Camille Saint-Saëns, Ice Cube, and What the Gospel Sounds Like

What does the gospel sound like to you? What does Jesus' message sound like in your head? Lyrics are not necessarily what I'm looking for: it could be Beethoven's 9th or "Blitzkrieg Bop" by The Ramones, hip hop or hymn.

I posted that on social media a week ago. The question had been bouncing around in my mind for months. I believe the gospel sounds like something. I couldn't tell you what it sounds like but I know it when I hear it. I know that the percussive piano in Arcade Fire's "Rebellion (Lies)" punching through a whirling dervish of instruments sounds like the Kingdom of God coming up through the ground. I can see it making the floorboards bounce like an old black and white cartoon.

That's just one example of what goes on between my ears, but I wanted to hear from others. Unsurprisingly, the responses were varied and all equally valid. Some said that it sounded like certain old hymns or Christmas songs. Two friends of mine who are ministers almost simultaneously said reggae with my pastor Bailey citing Bob Marley in particular. A few posted links, whether to the soundtrack of The Last Samurai or to a song by Sufjan Stevens titled "Out of Egypt, into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals as I Run" (of the latter, I could write a few paragraphs on how just that title sounds like the gospel).

Two particular responses struck me. The first one came from my sister Shari Hunt:

"[T]he 4th movement of Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3 in C minor. It's a symphony that features an organ in the most glorious way. I could go into all the musical details of it, but the main reason it sounds like the gospel to me is that it gives me goosebumps and brings me to joyful tears in the same way that pondering Christ's sacrifice, death, and resurrection does. It has dark moments of struggle but ends just completely gloriously."

When you read about Jesus preaching that the Kingdom of God is at hand, the pages are filled with tension. What he is talking about is good news, the best news, news that can bring us to joyful tears. Yet it is spoken in a context where things are still broken. The world in the midst of "dark moments of struggle." Though I think there are certainly times in life where the gospel can sound like unbridled joy, more often than not it doesn't sound real to me unless it is butting up against a minor key. Perhaps not a literal minor key, but in some way it acknowledges the reality that the Kingdom of God is here, but it is also not yet.

Speaking of reality, the second response comes from my friend Ethan Moore:

"[M]ore generally (and provocatively), I love rap music. And one of the reasons that I love rap music is the way that it tracks reality for so many people. It allows voices to respond to, oftentimes, very painful realities. The idea of 'realness'--often overemphasized, often cliche, but nonetheless appealing. This is echoing Bell's point in Drops Like Stars and Ice Cube's in Straight Outta Compton, but it's also what I feel like David is doing in the Psalms. What Jeremiah is doing in Lamentations. People willing to cry out honestly, angrily even, to God."

There is something confrontational about the gospel and I don't mean that in the "angry street preacher with a bullhorn" kind of way. But it calls attention to the "very painful realities" of the world. It acknowledges the poverty, the pain, the weak thrown around by the powerful, and the spiritual bankruptcy that makes it all possible. The gospel cries out to God and it cries out to humanity about how the world actually is and it then has the audacity to start flipping over tables.

That confrontation makes us uncomfortable. Or, more honestly, it makes us in white middle class American Christianity uncomfortable. The gospel sounds a subversive chord that you can hear in hip-hop, punk rock, and protest music. Not to put words in her mouth, but it's probably what Bailey was talking about when she mentioned "Redemption Song" and "Get Up, Stand Up." The gospel I hear has a tinge of rawness and (righteous) anger amidst the hope and joy.

There was a time when I would have sworn up and down that the gospel sounded like something you'd find on Christian radio. That doesn't mean that you can't find the gospel on that end of the dial. But as I've grown up, I've found Jesus' message to be simultaneously simpler and more complex, to be words of comfort and of challenge. There's a tension to it all, but it is one that I don't think I would trade. That tension causes the gospel to run like a fugitive from safe three minute tunes and thus you have to scour for the songs where it takes refuge. You don't know where you might find it, but you know it when you hear it.

And so, the gospel that I hear is sound and fury. There's a melody, but there's also dissonance. Beauty and rawness play side by side. A nervous, frenetic energy drives the pace yet there is an assured confidence in how the music is played. When it speaks, it speaks of how things really are and believes in a better way. Yet sometimes it doesn't need to speak at all.

Of course, that's not the entire story of the gospel. That's just what I hear and I'm just one person. I'm still curious what kind of music the message of Jesus plays for others. What does the gospel sound like to you?