God's Easter Music

This year the Presiding Bishop offers this poem to the church as an Easter message:

Alleluia!
Our Easter song
    is more than a word.
It is, as St. Augustine tells us, a way of being
    "from head to toe."

Christ rises in every particle of our being
and through baptism
    we are part of him:
    limbs and members of his risen body
    and ministers of his deathless, reckless
        reconciling love.

May we be given the grace
    to embody our Easter song
        for the sake of the world.

"May we be given the grace to embody our Easter song for the sake of the world."

Last Saturday I was driving to a diocesan meeting and listening to NPR’s Weekend Edition on the radio. A scientist from McGill University in Toronto is trying to analyze and measure, in some way or another, our emotional response to music. But what caught my attention were some general comments he made about music. He said music is a unique human quality… unique in its antiquity and its ubiquity. Music is unique within human culture in its antiquity and its ubiquity. No human culture lacks music. And throughout recorded history, music has been a part of human life. Whether or not you, as an individual, consider yourself musical or have much interest in music, we are musical. We as a species, we as a culture are musical. Across all of recorded human history, across all the immense breadth and diversity of human cultures, music is a quality of human being. Maybe music is part of what it is for us as human beings to be made in the image of God.

"May we be given the grace to embody our Easter song for the sake of the world."

Music as a manifestation of God’s image within human nature… At Easter, especially at Easter, for human beings to be bearers of the image of God is a glorious thing. Bearing the image of God is much more than being a pale reflection of some particular aspect of God. It is much more than claiming ourselves to be special in God’s sight, the object of God’s favor. Those are ways we often interpret human beings be-ing in the image of God. Easter reminds us that, by God’s grace, God’s very life is shared with ours. We share in God’s life. Through the death and resurrection of Christ, we share an intimate communion with God, a coexistence. Our lives and God’s life so intimately interwoven that you cannot tell the godly strands from the human strands.

So we have been, as Saint Paul says in Colossians, raised with Christ. Or, as Bishop Griswold says, "Christ rises in every particle of our being… We are part of him: limbs and members of his risen body." The image of God within us this day is resurrection life. It is Easter joy. Heaven itself shines within us. The music that is a part of our human being today is alleluia Easter music.

"May we be given the grace to embody our Easter song for the sake of the world."

A contemporary Episcopal writer has written, "Jesus came among us as word. I believe God remains among us as music." (Barbara Brown Taylor, When God is Silent). And if we share life with God… If our lives are enfolded with the risen Christ, if we bear the image, then we are God’s music in the world.

We are the music, the alleluia music of Easter. We are the music itself. This isn’t about you or I singing Easter hymns, although the more of that, the better. It isn’t really even about making actual music, or performing music. I am not just preaching to the choir. This isn’t about composing music, either literally or metaphorically. We are not the performers or the composers. This isn’t about appreciating music. This is about us being the music itself, God’s music. We are the music of Easter. By being, by living in the resurrected Christ, we are the joyous sound of Alleluia that rings in the air.

"May we be given the grace to embody our Easter song for the sake of the world."

What does that really mean? I don’t know exactly, but I do think it is something we must discover and do together. Music is a part of our corporate, our species-wide identity, the scientist said. Theologically speaking, we best share communion with God when we share communion with one another. We embody God’s image less as individuals and more as come together as the Body of Christ. In our coming together in the ordinary practices of worship, fellowship and study… in our interactions with one another, we discover and embody those places where our common life resonates with God’s life. This gathering right now is part of it. An individual can say alleluia; some individuals can sing alleluia; but somehow all together we are alleluia.

We are God’s Easter music. What a glorious joy for us. And what a wonderful thing for the world, for those many people who are a part of our lives who do not know resurrection joy. We are God’s Easter alleluia. Let us be the alleluia that brings new life to others around us and coveys God’s love and hope into their worlds.

"May we be given the grace to embody our Easter song for the sake of the world."  Amen.