In the beginning, there was sound. Amid the vast void of the darkness and chaos in the beginning, all the elements for physically realized vibration—for pitch and for tone—were there, but they weren’t audible. The math and the physics, the frequencies and the wavelengths, they were all there. The numbers and the ratios existed and theoretically could be assembled into pitches, but there was no coherence, and there was no order. Sounds had not yet been voiced.
When the wind of God blew through that void of nothingness in the beginning, the mathematical relations that had heretofore existed in concept only began to organize slowly into the stirrings of discernible sound. It was no more than a hiss. There was no pitch to it. Physics and math were being shaped into something that could be heard. But as of yet, there was still no one to hear the sound.
As God separated the waters from the dome of the sky, and as God created the dry land, the hiss of the wind that God breathed over the formerly disordered abyss gradually morphed into a low hum. The vibrations of water molecules rushing together in varying configurations stirred perceptibly in the slowly forming created order. And as the first plants began to appear and vegetation sprang up from the firm earth, a keen ear might have been able to detect a whisper of the excruciatingly slow process of seeds bearing fruit. But as of yet, there were no ears to hear these sounds.
The earliest microorganisms that evolved into swimming fish and slithering snakes and flying birds, they all uttered their primitive sounds. The pitches were not especially well arranged, but it was a joyful chaos of life buzzing on the planet. Some of these creatures could hear the tone of life bubbling around them, though as of yet, there were no human ears to hear these voiced sounds.
But soon, an image of God began to form in the more sophisticated animals, and these humans, with their funny-looking ears began to hear the waters of the sea and the birds squawking in the sky, and they began to hear each other. The vibrations of cords of tissue in human larynges organized themselves into sounds worthy of communication. The sounds that had existed before only in theory and in a disorganized fashion now took on concrete meaning, a strange new thing. And those who could hear began to understand and communicate with one another.
Over the millennia, the uttered sounds from human voices that were acquiring greater and greater intelligibility were sadly entangled with the sounds of human-made weapons clanging against each other. In addition to tender words of love, there were cries of bitter pain and frustration and anger. Conflict and meanness and all manner of ugly sounds emerged from the human voice. It was terrible confusion.
But then new voices emerged from the recycled chaos. The concepts of sound—the math and the physics of wavelengths and frequencies—that before had been vocalized into cries of war and murder now started to crystallize into sweet utterances of beautiful things. The random assortment of pitches and tones, through trial and error, were refined into consonant sounds, pure and delightful.
Voices serenaded across the landscape that had previously been marred by human strife and sin, and these voices were elongated into delectable songs. These songs were about an incredible future, beyond the scratchy furor of bitterness and strife. These voices of the prophets pointed ahead, looking to an anticipated time of peace and joy and happiness. They sang of God and of salvation and of hope.
But still, so many human ears did not hear these musical prophets. Or if they heard them, they chose to ignore them. Sometimes the din of human pride and achievement simply covered up those isolated but exquisite melodies of the peaceful messengers.
You see, there were also voices that were so brutish and bold and arrogant that they bellowed unmusically over the tunes of God’s messengers. The songs of the prophets had no place in a world that was losing the art of song, and the prophets’ music seemed feeble and trite, and their words of hope never seemed to come true. . . until that glorious day dawned.
On that day, in the midst of the grunts of empire, greed, and usurped authority, a new voice began to speak in a clear tone. This voice had been present from the beginning but had not been vocalized. It had been there abstractly as sound in the math and physics of wavelengths and frequencies. And although it was active in the emerging variety of melodies over the years and had inspired the songs of prophets and peaceful messengers, like the first word of a baby, this unique, special sound had not yet been uttered as it would now be uttered.
Until this point in time, the atonality of the world had triumphed. Even as consonance was being discovered and appreciated and as dissonance was being rejected, at the end of the day, dissonance always seemed to win the upper hand. But that was then. And this was now. In a cave in a quiet village in the Middle East, this voice that had existed from the beginning but not been spoken in the flesh erupted into the world in the startling cry of a Baby, echoing off the cold, hard walls of the cave.
As this Baby grew and unintelligible murmurs were distilled into recognizable tunes, this Word, existing from the beginning, rang out from the vocal cords of human tissue. And now, from what had previously been theoretical and conceptual, God sang in solfeggio to a world that needed to hear the tonic note, do.
Until this point, that initial do—that ur, foundational note—of the universe had been echoed in the overtones of creation and the songs of prophets, but the aleatoric confusion and darkness of human sin had drowned out God’s eternal do. And now, in the key of human life, God established in audible pitch the tonic note of his salvation.
Although it is often difficult to hear amid the clangor of new forms of atonality, this tonic note of salvation’s musical key is still available for us to hear. God in his marvelous Word made flesh established the key of salvation for us, but we through the years have wandered prodigally far away from that do of God’s truth and grace.
In every age and especially in our own, our ears are needlessly distracted by noises that tear us away from God’s home key. The organization of consonant sound is diffused into a proliferation of strident cries from out of the depths of pain and suffering. Voices screech to bolster self-importance. And at times, the hollow clang of money being exchanged covers over the timeless do whose pedal point grounds the entire universe.
Raucous, totalitarian voices scream their way above hopeful songs of peace and joy. These godless voices deliberately sing out of tune against God’s key of life, and after enough time, we find ourselves forgetting where do is because the key of salvation has been refracted into bedlam. The root note of God’s eternal Word is rejected for the dazzle of empty notes that make no difference in the scale of life.
Look around on our city streets. Turn on the television, or crack open a newspaper. Scroll through social media. You will see. Competing, false dos have butted their way into God’s exquisite key of salvation that was uttered in the Word made flesh. The functional harmony that God intends for his beautiful creation has been rent asunder. In God’s solfeggio, do is often unrecognizable because the notes of the scale have ceased to relate to one another. And the notes have lost their meaning.
But on this holy day, we pause to recognize that this disordered state of affairs is not the end of the song cycle. For you and I still have a song to sing. It is welling up in our hearts. That is why we are here today. We have come together to sing it. We can do nothing else. We are God’s troubadours, and our song is grounded firmly in the key of salvation.
It’s true that this music may be gentle and unassuming. It may have difficulty rising above the unceasing, shallow musak of the world. But whatever form it takes, our song is an echo of the ballad of the angels heard by the shepherds in that field watching over their flocks by night. Our song is that great hymn of the host of heaven, resounding, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of hosts.” Our song is Mary’s as our souls magnify the Lord. Our song finds its tonic note in that key established in a cave in Bethlehem two thousand years ago when a baby uttered its first cry.
And even when our hearts are broken with sadness and we are grieving loss, even when we are consumed by fear and anxiety and are singing all by ourselves, we will still be able to sing faithfully in God’s key of salvation, because God’s do sings in minor keys, too. After all, God’s song was sung in both Bethlehem and on Calvary. God only asks that we keep singing.
There will be plenty of people who try to silence your song. There will be others who make you feel silly for singing in public or who tell you to sing only in the shower. Some will criticize the quality of your voice, and others will lead you to believe that you are unmusical and can’t sing, or that no one wants to hear your song. Don’t listen to them.
There is only one thing for us to listen to and it is God’s command to sing. And if you listen carefully, you will hear that do of salvation, sometimes pitched low and sometimes octaves above, echoing gently from beyond the walls of the Bethlehem cave, waiting for us to join in and match its pitch. And how can we keep from singing?
Preached by Father Kyle Babin
Christmas Day 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia