On Making Music for God

Samuel Miller of Harvard has been much on my mind over the last two years since I rediscovered his book on The Life of the Soul in my library. Using images from that book in two recent Salem Adult Sunday School Seminars on “Practicing Our Christian Faith” and “Covenant Affirmations,” I have since sought out more of his books on the Internet.

A giant in thinking, writing, and reflecting on our faith as Christians, with deep insight and poetic imagination--both of which are in short supply these days and even less sought after by the average believer--he though dead yet speaks in remarkably powerful ways. Consider, for example, the following from his book on Man the Believer in an Age of Unbelief:

As often as I listen to a symphony orchestra I am stirred by the mystery of the event. Think of it: here are a hundred musicians each of whom has spent a lifetime in a passionate and consuming effort to learn their particular instrument. From early childhood, through youth to adulthood, through all the anguish of our mortal dust, in loneliness, heartache, and ecstasy, despite great sorrows and minor distractions and world catastrophes-- each one pouring their very life into skillful fingertips, or sensitive lips, with sure hearing, until every nuance, every subtlety, every insubstantial quaver can be communicated by … violin or horn, flute, or harp, or saxophone.

Then they assemble, not to hear each other’s solos, but to play together what they cannot play apart—a symphony. The souls of a hundred individual people, drawn into mortal life with all its color and drama, its faith and fears—all flowing together into the symphony. And it hangs for a moment in the air, laving our spirits with its transfiguring beauty. It redeems us, lifts us beyond ourselves; it glorifies our common humanity.

Is there no way in a world so magnificently empowered as our own, so magically interrelated, so burgeoning in its startling surprises, its human concern, its lively arts, to redeem us from our littleness and to life us into the symphony of God’s new creation? (p. 49, alt.).

Last night we heard the New York Philharmonic with accompanying choirs perform Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony for a Thousand” (his 8th). It was a farewell concert led by Loren Maezel, honoring his seven years as principal there and over 60 as a conductor. What we heard could clearly not have been heard without either the individual and communal devotion—not to mention discipline over time --of musicians and conductor alike, all serving the music.

We as God’s people and members of Christ’s body are the recipients of the most glorious symphony of good news ever heard. Oh that more and more we might find our way—individually and communally--into the rigors of rehearsing and proclaiming that good news. Make music for your God to hear. Join with his people under his baton and be lifted yourself while lifting others into his eternal presence.