“ I developed the curious notion that the Nazis were overthrown by music” Leonard Cohen
“follow these laws, that you may have life” – Moses
God’s law is music
This weekend I was able to celebrate our first wedding in 18 months with music, with congregational singing. It was fantastic. It lifted the worship to a higher dimension. We sang ‘Bread of heaven’ – of course we did.
I’m in total awe of musicians. Being one involves so many hours of patient learning. Nobody could just come up to this organ and start pressing their fingers down any old how – well, they could, but it wouldn’t be music. It would be noise.
To make music, you need to learn its chords, its rhythms, its grammar.
Most worthwhile things in life are like that: cooking, driving a car, dancing or swimming. They involve learning patterns that you yourself didn’t invent.
And what’s true of making cakes or music, is even more true of how we live together as human beings.
Often people say “I don’t need God to tell me what to do –I can work it out for myself”
Well of course you can, and no one’s stopping you – not even God. But, throughout history, it’s always the youngest, the weakest and the poorest who pay the price when right or wrong becomes whatever we say it is, when morality ceases to resonate with a transcendent music.
It’s no wonder that fascists always kill Jews. The Jews were the first to explicitly bear God’s Law, a way that says the strong should look after the weak, and we should all look after each other – even those who can do nothing for us. It’s the exact opposite of the survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle.
In our first reading, Moses celebrates the gift of God’s law, the Torah. The word ‘Law’ doesn’t really convey the delight that our Jewish brothers and sisters feel towards it. In synagogues today, the Torah scroll is lifted up and people kiss it – even dance with it. It’s more than law; it’s a musical score. Buddhists would call it the Tao, ‘the Way’. It’s the hidden wisdom that many sacred traditions have discovered; the secret music that underlies the whole of creation.
And, as Moses says, when humans play it well, the Law, the Tao, the Way, attracts, draws and delights.
When it’s played from the heart with mercy and humility, others encounter it and say: ‘yes, that’s what being truly human should look like and sound like’.
Of course, when it’s done badly, when people forget that God’s laws are for human beings, and not human beings for God’s law, people naturally run a mile.
But don’t listen to religious bullies, ancient or modern. God’s way is a law, a Tao, a discipline for the heart that wants to heal the world.
Psalm 14 (15) says the one who follows God doesn’t even charge interest on loans – Atheism! – It’s not God but bankers who say nations must break so markets can smile. S. James says God’s way is an unconditional defence for orphans and widows – representatives, in ancient times, of those who come last and least in the world. For those who, in any time or any place, are powerless, voiceless, and socially vulnerable, God’s will, what God wants, means mercy, embrace, protection.
Jesus talks in our gospel about the things that truly violate the letter and spirit of God’s law, and they are all things that pull human beings apart, that leave people abandoned, impoverished, slandered, worse off. We let the harmonics and rhythms of His gospel shape our lives because we know that Jesus brings life in all its fullness.
Of course we can go our own way: it leads nowhere. Of course we can just do our own thing. It sounds like noise. But humbly, one note at a time, we practice, and we pray, ‘Lord, make the law of your love the rule of my heart’ – not because God’s bigger than we are and tells us what to do, but because following God’s way is simply what a human being does
when she wants to make music.
Ely Soul 