SIGHS TOO DEEP FOR WORDS
Skippy Warren, Henry Noyd, Jerome Richardson, and Poiny Poindexter on stage at Bop City, 1950s. Public domain.
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” -Romans 8:26
In seminary, I began to wonder about the ways that music could convey theological meaning. Prompted by Paul’s words in Romans and my own experiences, I pondered how music might act as a kind of intercession — expressing ideas beyond the limits of language, with sighs too deep for words. Seminary is a great time to question the limits of language: you’re grappling with nearly incomprehensible theological tracts, buried under grammar rules for ancient vocabularies, and generally stressed about all the words you need to write for your term papers.
As a respite from all the academic work of seminary, I would pick up my saxophone and join the chapel music ministry. Saxophone isn’t a staple of sacred music, which often meant that my participation necessitated trying something different: spirituals, gospel, blues, and jazz. While these are unorthodox genres for music in mainline churches, they bring their own beauty to worship. Gospel hymns and old spirituals use a different language to talk about God, painting pictures of struggle, liberation, and community. I found their words insightful and challenging, stretching my faith beyond the stately, credal language of the traditional hymns that I loved. In blues and jazz, I heard a theology enacted in sound rather than words. Odd time signatures and pulsing rhythms compelled my body to move with the beat, communicating urgency, joy, solidarity. Complex harmonies and improvisational breaks defied expectation and invited dissonance, a chaotic counterpoint to the finely ordered systems we often construct around our faith. This music brought a powerful witness to our worship, making new dimensions of God’s glory apparent and new possibilities for our communities immanent.
The saxophonist John Coltrane said, “I’d like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.” (1) In the album A Love Supreme, Coltrane does just that — he wrote a prayer for the fourth movement, “Psalm”, and played it through his saxophone. The words are ephemeral, relegated to liner notes, but the prayer is still present in the bellows and babbles of Coltrane’s horn. An intercession with sighs too deep for words: this is theological music, music that expresses something about the divine as well as communicating something to the divine.
This communicative power is the deep attraction of music and the reason it remains a central part of our religious experience. Our words simply can’t say enough on their own: we rely on other sounds to express what we mean. I don’t think this is the kind of intercession Paul had in mind when penning his letter to the church in Rome, but I firmly believe the Spirit works through these sound waves too. This is true for our favorite hymns, praise songs, and psalm settings; but also perhaps for Top 40 hits or jazz standards. The music that we find most resonant is speaking both to us and for us, making sense of our experiences and expressing those experiences to others. Music performs an interpretive function, a kind of exegesis, for our souls and our communities.
It took me too long to realize that the experiences interpreted by spirituals, gospel hymns, blues, and jazz, are the experiences of black Americans. The “new” perspective that I found in this music was centuries old, hard-won through the sorrows and joys of the black community. As Bishop John Burgess wrote in the preface to Lift Every Voice and Sing, “The history and theology of the black church are embodied in its music. The music of the black church, then, is the expression of the struggle, the pilgrimage and the joy of a people.”
For much of American history, music was one of the few places where black folks could express their theology. Even when they did not have access to ivory towers or publishing contracts for commentary series, the black community thought seriously and critically about faith. Spirituals and gospel hymns hold fast to themes of hope and liberation in the face of oppression. The blues raise up tones of anger, injustice, and sorrow reminiscent of the psalter’s lament. Jazz revels in mystery and transcendence, comfortable with a God who defies reduction and simplification. The music of the black community offers deep insights into the nature of God and God’s relationship with us.
We desperately need these insights right now. Perhaps you’ve heard Martin Luther King quoted in the past few weeks: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” These words make sense of the protests and marches that have swept across the globe in response to the death of George Floyd (not to mention the heartbreaking litany of names that came before and after his). In our national life, we are pushing past the limits of language. Conventional discourse cannot express the outrage, despair, exhaustion, and hope felt by the black community. I believe this is a space black music can step into, interceding for all of us with sighs too deep for words.
Now, there is a reckoning: not just for the nation, but for the church. The most recent Pew Research Poll marks the Episcopal Church as one of the least diverse denominations in the country, with a membership that is 90% white and only 4% black. It is a plain historical fact that our tradition has trampled upon the black community. The 75th General Convention passed Resolution 2006-A123, acknowledging that “The Episcopal Church lent the institution of slavery its support and justification based on Scripture, and after slavery was formally abolished, The Episcopal Church continued for at least a century to support de jure and de facto segregation and discrimination.” The work of slaves helped finance the establishment and expansion of our churches, and still benefits some endowments today. During the Civil War, many churches chose to support slavery over emancipation. During the Civil Rights era, many churches chose to support segregation over reintegration. Our church has historically struggled to repent of the sins of white supremacy, and so we resolve to do better. Thanks be to God, the Episcopal Church has begun to faithfully discern a better path forward. Some of our churches have committed themselves to education, activism, justice, liberation, equity, and healing. But systemic racism is insidious and its tendrils twist into our hearts, distorting the basic ways we think about our faith. There is a deeper problem, one diagnosed by Willie Jennings as a “Christian social imagination [that] is diseased and disfigured.” (2) Our theology — the ways we imagine God, Creation, and community — is sick and needs to be healed. I believe that black music might serve as part of the remedy to this crisis of imagination.
By singing this music in our churches, we create opportunities for empathy and understanding.
By singing this music in our churches, we can create opportunities for empathy. We can lift up experiences that differ from our own, stretching our sense of the communion of saints beyond the walls (or demographics) of our immediate community. We can learn to pray as we ought, against our self-interests and our tendencies to preserve systems that benefit some at the expense of many. To be sure, there is a danger here: that a colonizing mind-set would lead largely white congregations to appropriate black traditions. Any attempt to elide the culture and context of black music is a tone-deaf exercise: we cannot make sense of the sounds without committing to the experience behind them. For many churches, this means that black music must be accompanied by preaching, teaching, and relationship-building. White congregations should see themselves as singing harmony, supporting the melody of black voices inherent in the music.
When we embrace the culture that cultivates black music, our singing becomes a source of understanding. This is more than an understanding of social dynamics — it is a deep, theological understanding of the very heart of God. The rich, expansive language we find in spirituals and gospel hymns reminds us of God’s preferential option for the poor, and the consistent themes of liberation and justice that stretch across scripture. The expressive, wordless emotions conveyed by blues and jazz dispel the cold, passionless spirituality that can stunt our communion with the divine. The paradoxical cries of black music, full of sorrow and full of joy, remind us of our paradoxical Lord, fully God and fully human. This music mends our unhealthy imagination by offering an alternative to the colonizing, controlling, comfortable theologies that often lurk — unexamined and unconsidered — in our hearts.
The interpretive, intercessory power of music can affect us on a deep level: deep enough perhaps to root out the rot of racism that has wormed its way into our faith. If we approach black music seriously, it will change us. Its use must be more than an occasional hymn from Lift Every Voice and Sing, or a bi-annual jazz mass. It must be more than a gimmick we use to boost attendance or attempt to diversify our congregations. It must be more than a self-congratulatory pat on the back to reaffirm our good, progressive ideologies. If we are serious, if we are willing to grow, black music will invite the language of the unheard into our worship. The wisdom and hope of the black community, expressed in song, can destroy the specters of white supremacy that still haunt our chancels, pews, and pulpits.
I will add an oft-repeated refrain here: it is essential that white folks listen to the experiences of our black siblings. This should be more than a passive posture of consuming documentaries, books, and social media feeds. Music is once again instructive, helping us become active listeners. Black music is inherently participatory; full of call and response, spontaneity, harmony, and improvisation. As James Cone puts it, “To interpret the religious significance of that [music] for the black community, “academic” tools are not enough. The interpreter must feel the Spirit; that is, one must feel one’s way into the power of black music, responding both to its rhythm and the faith in experience it affirms.” (3)
We must feel the Spirit. Let the music settle inside you. Respond to its rhythm. It may be a small start —tapping your foot in time. But soon, you find yourself swaying, humming to the melody. Your hands begin to clap, your body begins to move, you lift your voice and sing in solidarity with all those who labor for liberation. Music invites us to become participants, not mere bystanders, in the message and meaning of what we hear. We decenter ourselves to make space for those who have, for too long, not been heard. We join our voices with angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven in praising a Love Supreme, a Love ceaselessly working to heal our imaginations and bring justice to our communities. And the Spirit meets us there, interceding with sighs too deep for words.
Lewis Porter, John Coltrane: His Life and Music (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), 292.
Willie Jennings, The Christian Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 293.
James H. Cone, The Spirituals & The Blues (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1992), 4.
