Time's Dance to the Music of God

In some churches, folk are free to raise both hands high above them in open-hearted worship. In a group I’m too self-conscious to express myself that way.

But if I’m alone in the kitchen at home, loading the dish-washer while listening to some of the music I find breathtakingly beautiful – Bach’s Air on a G string for example – I have no such inhibitions. Instinctively, my hands open high above me, both expressing, and opening myself up to joy and wonder.

But that’s simply appreciation of the composer’s creative skills, isn’t it? Not worship.

But is it worship? Recently, I watched on BBC iPlayer a recording from the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in which Sir Mark Elder conducted the Hallé Orchestra in a performance of Elgar’s 2nd Symphony. Sir Mark introduced each of the work’s four movements, explaining the circumstances in the composer’s life which found expression in the music.

As I watched the intense concentration of the musicians, saw the rapt attention of the audience, heard the richly intricate orchestral sound as the conductor lived the music on his rostrum I suddenly thought ‘this is prayer!’

Was I wrong? We can only know and experience God as God self-reveals to us in ways our limited bodies, minds, and spirits can process. The immensity of God is beyond anything we can ever think or imagine.

God self-reveals in giving us words, parables, metaphors, symbols – and in Jesus himself. I am blessed by parables (how often have I walked the road home in my imagination, seeing the Father running towards his returning prodigal, feeling welcoming arms wrapped around me); I have been encouraged by the example and words of Jesus (‘I will never leave you.’).

Above all, I have been inspired by the great Bible story of creation; of humanity devastated by sinfulness; of a way back to God opened up by Jesus; of the final healing of all things; of our place as individuals in that story.

But all these words and stories can’t capture the bigness of God – they simply point to the great mystery beyond.

And so I sometimes wonder – how can I be sure that if I’m moved, say by a parable or a verse from the Bible, I am not simply responding to the story, to the beauty of the words rather than to the God who is reflected in both words and story?

Sharing this with a friend as we’d coffee in Dobbies the other day I suddenly realised the answer. God meets us in everything which points us to God. So I am not merely responding to the relevance of parable or the power of symbol but to the waiting Father. It’s like the icons used in the Eastern Church – as you reflect on the depiction of Jesus so the icon becomes a window into the heart of Christ.

And God doesn’t just come to is in specifically religious stories and ideas. I believe all joy reflects the Joy who is God; all beauty, the Beauty who is God; all love, the Love who is God.

So when I am moved or stirred by fine music, I am not simply responding to the composer’s score, but to the Music it palely reflects, the Music flowing from the heart of God.

There were no doubt people of many faiths and none among the members of the Hallé Orchestra that evening when it seemed music flowed from Mark Elder’s sensitive fingers. Yet in their commitment to create the sounds first heard by Edward Elgar they were in fact worshipping God whether or not they were aware of it.

Elgar once wrote ‘My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around is, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require.’ The composer Salieri said (in the film Amadeus) of a Mozart work ‘it seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.’

The Music of God surrounds us, and we are invited to open our hearts and receive all we require. Too often, we do not listen. We see the symbols – religious symbols, and the ubiquitous signs of God’s presence in the world – and take them for granted. We hang the icon on our wall and never really engage with it. We keep our faith on the shelf, like a dusty, unplayed orchestral score.

The Music of the Universe flows from God’s fingers. God calls us not simply to listen, but to join in; as those Hallé players let Elgar’s music cascade from them so we are invited by God to let the Master’s score be heard in our lives wherever we are.

And whenever we raise our hands in wonder, we’re raising our hands to God.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 3rd September 2015)

Thine be the glory

A friend of mine has a 50^th birthday on Sunday, Easter Sunday. I remember the Easter she was born in 1965. I was 13, and at a Scripture Union camp at Meigle in Perthshire. One of my most powerful memories of that week is of singing daily the hymn ‘Thine be the glory, risen conquering Son.’ I was stirred both by the words and George Frederick Handel’s confident melody.

I got to thinking of the significance of each 50 year period to the Jewish people in the Bible. Every 7 years their fields were to lie fallow to let the earth recuperate. Each 50th year was to be a ‘Year of Jubilee’. Not only would there be no cultivation, but outstanding debts would be cancelled, people who’d being working as servants to pay off debts would be liberated and could return to their folks, and all land ownership would revert to the families to whom it originally belonged. You can imagine how many would long for the liberation which Jubilee promised.

This radical way of doing economics was based on principles of equality, fair provision for everyone’s needs, keeping family groups together, and above all on reliance upon God.

Regrettably, there is no evidence that the God-given wisdom of Jubilee was ever put into practice in full. Instead it came to be seen as a vision of a future golden age of transformation, true freedom, and new beginnings.

Enter Jesus, who implied that he had come to begin making this vision of Jubilee a reality, not one year in 50, but forever, and to ensure that Jubilee would fully come.

As Christians, we realise on our clearer-seeing days that Jesus Christ brings us a personal Jubilee – forgiveness, inner freedom, spiritual homecoming, and a consciousness that we can rely on God. And so wee seek on our better days to live out the joy of Jubilee in our churches, and we work and pray to see the spirit of Jubilee seasoning a world where slavery, economic inequalities and debt are crippling realities.

But Jubilee still awaits a future fulfilment, when in God’s time Jubilee will come for the whole world. And there’s the thing. Jubilee is a powerful symbol. Christians are familiar with symbols – the cross, the fish, the bread, the wine. And both our theological ideas, and the words we use to talk about God are symbols, pointing beyond themselves to the great Mystery who is God. Symbols have power, and contemplating them moves us in the same way as some of us are moved by listening to music or drinking in art.

But sometimes we wonder whether in fact there is anything behind the symbols, or whether they simply inspire and console us by drawing out our inner strength and resilience. It’s possible, as the old communion hymn puts it ‘to see the signs but see not him’. Can it be, we ask in our lower moments, that the reason he is invisible to us is that the symbols are all there is?

Which is why the life of Jesus, and especially Easter is so important. Something happened that first Easter Sunday, something decisive and world-changing. Jesus, who claimed he’d come to show us the face of the Mystery, died. And yet, within weeks, his fearful, heartbroken followers had become bold proclaimers of a new Gospel, a Gospel of personal and cosmic Jubilee, convinced that Jesus had risen from the grave.

The implications of this, we believe, are profound. Jesus is not simply an inspiring symbol of fully-evolved humanity. Easter is not a simply symbol of our longing for new awakening. Jesus and the events of Easter are the evidence we long for that all the other symbols are not empty, that there is a loving being behind the universe drawing us, and it from darkness into light.

Because of Jesus, and the events to Easter we enjoy now those glimpses of personal Jubilee, and are confident (on the clearer-seeing days) that Jubilee will surely come.

To me, it’s deeply significant that someone should have their 50th birthday on Easter Sunday, the day God’s Jubilee began. To enter Jubilee, Jesus taught, is to be re-born.

‘Thine be the glory, risen conquering Son’ I sang at Meigle in 1965, the boy who cheated at the camp quiz, and lay in bed scared to death by the leaders’ ghost stories, and looked with awe at the future Scottish evangelist Bill Gilvear (who joined the camp after returning from harrowing experiences as a missionary in Africa,) and was stirred by words about the Jesus who was risen then, and is risen still.

At Easter we see more clearly not just the signs, but the one behind them. ‘No more we doubt thee, glorious Prince of life.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 2nd April 2015)