by Robin Mann
So Jacob, a long way from home, lay down to sleep. He
had a dream that scared him out of his wits (no wonder — he had a rock for a
pillow!). God appeared in the dream, and spoke to him, “Wherever you go, I
will go,” God said. This startled Jacob at least as much as the angels
climbing up and down the ladder. God was in this place too, not just safe
at home! It provided Dorothy and me with a good wedding text and years later, I
wrote it in a song:
Wherever I go, whatever I do,
whoever I am, I'm going with you.
No matter the time, no matter the place,
however I move, you walk at my pace.
On every day of every year
the weather may change,
but you're still here. (Wherever I go, © 1997)
SPIRITUALITY – OUT OF THIS WORLD?
People mean many things by ‘spirituality’.
Spirituality in music often seems to mean an ‘other-wordliness’, a style or
an atmosphere designed to put us in touch with God. But does such a notion fly
in the face of the central Christian doctrines? After all, our attempts to get
in touch with God are relegated to the bin of history in the light of God’s
breakthrough to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
Maybe spirituality is so overloaded with the idea of
escaping the physical that it’s not a good word for us to use when talking
about practising the Christian faith. Perhaps we should find another word for
‘practising the presence of God’. Such a word could represent for Christians
not an escape from physical reality. Instead it might signify an approach to
living that is thoroughly grounded in the here and now, a way of life that looks
at the world with the eyes of faith. As John Beavis put it in ‘Give Glory’:
Take
this sand, take this snow,
Cooper’s Creek to Omeo,
give glory, glory to the Lord.
Tiger snake, kangaroo,
Franklin-Gordon, Kakadu,
give glory, glory to the Lord.
A DOWN-TO-EARTH GOD
We Christians believe in a God who is involved in our existence, who has
become physical, human, to express love to us and the whole creation. If a
spirituality is to be genuinely Christian, it must surely be modelled on God’s
action.
I
don't believe in a God up in the sky
who sits in heaven and never hears me cry.
I don't believe in a God who's far away —
I believe in Jesus living here with us today. (God.
Version 1.0 © 1991)
This kind of understanding should come easily to
Lutherans, the tradition I belong to. In Luther’s Catechism, the phrase ‘in,
with and under’ is used in relation to the sacraments. God’s activity,
God’s presence is understood to be so closely identified with the physical
elements of water, bread, wine that God is ‘in, with and under’ the
elements. Hidden but present. Faith believes what it can’t see. All too often,
of course, Lutherans don’t appreciate it any better than people from other
traditions.
The candles are lit and the table
is laid;
Everything's set to begin:
Parents and children and husbands and wives
Brothers and sisters and friends.
Here we meet you once again,
God of mercy, God of grace;
Taste your love in bread and wine,
We meet you face to face. (Face to
Face © 1977)
But perhaps this kind of spirituality is too common,
too ordinary for people to get excited about. We naturally find it hard to
believe that spiritual realities are right in front of us, just as the two on
the road to Emmaus didn’t recognise their companion. It needed words of
explanation and a familiar action:
Day of sorrow is forgotten
when the guest becomes the host.
Taking bread and blessing, breaking,
Jesus is himself made known. (‘On the day
of resurrection’ Michael Peterson)
We recently saw again the movie ‘As Good As It
Gets’. Near the end, Melvin says to Carol, “I might be the only one who
appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do … and in
every single thought that you have, and how you say what you mean, and how you
almost always mean something that’s all about being straight and good. I think
most people miss that about you, and I watch them, wondering how they can watch
you bring their food, and clear their tables and never get that they just met
the greatest woman alive.” Melvin could be talking about Jesus. Most people
missed his identity. Most people still do. And the followers of this mysterious
Messiah do both themselves and potential followers a considerable disservice if
they don’t highlight the same characteristics their leader chose to emphasise.
The songs from the Iona Community carry a very
physical spirituality, a recognition of God’s reality in the people, places
and events around us, as in ‘Take this moment’:
Take the tiredness of my days,
take my past regret,
letting your forgiveness touch
all I can’t forget.
Christianity too often represents an escapism that is unreal. The words
of ‘Take this moment’ help us to express the fact that we live in the midst
of weariness and unresolved problems. Time and again a song from Iona will
express our failure to allow God’s reality into our lives:
Lord,
where have we left you —
somewhere all can view,
well polished and presented,
undented and untrue? (Lord, where have we left you)
Not only do these songs express our failures so well,
but they do it in terms that cut to the very core of our behaviour, as in
‘These I lay down’, the first Iona song I ever sang:
The narrowness of vision and of mind,
the need for other folk to serve my will,
and every word and silence meant to hurt —
these I lay down.
John Ylvisaker from Iowa , USA, captures the same
physical reality in ‘Jesus was a servant’:
When he came to wash my feet...
They were smelly from the heat...
Apart from acknowledging our physical humanity,
John’s words also add some humour, a quality mostly lacking in the songs we
sing in worship. This lack has always struck me as both curious and unfortunate,
and something of a denial of the incarnation. (Aren’t both laughter and tears
at the heart of being human?) If we are to practise the presence of God, an
honesty and an openness about our shared physicality seems a good start.
Especially since we share our humanity with God as well. And laughing about it
together seems just as appropriate as any other response.
And what about the music? If our practice of the
Christian faith is to be faithful to Christ, the music we use will reflect our
humanness, our physicality, as well. So rhythm, vitality, a certain cragginess
are likely to be part of our music. Too often these elements have been minimised
or erased altogether from church music. Like the centuries-old church practice
of adopting folk tunes from the culture, but then taking the rhythm out of them.
(Sydney Carter’s ‘Lord of the Dance’ was a shock to the church system for
its music as well as its words!) This is as true of modern popular styles as it
is of more traditional music.
But the best of Christian hymnody has this earthy,
robust character both in the words and in the music. The honest directness of
Isaac Watts’ words — ‘my richest gain I count but loss, and pour
contempt on all my pride’ — or the arresting individuality of a Johann
Crüger tune (‘O dearest Jesus’, ‘Now thank we all our God’)
keep us close to the humanity, the reality of the one we follow.
And another question: if our spirituality is to be
Christian, should the music we use be identifiably ‘church’ music? Or should
it reflect a range of musical styles from the surrounding culture? Not identical
to the culture — genuine Christian culture is always ‘in, but not of the
world’ — but while it may be a bit counter cultural, perhaps it should be
closer to the music of the day.
Is ‘religious music’ an oxymoron?
When introducing a song that I often perform called
‘Complaint’, I usually mention that about a third of the Psalms contain
complaints. One of them (Psalm 88) has only the slimmest positive word in verse
1 — it’s all downhill after that! The spirituality of the Psalms is in touch
with how our lives really are. They always know that God is present, that God
can be addressed. But they also don’t shy away from the reality of life: shame
and honour, joy and disappointment, thanks and complaint, success and failure.
In addition, as Walter Brueggemann argues in ‘Israel’s Praise’, the Old
Testament people of God are asserting a particular world-view, and arguing
strongly against alternative views. The title alone says it well: Israel’s
Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology.
The songs we sing together as Christians are not
chosen primarily to make us feel good. Our doxology shows our theology. If it is
to be truly Christian, it will be down to earth, in touch with daily realities,
and always, in one way or another, revealing the God we believe in, the God who
comes as a human being to meet us wherever we are, and who stays with us in
every part of our life.
As we sang ‘Holy, holy, holy … heaven and earth
are full of your glory’, the five year old girl shared the contents of her
Tupperware container — nuts, sultanas, M&Ms — with her 3 year old
sister. Yes, heaven and earth are full of your glory. We don’t need to go
somewhere else to find it. The eyes of faith may see it anywhere.
Robin Mann
| Reprinted with permission. This article was printed initially in the LicenSing Update magazine.(Vol. 8 No.2) LicenSing is a copyright program for churches. |