Today’s music is brought to you by one of my favorites, Felix Mendelssohn. The organ voluntaries are from his treasured organ sonatas, and today’s anthem is “Verleih uns Frieden,” a Martin Luther text. It’s a paraphrase of Da pacem Domine, a Latin prayer for peace from the 6th or 7th century. It was a regular close of church services in Luther’s time. J.S. Bach also used the text in his Cantata No. 42.

I dare say few composers are as gifted at writing melody as Felix Mendelssohn. Another composer that comes to mind would be Tchaikovsky, just think of all the wonderful, memorable tunes in The Nutcracker. Good melodies are easy to recall, and they seem inextricably bound to the text. It’s as if they were meant to be together. Futzing with the tune of a well-known text is dangerous. Sing the words for Amazing Grace to the music of Joy to the World. Although it works metrically, it feels icky.

Another way Mendelssohn fuses the text and music together is in his word painting. For the word Gott, which means God, the music is elongated, and at the end the word du (which also refers to God) is treated in the same way. The last sentence of the text is “For you alone are God.” The word alleine (meaning alone) is sung as a singular note without harmony. The music comes to a unison on the words “for you alone.”

Mendelssohn is a brilliant theologian. He fuses together the text and the music as if they belonged together. He unifies the harmony to a single note, to signify the unitive Truth of Gott alleine. He’s making the argument that’s often quoted in Romans, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” He’s trying to do what the mystics have been trying to do for eons, to explain that there is no place God is not. In Sanskrit, they say “Neti, neti,” which means not this, not that. Using negations is a feeble attempt, however. Even if you say who God is not, you can’t “capture” Truth – it’s free and boundless.

By way of deduction however, God is revealed; but deductive reasoning doesn’t reveal God. For if I were to be able to summarize God with words, I’d be the Definitive Source. I’d have the last word. Reducing God to words would be like taking a thimble to the ocean, gathering a tiny sample, bringing it back and saying, “Look here, this is God,” and then we all worship the thimble. Yes, truth is in that, but honestly, you must go to the ocean, to the Source. You can’t take my word for it, that’s secondhand knowledge, hand-me-downs that are tattered and holey, not holy, nor wholly, nor whole-ly. Neti, neti!!

Firsthand knowledge of God comes when you realize you cannot be separate, much like this music cannot be separated from its text. Well, it technically can be, but it would feel icky. When you feel icky, you think you’re separate from God. When you come to the inextricability of God and you, you actualize getting into unitive flow. And in that truth, you’re set free, and you don’t feel icky, worried, or panicky anymore. You feel as if you were meant to be, just like tunes and words. Unitive truth comes when you jump in the ocean, and even then, it’s too big to comprehend. But it makes more sense than just a thimbleful. Ultimately this fusion of God with us is how you achieve peace. It’s all bound up in knowing who you are and who you think you are not. But again, I say, “Neti, neti.” My words are simply hand-me-downs, a thimbleful. You’ll have to find the ocean in the music yourself. Soli Deo Gloria!