What Easter has to do with music

If Jesus did rise from the dead, then we must write and record music that is beautiful and challenging.

I’m discovering that’s what I believe. I’ve been a Christian all my life, but lately I’ve been growing in my understanding of what Easter – the event at the center of the faith I claim – has to do with art. Like a lot of people, I yearn to be better integrated – to discover what one part of my life or my actions has to do with another, and to line up the pieces that don’t fit together, until my life isn’t in pieces at all – until it all fits. Since art and faith are so significant to me, this means I’m always thinking about ways they fit together.

I find food for thought in obvious places, but also in surprising ones – like the book I finished this weekend by the Bishop of Durham about resurrection. Easter, it turns out, isn’t so much about going to heaven as it is about heaven coming here.

Which has to do with art and music. People create as a natural response to the created world around us. We reflect and enhance the beauty we find, ordering and enjoying the sights and sounds we find pleasurable – like Adam in Eden, who cultivated the garden and named the animals he found there. But unlike Adam, we live in a world that’s marred by ugliness and evil. Honest art reflects this, too.

Many first-century Jews – including Jesus – believed that evil was a temporary blight. Because God was just, they thought, an age would come when he would re-create the world. The beauty here would be transformed, made even better. The ugliness would be thrown on the trash heap. And dead people – particularly those who’d died unjustly – would be brought to life again.

Folks who concluded Jesus was the savior, then, saw Easter as the start of this new age of justice and beauty. His resurrection was a foretaste, like a single flower poking through still-frozen ground. Sure, injustice was still everywhere – but the era of peace had begun.

If I believe that, too, then it explains why I like music full of contradictions – tense, but yearning; dark, but full of promise. The kind of stuff I most aspire to make is a mixture of darkness and light. I don’t love sad songs or happy songs so much as hopeful ones. Because I think the world is cold – but also that Spring has already begun.

What about you? How do the things you believe intersect with the music you love?

Comments

[Dan]

I'm a huge fan of hopeful songs. My fave song I've ever written was one that came out of a cold place, and yet was hopeful. ("The Other Side" on my MySpace.) It's hard to write only happy songs, and just sad songs leave no sign of the Christian life, in my opinion. I've actually had the same thought before, our music should reflect the hope of the resurrection.

Thanks for the reminder!