New Testament Words 4

This week, I studied two words about how to be or not to be, but not in the Hamlet sense. These words remind me of my father because he was especially sensitive to the issues they raise and particularly ethical in these areas. The first word is about the right type of justice, while the second is about the wrong kind of ambition.

One who is EPIEIKES knows that there are times when that which is legally justified might be morally wrong. One with this concept of justice recognizes that the formal law is too general to address all the nuances or real life situations and that true justice will, at times, go beyond the letter of the law to apply gentleness, kindness, forbearance, and reasonableness.

In the realm of music, we also need to view the score with love, not literalism.

For example, a passage such as the last few bars of Waldstein's first movement may need a bit of pedal to create, as it were, a sense of an acoustic in which those joyful chords can reverberate. The score does not indicate pedal, but the instruments and the rooms and the times were different when Beethoven wrote this music. But the joy still speaks to us and should not be squashed by a dry delivery that could never support the depth of feeling the conclusion of the movement suggests.

Or, in playing Chopin's G minor prelude, we do best by seeing the veritable shark attack behind the notes on the score: chops and waves, jagged gestures, sudden change, relentless tumult, blinding uncertainty and a sense of peril - dealing justly with such a vision cannot be reduced to mere obedience to signs on a page. It requires the consideration of the whole person.

ERITHEIA involves contentiousness, political maneuvering, and in general, "applying earthly and human standards" to everything, as Barclay puts it. I imagine there is no need for me to provide personal examples here since you have probably already thought of several from your own life in music or the church.

As my dad would contend, the Church is Christ's body, and as such, it should not move according to what seems expedient from a purely human view or, for that matter, according to what passes for wisdom in the workaday world. The church is the place where another way is breaking into the world, a way that knows nothing of personal ambition, but instead, is motivated by service.

And I think that such altruism ought also to characterize the way we musicians go about our work as bearers of messages that are beautiful and good for the human race.