Doing Theology From BelowSample

The Blue Note

Yesterday, we introduced the concept of Jazz Theology which invites all of us to participate in the process and especially invites us to risk our voice – we said that that failure is built into the process.

Today, we’ll extend the Jazz metaphor and introduce the Blue Note.

There are three powerful notes discovered by jazz. They are called blue notes: the flatted 3rd, flatted 5th, and flatted 7th. The bluest of the blue notes is the flatted 5th. It’s the note that Miles Davis and many others perfected. These notes give voice to pain. That’s their function. It’s the note that disrupts and creates dissonance. It resists resolve. It disorients and sometimes irritates, but when blended with the larger score, it gives voice to the ache, longing, and, sometimes, anger associated with pain. Kathleen M. O’Connor said in her book, Lamentations and the Tears of the World, “The first condition of healing is to bring the pain and suffering into view.”

For the Jazz connoisseur, jazz has a huge capacity for healing in large part because of the blue note.

Whatever else Scripture is, it is a relentlessly faithful journey through the blue notes of humanity and God. All of the great stories in Scripture play out like an extended Miles Davis riff on a hot summer night that finally yields to resolution, though not easily or predictably. Two-thirds of the Psalms are laments. Job is, itself, a long psalm of lament. There is a whole book in the Bible that bears the name "Lamentations". In the sermon on the mount, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn.” And, of course, the cross is the ultimate blue note.

The unforeseen twist of the Gospel is that the blue note continues even in the resurrection. Jesus continues to bear the wounds of his suffering and ours in his resurrected body. The resurrection is not the end of woundedness. It is its transformation. Just ask Thomas who, quite literally, put his finger on the Gospel. The Gospel declares that the resurrection not only heals our wounds but also dares to honor our wounds and give voice to them…for an eternity. There is something profoundly kind and intimate about a God whose practice of redemption includes our suffering. Apparently, in God’s economy, there is a place in heaven, not only for our highest praise, but also for our deepest pain. God has made provision for both. Nothing is wasted in Christ, especially our pain. The crazy claim of our faith is that somehow we are healed in and through the wound, eternally.

Sadly, the blue notes of scripture are often avoided. Many of us have been taught to rush past the blue notes, not only in Scripture but in our lives, and the effects of this are devastating. Pain denied and pain suppressed comes back multiplied. Doing theology from below includes the discipline of honoring blue notes, slowing the text down at the very moment we want to speed it up. As Father Richard Rohr has said, if we do not transform our experience of pain, we will with 100% certainty, transmit it. Reading Scripture through the eyes of Jesus is to be mentored in the transforming and healing power of the blue note.

The blue note is not without its dangers, but it is a source of great hope and healing for vulnerable urban communities. A faith that systematically avoids the blue note sets up the conditions for large-scale violence. Come and learn from and experience the bitter-sweet note of grace.