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To Be Resonate with God
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| 6/7/2009 |
Imagine that we are all sitting at the keyboard of a piano, and we press down on the key right in the middle—middle C. What do we hear?
One full note fills our ears and our senses. It is pure.
Now, with our other hand, we press down gently on the key exactly one octave above. We’ve pressed the key so gently, the hammer doesn’t strike the strings in the piano; rather, those strings are undampered, or, as the musicians say, “open.”
Okay, we have the “C” one note above “Middle C” open and undampered. Now, we press down on the piano key for Middle C, and hear once more that beautiful tone.
Now, we let go of Middle C. We might expect that all sound stops, but we can still hear a musical tone. The vibrations of the strings of Middle C have caused the strings to vibrate on the C note one octave above, so much so that we can hear it softly in our ears. The undampered, open note has been made to resonate by the lower note. The vibrations of Middle C have given life to the strings one octave away.
So, here might be another way to imagine God--not another way to “see God,” but to “hear God.” God is that powerful musical tone, at the center of the universe, vibrating so steadily, such that all that is open, undampered, and in tune, will begin to vibrate also.
Imagine that you are those open strings one octave above Middle C. You begin to resonate, not because something, or someone, has struck you, or plucked you as a harpist does, but because you are open and in tune with God.
We are able to resonate with God, because we are made to be in tune with God, a gift imparted by being created in the image of God.
Just as one note in the piano sounding will cause another to resonate, the musician and theologian Jeremy Begbie writes that God interacts “with the world intimately, without violating it or merging with it, liberating it to be more fully itself.”
Our God truly is a liberating God, not a controlling God. In our resonance with God, we move from dissonance to tunefulness, which is freedom to live fully into God’s image of us, not the world’s version of us.
Begbie writes, “God’s involvement with our lives neither pushes us out, nor swallows us up, nor leads to some kind of fusion. God does something much more creative: through intimate interaction with us, God frees us to ‘sound’ as we were created to sound, enabling us to be more fully ourselves. We are not de-humanized, but re-humanized.”
With this in mind, listen to Jesus’ words to our old friend, Nicodemus. Jesus tells him, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Jesus strives to put Nicodemus in tune with the music that God makes in the creation. He does not de-humanize him, but seeks to re-humanize him by liberating his spirit from the brokenness and folly of the fallen world so that his spirit may be resonate with the Spirit of God that has given life to all of the creation. Why not hear, “born from above” as God’s profound music at the center of the universe causing us to come alive because we resonate with God’s very music in the creation itself? Can it be that Nicodemus, in asking his questions of Jesus, is seeking to undamper himself from all that keeps him from resonating with God, a desire he feels because he sees others in Jesus’ midst resonating with God?
Jesus tells Nicodemus, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."
We hear the music of God, and do not know from whence it comes from. This music gives us birth, for we resonate with the music within the Spirit of God.
Maybe St. Paul is sharing the same truth, when he writes to the Church in Rome, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” In our musical musings, we are suggesting, “For all who resonate with the music of God are children of God.”
Paul then says, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Daddy!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
We might say, “When we resonate with God’s music, it is the very vibrations of the Spirit of God vibrating our spirit, showing us how we are birthed by God, making us children of God.”
God begets us by making us sing the same song of God’s creation.
“And if children,” Paul writes, “then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” In our musings, one note vibrating causes the other to do the same. When we resonate with God, God incarnates within us. The challenge is to make our resonance possible by being in tune.
We all don’t resonate the same way. What is so powerful about the one note vibrating, or one great chord, as we so often hear on the organ, is that it makes resonate many more notes than the octave above. The “G” will resonate as will the “E.” You might hear the “minor 7th;” indeed, we are to each resonate in our own way if we remain undampered and open.
As this is Trinity Sunday, maybe we should say that there is not one note, but three notes--a full chord--playing at the center of the keyboard that makes resonant the other open note. “What could be more apt,” Jeremy Begbie asks, “than to speak of the Trinity as a three-note-resonance of life, mutually indwelling, without mutual exclusion and yet without merger, each occupying the same ‘space’, yet recognizably and irreducibly distinct, mutually enhancing and establishing each other? To speak of three strings mutually resonating instantly introduces a dynamism . . . far truer to the trinitarian, living God of the New Testament.”
Jesus explains it this way to Nicodemus: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
On this Trinity Sunday, we give thanks that we do not perish, but are made eternally resonant, not dissonant, with God the Father who resonates with God the Son who resonates with God the Holy Spirit, the very “three-note-resonance of life, mutually indwelling, without mutual exclusion and yet without merger.”
On this Sunday, we give thanks not only for the music, but for the musician who unleashes it. A preacher, often foolishly, uses words to describe the nature of God. The organist uses music to help us each undamper and be open to God, so that we might resonate n the music of God. For 45 years, John Bisnfeld has never performed for us; John has worshiped with us, and for this, we say, “Thanks be to God.”
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