November 9, 2025 - Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost: The Music of the Celestial Spheres

November 9, 2025  Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Psalm 150 and Psalm 148
“The Music of the Celestial Spheres”
Douglas T. King

Words are remarkable.  They can communicate innumerable ideas. They can share stories.  They can paint pictures in our imagination.  They can challenge.  They can comfort. Christian Wima notes that words can bring us everything “from simple descriptions to blazing revelations.”  They can tell us of so many things.  I get paid to use words, so I am quite fond of them.  

But, Jamie James, a music critic for the London Times, writes this about the comparison of words to music.  “Somehow, Mozart’s symphony, rather than telling us about joy, creates joy.”(James, p. 17)  James is right.  Music has this mysterious and miraculous power to reach inside of us beyond where words reside and touch the very core of our being.  Music speaks directly to our souls.  The poet and mystic William Blake wrote, “music exists and exults in immortal thoughts.”  

We certainly know the deep truth of that here at Ladue Chapel.  We take to heart the summons of the 150th psalm as we passionately praise God with our own form of trumpets, lutes, harps, tambourines, strings, pipe and cymbals in worship every week.  

But our second reading, Psalm 148, brings a different dimension to the music offered up to the divine in praise.  We hear of the celestial bodies, the sun, moon, and stars praising God.  We hear of fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind praising God.  We hear of mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars praising God.  We hear of the movements of creation itself praising God.  It is the very nature of nature to offer praise to God.  Creation inherently offers praise to its creator.    

Psalm 148 transports us to the sixth century B.C. and a figure best known for a geometric formula.  I am referring to Pythagoras.  For most of us, our knowledge of Pythagoras begins and ends with the formula “a” squared plus “b” squared equals “c” squared.  But he was so much more than that.  He was considered not solely a mathematician but also a philosopher, a sage, and a prophet.  

Full disclosure, this next part may just interest the music geeks of the congregation.  The story goes that one day Pythagoras was walking past a blacksmith’s shop.  As he was considering the abstract concepts of musical sounds and numbers and he heard the hammers striking iron.  The different hammers were creating a harmony.  James writes that Pythagoras went inside and discovered “the musical intervals produced by the hammers were exactly equivalent to the ratios between the hammers’ weights.  In other words, the six-pound hammer and the twelve-pound hammer, having a ratio of 1:2, produced a perfect octave.  The eight-pound hammer and the twelve-pound hammer having a ratio of 2:3, produced a major fifth interval; and the nine-pound hammer and the twelve-pounder, with a 3:4 ratio, produced a perfect fourth.”

The discovery of this mathematical perfection creating musical perfection confirmed Pythagoras’ “belief that the cosmos is a sublimely harmonious system guided by a Supreme intelligence…”  He considered “music…a remedy for every manner of sickness.”  He believed that music “could arouse sympathetic vibrations in the human instrument.”
(James, p. 31)

Pythagoras named three kinds of music.  “…musica intrumentalis…” the music with which we are most familiar, “made by plucking the lyre, blowing the pipe, and so forth; musica humana, the continuous but unheard music made by each human organism, especially the harmonious (or inharmonious) resonance between the soul and the body; and musica mundana, the music made by the cosmos itself, which would come to be known as the music of the spheres.” (James, p. 31)

These perfect ratios, the octaves, the fourth and the fifths that delight us so, are a reflection of the harmonies deeply embedded in God’s very creation, and within each one of us, created in the image of God.  

Interestingly enough, “The Greek word for ratio is logos, which also means word, thought, reason.” (p. 36)  And logos-Word is, as we know, one of the names for Jesus Christ in the gospel of John.  It has been suggested that these perfect ratios are a reflection of the perfection found in Jesus Christ as fully human, fully God, bringing divinity and humanity into a perfect harmonious unity.

Pythagoras believed that music touches us deeply because it is a manifestation of the inner perfect ratios and harmonies imbued in creation by the divine.  Music is a manifestation of the interrelatedness of creator and creation.  Music is the aural embodiment of God’s choice to be deeply imbued within our very existence.  In the gospel of John we are told of Jesus that, “All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being.”  Music is a manifestation of this scriptural reality.

Our bulletin cover art is of the Divine Monochord, an instrument of a single string representing the entire universe, and God’s hand is tuning it that all of creation may one day be in blessed harmony.  Music is a manifestation of that divine tuning. Music is a manifestation of our responsive offering of the purest form of praise reflecting the divine harmonies.

The German poet, Rainer Marie Rilke has a poem entitled “Oh Tell Us, Poet, What You Do.”  In it he responds to a variety of questions regarding how he survives the challenges of life and what his greater purpose is.  His response to each and every query is, “I praise.”  Rilke, as he often does, is speaking to some of the most elementary existential implications of our existence.  For what he says of poets, is what is true for us all.  When we orient ourselves toward praise, we discover our deepest purpose and our deepest joy.  We are like the sun, moon, and stars, in need of praising God.  We are like fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind in need of praising God.  We are like the mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars in need of praising God.  When we orient ourselves toward praising God we view the world with a sense of gratitude.  And that sense of gratitude teaches us to recognize the blessings of our lives, even and especially when life is difficult.  

As I have said previously, music is a manifestation of our offering of the purest form of praise.  And since we were created to praise, music welcomes us into who we truly are.  One of the things that I love about this congregation, is that we sing hymns with gusto.  That does not mean all of us are exactly nailing the pitch or the tempo with glorious accuracy.  It means we are doing what we are called to do, to make a joyful noise in any way we can.  I have no doubt that God is pleased with every one of our voices raised in joyful praise, regardless of ability.

On the other hand, if I did have any doubt about our pleasing the divine with our music the worshippers behind me certainly have all our backs.  What a glorious blessing it is to have such a remarkable music program for our congregation.  On this day as we celebrate David for his 20 years of faithful and inspired servant leadership at Ladue Chapel, we are grateful for the gifts God has bestowed upon him; grateful for his creativity, care and compassion; grateful for his talent as a performer, a conductor and a teacher; and grateful for God’s gift of music in our midst which shines through him.

David, thank you for all of the ways your ministry of music, has healed us, enlightened us, inspired us, sustained us, and nurtured us.  Thank you for revealing all of those divine ratios, all of those Godly harmonies, over and over again for us.  Thank you for all of the joy you have created and continue to create.  

And thanks be to God for the gift of music in our midst.  Amen.

James, Jamie, The Music of the Spheres, Copernicus, New York, 1993.