Sound Theology by Colleen Butcher

Easter is a season for good reasons. If your church has already moved on, or back, or around to your “life as usual,” you’re doing it wrong. Everything is changed. Everything is different after the resurrection. The season of Easter reminds us, week by week, that nothing will ever be the same. Don’t move on…dig deep.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!! read more…

Sometimes, (riffing on the famously mis-quoted line made popular in the movie Amadeus), there are just too many words (notes!). For the season of Easter, Sound Theology will give you simply the Psalm for the day (from the Revised Common Lectionary), possibly a hymn verse or section of poetry, and the music.

There is so much remarkable music for the Easter Season, that we should take the time to soak it in.

Psalm 16:5-11 (The Message) read more…

Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-17, 22-24

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.

Let Israel say: “His love endures forever.”

The Lord is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.

Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous:

“The Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!

The Lord’s right hand is lifted high; the Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!”

I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done.

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;

the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

The Lord has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad.

ST#107 – Easter 1

During the past six weeks of listening to ensembles and focusing on the characteristics of ensemble, I have also been mulling over the first chapter of Colossians, especially verse 17:

He existed before anything else,     and he holds all creation together.

This glorious hymn in Colossians (v.15-20) affirms, confirms, and then reaffirms the centrality of Christ before, in, and after … everything! The ensemble (togetherness) of eternity is Christ.

In the coming week, we will re-member the path of Jesus and the disciples from Bethany, through Jerusalem, to Calvary. The soundtrack that sets these stories to music includes compositions from the earliest chants through to modern expression, and could fill weeks and weeks of listening. There are over 30 published settings of the Seven Last Words of Christ, for example, from as early as the 1500s. read more…

Even the best ensembles, when they get to a certain size, need the help of a conductor. Quartets and Quintets are small enough that the musicians have the essential ability to see each other’s faces. They can look directly at each other, hear each other’s breathing, and read each other’s body language. But when the group gets beyond 6 or 8 musicians, they start to sit in rows, and no longer have the same capacity to receive these critical cues from one another. read more…