Day of the Dead, Lord of Life
photo courtesy of usgs.gov
“Death be not proud,” taunted John Donne. “One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.” Death interrupts our view of eternity, a fearsome jalousie obscuring a future we must approach. Like Donne, we console and distract ourselves by turns with bravado, with pleasure, with laughter and finally with God. Peter Berger, eminent sociologist of religion, wrote that “the power of religion depends, in the last resort, upon the credibility of the banners it puts in the hands of men as they stand before death, or more accurately, as they walk, inevitably, toward it.”
Religion masters death by writing it into the second act of a cosmic drama of the soul. For Christians, the principal figure in this drama is Jesus, whose own death and resurrection conquered death for all. The glory of this victory, and its appalling price, is the great source and subject of Western art. Last year I sang with the Webster University Choral Society in a performance of the Brahms Requiem. At the mighty climax of the musical drama, Brahms sets the text from 1 Corinthians 15:55 to a thundering rhythm, and together we sang: “Tod, wo ist dein stachel? Holle, wo ist dein sieg?” O death, where is thy victory? O grave, where is thy sting?* (It sounds better in German.) The question is taken up by Mack Wilberg, a Mormon composer, whose own Requiem answers Brahms with John 11:15-26 at its climax, “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
Different Christian traditions impart their own tonal colors to the majesty of Christ’s victory. For Mormons, the promise of the physical restoration of the body, a literal resurrection from the dead, is a comforting theme: “The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame.” This attention to the physical detail of the body, its organic integrity, emphasizes Christ’s total triumph over the grave. And this detailed account of resurrection is prelude to a detailed picture of the afterlife, in which families are reunited to live and love in a perfect union of souls unmarked by the temporary alienation of death. Death, be not proud!
Ultimately, it is not the event of death that engages Mormon attention so much as the dead themselves. It is not only our conviction that the family withstands death, but also the sense that our own salvation through Christ is bound up in the salvation of our kindred dead. This animates our interest in family history, makes the names and stories of our progenitors alive in our own, motivates our anxious engagement in the recovery and preservation of our genealogies. Death is the dark mirror that reveals one’s deepest image of the soul. When Mormons look into that dark mirror, they see not the self alone, but an exultation of souls moving forward into perfect community with Christ.
*Skip ahead to about 5:00 if you want to get straight to the drama.
“…men as they stand before death, or more accurately, as they walk, inevitably, toward it.”
A physicist would speak of how we are dragged kicking and screaming down the timelike axis of spacetime…
My recollection is that the Brahms requiem, despite drawing on the Bible, is essentially devoid of Christianity or even belief in an afterlife. If this recollection is correct, perhaps it is not the best example of the death and resurrection of Christ as the ultimate inspiration for Western art? If so, however, you are verily on target in referring to Wilberg “answering” Brahms. Moreover, I suppose the fact that even so Brahms draws on the Bible still says something.
Dr. John A. Romeri, Executive and Artistic Director of the cherished Cathedral Concerts here in St. Louis (www.cathedralconcerts.org), recently voiced his appreciation for Mack Wilberg’s collegial and generous approach in sharing with him some of Wilberg’s nonpublished musical arrangements. As to whether Brahms’s humanistic German Requiem should be invoked in a meaningful discussion on Christian belief traditions, I suppose that is as plausible and relevant as presenting Mormon beliefs in that context.
DJB, I heard that interview on 99.1 this morning, as well. I love the Cathedral Concerts and have attended a number of them. I would love to see the Christmas concert this year.
I don’t think Brahms’s debt to Christian traditions of resurrection is in much dispute, given both his engagement with the requiem form and his selection of numerous New Testament texts, including 1 Corinthians 15. But you’re both right that there are certainly more orthodox and explicit instances of art drawing on Christian theology—-just none that would allow me to brag a bit about a personal highlight of the year.
Fair enough: whether by lack of imagination or by a desire to communicate with his contemporaries in a way they could better relate to, Brahms is indebted to Christian tradition for the requiem form and for direct lifting of Biblical verbiage. (Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal, as I think T.S. Eliot said.) But I’m not sure this formal indebtedness rises to the substantive level “great source and subject of Western art” implies.
That is, perhaps we might say the indebtedness of Brahms’ requirem to Christianity is analogous to the Book of Mormon’s indebtedness to the Bible.
Nice article. I like how you can use Halloween as a springboard to celebrate how our faith in Christ delivers us from the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15, http://scriptures.lds.org/en/heb/2/15#15).