God's Voice

Psalm 29 offers an extensive description of the voice of the LORD.
“The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders, the LORD over many waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful;
The voice of the LORD is full of majesty.
The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;
The LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon…
The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness…
The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth.
He strips the forest bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!”
…May the LORD give strength to His people.
May the LORD bless his people with peace.”

I wonder if David was thinking about Mt. Sinai when he wrote that Psalm. Exodus 24 tells us God spoke with Moses, and that Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. Not only that, but he read them aloud: “He took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” And then Moses sprinkled them with the blood of the covenant. All this seems a profound shadow of the Word that would be made flesh. And then Moses went up the mountain, and Psalm 29 describes what the people heard, quaked at, and felt “Glory” in terrified awe rushing to their lips.

I almost wish I didn’t know how quickly they forgot, how quickly they worshiped a god of their own making. I do know, I know from experience.

We who are washed in the blood of the New Covenant would do well to remember these sounds and their fearful response. The Word made flesh is not a lesser manifestation of the Glory but a greater, and a nonchalant or ambivalent response is inappropriate. This creates a deep hunger in me for a more extensive and thoughtful palette of sounds in our Christian worship gatherings, and for shepherds who are about teaching us to listen, not just enabling talented parishioners to use their gifts!

I’ve been teaching my Art of Listening class the powerful music of the Romantic tradition, music that terrifies, that overwhelms with authoritative majesty, and then, oh blessed reprieve, the delicate music of France, tender enough to attend the miracle of birth, to strengthen the faint, and emit peace: we need it all! All of it reveals the full spectrum of God’s voice, and were it not for His image in us, we would not be able to create any of it. If it were not for my being a musician, I’m trying to think how I would know any of these sounds. They so rarely make it into church; some churches have never heard them. The very real risk of making music into “a god of our own making” is ever present, but to be without a full spectrum in our aural imaginations when it comes to hearing the voice of God, runs the terrible risk of producing desensitized Christians, ostensibly deaf: no more able to hear the still small voice than the thunder and lightening that breaks mighty cedars into matchsticks. I wish I could teach my Art of Listening class as a Sunday School class. There would be so much richness there.