Death is an existential fermata

It is always good to surround yourself with people smarter than you, which Gretchen has proven to be. I was blissfully traipsing in a subject area about which I knew nothing: music. This last Sunday I spoke about the grammatical “hook” residing in the opening “and” of Gen 1:3. I described it as a “pause” like the “hook” in music. Well, I was wrong. (Don’t tell my wife, Beth—she often insists I am wrong, and I deny it every time!) A “hook” in music is a short riff or phrase, often repeated, that “catches the ear of the listener.” If we were to identify a possible “hook” in Genesis 1, it might be the repeated refrain, “And God saw that it was good,” which then sets us up for the unexpected and culminating, “And God saw everything He had made and it was very good.” Clearly, this is a “hook” we need to hear and that should catch us up. But the “and” of Gen 1:3 is not a “hook”: it is a “fermata,” which is a stay, stop, or pause over a note or over a rest. The length of a fermata is determined by the performer or the conductor. Normally it is followed by a continuation of music, but it can also occur at the end of a musical score. This is death: death is a fermata in our personal music score. Death is an existential fermata, outside of time, whose duration is determined by us as the performers and/or by God as the Conductor. Will your music, that is your life, start back up after this existential fermata of unknown duration, or will you remain there forever in non-existence, much like you existed prior to birth? Only “in God” is it possible to pass through our personal and inevitable death fermata into eternal life with God. This passage is made possible through our baptism into Christ’s death, which is the singular act that vectors us through death into life eternal with God. Join us this Sunday Live on Facebook at 11:00 as we try to wrap up an unexpected series that began in the beginning with Genesis 1 and that hopefully with end with or baptism in Christ. But isn’t baptism a new beginning? Questions! Love ‘em!