*2.4. Words and Music*

It immediately becomes apparent that words that bear the Word of God are of central importance. Augustine defined a hymn as praise to God that is sung. Such singing of words about the Word ties words and music together closely. For Martin Luther it means music is next to the Word of God. Luther sensed that music is from the

sphere of miraculous audible things—like the Gospel [and] is a unique gift of God's creation [that] comes to us in the same way the Word of God does, namely, mediated by the voice [10].

Because of this close relationship between words and music [11], their distinction can be missed so that the meaning of words can be construed as if it were music. Poetry, of course, is musical or proto-musical or may even be called music because of its mellifluous ordering of sounds in time, but what we are dealing with here as music is the crafting and limiting of the vast raw material of creation's many sounds into forms that have the elements of specific rhythms, pitches, and tone colors, with or without texts. If the distinction between words and music is not observed, half of our topic is obliterated.

Jonathan Linman helps to avoid this confusion by noting what belongs to music in its intimate association with spirituality. Quoting the ancient saying, attributed to Augustine, "The one who sings prays twice" (sometimes given as "The one who sings *well* prays twice" or "Whoever sings [to God in worship] prays twice" [12]), he notes that music deepens the life of prayer as the "embodied qualities of music making carry the Word into ourselves and employ multiple dimensions of our physicality and experience." Music "involves memory" as it links "certain texts and tunes." By means of various styles music "can carry us in our imaginations and experiences to the ends of the earth such that we grow in appreciation for the gift of cultural diversity" and grasp a "sense of the rich tapestry [of the] human family" [13]. To Bouyer's celebration, adoration, and proclamation we can now add Linman's prayer, memory, and a communal tapestry related to the whole human family.

#### *2.5. Music and Proclamation*

Luther emphasized the first cluster: celebration, adoration, and proclamation. He saw music as a gift of God ([14], pp. 321, 324) that proclaims the Word of God [15]. Once people know what God has done for them in Christ, said Luther, they "must gladly and willingly sing" [16]. God's gift of language combined with song was given so that we "should praise God . . . by proclaiming the [Word of God] through music" ([14], p. 323). Here praise, proclamation, celebration, and adoration all run together on a musical circuit of sound. What is perceived as incorporeal sound takes flesh in vibrating human bodies. They praise and adore the unseen God enfleshed in Christ as the Holy Spirit impels the singing of words that carry the Word of God by and through Christ's body the church. Walter Brueggemann adds another aspect of praise, a potent one. He says that

in the liturgy . . . the praise of Israel—or more broadly the human vocation of praise—is to maintain and transform the world, [that it is] world-making . . . through human activity which God has authorized and in which God is known to be present [17].
