Music: In the Air and in Our Hearts
DATE: September 13, 2009
SCRIPTURE: Genesis 4:14-22
I've had occasion this week to think a lot about family. Last Sunday and Monday, as our good friend Ed See went through his last hours, I had the privilege of spending time with his children and their families as they stood watch. And I was reminded yet again of how powerfully we reflect our parentage, for they are a very fine group of folks, full of the same wit and integrity that informed Ed's life for ninety-three years.
Then, much of the rest of the week was spent with my own family, as we gathered in Kentucky for my father's Memorial Service. There were four generations of Danners present, and we often heard comments about how much we sounded like my dad or looked like my mother. We told many stories, cracked some puns, one of our favorite family pastimes, and remembered how after a good meal my Dad would turn to my mother and say, "That was a good danner, Mrs. Dinner." As we compared our own habits of parenting and work, we rediscovered how much we have in common—and how much each one of us owes to our heritage.
So perhaps it is more than mere coincidence that I chose this morning's passage from Genesis several weeks ago.
At first glance it might seem rather odd, what with all its hard to pronounce names. But in fact, it too is all about family, and is just one of many genealogical lists that show up in the Bible.
The reality is that this one, here in the early chapters of Genesis, may be nothing more than a bit of fiction. After all, many, many scholars feel Genesis 1-11, with its stories of creation, the flood and the Tower of Babel, should be understood as myth and not as history. So if it's all made up, why dwell on it? What can it possibly have to teach us?
No doubt, many things, but here's what I find striking about it. Right in the midst of this genealogy of the descendents of Cain, son of Adam and Eve, is Jubal. Here among the founders of the basic elements of civilization like the builder of the first city, the father of all shepherds, and the first ironmonger, is Jubal—the first musician. The first to play the pipe and the lyre.
Now whether or not he existed, is really beside the point. For what his inclusion in the list tells us is that right from the start, music has played a crucial role in the lives of people of faith, people like the writers of Genesis. Indeed, throughout the scriptures, we read again and again, how God's people expressed themselves in song. In good times and in bad, music enabled them to express their innermost joys and concerns, their fears and their celebrations. In fact, smack dab in the middle of the Bible is the Book of Psalms, 150 pieces of poetry that were originally written to be sung in worship. Songs of thanksgiving, songs of confession, songs expressing anger and pleasure. And songs, first and foremost, praising God, the composer of life's song. The maker of the music of the spheres.
This summer I attended a seminar on congregational singing as part of my Iona experience. There we were reminded that what makes a song or a hymn good for worship has nothing to do with whether it was written by J.S. Bach or Michael W. Smith, but rather whether or not it expresses the thoughts and emotions of a congregation as they worship the Holy One.
Music has often seen people of faith through great trials—and has always been part of our greatest times of rejoicing. Historian Thomas Carlyle said, "Music is the speech of angels." But in time of joy and in times of sorrow, it is also the speech of human beings. It is that which enables us to make it through the nights and celebrate the days.
Author and pastor Bob Morley tells about a time he was standing in a supermarket checkout line. As his order was being tallied up by the clerk, he stood humming a tune. You must be having a good day, said the clerk. Well, actually, said Morley, I'm having a lousy day—but that's why I'm humming. "I don't hum because I feel good," he said, "I feel good because I hum." (Aerobics for the Spirit, 185)
And so it has been. Ancient Jews held captive in Babylon wrote and sang songs of Zion to voice their longing for home, and then songs of celebration when they finally returned. African slaves raised their voices in songs which combined tribal melodies and Biblical images to express their hunger for freedom and their confidence in God. And all across our nation, when mere words could not express our fears or our hopes, it was Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" and Sy Miller and Jill Jackson's "Let There Be Peace on Earth" that united our voices, our hearts and our minds in the days following 9/11.
But its' not just in times of great public events that music helps us along. It is also in those personal moments as well.
Last spring, as Ed See grew more frail, his granddaughter Kaitlin McGaw, who lives on the West Coast, scheduled a visit east. Before she flew out, her mother called our office and asked if Kaitlin could hold a little concert here at Saugatuck after worship. You see, Kaitlin is a singer-songwriter, and her grandfather had never heard her perform in public.
Kaitlin even wrote a special song for worship that morning. It was a beautiful piece! And as she played and sang, Ed sat in the front pew and beamed. His smile reached from ear to ear! Every once in a while he would turn around and look at the rest of us as if to say, "That's my granddaughter!" We were all lifted by the music, the joy, the pride and the prayer.
Music works that way—always has—from the days of Jubal and Genesis right down to modern times.
My mother cared for my disabled father for seventeen years. Two years ago she decided—at seventy-four—to try something new. She's always been touched by the plaintive sound of the dulcimer, a stringed instrument which figures prominently in Appalachian music. So she took a few lessons. Then she had a dulcimer made for her by a man named Lloyd Graham. It's a lovely piece of work—its cherry wood fairly sparkles! She calls it Anna.
Then mother got serious, and started taking lessons from Lloyd—and joined a dulcimer group called, I'm not making this up, the Knox County Porch Pickers. And over time, as she's practiced twice a day, at 8:30 and 4:30, her skill has grown.
This Friday, the day after my father's Memorial Service, mother assembled us all in her living room for a bit of a recital. She started by playing "My Shepherd Will Supply My Need," Isaac Watts paraphrase of the 23rd Psalm. "I always start with that," she said. It is, I am sure, her musical prayer. Then she played "Red River Valley" and "Spotted Pony" and "Carry Me Back to Old Virgins." Finally she wound up her playing with a piece called "Southwind." "It's called that," she said, because of the way you play it, like this," and then she demonstrated, a strumming of the strings that, indeed, sounded like the wind. She almost seemed in another world as she played it.
As her fingers ran across the strings, emitting their lovely tones, I couldn't help but think how those same fingers had tended my father's aches and pains and over the decades prepared his favorite meals. How those same fingers had caressed his cheek and lit candles on dozens of his birthday cakes. And how for over fifty-six years, those fingers had been entwined with his in a love that reflected the very love of God.
How wonderful that over the last two years she has had that dulcimer. How wonderful that like all manner of music in the past, it has helped my mother express her prayers of praise, thanksgiving sorrow and joy. For it is indeed true, when music is in the air, and in our hearts, it helps us connect with the Holy in unique and special ways.
Thanks be to God for the gift of music. Thanks be, indeed.
Amen.
John H. Danner