Chances are, at least one of the beloved songs you learned as a child was a musical canon. “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and “Frère Jacques” are two of the most famous. Countless brides long to walk down the aisle to Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Just pick up the hymnal in front of you, and you will find an entire section of hymns that can be sung in canon.
The genius of a canon is that counterpoint and harmony are created by staggering the entrances of a particular melody. And you can’t speak of a canon without using two Latin words: dux and comes. Dux, which means “leader,” is the first part to enter in a musical canon. The second part to enter is the comes, which we might call the follower.
Canons come in a myriad of forms, but there’s always a dux and a comes, a leader and a follower. And the leader’s task is to establish the theme of the ensuing piece. After a suitable interval, the comes follows with the same line, and voila, you have a simple piece of counterpoint. And you, my friends, have just received a free lesson in counterpoint.
But it might seem, based on that cursory description, that a canon is somewhat mechanical. It’s a simple matter of leading and following, of mere imitation. Can there be any freedom in the follower’s part? Is there not some mindless relation between dux and comes? Is the follower anything more than an automaton?
Other questions arise, too: How does the piece end when the first statement of the theme must finish before the ensuing statements? Is the point of a musical canon primarily about a mechanical demonstration of contrapuntal prowess, or can an imitative piece like a canon be deeply expressive? Is the piece ultimately designed to go somewhere, or does meaning lie fundamentally in the relationship of the two parts? And perhaps the million-dollar question is this: what happens when the follower doesn’t follow?
These questions might very well be asked of Christian discipleship. Jesus, of course, is the dux. We are the comes, at least if we continue with St. John’s image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. We didn’t initiate the musical theme of our lives; Jesus did. Jesus has set the pattern. Jesus has, in fact, set abundant life in motion. And to be his disciples, we must get behind him and follow.
And here we are brought back to those questions that inevitably arise when we talk about leading and following. Where is the freedom in following this leader? How do we follow and exist as unique individuals? What is the destination? Is there a destination? And one thing is sure: because of sin, we will be prone to wander and not to follow. So, what happens to the musical piece then?
In some cases, there are no easy answers to these questions. But it seems to me that there is often a misperception of the relationship between the two parts: dux and comes. Musical canons, after all, come in many shapes and sizes. The most interesting canons are those in which the imitation of the following part is not simple repetition at the unison or the octave, but even sometimes at the fourth, or fifth, or heaven forbid and only if you’re J.S. Bach, the seventh! Sometimes the following parts start after the interval of one measure, sometimes it’s four. Occasionally, the following part is stated in augmentation and at a slower rhythm than the leading part. Sometimes the following part is an inversion of the leading part.
And there will be times, too, when the following part seems to deviate more than the rules of counterpoint allow. At times, the canonic repetition of a part is really a stretch and seems nearly unrelated to the dux. But two things are true about every canon: the theme holds it all together, and the canon is not primarily about the ending and how you get there. The genius of a canon lies in the relationship between the parts while they are sounding, and that’s where the music happens.
Is our relationship with Jesus really any different? There are many who can’t wrap their minds around Christian discipleship because they can’t fathom a lifelong relationship of following. For them, following is mere imitation, and second-rate imitation at best. It is mechanical and uncreative. No matter how good Jesus was, for them, a life of following is a life of slavery. They want to know where they are going, and mindless following just seems to be an abdication of freedom. For others, following is all there is. Jesus was no more than an exemplary person, and if we want to be good, too, then the solution lies in following. Jesus started a canon at the unison, and our job is simply to do our best to keep it faithfully and strictly.
At the end of the day, where are we going anyway? If you surveyed many Christians today, I would bet that many are looking for definite answers about how the musical canon ends. Where are we headed, and most importantly, how do we get there?
But this is not what a canon is about. If you ask me, the least interesting and least important thing about a canon is the ending. And it’s the same with Christian discipleship. When the end drives everything else, we miss the point of true discipleship.
And this brings us to two of the passages of Scripture we have just heard: Jesus’s Good Shepherd discourse in John’s Gospel and the vision of eternal life from the Revelation to John. In one sense, with the Gospel, we get the beginning of the story, the statement of the musical theme. With Revelation, we hear how this theme works in canon. We catch an extraordinary glimpse of eternal life. But something profound is lost when we are narrowly focused on reaching heaven rather than the art of following. When the end is all that matters, the canon becomes mechanical and cheap. The canon becomes less about a relationship of parts and more about idolizing the ending.
Think of that vision of eternal life offered in the Revelation to John. The musical canons that have led to this place have been varied and diverse, and in this place, around the throne of the Lamb, the music continues for ever and ever. And the point is not so much about the ending; it’s really about the music itself.
In this place, where the song goes on and on, there is no erasure of past suffering. It has been intrinsic to the journey, for a life truly lived cannot avoid such earthly travail. Some of this pain is the knowledge of times when our musical lines have been distorted by sin. Some of it is not of our own making.
But on the other side of these earthly sorrows, eternal life is musical merry-go-round. It is circular. Those who find themselves in that heavenly throne room are circling round and round their leader, the Good Shepherd, the Shepherd of the sheep who has also been a slaughtered lamb for their salvation. There is no need to be anywhere else. It is enough to be in the presence of the Lamb, the Good Shepherd. Indeed, this has been the whole point of following him: to be in deepest relationship with the Lamb, who is the musical center of this grand canon of life.
We who come here to the Lamb’s throne week after week, know something of this musical theme. We know its irresistible pull. We know how one sweetly sounding voice has called our own names and invited us into relationship. We have been enticed into following, I hope, not to get or win something, but because to be in musical canon with this Leader is the entire point of the piece.
We follow not to seek arrival but to find abundant life. We follow with our comes to the Good Shepherd’s dux, because when we do, we find God, we find ourselves, and we find our neighbors. This canon will never end. It’s not meant to. It’s intended to go on forever, because the point is not the end. The point is in the beautiful interplay of the musical lines, weaving in on themselves in loving interaction. The true motivation is to follow the Good Shepherd, who is strangely enough, also the Lamb. Following him simply for the sake of relationship is the real point of this piece of counterpoint. And one final thing is true: if we follow the Good Shepherd, the music will continue forever.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 8, 2022