Loading...In this issue of the newsletter appear the third and fourth of five articles on the senses and how they help us to experience fully the presence of God in our common worship. In prior months, I have offered some thoughts about taste and smell. Now we turn to hearing and vision.
Their voice has gone out into all lands
Sound – and by extension, hearing, which is our experience of it – is arguably the most communal, the most relational sense. Each of the other four senses may be experienced by a single person in a crowded room, while others are unaware of it, and indeed are unaware of that one person’s experience. Sound, on the other hand, is broadcast. With a few exceptions, hearing does not depend on bodily orientation, contact with any object, or even conscious choice. Sound engages with and is engaged by all within range.
And yet, sound is also the most ephemeral sensory experience. The liturgical scholar Edward Foley notes that it is “perceivable but elusive, recognizable but uncontainable.” When the source of a sound ceases to make it, it disappears quite quickly. This is in decided contrast to odors or images, which may linger long after their sources are gone. (Consider stars that “died” thousands of years ago, yet whose light is only just reaching us.) It is therefore all the more ironic that sound, in the forms of speech and music, is the dominant vehicle for the conveying of meaning in many, indeed most, Christian liturgies. It may help to think about sound in some contrasting ways: as impermanent, intangible, active, engaging, and personal.
Impermanence is as much a quality of liturgical sound as of any other kind. Hymns and prayers end, as does the service itself. Our hearing, easily accustomed to stimulation of all kinds, is made uneasy by silence, that state that follows the end of a sound. Symphony-goers hurry to applaud at the end of a piece, no doubt in part to show their appreciation, but perhaps also because the silence that follows such a vivid sensory experience is uncomfortable. Liturgical silence is often overlooked or actively avoided, yet it is the witness of many Jewish and Christian writers that it is often in silence that God speaks. Quaker silence comes immediately to mind. The early Quaker Charles Marshall wrote, “Cease from those disturbances that draw the mind from an inward, deep sense of the invisible, immutable power of the Lord God Almighty.” In the case of Quaker worship, the silence encompasses the entire meeting, making it all the pause after the noise of the world in which God may be heard.
The impermanence of the sound of worship also tells us something about the purpose of the service. The liturgy is not meant to be a permanent place of residence, but rather a stop to refuel and recharge. One of our Eucharistic prayers says, “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” The liturgy, like its various parts, must end so that its purpose can be realized. Sound is, in a way, about change.
The theme of change is also present in the second aspect, intangibility. The production of speech and music typically does not involve the altering of physical matter, and hearing does not involve engagement with anything physical. Yet sound can alter matter – a glass shattered by a note on the right frequency – and that which we hear can be inwardly transformative. Hearing internalizes the power of sound. In our encounter with sound – that which cannot be pinned down in physical form, but which nonetheless works on us and in us – we have a metaphor for the Divine working. The sound of the liturgy, discernable but not susceptible to being contained and controlled, speaks to us of the quality of the presence of God.
The active quality of our experience of sound is clarified in the distinction between hearing and listening. We often cannot avoid hearing (we have no “earlids”), but listening is not passive. Listening, actively taking in and processing, gives form and meaning to what we hear. In this way, a conversation is created between sound source and listener. This relationship also characterizes the interaction of the Judeo-Christian God with humankind. “Speak, for your servant is listening (1 Sam 3:9).” “…And his sheep follow him because they know his voice (Jn 10:4).” Liturgical speech and music (and silence!) express the community’s praise, intercession, celebration, lamentation, thanksgiving – every human emotion – and in a mysterious way also embody God’s response.
Our response to sounds is, happily or unhappily, a process of engagement. The sound of a garage door opening three floors away can turn a sleeping pet into a frenzied welcoming committee. A few measures of music heard in isolation, repeated over and over in one’s imagination (often involuntarily), may lead to the complete tune. Dancing and movement in general are common responses to rhythmic sounds and music. Observation of the crowd at a rock concert throws into relief how this phenomenon is both individual and communal. All hear the same sounds, and respond in ways that are socially conditioned, personally expressive, or both. The same is true of the music we hear in church.
Hearing becomes the motivator of response. St Paul exhorts Christians to be doers of the word and not merely hearers. Liturgical sound engages the congregation and calls forth its response, both in the moment and beyond it. In the former category, one thinks of altar calls, typically conducted at the end of the sermon, as hymns are sung. “Just as I am,” and “Come to Jesus,” call both for inward conversion and an outward sign of intent. Preaching, the concerns expressed in collective prayer, and hymn lyrics also call on those assembled to express values of love and service in their lives outside the liturgy.
Finally, both music and speech are experiences not simply of something other, but of a specific other. Sound is personal. We know the voices of those we are close to even when we can hear, but not see, them. We can identify musicians by characteristics of their styles of performance. Our act of hearing links sounds with people. This also describes the human experience of interaction with God. The God of Israel speaks with one voice – in the burning bush, on Mount Sinai, in the silence after the earthquake, wind, and fire. In the New Testament, the voice of God is even more personal and embodied in the life and teachings of Jesus. A God who would be known is aptly revealed in a sensory experience that joins the ephemeral with the concrete. Liturgical sound helps us to locate God, not physically, but rather in the landscape of our lives.
This is from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes
Christianity inherits from Judaism a complicated relationship with images. The Second Commandment (or in some traditions the latter part of the First) forbids the making of idols or “graven images.” Iconoclastic movements, first in Eastern Christianity in the 8th and 9th Centuries AD, and later in the Protestant Reformation, rejected images as distractions from the essence of worship, and thus from the essence of the Holy. At the same time, humans are strongly visual beings. We interpret the world literally and metaphorically in terms of sight. We speak of “seeing people,” “seeing the answer,” and “seeing through pretense.” The Bible uses this metaphor as well – “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes/sight” (Ps 118:23), and “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8).
With all the senses, the means of perception and that which is perceived are intimately related. One way in which the relationship of sight and liturgy might be explored is through categories of what is seen – light, color, and image (or icon). These are, of course, overlapping, but each speaks to a way in which sight draws the worshiper into the mystery of God.
Light is a familiar metaphor for God, for faith, and for the message of the Gospel. In the absence of light, nothing can be seen. It both defines what is seen and qualifies the manner in which it is perceived. Literal light surrounds and suffuses the liturgical action, in which the light of the Gospel is made visible in words and gestures. Light also draws the eye. One is reminded of Bernini’s altarpiece of the Ecstasy of St Teresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. In it, white figures of an angel and St Teresa are set against a black and gold background, while light falls from a hidden window above them. The meaning is heightened by the composition – light from above is divine revelation.
Color adds depth of meaning, filling in the outline of the picture. In Byzantine thought, color was both a necessary part of a complete image and also a symbol of the Divine creative power. So color represents the working of God in the world in all of its diversity. The use of a liturgical “color code” is an echo of this. Although the familiar Western green/purple/red/white system is comparatively recent, it is not difficult to assign theological meanings to the colors, representing very old Christian ideas.
Green is calming and represents growth and life. White is brilliant and bespeaks purity. Significantly, it is also the closest color to “light.” Red is warm and represents energy and enthusiasm. Purple is the darkest of the four, somber, a symbol of introspection and reflection.
These categorizations are not universal – for many Asians, white is the color of mourning, and many of the Eastern Christian traditions use a different color palate or a constant, vibrant range of colors for their liturgical vestments. Regardless of this, it is fair to say that colors guide and give cues to the emotions.
Colors also serve as the building blocks of images. Gregory of Nyssa wrote, “In the art of painting, different colors combine to represent the subject portrayed. However, the person looking at the image created by the skillful use of colors does not linger over the colors painted on the tablet; he beholds instead only the form which the artist has shown.”
Images in the liturgical setting come in many forms. The Eucharistic elements are images, as are the furniture, the decoration, and even (perhaps especially) the people present in the congregation. The human face is the icon of the creativity of God and or God’s loving wish for a relationship with humanity.
One of the oldest and most complex images in churches is the painted (or in the parlance of the Eastern Churches, “written”) icon. The orthodox understanding of the prayerful act of engagement with an icon deals intimately with nearness and distance. In the “sacred gaze,” the distance between the viewer and the subject of the icon diminishes. Whether the icon is a portrait or a dramatic scene, meaning flows from it that must be translated into the spiritual “dialect” of the worshipper. The icon, a “window into heaven,” draws and holds our attention, inviting us into a view of creation that is a radical transformation of earthly reality. When, in an Eastern Orthodox church, the iconostasis is a solid wall of icons, the host of patriarchs, saints, and angels joins the congregation in its act of praise and thanksgiving, while also serving as a visual reminder of the reconciling and recreating work of God that is still in progress.
An experienced observer can tell a lot about a church just by looking at its worship space. What we see both tells us something about the people who made it and about how its architecture, furnishings, and decoration have helped to form the community that worships there. However, this does not detract from the deeper truth that the visual world summons and focuses the spiritual senses in a profound way.
Blessings
Howie+
