The End is Music
Music gives us the opportunity to feel whatever it is we are feeling without feeling like we’re not allowed to feel what we feel.
Revelation 7.11-12
And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
“What’s your name and what’s the last band you listened to?”
That’s how we started a Sunday School class last week. I hoped that names and musical preferences would sufficiently break the ice such that we could get to the good and important work of jumping into the strange new world of the Bible.
“I’m Whitney and we were listening to Pink Floyd in the car on the way to church this morning.”
“My name is Larry and I listened to one of Bach’s Concertos last night.”
“We’re the Reids and the answer is Metallica!”
On and on it went and we definitely spent more time talking about music than I thought we would. And yet, it was marvelous to see the reactions on individual faces as they were pleasantly, or frighteningly, surprised by the musical preferences of their fellow church goers!
Connections were made that never would’ve happened without the miracle that is music.
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The late great theologian Robert Jenson has a collection of zingers that properly proclaim the wonder that is faith.
“God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead having first raised Israel out of Egypt.”
That’s basically the Bible in a sentence, and that sentence was composed by Jenson.
Here’s another: “The Gospel is a story about Jesus, told as a promise.”
That’s a sentence worth spending some time with.
Jenson was great with distilling the entirety of something into something tangible and approachable. Which is no easy feat when it comes to scripture or theology.
And so, it came to pass that, one day, a certain seminary student raised her hand in the middle of one of Jenson’s lectures and said, “Dr. Jenson, I’ve heard you talk about God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I’ve read your books and sermons. But what I really want to know is this: What is heaven going to be like?”
Maybe you’ve wondered that same question.
And this is how Jenson answered: “All I know is that the End is music.”
The End is music.
Jenson, of course, was referencing the great number of instances in Revelation when the great multitude proclaim the glory of God through song. But music is all over the Bible, it is central to how we worship, and it shows up in our daily living.
For instance:
We use music and song to teach children, to tell stories, to remember, to hope, to lament, to celebrate.
Music surrounds us whether on the radio, from a pipe organ, or the music of the wind moving through the trees.
Music is this powerful and wonderful witness beyond ourselves. It is that external word that speaks into our existence things we did not know that we desperately need to know.
Music can change us. It can make us cry, or smile. Really great music can knock us over, and really terrible music can lead us to cover our ears. Music is everything. And it is the end.
The psalmist says, “Sing to the Lord a new song, for the Lord has done marvelous things.” That’s worship in a nutshell. We sing to the Lord because the Lord has done so much for us.
We lift up our voices in song, some songs are from long ago and some came from yesterday, but we sing them for a reason. God has delivered us from where we were to where we can be. God has taken our sins, each and every one of them, nailed them to the cross, and left them there forever.
Or, as the hymn goes, “My sin oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.”
We can, and do, make a joyful noise to the Lord, we can, and do, break forth in joyous songs and sing praise because our God is awesome.
We sing our faith in the church. The words and the melodies of our music transcend space and time; they tune us in to God’s frequencies in the word. Music gives us the space to experience what we believe and how we pray when we don’t know how to put those things into words - music gives us the opportunity to feel whatever it is we are feeling without feeling like we’re not allowed to feel what we feel.
When Robert Jenson said the end is music he went on to add how that particular music does not end, and so is always our beginning.
"In the end we, with all of creation, will be transfigured into the music that is the Trinity, the communion of the Father, Son, and Spirit. We will be God’s music.”
We don’t know what the music will sound like in the end. It could ring like the handbells of a Sunday morning service, or it could have the powerful vibrato of a Bach concerto, or it could convey the transcendence of The Great Gig In The Sky from Pink Floyd, or it could make us jump up and down like Enter Sandman from Metallica.
But no matter what it sounds like, we will be caught up in it - that’s the promise of the story of the Gospel.