version, this line went "just a slob like one of us". I changed it to Prince's version, not because it would be beneath Jesus' pride to be numbered among the slobs (Isaiah 53:12), but rather that the Bible itself uses the language that God became a slave. 'Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.' (Philippians 2:5-8) Even the death of a slave.

Just a stranger on the bus
The stranger on the bus bears the Imago Dei.

'Then the King will say to those on his right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me." Then the righteous will answer him, saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?" And the King will answer them, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me." Then they also will answer, saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?" Then he will answer them, saying, "Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me."' (Matthew 25:34-45)

Tryin' to make his way home?
What is wonderful about God is that he is not trying to make his own way home. He went out to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). He was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19), making a way for us to get back to the home he has prepared for us (John 14:1-3).

If God had a face what would it look like?
Earlier, I noted that Moses could not see the face of God. For no one has seen God (John 1:18).

And yet, we have seen the glory of God in the human face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). God does have a face. And to see it we must look at a human face. The face of one of us.

And would you want to see if, seeing meant
That you would have to believe in things like heaven
And in Jesus and the saints, and all the prophets?
These three lines pose the million dollar question. Would you be willing to see the truth if seeing meant believing? Would you be willing to see if it meant you would no longer be the master of your fate or the captain of your ship? There's a cost to believing. It would mean losing your life. 'Then Jesus told his disciples, "If anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.' (Matthew 10:38-39)

'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.' (John 3:16-19)

Dare we come into the light? Dare we open up and be known? Dare our deepest darkest secrets and inmost thoughts be exposed? This is the verdict. We dare not.

And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
And yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah
What if God was one of us?
Just a slave like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin' to make his way home?
Just tryin' to make his way home

Like back up to heaven all alone
Nobody callin' on the phone
I find these two lines fascinating. They speak of human loneliness and the desire of the lyricist to project that loneliness onto God. It is almost as if what would make us feel better is if we knew that God also felt alone.

'And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"' (Mark 15:34) We need not project any more. For out of love for humanity the Son of God was plunged into the very depths of God-forsakenness. He came to where we are, lonely and alone.

Helen Waddell's novel Peter Abelard, based on the medieval scholastic philosopher of the same name and his wife Eloise, describes a scene with Eloise and an old friend named Gilles. Eloise is still grieving the fact that Abelard chose under tragic circumstances to separate from her when Gilles receives a letter from Abelard. The following is an excerpt from Rowan Williams' book God with us which quotes from Peter Abelard.

'"Does he speak of me?" asks Eloise. "Not yet", Gilles replies. Eloise turns away to the window and when she turns round she sees a sight she had never expected to see, the old canon in tears. She goes to Gilles: "Don't, Gilles. Beloved, you must not... It is over now. It doesn't hurt now." She catches herself and says, "Did you hear what I just said?... I can bear it now, because - because of you... Though why it should be  - why you must break your heart to comfort mine..." Gilles looks at her, 'the old speculative gleam kindling in his eyes', and says, "I wonder. Is that what men have asked of God?"'

'Cept for the Pope maybe in Rome
What a great lyric, witty and funny. I chuckled when I first heard it. Thankfully, through Jesus anyone who so desires has access to God. Not only those who sit on the Petrine throne.

And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
And yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah
What if God was one of us?
Just a slave like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin' to make his way home?
Just tryin' to make his way home

Like a holy rolling stone
God became one of us. God was forsaken of God. Buried in a tomb sealed with a stone. Who will roll away the stone for us? (Mark 16:3)

Back up to heaven all alone

Just tryin' to make his way home

Nobody callin' on the phone

'Cept for the Pope maybe in Rome

____________________

31.08.2021, Auburn, Sydney, Australia. On One of Us by Joan Osborne.

Worship and Authenticity

Concerning the Chaconne: “On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind. If one doesn’t have the greatest violinist around, then it is well the most beautiful pleasure to simply listen to its sound in one’s mind.” -- Romantic composer Johannes Brahms in a letter to fellow composer Clara Schumann.

This first quote is written by a man for whom personal emotions and feelings were of the utmost importance, a composer from the Romantic period. In it, he stresses deep thoughts and powerful feelings. The story, backed by a controversial theory put forward by some music historians, goes that Bach wrote the Chaconne after returning home from a journey to discover that his first wife and the mother of seven of his children, Maria Barbara, had died. In this understanding, Bach has written his personal grief into this piece, which is then shared by all who hear. But the apparent 'problem' with this theory, is that “there is no evidence that Bach himself considered the Chaconne to encode an entire vista of the universe or to sound out his own emotional depths. Such Romantic notions would never have occurred to a court composer who had trained in the late 1600s as a Lutheran town organist. Creating art then and there was not an act of personal expression but one of civic or religious service. Of course emotions could be depicted and messages delivered. But musicians of Bach’s generation did not need to feel an emotion in order to depict it. It was the next generation, beginning with Bach’s own son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who began to demand that a musician express emotions in a way we would call ‘authentic’.“ (Michael Markham in the LA Review of Books.)

The implication in this pushback (whether or not Markham intended it) seems to be as follows: If Bach wrote his personal grief into the Chaconne, then Bach wrote with authenticity and personal expression. But Bach came from a time where musicians did not write with authenticity and personal expression, but for civic or religious service (duty and worship). Therefore, Bach could not have written his personal grief into the Chaconne because he did not write with authenticity and personal expression because he wrote for civic or religious service. What caught my attention within this implication was the implicit dichotomy that if one does something in and for duty and worship, then one is not doing it with authenticity and personal expression. Whether or not my comments are true about this specific instance of certain persons' interpretation of Bach is besides the point. What is true is that people today often live with this perspective and mentality.

"The Chaconne was divided into three large sections. The dark and brooding outer sections flanked a hymnlike inner one that evoked peace, gratitude, and optimism. Was it far-fetched to think that Bach, a devout Christian, might have offered the Chaconne as an expression of the Holy Trinity, its bedrock spiritual principle? The first section, in D minor, would represent the Father; the next, in D major, the Son; and the final section, in D minor, the Holy Spirit. This line of thought intrigued me, even though I was on shaky footing as a secular Jew with only the flimsiest knowledge of Christianity. The more I looked, however, the more 'threes' I found. The Chaconne's basic building block was a three-beat bar, the initial theme appeared three times — at the beginning, the middle, and the end — and then there were those evocative three-note groups that appeared over and over again. Was the Chaconne some kind of message in a bottle destined for (dare I think it?) God?" -- An excerpt from Violin Dreams by violinist Arnold Steinhardt.

This second quote is by a man who dares to think that perhaps Bach wrote the Chaconne as worship to God. But if the Chaconne is worship to God, then is it true that it is no longer authentic? It depends on the working definition of what it means to be authentic. Doubtless countless essays, theses, and blog posts have been written on this topic and no shortage of ink, physical or otherwise, proverbially spilled over disagreements concerning it. It seems to me that what is often mistaken to be 'authenticity' is actually and more precisely 'self-centred self-expression'. By self-centred, I don't mean the usual meaning of selfish or greedy, but rather the literal sense of the self being in the centre, of the 'I' being of the highest importance, and of my world being about me  (egocentrism). Hence, self-centred self-expression means acting in individualistic ways that are self-defined and self-focussed. It is the freedom to love myself and to put myself first because I deserve it. It is living for myself. Indeed, this attitude is celebrated by today's culture and vaunted in our society. If we use this mis-definition, then it is indeed true that worship and authenticity are at odds. For worship means being other-centred and other-defined.

But if authenticity means living from the desire to know as we are known, if authenticity means loving because He first loved us, if authenticity means having the peace that surpasses all understanding as broken and hurting people in a broken and hurting world, if authenticity means being compelled not by our unrestrained passions but by the love of Christ -- having the liberty to live as we ought, if authenticity means being human in the truest and deepest way -- the way God made us and intended us to be, the way for which God sent his own Son to die, the way in which the truest human to have ever human-ed human-ed, if authenticity means the Imago Dei, the Image of God, then worship and authenticity are not at odds at all. In fact, worship is only true when we are authentic and we are only truly authentic when we live in worship.

There are two stories associated to Bach's deathbed. His last words were to his second wife, Anna Magdalena. "Don't cry for me, for I go where music is born". Or so the first story goes. There is a romantic and emotional evocation about these words. One can almost imagine that music here should have a capital M. Though this unverifiable saying is touching, I find myself even more moved by what we do know to be true -- Bach's final work, which he did as he lay dying in his deathbed, was on a chorale prelude titled Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit. Before your throne I now appear.

That, I submit, is the worship woven with love and beauty that made Bach's work ultimately authentic.

____________________

29.11.2020, Hurstville, Sydney, Australia. On the Chaconne from Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor.