Music: Small notes can move hearts
A special service at the Cathedral Church, with visitors from the annual Anglican Musicians Conference.
With all of these esteemed musicians and choir directors and organists in our midst, it is an honor to be a part of this service. I want to say to all of you who are here, both locally and from other parts of the country, you are welcome here.
I’m very, very glad that you are here. I’m a amateur pianist and I love to take part in worship music. Because music says things to me that the spoken word cannot. Music gets down into certain parts of my psyche and my mind and my memory and my spirit. More often than not, when I think about some significant event or experience, a song that is related to that incident, whether it be instrumental or vocal, immediately comes to mind.
Music permeates so much of who we are. That’s why they pay big bucks to people who write scores for movies. Because they know that even if the acting isn’t so good, the background music can actually carry the impact of a scene.
For Anglican and Episcopal musicians, I want to say to you that it is critically important that music be a part of the flow of what we do when we gather together to worship God. Even if the preaching isn’t so good, the music can carry the service.
The converse is less common: If the music is poor, the choir is off key, the pianist — not the organist — the pianist is just getting by, a good sermon might help, but can’t make up for the musical shortcomings.
Music, especially singing, has an extraordinary place in worship, both in the Hebrew Scriptures, as well as in the Christian New Testament. The call to sing and to make music resounds again and again and again in the Bible, because it is in fact music that lifts the heart. When we get to that point in the service where I as celebrant say, “Lift up your hearts,” and you say, “We lift them up into the Lord,” the action that will take place in that moment will have everything to do both with our attentiveness — so that it’s not just rolling off our tongue — but also it will have everything to do with what has happened up to that moment, musically as well as liturgically.
Music works to open our whole selves to God, in great vulnerability. It seems like a small thing, a melody line, a particular piece of music, even a single note. They are, to use the Scripture, they are seeds. “What is the Kingdom of God? The Kingdom of God is like a man who scatters seeds.”
That is certainly my hope for what happens musically as we worship, that it is an action that God uses literally to scatter the seeds of the Kingdom. As I was reading the parables and I’m looking at the commentaries for today’s readings, I had a vision of what happens when a choir sings and the musicians play in a service of worship. If their ministry and they as persons are welcomed, accepted, seen as fellow members of the body of Christ, whose ministry is in fact valued and important, something wondrous happens.
The spirit of worship is deepened in us; The seeds take root and grow