Tag Archives: primal archetypes

SERMON: Make a Joyful Noise – Music is the Mediator

On the fifth Sunday after Epiphany (February 4, 2018), the Rev. Dr. Arthur Suggs continued with — as he said — “a series of sermons on primal archetypes that wind their way through the scriptures, bend their way through the world’s religions, and churn their way through our lives. First in the series was trees, the second was mountains, the third was light, today is music, and next will be water.”

Spiritual Music … the Beatles?

The Rev. Dr. Suggs started with this: “For the sermon this morning, let me begin with part of an article from about a year ago. It was strange because only after reading the article did I look at who wrote it and realized that I know him:

“As a child being raised in a troubled home, religion and spirituality were discussed about as often as we discussed opera, which was never. Music and, to a lesser degree, nature were my sole companions. Turning on the radio one day, I heard a hit song that began, ‘Help! I need somebody! Not just anybody! Help! You know I need someone! Help!’

“I was a twelve-year-old boy, and, like John Lennon, I also needed help, but I didn’t know where to turn. I did not have a girlfriend, therapist, church, or relationship with a ‘concept’ called God. So I turned to the Beatles, none of whom professed or practiced Christianity, and yet they wrote and recorded song after song that came from a place of deep spirituality.”

The Beatles arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport, 7 February 1964. U.S. Library of Congress, Wikimedia.

“It was not Jesus, Yahweh, Sigmund Freud, Higher Power, or Jehovah 
that led me to hope for some ‘Help!’ It was the Beatles. George Harrison was a Hare Krishna who wrote ‘My Sweet Lord’ and ‘Give Me Love’; John Lennon penned ‘Eleanor Rig-by,’ ‘Imagine,’ and ‘Give Peace a Chance’; and Paul McCartney composed ‘Lady Madonna,’ ‘Black Bird,’ ‘Let It Be,’ and ‘Hey Jude.’”

A Powerful Link Between 
Music and Our Deepest Emotions, from Sadness to Joy

“There’s a link, somehow or other, between all kinds of people and their varieties of music. Many researchers have studied this phenomenon, and there’s a very powerful link between music and our deepest feelings, our deepest emotions, covering the range of emotions from sadness to joy and everything in between.”

Rev. Suggs shares examples of evocative music, from the recognizable scores of The Titanic and Schindler’s List films, including the “Hymn of the Sea” in the former and Itzhak Perlman’s violin solo in the latter – “a very simple violin piece that makes you ache inside with both sadness and beauty.”

Then a song from the Rocky III soundtrack …

“So I’m tooling down Route 17 when “Eye of the Tiger” comes on, and I crank it up loud. In my mind, I’m Rocky, defeating the enemies, unbeatable, and listening to this music.”

“Suddenly, I look down, and I’m going 95 miles an hour. A wave of panic comes over me, and I check all the mirrors, not expecting to see one cop but anticipating six cops behind me. Thankfully, there’s no cruiser, but I slow way down to a normal speed limit. How do you get so engrossed that you don’t even know you’re going 95 miles an hour? It’s amazing.”

Jimmy Hendrix, Woodstock, the “Flower Duet” from Delibes’ opera Lakmé, Eminem, Amazing Grace, praise bands, Gregorian or Taizé chant … and then some.

Rev. Suggs continued …

Everything in the Universe
Vibrates in Motion with 
Frequency and Sound

Plato wrote:  Music “gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaity to life.”

I suggest to you that it’s sort of significant for Plato to say that. Here’s the author who introduced into the world the idea of the soulness of things. “Music gives soul to the universe.”

Two observations:

There does not exist a religious tradition that does not have music integral in some way. Even the traditions based on silence (Quakers, Zen Bhuddism), chant music of some type as prelude 
and postlude for them. It’s found everywhere.

The other observation is one that I think we do take for granted, but it’s only things that are categorically true. There are zero exceptions to this and that is:

Everything in our universe vibrates. Every single portion of our universe is in motion with a frequency and a sound and a vibration.

The Milky Way, NASA-APOD.

EVERYTHING!

Our Milky Way goes around 
 once every 230 million years.
The Sun and our whole solar 
 system orbit the Milky Way 
 in 230 million years.

Our Earth circles the Sun, and 
 we define it as a year.


Our moon circuits the Earth 
 every 28 days.


We observe the sabbath 
 based upon our religious 
 traditions every seventh day.


The cycle of our day is based 
 upon the rotation of the Earth 
 relative to the Sun.

And 
 so we have breakfast, lunch, 
 and dinner every day.

We 
 have waking and sleeping 
 every day, and work and 
 leisure every day.


Our hearts beat around 70 times 
 per minute.


Our respiration is about 20 times
 per minute.


We can hear music from 60 hertz 
 up to the vicinity of 20,000 
 hertz.

The vibration of atoms 
 in general is 1013 hertz.


Every ray of light has a 
 frequency to it.

Beethoven’s walk in nature, by Julius Schmid (restored by Michael Martin Sypniewski). Wikimedia.

Ludwig van Beethoven said:

“Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
So what we do, with a combination of both art and science, is that we organize the frequencies. We manipulate and arrange the vibrations to express our grief and our joy, our sadness and our exultation, our longing and our reverence.”

Amen.

Download the full sermon PDF

Featured Image Credit: Flash Mob! HKFO performs the Beethoven “Ode to Joy” Flash Mob, Hong Kong’s largest choral-orchestral flash mob at Shatin New Town Plaza on 28 July 2013.