10. The Voice that Sings the Christ-Song
10. The Voice that Sings the Christ-Song.
“The Lord is the Song!” (Genesis 15:2; Psalm 118:14; Isaiah 12:2).
The Song with a Body. There are a few ways to understand this recurring biblical passage… The Lord is the reason I sing. The Lord is Who I love to sing about. The Lord is the object of my singing. The Lord is Who we sing to. The Lord is the one Who inspires our singing. I sing because of the Lord, in honor of the Lord, in obedience to the Lord. Many translations put this verse as saying, “The Lord is my song.” But biblical scholars say that this passage could just as correctly be translated as, “The Lord is The song,” or even, “The Lord is the song of God.”
Jesus is The Song. So this important piece of Scripture captures the imagination as it makes clear that… Jesus Himself IS the Song. Christ is the divine song with flesh on. He embodies the Song of the universe. Jesus is God’s Song to the world. The life of Christ is itself a Song. The Christ-Song is a perfectly constructed piece of eternal music in the flesh. Just as a song is the composer’s method of self-expression, Jesus is God’s perfect and ultimate form of Self-expression. As our Savior, Jesus is the Song of Salvation. As the Redeemer, He is the Song of Redemption. As the Deliverer, He is the Song of Deliverance. As the Wonderful Counselor, He is the Song of Wisdom. As the Prince of Peace, He is the Song of Shalom.
Another I AM? Might we be so bold as to add another I AM to John’s gospel list? I AM the Song. The Lord is my song, He is The Song. This idea makes it practically sacramental. Christ’s claim, I Am the Bread of Life, for example, was fulfilled in the Eucharist when we literally welcome the Bread of Life, the broken body of Jesus, into our very being. Likewise, when we sing the Song of Jesus, when we participate in Jesus as the Song, He becomes a part of us, body, soul and mind. The Christ-Song is the spiritual music in our lives.
The Infinity of the Song. Just as music, God’s greatest gift to mankind and the very language of heaven, has an infinite number of possibilities, the Christ-Song has an infinite number of styles, applications, qualities, moods. So it makes sense that the life and mission of Jesus can be explored by taking a careful look at the elements of a song: the Overture; the Prelude; the Melody; the Harmonies; the Rhythm; the Lyrics; the Bridge; the Dynamics; the Key; the Genre or Style; the Voice; and finally, the Outro. To study the aspects of the Christ-Song in the Gospels begs us to explore those elements of a song, any song. Hopefully, this study of the elements of the Christ-Song will make Him unforgettable, much like when words are put to music, they become unforgettable. When the living Word becomes the lyrics to a song, for example, much the same happens. Hopefully, embracing Jesus Christ as the Song will make Him unforgettable as well. The elements of the Christ-Song can be explored through those twelve elements of most songs, including the Voice with which the Song is sung:
God’s Voice in Nature that ‘Splits the Cedars:’
“… the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty sea. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord splits the mighty cedars; the voice of the Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon…” (Psalm 29:3-5).
Psalm 29 is a dramatic poem describing a powerful thunderstorm, and explores the power of God over creation, and thus the power of God over the affairs of mankind and His glory in the world. Hebrew poets usually imagined that thunder was God’s voice made audible. The English equivalent to the Hebrew word for His “voice” is “rumbling.”
The Orthodox priest Father Patrick Henry Reardon, in his book Christ in the Psalms, helps to set the stage for this psalm. “The setting of this tempest is a giant cedar forest, whose overarching branches assume the contours of a vaulted temple, and through this lofty forest the booming voice of God comes pounding and roaring with a terrifying majesty, accompanied by the swishing of the wind and rain, while flashing bolts of lightning split the very trunks of the towering trees.” Clearly, Psalm 29 is intended to reveal God’s glory through this storm.
Hebrew scholar Reardon also makes the fascinating point that one should hear the psalm read out loud in the original Hebrew. Evidently, Ps. 29 actually sounds like a thunderstorm. The word for voice, qol, mimics the sound of thunder when spoken with the intended guttural voice. The expression “qol Adonai,” the voice of the Lord, even sounds like a repeated thunder roll. Since that particular phrase is repeated throughout the psalm seven times, one gets the impression the psalm is dominated by the soundtrack of continued thunder. Also, the word for glory, “kavod,” is repeated a number of times in the psalm, and has a guttural sound that can easily be understood as the sound of thunder.
Since the cedar tree, particularly the Cedars of Lebanon, have been a symbol in Scripture for strength, for loftiness, for longevity, God’s power is seen as so impressive that it can even shatter the proud “king of the trees,” as the cedars were known in biblical times. God has the power to bring even the great ones, haughty and proud, to their knees. God has the ability to bring the arrogant down to size.
God’s Voice in Scripture:
God’s voice, the voice from another dimension that can only be described in human terms and not defined, are indeed described in many different ways in Scripture. God’s power is implied in every description.
At Creation. Twelve times in Genesis 1-2, God was said to speak creation into existence. There are some, especially in the Hebrew tradition, that claim that His voice could not have been audible, since a Spirit does not literally have vocal cords. Instead, they say, “God said” is referring to God’s powerful will in action, and not an actual physical sound. But I wonder about that, since if God could create an entire universe from nothing, He certainly could be capable of bringing words out of His Being from nothing as well. Also, there are plenty of biblical examples like the following, when it certainly seems that God’s voice was literally, audibly heard by human beings:
To the Israelites at the foot of Mt. Sinai, God’s voice was terrifying. “We will die if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer… You speak to us, Moses, and we will listen. But don’t let God speak directly to us, or we will surely die!” (Deut. 5:25; Ex.To Ezekiel, 20:19);
To Daniel, the voice of the Lord sounded like a multitude, like the roar of a huge crowd. (Dan. 10:6);
To Ezekiel, God’s voice sounded like floodwaters, a rushing waterfall, or the mighty ocean. (Ezek. 43:2);
To Elijah, the voice of the Lord came to him in a whisper, a sound of gentle stillness, a light murmuring, as if God was gently exhaling His breath of life and encouragement onto Elijah. (1 Kings 9:12);
To Moses, who audibly heard the voice of Yahweh numerous times, from the burning bush, to the Holy of Holies (Ex. 20), to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting (Ex. 33:9,11). The voice of the Lord must have sounded like his next-door neighbor, understandable and practically human. “The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.” (Ex. 33:11), and “mouth to mouth” (Nu. 12:8) . “Moses spoke, and the voice of God answered him.” (Ex. 19:19).
The Father Speaks In the Gospels, there were three times God spoke audibly. “Bat-qol” is the rabbinic term for God’s voice meaning “daughter of the voice,” or small voice or echo. This phenomenon has become known as the “Threefold Witness of the Father”… God spoke words of affection and affirmation at the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3:7; He spoke much the same at the Transfiguration of Jesus in Matthew 17:5; and there was a brief but intimate exchange between Jesus and the Father in John 12:28-30: “‘Jesus said, ‘Father, bring glory to your name!’ A voice came down from heaven and said, ‘I have already brought glory to my name, and I will glorify it again!’ The crowd standing by who heard this said that it was a clap of thunder; others said that it was an angel that was speaking. Jesus answered, ‘It was not for my sake that this voice came, but for yours.” What we have here is an intimate glimpse of what was probably going on continuously, a profound inner dialogue between Father and Son. God’s voice is definitely a mystery, of course, and was also compared in Scripture to loud thunder, an angel, harps, and trumpets. In this passage in John, it was hardly a still small voice, because the people around Jesus who heard the voice were confused about what they heard, whether a loud clap of thunder or the speaking of an angel. God’s voice to His followers remains a mystery… sometimes clear, sometimes unclear, sometimes unmistakable, and sometimes soft and gentle. To add to the significance of their quick conversation, a little glimpse of what they are referring to when they speak of “glory” and “glorify.”
Glory: the weighty splendor of God’s personal presence in the world. The bottom line is that the weight of God’s presence outweighs the world; His presence is more substantive and heavier than the universe. To give God glory is to…
GLORIFY: to acknowledge and applaud the awesome reality of God’s presence in the world; to make His presence heavier and more obvious; to magnify Him by enlarging His name and reputation in the world; to live in a way that strengthens God’s credibility; to honor God in a way that reveals the truth and makes Him less hidden; to live in a way that preserves God’s glorious name and Personhood; to follow God in a way that helps others to recognize God as the ultimate Person of Substance; to publicize and promote His glorious name by demonstrating His character; to be a guardian of God’s goodness and spiritual power in the world.
“So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness… (Hebrews 3:7-8).
The Voice of Jesus Christ the Son:
As we think about the voice of the Lord, we naturally start to wonder about the voice of Jesus, God in human flesh. What did His voice actually sound like? Was it pretty much like every other man’s voice? Anything distinctive about it? Nobody in the Gospels ever mentions anything about the physical features of Jesus, the tenor of His voice, His height and weight, the color of His hair or His eyes. We just don’t really know anything about the physical Jesus, the Man we worship. Perhaps the most important aspects of Christ’s voice is that the sheep of His fold are familiar with His voice, they are able to recognize it without fail, and they will follow their Good Shepherd anywhere… “I am the good Shepherd. My sheep listen to my voice. I call my own sheep by name and lead them out to pasture. I go ahead of my sheep, and my sheep follow me because they recognize the sound of my voice.” (adapted from John 10:1-5). We also know, as Jesus told Pilate, that “Everyone who loves the truth hears my voice.” (John 18:37). We know that Jesus somehow contained the voice of the Lord to the extent that any human can. He was certainly skilled at using His voice to meet the demands of every situation. He could speak tenderly with children, loudly to the crowds, authoritatively with the demons, forcefully to the moneychangers, lovingly to a humiliated Peter on the beach, forgivingly to the prostitutes and adulteress, judgmentally to the religious establishment, and with life-giving power to the dead Lazarus. Don’t we all long to hear the actual voice of Jesus when we see him again at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb?
“Don’t be surprised! Indeed, the time is coming when all the dead in their graves will hear the voice of God’s Son, and they will all rise again.” (John 5:28-29).
But before that heavenly Feast when we get to hang out with the Patriarchs and saints and the Lord Himself, we know that the whole world will hear Christ’s voice at the Last Day. He has the authority and power to somehow make his voice understandable to all the humans who ever lived.
“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.” (Revelation 3:20). We all pray that we can discern God’s voice when He speaks to us, for those who know Jesus, know His voice.
Did the Trinity Sing Creation into Existence?
Why not? Why isn’t this beautiful passage from C. S. Lewis’ Magician’s Nephew actually an inspired vision of what really happened?
“In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it…
‘Gawd!’ said the Cabby. ‘Ain’t it lovely?’
Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out – single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it , as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves who were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.
‘Glory be!’ said the Cabby. ‘I’d ha’ been a better man all my life if I’d known there were things like this.’
…Far away, and down near the horizon, the sky began to turn grey. A light wind, very fresh, began to stir. The sky, in that one place, grew slowly and steadily paler. You could see shapes of hills standing up dark against it. All the time the Voice went on singing…The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold. The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose.
Digory had never seen such a sun…You could imagine that it laughed for joy as it came up. And as its beams shot across the land the travellers could see for the first time what sort of place they were in. It was a valley through which a broad, swift river wound its way, flowing eastward towards the sun. Southward there were mountains, northward there were lower hills. But it was a valley of mere earth, rock and water; there was not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass to be seen. The earth was of many colours: they were fresh, hot and vivid. They made you feel excited; until you saw the Singer himself, and then you forgot everything else.
It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy, and bright it stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song and it was about three hundred yards away.”