The Music Is Still Playing--November 25, 2025

 

The Music Is Still Playing--November 25, 2025

"[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:15-17)

If you want to make music, you need more than notes on a page.  Even great composers, once they have finished the written score of their great symphonies or operas, don't really have music--not until you, or somebody else, or an orchestra of somebodies, start pulling bows across strings, playing keys on a piano, or blowing air into trumpets, flutes, and clarinets.  And all of those actions take sustained effort.  They require the continued labor of exertion, breath, and motion.  Without those, the music stops, even if the whole score is printed on the page.  In other words, if you want to have music--at least live music, you need more than just a creative mind who first comes up with the melodies and harmonies in the beginning.  You need the ongoing commitment of actual musicians who make the music happen in real time. So long as the band keeps playing, the music continues; when they stop for intermission, the music does, too.

I mention this because I've found it a helpful reminder about our own existence and our ongoing dependence on God--in particular the God we have come to know in Christ Jesus.  We depend on God for our existence, not simply in the sense that God created the universe a long, long time ago and we are a part of that universe, but in the sense that God continues to sustain the universe's existence at every moment.  That is to say, our lives are like music--they need not only the original creative act of writing the notes on paper, but the ongoing action of producing the sounds.  God continues to keep the universe going, at every point of our existence, like a flute player choosing to continue to blow air over the mouthpiece, like a cellist committing to pulling the bow across the string to make a sound, or like a pianist hammering out chords and arpeggios, which would all go silent if the fingers stopped moving.  The letter to the Colossians says the same thing about the entire cosmos, as many of us heard this past Sunday when these verses were read.  In Christ, the writer says, "all things hold together."  That is to say, it is an ongoing action and choice on God's part that the world keeps existing.  If God no longer committed to keeping the world going, it would cease to exist just as surely as the aria ceases when the soprano closes her mouth and stops singing.

We Christians don't only believe that God "invented" the universe in the sense of coming up with the idea or first writing a melody down.  We believe that this God in Christ keeps the music going, so to speak, by continuing to sustain the universe at every moment.  Unlike, say, a painting by Van Gogh or a sculpture by Rodin, which are still very much on display long after their creating artists have shuffled off this mortal coil, the universe is like live music: it continues to exist only insofar as God the Musician continues to pluck, breathe, and play the notes.  At every instant of our lives--both our best and most holy moments as well as our cruelest and crudest--God has graciously continued to keep the universe in existence and keep our lives going.

Now, if the letter to the Colossians is right about this (and I would insist it is), consider what that means about you, about me, about every other person who has ever lived or will ever live, as well as about every rock, tree, sea slug, stinkbug, squirrel, and giant squid. God has brought all of it into existence and has continued to sustain all of it.  God has continued to keep you and me in existence even at our worst moments and even when we have been turned completely away from God in utter rejection and rebellion.  God has continued to keep this whole world continuing, all the way down to you and me, even in the times we most ferociously turn our backs on God and actively break God's heart. A lesser deity would snap us out of existence for the sake of sheer spite (or relief).  A lesser god would decide to stop playing the music if there were sour notes.  If you or I were in God's place, I suspect we would have given up on the whole world long ago.  But God chooses at every moment--or perhaps we should say, from outside of the concept of linear time, God has forever chosen--to keep the universe going and to sustain our existence, apart from whether we have deserved it, whether we have prayed piously enough, whether we have followed the rules adequately, or whether we have believed the correct facts about God.  God's love in Christ holds all things together, even when we are actively trying to splinter things apart or rebel against that love.

That really does change the way we view our lives, or the world at large, doesn't it?  It can be tempting to assume that there are some people God doesn't really love, some places that are godforsaken, or some creatures that don't have any value or purpose.  But their sheer existence is evidence, Colossians says, that they are beloved of God--beloved enough for God to keep holding in being like a trumpet player sustaining a long note.  The existence of the world, even when we don't like some of the parts or people within the world, is itself the evidence that God loves the lot of us.  In other words, we can't say, "Well, God doesn't really care about So-and-So, but they already exist and God just doesn't interfere with the world anymore now that it's going on its own." Rather, even the people we think are least lovable, even the ones who we might think contribute the least to the value of the world, and even the people who are turned completely away from God are still beloved by God such that God actively wills to sustain them and the world in which they live.  The fact that the music is still playing is evidence that God continues to love this melody enough to keep breathing out the notes.  And there is no one--not a one--whom you will ever meet, who is not so beloved.

Let that truth sink in and change the way you see the world today... and let's see what happens.

Lord God, allow us to see our own existence--and that of the whole world--as signs of your faithful and sustaining love.