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“Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.
They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.”
-Jeremiah 17:7-8a
Those words from Jeremiah are nearly identical to words from Psalm 1, and both are scheduled for Sunday reading on the 17th of February this year. As a life-long tree lover — in junior high and high school I had three tree houses in one grand embracing maple, and another in my grandparents’ century-old oak — those biblical passages have always caught my attention, but they do so in a new way this year. I’ve been reading research on plant communication in forests. A formerly unknown world is being shown to me, and it has me thinking new thoughts about trees, and renewed thoughts about music and the “forest” of Bible stories.
In as brief a summary as I can manage, scientific discoveries have revealed that the “whole” of a forest is far greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, it is not just a bunch of individual trees towering over individual ferns, fungus and rotting leaves; it is a community. It communicates, it is in communion. Amazing. I admit that I still have favorite trees along trails I walk, individual trees still matter to me, but I am less likely now to “not see the forest for the trees.”
In one way, the inter-connectedness of trees with each other and the world around them should not surprise me. Music is like a forest, and so is the Bible. If the individual elements of music — rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre, etc — are not in communication with each other, the result is not music but noise. It is the communication, the communion of the individual aspects with each other, that makes music. Similarly, the degree to which the written elements of a composition and the performer communicate with each other, the depth and quality of their communion, is the degree to which the music comes off the page, living and singing.
Bible verses and individual Bible stories are the same way. We all have favorites, but it is the way all those verses and stories live together that gives us what we call the biblical message, or The Gospel. Verses, for example, that if torn out of their biblical context could wound and injure, find a non-injurious place in the great “forest” of stories and commentary that has deep roots in the rich soil of love and grace. The “whole” matters.
Therefore, the Church reads more than a handful of favorite passages, working its way through much of the biblical account each year, and even more over the course of a three-year cycle. And along the way the Church has found more than a mere servant in good music; it has found a friend. The Bible has welcomed music into its “forest,” and music has just as thoroughly welcomed the Bible into its own. Neither is an invasive species in the other’s world. Sing For Joy happily lives in that life-enhancing woods, and is glad to live there with you.
Peace be with you,
Pastor Bruce Benson
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