The (Sound) Sound of God at the Speed of (Amazing) Grace

What IS the sound of grace anyway?

I am slow.

It was not until U2 recently started introducing their centerpiece anthem, "Where the Streets Have No Name" with a snippet of "Amazing Grace"
("Amazing grace/How sweet the sound/That saved a wretch like me...")
in concert that it
hit me:

1)Of course! "Sound" is a hallmark theme of their most recent CD
("Let me on the sound," "We are people borne of sound," "I found grace within a sound," etc.
I have written on this here, as have others.

The "sound" to me is

:

• the musical, mystical sound Bono has often mentioned: "looking for a sound to drown out the world."
• a reference to string theory ("The universe is at base, sound/music" -Len Sweet), and thus:
• a cry to be let into God's sound/voice/strings at its very creation, core, and chaotic creativity. (See "The Divine Voice," an amazing theology of sound, and Sweet's seminal "Summoned to Lead"). Perhaps we can only hear/see God's voice/sound when we pray/act in holy synesthesia...some amazing biblical precedence there.
• link

All salvation, if sound, is salvation by sound.
And only sound, at the end of the day, is the sign of a relationship with God:

"Connecting knowledge to sight fools us into thinking that knowing is a private event, since you do not have to be seen in order to see. The very image of illumination conjures a quiet moment that takes place in one's solitude, since light moves without making a sound. The privacy of sight is reinforced by the fact that you can see from a distance. Indeed, the further you can see (the further from the object you are), the more impressive is your act of knowledge.

Hearing, by contrast, establishes a more intimate relationship between source and perception. On a very basic level, this is true simply because we must be fairly close to the source of the sound we are trying to hear. Even with amplification, as all theater professionals know, we understand what someone is saying better when we can see them speak. More scientifically put, sound waves travel slower and weaken more quickly than light waves. It is that physical limitation that makes hearing a more relational form of knowledge.
-Stephen Webb, "The Sound of God: Supersonic Theology and the Future of Public Speaking"

Do the math:

"We walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Cor 5:17):
It's "not by sight," so the "certainty of what we see" is moot (and "mute").

Better to trust and intuit from what/who we HEAR...in the sound:

"Faith comes by hearing...":

Somehow Bono has intuited that, just knows it, has not just heard of it, but heard it.
He is epistemelogically grounded and doctrinally sound.

Shofar, so good..

2)BUT...Why did the hymn writer (uh, John Newton, not Bono this time) choose the surprising, non-sequitur definition of grace as...of all things.. a "sound"? St. Tim may talk about me "pushing toward the unobvious," but if you asked 1oo theology students to define grace with a fill-in-the-blank, a total of less than zero would answer
"sound." Even though it may be the definitive right answer.

How unobvious is Newton's answer? Everyone knows grace is (yawn) "undeserved and unmerited favor."

But Newton has been telling us all along it's about sound? IS sound?


One would think John Newton had been influenced by Bono's theologizing on "No Line on the Horizon" in 1748.

U2 has been quoting or referencing sections of "Amazing Grace" since...well, the first single of their first album:and singing snippets of the hymn itself in concert for
almost as long. Bono has called it nothing less than his all time favorite song.

But finally it is fully at home in the setlist, as the whole trajectory and "order of worship" revolves around sound itself.
---

To my amazement, the first two results (here and here)of a quick googling of the "Amazing Grace" lyrics coupled with "sound of grace" landed me on articles about the U2 record!

But who has researced what Newton chose the striking sound metaphor
(or the opposite of metaphor, whatever that is...one dictionary suggests that it is "anthropomorphism,"

"The ascription to the Deity of human forms or modes and of human feelings or moods, respectively...

A term used in its widest sense to signify the tendency of man to conceive the activities of the external world as the counterpart of his own.")?

Anyone know the story?

What did Newton hear that convinced him that grace was a Sound that saved him?

I have only found one guesstimate:

The opening words of the song are interesting; I do wonder what Christians make of them: "Amazing grace; how sweet the sound ..." Why sound, and not feeling or experience?

.. It would seem from Newton's careful, clever lyrics that his experience, too, was triggered by a sound -- likely that of the ship's bell or foghorn.
-Tom Armstrong

In the meantime, one should read (or better yet, listen to) two of the books I have already namechecked:

• -Leonard Sweet's "Summoned to Lead," a wonderful take on leadership through the lens of sound..
• - Stephen Webb's deep and groundbreaking "The Divine Voice, The: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound."

Which brings us full circle to the coupling of "Amazing Grace"/Where the Streets Have No Name."

The latter is usually interpreted (albeit too simplistically, but not inaccurately...see this) as "about heaven."
And therefore about sound.

Huh?

It's Webb who traces a tradition...all the way back through Augustine, and implicity yet intrinsically in Scripture itself...that the fundamental "sense" of heaven is indeed sound.

And since ultinately "Where the Streets" (see this) is about not (just), but heaven invading earth in the here and now..

Such is also the theme of the entire "No Line" CD..
and accompanying tour
("In this innovative sacred space setting for a live music event, U2 turn out to be channeling thhe Son, the sound, and Williams/Owens mixing a Lumière that lets us in the sound in a new way.")

No wonder they were considering "sound spotlights" for this tour.

How else would one incarnate the sound of grace, and let is into said sound?

Sounds good.

Sounds like grace.

Thy Sound come.
Thy Grace be done.
On the streets of earth
As it already is in heaven.

"...all great music gives us a sonic foretaste of heaven by translating salvation into a musical key. All imagination is born out of the desire for eternity, but as much as the imagination transforms our desires, so will heaven transform our imagination. Heaven will not be contrary to what we imagine of it, but it will exceed our imagination to an inconceivable degree. In heaven, the divine voice will no longer be carried along by vibrations of air but instead will travel at the speed of grace, and it will sound amazingly sweet."
-Stephen Webb, "The Sound of God: Supersonic Theology and the Future of Public Speaking"

Oh how we need on earth before we go to heaven, an eschatological inbreaking of imagination, jumpstart on justice, and the Shematic hearing of God's heavenly Voiceprints.

It's we who walk in grace and are grace, that are and incarnate the "grace...and sound greater than... and beyond the noise" (Sammy Rodriguez's phrase ):

"What does the sound of grace sound like ? ...Jesus is the Resurrected Songwriter of the new song..We go beyond the music, beyond the noise, beyond the volume..

Grace has a sound..YOU are the sound of grace."
-Rodriguez, "Are You a Third Day Christian?" , pp 108; 117