Psalm Offering 8 Opus 7 – For victims of religious persecution.
This psalm offering is a prayer offered up for victims of religious persecution. I suggest that you listen to the music first. Read the scripture passage from the Book of Lamentation. Reflect on the scripture passages and questions and then listen to the music once more.
Psalm Offering 8 Opus 7: For victims of religious persecution. (c) 2017, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
Your prophets provided you visions of whitewashed illusion; They did not lay bare your guilt, in order to restore your fortunes; They saw for you only oracles of empty deceit. (Lamentations 2:14, NRSV)
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell? (Matthew 28: 27-33, NRSV)
“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them. (John 15: 18-21; 16: 1-4, NRSV)
REFLECTION: Persecution based on religion is a timeless abomination in human history. The early Christians were persecuted by both the Jewish religious authorities and the Roman Empire. As Christianity became the religion of the Empire, Christianity, no longer persecuted, became the persecutor. The Protestant Reformation brought a new layer of persecution as Catholics and Protestants killed one another for the glory and honor of God. And, when they were not persecuting one another, they persecuted those of the Jewish religion. The Muslims did their share of persecuting other religions, and as we see in the present, Shiites and Sunnis killing one another all for the glory and praise of Allah. In 1965, Tom Lehrer wrote a satirical song entitled “National Brotherhood Week” in which he mocked religions who say they love and follow God’s commandments, and then turn around and act otherwise. “Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Hindus hate the Muslims, and everybody hates the Jews.” (© 1965, by Tom Lehrer.) We all like to think that God is on our side. However, as President Abraham Lincoln pointed out, it’s not a question of whether God is on our side. The real question is whether we are on God’s side. For religions to persecute and kill one another in the name of God is an abomination to God.
QUESTIONS TO PONDER: How tolerant am I of those who are formed and worship/pray in a religion different from mine? How tolerant am I with those of my own religion who pray, think or worship differently than I? Am I able to bow to and respect the presence of God in a person whose religion differs from mine? Do I respect the religious practices and rituals of other world religions? Am I capable of seeing the commonality and shared values of my religion and that of other world religions? Am I willing to accept that the God I worship is the same God that people of other religions worship?
ABOUT THE MUSIC: This is composed in the key of B Locrian mode. It is written in Sonata Allegro form. The meter of the A melody is in ¾ time. The agitation and violence of religious persecution is reflected in the very agitated rhythmic ostinato pattern of two 8th note triplets and 1 beat of 8th notes of melody A. The Locrian mode is perhaps the oddest sounding mode of all the Greek modes. It is almost a diminished scale. The melody of the A section sounds forbidding and barren. When the melody is repeated in chordal form, the chords are mostly minor, minor sevenths, and diminished chords. The B section introduces a change into 4/4 meter, and like the primary melody of the prelude in the 2nd Psalm Offering, is rendered in a 4 part choral arrangement. There is a plaintive sound to the B melody, almost that resembling a painfilled sigh. The agitation of the A melody returns again in ¾ meter and a long development of the melody occurs, the rhythmic ostinato pattern reemphasized all the more until it returns in full form. There follows a recapitulation of the B melody leading to an extended Coda. The music ends similarly to that of the First Psalm Offering, in which the A melody returns in a ghostly manner.
