Cantique de Jean Racine, Opus 11

"The highest goal of music is to connect their soul to their Divine Nature, not entertainment." 

Pythagorus

I often find that pieces of music can impact us greatly.  They resurface at various places in your life, where you can remember the places where they were played, how they affect you, and move you in places you may not have recognized before.

Pieces like the Cantique de Jean Racine, Opus 11 by Gabriel Faure.

The piece is a mixed choir composition, usually intended for accompaniment on an organ, which captures the French paraphrase of a Latin hymn from the breviary of the matins, liturgical books for the darkness of early morning.   Composed in 1865, it became one of Faure's early signature pieces.  He was 19 at its composition.

I first encountered the piece at a show choir summer camp at Duke University in 1994, the summer before my freshman year of high school.  The Brightleaf Music Workshop always aimed to expose its students to a wide variety of choral music, from show choir, to vocal jazz, to gospel, and high holy classical music.  The Cantique was one such classical piece for that year, to be performed in the final shows and additionally to be performed at Sunday services in the Duke Chapel.  

This was one portion of the camp that I always looked forward to. 

Duke remains an interesting college campus.  One side is all straight edges and modern architecture, as if completely designed by engineers.  The other is closer to Oxford and Cambridge, assembled by stone masons and craftsmen.  As if completely designed by artisans.  The Duke Chapel exists on this side of the campus, completely mirroring classical cathedral architecture.  Accordingly, the cross shaped building has amazing acoustics that ring music and sound throughout the structure.  

Plus, it has the most beautiful sounding organs that I've heard.  While the Chapel now has three, at the time, it housed two large pipe organs, one with 6,900 pipes, and the other with 5,033 pipes.  You can feel the bass from those pipes in your soul.

For the 1994 Brightleaf song selection for the Duke Chapel services, the conductors of Brightleaf chose the Cantique de Jean Racine to be accompanied by the chapel's organs, and a men's acapella performance of the Amen section of an Ave Maria variation to close.  

To sing those pieces there, with expert accompaniment, and to feel the music in your body and soul because of the construction of the Chapel was a divine experience.  We can often talk about feeling the Spirit in Christian circles and this often comes with more charismatic music.  Something more modern, something where the darkness and the volume allows you to let go and feel the emotion of the song and the praise being lifted.  

This was different.  This was connecting with something older, something greater. A piece that had been performed for hundreds of years, raising praise to God.  A building designed to honor the Lord in every piece that was chosen for it by masters in their field.  The unity of voices singing in harmony.  And the echo of the music in the air.

I count it as one of the clearest experiences where I felt the Spirit of the Lord's presence. 

The piece would continue to pop up in my life, being a competition piece for All-Region Choir in my high school years.  And now, I'm having the pleasure of singing it with the Cummins Diversity Choir, with others who have likewise encountered it in ages past.

And each time we sing, I still feel the echo of that Sunday morning years ago.

"Verbe égal au Très-Haut, notre unique espérance,
Jour éternel de la terre et des cieux,
De la paisible nuit nous rompons le silence:
Divin Sauveur, jette sur nous les yeux.

Répands sur nous le feu de Ta grâce puissante;
Que tout l'enfer fuie au son de Ta voix;
Dissipe le sommeil d'une âme languissante
Qui la conduit à l'oubli de Tes lois!

Ô Christ! sois favorable à ce peuple fidèle,
Pour Te bénir maintenant rassemblé;
Reçois les chants qu'il offre à Ta gloire immortelle,
Et de Tes dons qu'il retourne comblé."

"Word of the Highest, our only hope,
Eternal day of earth and the heavens,
We break the silence of the peaceful night;
Saviour Divine, cast your eyes upon us!

Pour on us the fire of your powerful grace,
That all hell may flee at the sound of your voice;
Banish the slumber of a weary soul,
That brings forgetfulness of your laws!

O Christ, look with favour upon your faithful people
Now gathered here to praise you;
Receive their hymns offered to your immortal glory;
May they go forth filled with your gifts."

It's Not About Me

With yesterday's post getting so much attention, I thought it appropriate to discuss why understanding worship, why viewing it in the appropriate context is so appropriate. 

Why we have to move past thinking of it as something we go to.  Move past viewing it an hour or so long appointment on Sunday mornings (and maybe Sunday and Wednesday evenings).

That comes from remembering who worship is for.

Remembering that it's not really about us.

Worship is not about that feeling I get from singing songs in a group setting.

It's not about that feeling of conviction or exhortation we get from a message.

It's not about that joy of communal fellowship.

It's not about something labeled a "worship service."

It's not about the leadership of the church.

It's not about the other members of the church.

It's not about us.

It's not about me.

Worship exists for one purpose - to glorify God.

Worship is about God above, and God alone.

Sure, worship can encompass all the things above.  It can involve singing, it can involve the preaching of the word.  It can involve hearing a message.  It can involve fellowship.  It can be in a building, it can be in a formal structure, it can be just how you have experienced it.

But that's not all that it is.  That barely scratches the surface of worship.

Worship can be being moved by God's creation.  Worship can be an act of simple gratitude.  An act of kindness.  An act of mercy.  Worship can be loud and noisy.  It can also be still and quiet.  It can be out among the multitudes, as in the largest evangelism crusades that Billy Graham ever had.  It can happen all alone, in a quiet corner, of a quiet room.  It can happen on the battlefield.  It can happen at work.  Yes, it can even still happen in our schools today.

It can happen physically and it can be sent out and shared virtually.

It is, quite literally, what we were made for.

You and I are created to worship.  If we do not do it, the very rocks will cry out.  Further, I guarantee that you are worshipping something, even if you would claim no belief.  Everyone worships something.  Money, status, self, their spouse, their kids, leisure.  Something.

While we have a responsibility in the process in Christian worship, while we are involved, it's not about us.  The focus should never be on us.

To misunderstand this can bring us closer to worshipping the wrong things.  Closer to idolatry than we would like to imagine.  It can make us enforcers of form over substance.  Bring us close to worshipping our style of worship, the building we attend, our ministers performing the service over the one true God who has called us to worship.

This was the problem of the Pharisees.  According to Jewish tradition, they were the best worshippers.  They followed every religious custom.  They prayed the right prayers, worshipped the right way, they met the requirements that we would identify as worship.  They went to the temple, they gathered like they were supposed to do, attended all the right meetings, and to the Jewish people of the day, they appeared the most pious.

But Jesus had to remind them that their focus on form over substance, on their focus on tradition instead of actual worship, was worthless.

"Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 'The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works that they do.  For they preach, but they do not practice.  They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their little finger.  They do all their deeds to be seen by others.  For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.  By you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.

And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.  Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.  The greatest among you shall be your servant.  Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.  For you neither neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves...'"

Matthew 23:1-15

Jesus continues on through all of his seven woes, but I think the point is made.  The Pharisees were so focused on their ways of worship, the way that the conceived of worship, that they missed the opportunity to worship the Messiah when He was right there before them.  He was calling them out of their familiar, to experience true worship, and they completely missed it.

A great example of this can also be found in the story of the woman at the well.  After all the initial questions are dispensed with.  After Jesus has revealed just how well He knows her, the question turns to where to worship.

"The woman said to him, 'Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.  Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.'  

Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.  You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.  But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.'"

John 4:19-24

The Samaritans and the Jews had always disagreed about how to worship.  About where worship was to occur.  And here in this conversation with a Samaritan, Jesus reveals that they have both been missing the point.  Worship is not about a location.  It's about a spirit.  Worship is about glorifying God and we must do that in spirit and in truth.  Those are the requirements.  

That's why being out of our buildings should not phase the church.  It's why the church can't be re-opened, because the Church was never closed.  We who make up the Body of Christ, the great universal Church, have been open and active in this time.

There was an opportunity in this time for our worship to have increased.  I have seen it happen and I pray it has happened for you.  That is what we should take away from this.  What we should carry with us long beyond this crisis is over.  To move our worship beyond a building, beyond our previous ideas of what worship entails into spirit and truth.

Let's focus on that and not a temporary interruption of our meeting together.

Ebeneezers

Ebeneezer - a commemoration of divine assistance.

"Here I raise mine Ebeneezer; hither by thy help I'm come."

We need Ebeneezers.  We need to hold on to them and we need to recognize them when they happen.

They are milestones.  Markers of divine providence.  Tangible memory aids to let us never forget what the Lord has done for us.  What He has brought us through.  

Biblically, Ebeneezers are literally “stones of help.”  They come from 1 Samuel 7, where Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen, following the Israelite victory over the Philistines, naming the place Ebeneezer and saying “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”  From then on, every time an Israelite saw the stone erected by Samuel, they had a tangible reminder of the Lord’s power and protection.

It’s important to make and keep these and to recognize them as they appear.  To also recognize when the Lord reminds us of His faithfulness.

Today in church, I felt one such reminder.  All of the songs today really spoke to the Lord’s help through every situation, but we came in particular to Here Again by Elevation Worship.  The song speaks to being in the middle of the storm, but knowing the Lord is with you.  Recognizing that we are not enough on our own, unless the Lord meets us here.

Then we came to the bridge.

“Not for a minute

Was I forsaken”

And that hit me in a very unexpected way.  I’m glad I was not singing backup this morning, as it was a bit tough to keep my composure.

Because it’s true.  Not for a minute in all of this have I been forsaken.  Not in the minute where I was fired.  Not in the minutes in having to explain why in an interview.  Not in the minute the emails come back with a form rejection for various positions.  Not in the minute where a recruiter turns out to be more interested in selling a service.  Not in all the minutes in between.

But, paradoxically, we serve a savior who was forsaken, so that we would never be.  We serve a savior who took on our sins, so that we would bear them no more.   We serve a savior who felt his Father turning his back on him, so that we could be welcomed into His presence.

It's a reminder that I needed this morning.  A reminder that whatever doubt may say, there has never been a moment God has not been in control.  Never been a moment He has not cared for me.  

A bridge to serve as a figurative Ebeneezer for me.  And one I can never sing the same way again.  

"Here's my heart Lord, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above."

A Thorough Doxology

Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run; 
Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise,
To pay thy morning sacrifice.

Thy precious time misspent, redeem,
Each present day thy last esteem,
Improve thy talent with due care;
For the great day thyself prepare.

By influence of the Light divine
Let thy own light to others shine.
Reflect all Heaven's propitious ways
In ardent love, and cheerful praise.

In conversation be sincere;
Keep conscience as the noontide clear;
Think how all seeing God thy ways
And all thy secret thoughts surveys.

Wake, and lift up thyself, my heart,
And with the angels bear thy part,
Who all night long unwearied sing
High praise to the eternal King.

All praise to Thee, who safe has kept
And hast refreshed me while I slept
Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake
I may of endless light partake.

Heav'n is, dear Lord, where'er Thou art,
O never then from me depart;
For to my soul 'tis hell to be
But for one moment void of Thee.

Lord, I my vows to Thee renew;
Disperse my sins as morning dew.
Guard my first springs of thought and will,
And with Thyself my spirit fill.

Direct, control, suggest, this day,
All I design, or do, or say,
That all my powers, with all their might,
In Thy sole glory may unite.

I would not wake nor rise again
And Heaven itself would disdain,
Wert Thou not there to be enjoyed,
And I in hymns to be employed.

All praise to Thee, my God, this night
For all the blessings of the light!
Keep me, O keep me, King of Kings,
Beneath Thine own almighty wings.

Forgive me, Lord, for Thy dear Son,
The ill that I this day have done,
That with the world, myself, and Thee,
I, ere I sleep, at peace may be.

Teach me to live, that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die, that so I may
Rise glorious at the judgment day.

O may my soul on Thee repose
And with sweet sleep mine eyelids close,
Sleep that may me more vigorous make
To serve my God when I awake.

When in the night I sleepless lie,
My soul with heavenly thoughts supply;
Let no ill dreams distrub my rest,
No powers of darkness me molest.

O when shall I, in endless day,
For ever chase dark sleep away,
And hymns divine with angles sing,
All praise to thee, eternal King?

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him aboev, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Thomas Ken, 1674.