MUSIC IN
THE SOUL
March 25, 2007
TEXT: Philippians3:4b-14
The name of Noah Markham may not mean much to any of you, but
he has become a symbol of the grace of God and living testimony
that light can emerge from darkness, that nothing is over until
its over, and then it may be not be over after all.
Noah had been a frozen embryo were rescued from a flooded fertility
clinic weeks after Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans. The
embryos of Noah’s mother, Rebekkah, were among 1400 stored
in canisters of liquid nitrogen retrieved by police in boats
in 2005. After Hurricane Katrina struck, doctors feared the embryos
would be lost as the clinic was left without power and temperatures
soared to more than 100F. But the doctors persuaded the governor
to allow the rescue from the flooded hospital.
We don’t know what will become of Noah Markham; what kind
of life he will lead; how he will affect the course of history;
who his descendants will be, and what influence they will have
on the flow of civilization. There really are no accidents in
life. What may seem to be random and without reason, will ultimately
have a purpose in the grand scheme of the universe. Is it odd,
or is it God.
The apostle Paul was born a Jew, as he says “a Hebrew born
of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor
of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” And
yet this man who had hunted down Christians in order to bring
them before the Jewish tribunals for trial went on to become
the founder of the Christian movement which altered the course
of human history.
We never know what God has in store for us. Paul says that we
must trust God and press on, “forgetting what lies behind
and straining forward to what lies ahead” until we reach
the goal which God has set before each of us.
All of us have endured shadow times in our lives, times of uncertainty
and despair, those dark nights of soul when we wondered if the
sun really would come up tomorrow. They may have been personal
tragedies, or national ones, times of uncertainty and doubt,
crises of faith and spiritual confusion.
Long before Kris Kristofferson wrote his song of despair and
loneliness, “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” a
shepherd boy named David sang out of the depths of his soul. “In
Psalm 22, he cried “My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my
groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and
by night, but find no rest.” But there were many songs
of joy and deliverance, where the blues of the night turn to
rejoicing at the dawn: “Weeping may linger for the night,” David
says, “but joy comes with the morning.”
Singing was so much a part of the life of Israel; it was an expression
of the soul of the people. When the Jews were exiles in the land
of Babylon, one writer composed this song: “By the rivers
of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we
remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For
there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked
for mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" How
could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?”
But they did sing, and the songs have come to be the expression
of the soul’s longing as well as the joy of the human spirit.
The music of the soul was the music of hope. As the seed of life
that became Noah Markham emerged from the waters of chaos, so
music often became the seed that prompted hope in the lives of
so many men and women.
So much of our great art and music have emerged from the crucible
of pain. When African and European music first began to merge
to create what eventually became the blues, the slaves sang songs
filled with words telling of their extreme suffering and privation.
One of the many responses to their oppressive environment resulted
in the field holler. The field holler gave rise to the spiritual,
and the blues, notable among all human works of art for their
profound despair . . . They gave voice to the mood of alienation
that prevailed in the construction camps of the South, for it
was in the Mississippi Delta that blacks were often forcibly
conscripted to work on the levee and land-clearing crews, where
they were often abused and then tossed aside or worked to death.
When you consider some of the great blues singers and jazz musicians,
so many of them died young. When I was in Kansas City a few years
ago, a visited the Phoenix, the club where Charlie Parker played.
Parker experienced many personal difficulties throughout his
life. Often in debt and addicted to alcohol and drugs, he endured
broken marriages, suicide attempts, and imprisonment. His death
at the age of 34 was the result of a number of ailments, including
stomach ulcers, pneumonia, cirrhosis of the liver, and a heart
attack. Bird Parker is buried in Kansas City. He once said that
if you don’t feel the music in your soul, it’s not
going to come out of your horn.
Billie Holiday, whose mother was only 13 when she was born, grew
up in a brothel. It was there she first heard the music of Louis
Armstrong and Bessie Smith on an old Victrola. Billie died at
the age of 44 in New York almost unrecognizable—thin, drawn,
haunted. She had sold off her clothing to feed her habit and
her little dog. Even on her deathbed, someone managed to smuggle
heroin into her room. Joe Glaser, who paid for her funeral as
he had done for Charlie Parker’s, said that her death was
a concoction of everything she’d done for the last twenty
years.
John Coltrane, whose addictions led to his early death, recovered
in time to compose A Love Supreme, a synthesis of music and religion
to the glory of God. Coltrane said, “My music is the spiritual
expression of what I am—my faith, my knowledge, my being
. . . When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire
to do something really good for people, to help humanity free
itself from its hangups . . . I want to speak to their souls.”
While songs and music may express the soul’s longing and
aspiration, it also expresses the power and majesty of God’s
presence. Jazz may not be the language that speaks to you. You
may find your mystical experience in the written word, or in
art, or in the natural world, or in the silence of quiet reflection,
or perhaps in human love and relationships. But however God chooses
to speak to you, and however you choose to listen to God, the
important thing is that you do listen. Especially in those times
of doubt and despair. That is when the song will be heard most
clearly and you will find your way through the dark night.
Paul says that regardless of what is happening in your life,
you must press on, not looking behind to what is past, but rather
to the future, knowing full well that there are no accidents
life, but God’s intention. We need to trust in the love
of God. As the songs says: “Trust love, trust God. Love
will have the final word.”
When the last chord is played;.
When the final note is sung;
When the last prayer is uttered;
When the final word is spoken,
it will be love.
Trust love, trust God, and move on with a song in your heart
and music in your soul.
-Harry L. Serio |
