Sermon: In Praise of Music

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In Praise of Music

By Charles Rush

May 17, 1998

r prayer group is reading ‘Timeless Healing' by Herbert Benson. Benson has taught medicine at Harvard Medical School for the past 25 years. Over that time, it he has had the chance to observe the phenomenal power of the body to repair itself through prayer. He calls it a ‘remembered wellness' and has devoted quite a few years to exploring and documenting the subject. He believes that the pejorative comments that surround the ‘placebo effect' are misplaced. You have seen studies where people take a sugar pill, and low and behold 25% of the people get better just because they think there is a remedy that is available to make them better. When these observations were first made public, there was a tendency on the part of the medical community to dismiss them derisively. ‘It is just the placebo effect.'

Benson was one of the few physicians at that time to take the opposite response. He said, ‘maybe this suggests that the body has spiritual resources resident in itself to repair itself that are under appreciated in the paradigm of Enlightenment medicine. Perhaps, there is some sense that concentrated consciousness can actually have therapeutic effects on a bio-chemical level. He devoted a number of years to documenting this phenomenon. Fortunately, Dr. Benson realized that that he was proving the obvious, namely that prayer actually does open resources of healing in people's lives. But it was a fact that we had never bothered to investigate this in any systematic way for research.

After a few years of study, Dr. Benson couldn't help but begin to explore the subject further with some of his patients. He began to teach his patients how to meditate. He would have them concentrate on one theme from their religious tradition. For example for Protestants, he would focus on one line from the Lord's Prayer ‘Thy kingdom come'. Jews might pick for themselves a line from Psalm 23 ‘The Lord is my shepherd'. Catholics might pick a single line from the rosary. He would have them begin breathing intentionally, slowing down their breathing, focusing their thoughts on the moment.

As I have said before, when you try to do this, it is amazing how many random thoughts will fly into your head, some of them lofty, most of them incredibly trivial, and some of them rather dark. I suppose a whole study could be done on what these thoughts tell you about yourself but we will save that for another time. The point is to let them be freed. You acknowledge them and repeat your line again, breathing slower and slower, focusing your consciousness so that you are fully in the moment. It is a skill that you can get better at with practice, like a back hand at tennis that you have to practice over and over until you get it just right.

Once in a while, it pays off. You know that there is nothing quite like that feeling when you are actually playing tennis in the middle of the match when, for a few shots in a row, you are hitting in a groove that is just like the way that you dream about seeing yourself hit them. In that moment, you are in the zone, and it doesn't matter that the rest of the match you play up and down, with some real clunker shots, you will be back out on the court next week, trying to replicate that feeling of being in the zone.

Meditation is like that too. Occasionally, you get these moments of transcendence, where the moment is rather supersaturated with existence, a concentration a momentary merging. It is a spiritual moment. In general, through meditation, we are connecting with the divine, opening ourselves to becoming channels of spiritual energy. That is the essential function of prayer, to put us into the divine zone, to connect our inner selves with our God source and to realign ourselves or to re-center ourselves.

Benson has a quote in one of his chapters about worship. In effect the quote says this: A lot of people come to church and are uninterested in theology as such, want nothing to do with exotic ideas, do not expect brilliant ideas from the sermon, and dislike change I must say that this is a sobering thought. Rather, he says, they find a link with tradition and the ritual of liturgy, give them a sense of security. Now, why is that? He says that the liturgy itself can my mysterious and awe invoking.

In other words, the ritual of the liturgy, particularly in certain places, can put you in the zone. It triggers in us a ‘relaxation response' like that of meditation, it facilitates us into a saturated moment, a divine connection that takes us both into ourselves and beyond ourselves in transcendence.

Let me correct him on one point. This is one part of the liturgy or one aspect. There is a place for novelty, for change, for thought, and for God's sake, for new thought. But he is right about one thing, that after a while, just coming to church on a regular basis puts us in the zone. And thank God it does because we can get some spiritual nourishment even when the preaching is awful, when the soloist is flat, and the sound system has feedback Not that this ever happens here, you understand.

The liturgy can put us in the zone to connect with our deepest selves to God. It is not simply a rational event, although it is not irrational either. It is supra rational. We shoot through a mere linear approach to things.

And a key piece of this is music. Music moves us through and beyond the limits of reason alone. How important that is. Immanuel Kant published a book entitled "Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone". Isn't that a great Enlightenment title? A German Enlightenment title? Vy vould ve ever want to go beyond reason? Because the book is boring and in a funny way it never connects with the central reality of spirituality, even though Kant is brilliant and describes his subject matter with remarkable clarity.

No, spirituality is reasonable but it is more than rational. Music takes us to that place. A couple of examples.

When I was in college, I knocked around Europe. I got a boat in Athens that was going to Haifa, Israel. Never been on a boat before in the ocean. It was quite an experience for a couple of days on the beautiful blue Mediterranean. Back in those days the Ocean liner companies had a few cheap seats for students up on the deck of the ship. There was an area where we just camped out with our sleeping bags. It was just great, except when it rained, which was a small problem.

A boat full of people going to Israel in 1976 was full of interesting people. I was a big talker then and I met quite a few of them. The ones that really intrigued me were the Orthodox Jews from the Soviet Union. They weren't just on a trip; they were on a road to freedom, through 30 years of agony. One of them told me a few stories about what it was like to survive in one of the perms in Eastern Russia in the middle of the winter, without any heat, and without proper clothing, and only the most minimal amount of food. Some of them would not speak of it at all, and the ones who did were indirect because it is really something that you cannot explain to a Westerner. I had read the book ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' and I had some imagination about what it would be like to be so harshly punished just for practicing your faith. I know now what I could not know then, that persecution for your faith is different from other forms of torture because you call upon the resources that you learn from being in the zone of meditation and they somehow get you through and can make you stronger spiritually speaking.

I know now that what kept those men going during those long years of struggle was thinking of Palestine, of getting to Palestine. ‘Next year in Jerusalem'. Some times they must have had to focus on that thought for most of the day just to get through, to hang on, to keep from despairing and giving up.

On the morning of the third day, as Dawn ran her fingers across the sky, as Homer used to say, you could see the shoreline of Israel in the distance. All of the Orthodox were up at the rail, looking forward to the homeland they had never been to in their lives. Almost as one person, they formed a large circle on the deck and began singing Jewish songs of the promised land. They began to dance in the Hora, arm in arm and sing.

It was a profound and contagious moment. All of us college kids, not given to early rising. You sit up and look around, no coffee But instead of being grumpy, we stood and watched, grown men were crying for the joy of hope revisited. The next thing you know we were all dancing too. And we were all singing, didn't know a word of Hebrew, but we got it by the second verse. It seemed like the thing to do. I think we were all ready to become Jewish. And it went on for a couple of hours. By the time we were near to the port of Haifa, the whole deck was full of dancing and singing, people expressing a deep sentiment that could be expressed no other way. Music can take you to that place of inexpressible hope, the fulfillment of something at such long last, you thought the day would never come.

Or assurance in the face of an overwhelming grief. You know that we have the psalms of the Jews, have you ever wondered what the tunes were like that they were sung to? We no longer have the tunes. Tradition holds that when the Jews were exiled to the land of Babylon, they were so overcome with grief at being cut off from their homeland and living as slaves to a foreign power for several generations that they could no longer sing the songs of Zion. They forgot the tunes to the Psalms. We don't know whether the story is really true but that kind of grief sure is and only music can really get to its source.

A few years ago, in West Windsor, a 9-year-old boy was tragically killed in an automobile accident as he rode home from a baseball game. A car lost control. It was a terrible event and a funeral service was held at the new Catholic church. Hundreds and hundreds of people came, people who didn't even know the family but who lived in town, just to be there in support because such an awful thing could really happen to anybody. It was one of those moments when people wanted to come up to the parents and say something but there just aren't any words to express what you mean that don't sound banal and platitudinous.

The priest kept his remarks mercifully brief. And the choir sang ‘On Eagles Wings'

And he shall lift you up on eagles wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to fly like the sun, and hold you in the palm of his hand.' You can only imagine that the family was shattered to the core of their being, numb, lacking any purpose or meaning, threatened in a very ultimate way- that things don't always turn out right, maybe chaos wins. And all the other families, vicariously living through them the fundamental threat to meaning. In that moment, the music of assurance in the midst of such a threat. There is nothing quite as frightening as losing a child. Words cannot express this fear. Likewise, it is not enough to speak the words of assurance, they might not get from the head to the heart and if they don't get to the heart, it won't matter. No, you have to sing the words of assurance to get to the place where the fear can be assuaged.

I shared with Wayne this week, the number of passages in the Paul's letters where Paul is searching for the right thing to say and he quotes a hymn. One of the most famous examples, is one of assurance. It is from Romans 8 and one of Wayne's favorite passages from the bible. Paul is speaking about the threat of torture and death and he says "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus." It is not enough to mention one or two; you have to mention every possibility. You have to sing that assurance because the threat is fierce and just might overcome you otherwise.

Finally, Joy. There is a story in the bible that should be filed under the heading ‘Religion just ain't what it used to be.' After a military victory when Jerusalem was finally secured, we are told that King David was moved in a spontaneous act of spiritual joy and thanksgiving to God. Acting in his capacity as Chief Priest of the people, he had the Ark of the Covenant brought into the city gates in a procession and the singing began. David was caught up in the moment and began dancing but even that didn't seem fully expressive of how he felt, so he stripped down and danced naked before the Ark.

You will be relieved to note I have no such plans to worship au naturel. You may also be interested to know that David's wife was horrified with embarrassment. It may be the earliest evidence we have of the preacher's wife giving constructive feedback on the weekly worship. ‘You did what?' A withering review.

The Psalms tell us to make a ‘joyful noise' unto the Lord. Frankly, I wished that they had been a little more specific. In the many years serving small parishes, I've endured a lot of joyful noise, the noisemakers so often volunteering for the Sunday solo.

But music does express our joy and everyone can participate in it on some level. There are a group of fellows that live on Martha's Vineyard that figured out a way to get all kids involved in music, through percussion instruments. They go to the local school system and hand out cymbals, sticks, bells, tambourines. Everybody gets something. The leaders begin with a basic beat and they keep inviting more and more kids to join in until everyone in the room is drumming to the same beat. It is infectious with primordial joy.

They were doing this on the beach the last day of the summer (Labor Day) one year. They had about 20 people drumming on the beach. And dozens of people came on over to just check it out. They all stood around a while bouncing up and down. Spontaneously they formed a long line and all began a long line dance, young and old, chic and ugly. Everybody was closing out the summer, expressing the primordial joy that we feel over the wonder of warm weather and the warm memories it brings.

Thank God for joy. Imagine if we couldn't bring our joy to worship. Imagine if we had no song to express our joy. We'd all be Presbyterians. Thank God for the joy of music.

Handel's Messiah, the Hallelujah Chorus. That is a joy so big and infectious, you get caught up in it, proud to be a bit player in a Universe-sized elation. The story is that Handel wrote only Operas but one day someone challenged him to write something that would not only entertain but also inspire us.

That music can inspire us in a way that preaching never does. For the last several years, I have been saying on Easter that it is difficult to preach on the resurrection to the ‘cultured despisers of religion'. It is such a profound triumph of hope over despair contained in a simple story woven in poetic images. It is so fantastic and elusive to the merely rational mind that most of us can't escape with any serious transcendent imagination. I never know if I connect.

My colleague Wayne Bradford understands that and has us all sing the Hallelujah Chorus. One of our church members stopped me on the way out of the door one Easter recently and said, ‘Reverend, I'm not totally convinced by your sermons on Easter but Handel that's another matter.'

He is right of course. Music takes us to a place as transcendent as our spiritual natures. Hope after a long journey. Grief and the assurance in the midst of shattered purpose and meaning. Joy at the inexpressible wonder, the unbearable lightness of being itself. We are shot through with these. They pull us out beyond ourselves. Thank God for music, the language, the poetry of transcendence.

Amen.