7. The Dynamics of the Christ-Song: Extreme Volumes in the Gospels

7. The Dynamics of the Christ-Song: Extreme Volumes in the Gospels.

“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. To study the aspects of the Christ-Song in the Gospels begs us to explore the 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, 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 the ten elements of any song, including the volumes of the song’s dynamics:

“Sing unto Yahweh a new song!” (Psalm 98:1).

A Truly Dynamic Personality. The loudness and softness of the Gospel’s volume dial completely reflected the mercurial personality of Jesus. He was an unpredictable bundle of extremes throughout the Gospels, and so the authors of His story had no choice but to report it as they saw it. The Good News enjoyed a wide range of emotions and moods, sometimes immediately following each other without any transition whatsoever. The roller-coaster dynamics of Gospel passages could effortlessly go from a bellowing noise to absolute silence. A song’s dynamics range from very soft to very loud, and the Christ-Song reported both extremes and everything in between.

Changeable and Flexible. Jesus seemed just as comfortable being by Himself on a mountain top in private prayer as He was in angrily yelling woes at the Pharisees. He would often go out of His way to get  His quiet time with the Father, but He wasn’t shy about expressing very loud behavior when the situation called for it: His loud denunciations of demon spirits and their expulsions from human patsies; His frantic and violent clearing out of the Temple moneychangers; His famous seven “Woe unto thee” judgments placed on the impotent Pharisees in which He called them every name in the book; His yelling with authority at a wild storm on the Lake to calm it down; His very loud words addressed to a dead man in his tomb to come back to life. Jesus had the self-control to have complete composure one minute and then be found spitting with righteous indignation the next.

Soft Words with Loud Sound Effects. Sometimes the dynamics of the Christ-Song were misleading in that loud words were apparently expressed softly by Jesus, such as His scandalous I AM statements that drew so much ire from the religious authorities. Or when He calmly reintroduced Himself as the Messiah to His hometown and His soft words of Scripture ended up igniting all His old friends to near hysteria and He had to quickly escape with His life. And there was the time Jesus was simply skipping His lunch to softly teach in a house and His own family thought Jesus was losing His mind (Mark 3:21).

Try to Keep Up! There were many Gospel passages that transitioned so quickly from soft to loud and back to soft again, that a reader could get whiplash just trying to stay with all the action and mood changes. The Christ-Song’s dynamic volume of passages like these keeps the reader busy keeping up:

Luke 2 = From the loudness of the sky full of singing angels in Bethlehem, to the soft glow of the shepherds kneeling awestruck before the baby Jesus in a manger;

Mark 3/Luke 6 = From the silent prayers to His Father on a mountaintop, to a packed house loudly clamoring for His attention, to religious leaders fervently calling Jesus demon-possessed, to Him calmly telling them a few parables;

Mark 5 = From disembarking from their boat on a Gentile shore, to be immediately met by the extremely loud shrieks of a naked, violent, insane demoniac, to Jesus calmly engaging the demons in conversation and expelling those demons into a nearby herd of pigs who drowned themselves in their frenzy, to the once-hopeless demoniac’s now clothed return to sanity and casually having a conversation with Jesus;

John 6 = From a serene moment on a mountaintop with His disciples, to 5,000 needy and hungry peopled mobbing Him nearby, to a dramatic multiplication of enough fish and bread to feed the whole horde of people surrounding him, to withdrawing by Himself for some well-deserved private time to decompress, to walking on the white-capped waves to reach His terrified disciples, to calmly quieting that storm on the Lake with a word, to a quick and enjoyable boat ride across the Lake to Capernaum;

John 10-11 = From the Temple’s religious leaders angrily picking up stones to execute Jesus for blasphemy, to Jesus quietly escaping them and retiring to a private place across the Jordan River, to the distraught mourners of Lazarus in Bethany, to Jesus dramatically raising His friend Lazarus from the dead, to Jesus withdrawing to a remote area near the desert;

John 12 = From enjoying a quiet dinner with His close friends in Bethany, to Mary of Bethany anointing His feet with very expensive perfume, to the ecstatic rejoicing at His Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem, to a thoughtful teaching opportunity, to the thunder of God’s voice from heaven, to Jesus departing and hiding Himself from everyone;

Luke 17 = From confusing the disciples with a stroll through unclean territory in Samaria, to finding ten lepers approaching them on the road and asking to be healed, to Jesus quietly giving them a divine look that healed them all right on the spot, to their continuing on their trek to Jerusalem without a second’s hesitation;

Matthew 21 = From the wild praises from the huge crowd at His Triumphant Entry during which “all of Jerusalem was stirred up,” to the frantic cleansing of the Temple moneychangers complete with whip in His hand, to the children and disabled who nonetheless saw Jesus to be a ‘safe place’ as they approached Him once the Temple was cleared;

Matthew 22-23 = From a time of silence in which Jesus rendered the irritated Pharisees speechless, to Jesus immediately yelling out His diatribe against the Pharisees, calling them everything from self-righteous hypocrites to blind guides to whitewashed tombs to greedy fakes to a brood of snakes, after which Jesus calmly walked away as if nothing had happened;

Matthew 27 = From being stubbornly silent while being interrogated by the chief priests, elders, and even governor Pilate himself, to the frenzied mob demanding that Pilate release Barabba and crucify Jesus.

The Final Seven Words of Christ on the Cross. Even the seven last words on the Cross had the volume dial spinning back and forth: From the powerful word of forgiveness for all those who betrayed or tortured Him (Luke 23:34), to the tender gesture of forgiveness and salvation to a thief on the Cross (Luke 23:43), to the sweet words of affection to His mother and close disciple (John 19:26-27), to the frantic words of human distress in His seeming abandonment (Matthew 27:46), to the words of simple weakness in His agonizing thirst (John 19:28), to the triumphant cry of triumph that His mission is accomplished (John 19:30), to His final gasping breath in which He expressed His ultimate faith in His Father (Luke 23:46).

So the extreme dynamics of the Christ-Song as reported in the Gospels became a trademark of His ministry. Jesus seemed to be singing a song that would not put Him in a box or stereotyped as one certain type of Person. He wanted His Song to cross all the boundaries and attract every type of person He met. The Christ-Song is in every way the New Song that can play to a wide audience, a listening audience that is as wide as the universe.