The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
December 16, 2007
Vol. 10 no. 46

Everything But...
           Most people prefer just to listen to music and many love to play and sing all manner of music, but since the church does tend to think and sing at the same time, today’s service of Lessons & Carols provide a good occasion for some singing and some thinking.
           Our service is modeled after the Nine Lessons & Carols performed each Christmas Eve at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. It must be the atmosphere because the person who has written the most about music in the church is Jeremy Begbie, a theologian at Cambridge whose book Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music has just been published.
           Music just doesn’t happen in a worship service, it demonstrates through the subtleties of its movements the struggles of the religious life. A tension develops, followed by a resolution. Music sounds out the religious pilgrimage. Begbie lifts up three characteristics of the spirituality of music.
           Music cannot be rushed. Try to rush through music and it simply becomes noise. Try to rush through Advent or Holy Week and Christmas and Easter no longer make the sense they are intended to have.
           Music invites us to live on many levels. At its best, music is not a simple straightforward tune. Where and when everything does not go as planned and conflict abounds, “there is always hope if we live on more than one level.” We live in the world, but are not of it, living on different levels.
           Music makes us wait. Ironically, music teaches us the most about silence in the spaces between notes. In the silences of our lives we are beckoned towards something not yet realized - delayed gratification - waiting for the note of resolution. There will be a few delays today, thank God.