“The tune of Jesus is still beautiful even if Christians have sung out of tune.” I love that line from Australian church leader and historian John Dickson, who was one of the guests featured in the second episode of my podcast Reconstructing Faith.
“The composition is beautiful: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who mistreat you—which isn’t just an arbitrary ethic. It’s the whole arc of Jesus’ life history, the very logic of the Christian faith.”
Jesus Christ Is Sung
This analogy of Christianity as a melody to be played or a song to be sung resonates with me. I point to it in The Thrill of Orthodoxy. It’s not a new analogy—it has an ancient pedigree—but we need it in this moment.
In his letter to the Ephesians, Ignatius wrote,
“In your unanimity and harmonious love Jesus Christ is sung. Now you must join the chorus, each of you, so that being in harmonious unanimity, taking your pitch from God you may sing in unity, in one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father, so that he may also hear and may recognize you through your good actions, being members of his Son.”
In the church’s love, Jesus Christ is sung.
How are we doing with that?
Bungling the Tune
When we look to the past, we see how Christians have often drifted toward beliefs and actions that fail to do justice to the melody handed down by the apostles, whether it was the jarring dissonance of warriors committing atrocities in the name of Christ or the ostentatious displays of wealth and favoritism so clearly out of line with the instructions of our Savior.
But “Christians behaving badly is the minority report,” Dickson says (and shows in his book Bullies and Saints). “I would say in most centuries of the church, most Christians sang the tune recognizably.” Even today, when pastors or church leaders sin in ways that scandalize the church, the majority of Christians are shocked and disappointed, perhaps even more so than people in the world. Why? Because “they are singing the tune, they are bumbling their way along, trying to believe the gospel and trust the gospel, and they’re let down spectacularly.”
No matter the era, you’ll find some Christians mangling the melody and others singing it beautifully. At times, you may be stunned to hear a Christian leader sing one verse flawlessly while botching the next entirely. We’re a bungling bunch of believers, after all. None of us will get all the notes right all the time, and it may be that we sound more like an untrained children’s choir trying to stay on key than the choristers of Westminster Abbey. But humility keeps drawing us back to the song as we seek to honor the melody.
Thankfully, we have the Spirit’s guidance as we sing the gospel’s melody. Basil the Great wrote,
“It is impossible to maintain a life of holiness without the Spirit. It would be easier for an army to continue its maneuvers without a general, or for a choir to sing on key without its director.”
Back to the Melody
When the church is rocked by scandal and riddled by sin, when there’s rot in the house and renovation that becomes necessary, the answer isn’t to destroy the building. When Christians sing the melody of the gospel horribly off-key, the answer isn’t to change the song.
You can take a song and remix it, remaster it, or adjust its tempo, as singers sometimes do when they cover the songs of others. But if you change too many things about the song, you wind up with a different melody altogether. You cannot reconsider, revisit, redefine, revise, or rework the faith forever and still be committed to the faith. Remixing and remastering and rearranging an old song can bring out the beauty of the original, with flourishes and instruments that add a new effect. But once you no longer submit to the melody—once you change the lyrics or alter the tune—you lose the original song.
When the church is plagued by sin and scandal, the process of renewal can only begin when, as John Dickson says, Christians go back to the Gospels and the New Testament and read the Word of God afresh and suddenly realize, “We don’t look like this!” And God stirs up those embers until they spark into flame, seizing the hearts of believers determined to recapture the essence of Christianity and display its beauty in our churches. That’s when we seek out the melody again and sing the tune so as to exalt the Savior who gave it to us.
Near the end of Calvin Miller’s classic book The Singer, the earliest singers of the song given by the Troubadour are freed and commissioned to spread the music into all the world:
“The Song is all that matters.
It may be you will have to sing it
where the crowd will shout you
down and demand your legs or life. . . .
Some will hate you for the song you love.
They will seek to stop your singing.
But no matter how they treat you,
remember that I suffered everything
before you. . . .
“Again the Singer lifted up his
bearded head and sang, ‘In the
beginning was the song of love . . .’
And through the trees the Madman’s
strong sound voice sang back, ‘And
here’s the new redeeming melody, the
only song that can set Terra free.’”
If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.