I remember a day from a music theory class in college, when one of my professors was discussing the dominant seventh chord. Even if you don’t know what that chord is, you would recognize it. It typically precedes the tonic chord, what we might call the foundational chord of a musical key. The sequence of dominant seventh chord followed by tonic chord is like a punctation mark: a period or an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence. The whole tradition of tonal Western musical, classical and popular, is based on the juxtaposition of these two chords. The dominant seventh chord is structured so that it will naturally resolve into a tonic chord. Put another way, the dominant seventh chord wasn’t initially intended to exist by itself. Its instability was meant to resolve into the stability of a tonic chord.
To demonstrate the aural function of a dominant seventh chord, my professor moved to the piano in the room and played the chord. But he didn’t follow it with the tonic chord. And then, in his typical edgy way, he said rather provocatively, “I’m not going to resolve it. I’m just not going to do it.” And he walked away from the piano.
Most of us in the room were cringing. Resolve the chord, we were saying in our minds, while we laughed uneasily. It was driving us crazy. Our Western ears have been acclimated to a tonal system that seeks resolution of tension. Dissonance resolves into consonance, tension moves into release. Our tidy Western minds want things to be tied up with a bow and put back in order. Dominant seventh chords are meant to be resolved.
Now, if I were to read only verse sixteen of the third chapter of St. John’s Gospel, I wonder if you might hear it as unresolved. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Our theological minds are no different from our musical ears. We have been formed in a Western system of thinking about God and salvation. And what is unresolved in John 3:16 is where each of us will end up when the dominant seventh chord is resolved. Will we perish, or will we have eternal life? I suspect that every citation of John 3:16, whether on a bumper sticker or tattooed on an arm or plastered on a billboard, is intended to play a dominant seventh chord and walk away from the keyboard. There’s an element of manipulation to it, and the primary tactic of that manipulation is fear.
We’re taught to fear how the chord will resolve. Do we believe correctly and will we be rewarded with eternal life, or do we fail to believe and will we perish? With this unresolved dominant seventh chord hanging in the air, we travel through a cloud of anxiety. God is somewhere away in the heavens, hands hovering over a keyboard, waiting to resolve the chord in one of two ways: towards eternal life or towards eternal destruction.
But just as dominant seventh chords don’t usually hang out in the ether without resolution, John 3:16 doesn’t exist in a vacuum. As we well know from hearing this morning’s Gospel reading, the evangelist gives us resolution. And yet, I’ve rarely seen a bumper sticker or tattoo or billboard with John 3:17 included as well. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
God’s gift of Jesus to the world was a gift of love, intended for salvation, not for condemnation. But this isn’t usually the way John 3:16 is interpreted. This famous verse is usually wielded as an anxiety-laden dominant seventh chord hanging in the air, waiting for resolution to eternal life or eternal death. The focus is too often on believing correctly, as if belief could ever be narrowed to a multiple-choice option. The focus is too infrequently on receiving God’s gift of salvation in Christ by trusting that God’s desire for us is salvation, not condemnation.
But maybe the problem is trying to conceive of salvation with our Western, future-oriented minds. When we think of salvation, we think of a defining moment, a judgment day on which we will be put into one of two places, heaven or hell. God’s hand, hovering over the keyboard of judgment, resolves the dominant seventh chord in one of two ways. And naturally, we fear what that will look like.
But imagine, if you will, a less Western way of thinking about things. If you’re a music aficionado, think of the music of Claude Debussy or Olivier Messiaen. Think of dominant seventh chords hanging in the air that are never resolved because their purpose is not to be resolved. Instead, the chords have been extracted from a world where tensions must be released and dissonances resolved. The chords are worlds in and of themselves.
Such a world—which we might categorize as more Eastern than Western—helps us rest more contentedly in the present rather than in the future. Unresolved chords don’t need to be resolved in the future. They’re harmonies intended for the present, to be enjoyed and received, like gifts. And if you can, imagine salvation as rather like that. Imagine that St. John knew what he was doing when he put verses sixteen and seventeen together in the third chapter of his Gospel. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
This world of John’s is not free of judgment. It’s just that the judgment is right here, in the present rather than exclusively in the future. We’re judged when we refuse to accept God’s gift of love by turning from our sin. We’re judged when we worry so much about resolving the dominant seventh chord that we pay no attention to the people around us who are suffering in the present. We’re judged when we call darkness light and light darkness. We’re judged when we’re unable to trust that God’s first movement towards us is love, not condemnation. And when we can’t see that, we’re condemned to a fearful hell in which we turn our backs on the God who is always facing towards us in love, with arms wide open. And in this hell, we find ourselves in a zero-sum game of competition with those around us. We covet what they have, we envy their gifts, and we resent their offenses against us. We become enslaved to anxiety and fear because we’re unable to believe that God has enough love, mercy, and gifts for everyone.
If we’re so intent on resolving dominant seventh chords in the present, our future life after death will be a hell of worrying about chord resolutions when God is simply inviting us to bask in the music of beautiful chords that are meant to be received and enjoyed. The paradox is that when we worry less about salvation, we find it, but when we judge others, we ourselves are judged.
I don’t know how the individual chords of our lives will be resolved. That’s up to God. But I do know that the first step into hell is an inability to trust that God loved us from before we were made, that God still loves us, and that God will always love us. The roads of hell are paved with fear: fear that God was biased against us from the beginning, that we’re never enough for God, and that we will never know our eternal future. But Scripture is also clear that fear is the opposite of love. If we choose the path of love over the path of fear, we will be true believers, and we will find ourselves walking right into the arms of God. And then we will see that heaven is much closer to us than we ever imagined.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 10, 2024