Month: June 2021

God so often chooses the most unlikely of people to play major roles in Salvation History. God chose Rahab, a Canaanite woman and prostitute in Jericho, to not only save the two Israelite spies seeking to find the weaknesses in that city state, but she would be one of many women who would give birth to children in a line of ancestry that will stretch from David to Jesus.

COMMENTARY

In my research for both the music and poem, I consulted a resource written by Phyllis Bird, entitled,”The Harlot as Heroine: Narrative Art and Social Presuppositions in Three Old Testament Texts.” The title of this article illustrates clearly that the scandal which we often assign to people because of their past actions, their culture, their place in society, or the work that they do, is not scandalous to God. God is always inclusive, and never exclusive. Christians, of all people, should be aware of the inclusiveness of Jesus, who welcomed into his intimate community of friends and followers, tax collectors, prostitutes, armed revolutionaries, along with those plying many trades. Jesus’ own religious leaders were scandalized by those who kept Jesus company. It should also be noted that it was the one who was the most prominent among his company who would ultimately plan in collusion the death of Jesus and betray him.

THE STORY

Rahab, a Canaanite woman and a prostitute (according to Hebraic Biblical sources), invites into her home two Israelite spies. She knows well the path of destruction that this army of nomadic people had caused throughout Canaan, city after city, king after king, destroyed and occupied by the Israelites. With the Israelites outside his city wall, the king of Jericho is greatly alarmed and orders the death of the Israelite spies. Rahab, hides the spies and tells the king’s soldiers that she does not know where they might be hiding. She negotiates with the spies that she will lead them to safety if they will spare her and her family when they take the city. They agree and tell her that she must gather all who are important to her within her house. From the mantle of her door, she must hang a red thread. Israelite soldiers seeing the thread would pass by her house and not cause her and any within harm. She lets them out the window of her home, which is part of the wall of the city. The red thread hanging from her mantle, spares Rahab and her family from death and destruction, just as the Angel of Death passed by all Israelite homes whose mantle was painted with the blood of the paschal lamb. The genealogy of Matthew mentions Rahab as one of the great women in the ancestry of David and Jesus.

THE MUSIC

ABOUT THE MUSIC

Composed in three part form (ABA), there are two distinct melodies. The melody and tempo of the first part invoke a sense of peace and tranquility. This is Rahab’s theme, representing the peace and safety that Rahab and her home provided all people. The middle section of the song, changes from a major key to a minor key and the tempo increases greatly. The melody represents the fear, chaos, and violence that exist outside the door of Rahab, prior and during the battle for Jericho. Rahab’s theme is repeated in the third section of the song, again representing the mantle of peace and safetly that Rahab extends to those in her company.

THE POEM

CANTICLE FOR RAHAB

A proud Canaanite woman,
you are a professional.
A member of the ancient trade,
your home, your place of work,
the intimacy of your bed and body
providing needed comfort to men,
weary from travel, seeking solace
and peace in your arms.

Unlike the bawdy houses of yore,
your home is a safe haven
from the chaos that exists
within the human heart
and outside of its walls.
In the quiet that follows passion,
whispered stories,
of a nomadic army of former slaves
from a foreign land, invading,
leveling, and occupying cities in Canaan.

Two men not your normal clientele,
their language and customs,
their clothing and manner foreign to you
appear at your door.
As with so many of your clients,
you invite them into your home.
The secrets of body and soul shared,
they seek, more perilously,
to explore the secrets of your city.
Their army lay outside the city,
a wild fire of fear and alarm
spreads like a plague in the streets
outside your home.

A woman of business,
hiding them from the King’s police,
you negotiate a price for your silence,
safety for yourself and your family.
Like the mantles painted red
with the blood of the paschal lamb,
protected their people from the Angel of Death,
a mere red thread hanging from
the mantle of your door
protects you and all within the home
from the scourge that will reign
in the streets of the city.

Your home, the peace within
a stark contrast to the violence outside.
Who could have foreseen
that a woman of your profession,
a Canaanite woman, at that,
from the safe, peaceful haven
of your womb would be born
the ancestor of not only David,
but the ancestor of the Messiah?

(c) 2021 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

Me, on my dad’s lap, my dad, and my brother, Bill.

My dad is the greatest man I have ever known. Understanding, loving, patient, a man of great faith, and the wisdom figure of my family. I remember when my dad died, as mom was out of the hospital room making arrangements with the funeral home, I sat by my dad’s side. I felt humbled and alarmed when I realized that I was now suppose to be the wisdom figure of the family. I thought, “Boy, everyone is going to be SOL (shit out of luck). What I have realized since then, is that though dad’s body may have died in 2004, he is still very much alive and present to me. Whenever I feel in need of his wisdom, all I do is call on him and he never fails to continue to inspire me.

Below is the first song I composed for my dad when I was a freshman in college majoring in music. It is heavily influenced by the Chopin Preludes I was practicing at the time.

My dad and my sister, Mary Ruth.

This song and poem is the seventh in the song cycle devoted to women of the Hebrew Scriptures. Tamar, compared to so many other heroic women of the Hebrew Scriptures, is an unlikely heroine. Given the circumstances in which she lived, however, she is ingenious in using the means available to her to not only assure security for herself, but an important place in Salvation History.

THE STORY OF TAMAR (Genesis 38)

Judah had three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah. Judah provided a wife for his first born son, Er. Her name was Tamar. All we know of Er, is that he was wicked in the eyes of God, and God killed him. As was the custom, to assure Tamar a place in the family, she was given to Onan, who was to act as a Levir, or surrogate for his dead brother, Er. However, because if he fathered a son with Tamar, Onan would not his receive the full share of his inheritance, when he has sexual relations with Tamar, he spills his semen on the ground. This act displeased God so greatly, that God kills Onan.  Because Judah feared that Tamar was cursed and anyone marrying her was doomed to die, he did not want his youngest son to marry her. Judah ordered her to return to her father and remain chaste and a widow, never to ever remarry.

Tamar condemned to this Limbo and not free to marry, decides to take action that would assure her security in the family of Judah. She decides to disguise herself as a prostitute and have sexual relations with Judah. Placing a veil over her face, she sits and waits for him at the city gate. Judah, returning from the sheep-shearing festival, coins in his pocket, drunk and randy is an easy mark for Tamar. He promises her a kid from his flock if she would have sexual relations with him. She agrees if she can have his staff and seal to keep until she receives payment. They have sexual relations, with Judah leaving his staff and seal with her. When he sends his servant back to the city to give her the kid and retrieve his staff and seal, she has vanished.

In the meantime, Tamar’s relations with Judah has resulted in a pregnancy. After three months, people report to Judah that Tamar is 3 months pregnant and has disobeyed his order to remain chaste, a crime that is punishable by death. Judah orders that she be brought to him and be burned at the stake. Tamar appears before him and presents to Judah his staff and seal. Judah recognizes that he is the father of the child she is carrying. He receives Tamar back into his household, assuring her security for the rest of her life. She gives birth to twins, Perez and Zerah. Because Judah has unknowingly honored the obligation of the levirate, he no longer cohabitates with her. From Perez would come the line of David.

COMMENTARY ON THE STORY

As you read the story of Tamar, I am sure you might wonder, “Why, Tamar?” She does not possess the historic importance and courage of Deborah and Jael. She is not a prophet and sister of Moses like Miriam. Her role and position was, for the most part, rather minimal. However, as you read the genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of Matthew, she is one of the few women of Hebrew scriptures that Matthew thought it very important to document. She is an important and essential part of the Messianic ancestry of Jesus. Given the low position that women possessed in the Patriarchal Times  documented in the Hebrew Scriptures, she took the initiative and means available to her to make sure of some security for herself. Disguising one as a prostitute in order to conceive the child of her father-in-law is not an activity of shame, but rather an activity of desperation to insure survival. It is as heroic as the self-sacrifice of Fantine, in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable, who endured the degradation of prostitution to provide for her daughter, Cosette.

We never know what made Er wicked in the eyes of God. We know why God killed Onan, who disobeyed God’s will by refusing to father a child with Tamar. As I reflected on her story, I thought that God, fully knowing Salvation History, decided that the character of these two men made them unworthy to father a child who would be an integral part in the lineage of the Messiah. Tamar’s sexual relations with Judah, her father-in-law, may seem to be incestuous to us and to the people at the time of Judah. However, Judah was unaware with whom he was having sexual relations (Tamar was veiled), and, in the end, unknowingly performs the function of the Levir of being a surrogate father to a widowed woman in the family to assure her a place in his family. He never had sexual relations with her ever again.

The Holy Spirit is the inspiration behind all that is good, even when that “good” may seem to us a contradiction to the teachings of our religious traditions. It is easy for us to judge and condemn the actions of others without knowing the intent behind their actions. Judah was prepared to execute Tamar for her infidelity by burning her at the stake, insensitive to the hell to which he had condemned her. He had no foreknowledge of the important role that both he and Tamar would play in producing a child who was integral part of the lineage of the Messiah. The idea that it was God’s Spirit who inspired Tamar to take the radical step of disguising herself as a prostitute in order to bear a child of Judah. Did the idea of securing the staff and seal to prove to Judah that he was the father of her child originate solely on the wits of Tamar, or did God’s Spirit inspire her to ask for them. I believe it was the Holy Spirit. And, it was the Holy Spirit that opened the eyes and the mind of Judah to acknowledge that he was the father of Tamar’s child. We often say that “God works in mysterious ways.” As Jesus often reminded us, God’s ways are often not the ways of we who are human. I am thankful that Tamar reminds me of the wonderful, mysterious ways in which God works in our lives.

THE MUSIC

ABOUT THE MUSIC

As I approached composing the music for this song, I thought, “How on earth can I begin to express this unusual story musically?” As my father taught me, namely, all good things originate first in the Holy Spirit, I found it rather extraordinary that this song flowed quickly for me. Everything from the key areas, B minor and F# major, to the 6/4 and 6/8 meter of the music just seem to flow.

The song is in three part (ABA) form. The first part, in the key of B minor and in 6/4 meter (six beats to a measure, a quarter note getting one beat) is meant to represent the frustration and desperation of Tamar as she experiences the death of not just one, but two husbands, and the Limbo to which Judah condemns her for the rest of her life. The tempo is very slow and methodical.

The second part, in the key of F# major and in 6/8 meter (six beats to a measure the eighth note getting one beat), is meant to represent the part of Tamar’s story in which she decides to risk disguising herself as a prostitute and entice her father-in-law, Judah, in having sexual relations with her in order to conceive his child and assure her a permanent place in his family. The tempo is fast and in the form of a fugue.

The third part, is a recapitulation of the first part, and is meant to represent a now, very pregnant Tamar, who is brought in shame before her father-in-law. The very decorated melody is representative of Judah’s realization that he is the father of her child, and his vow to assure her and her child (it was unknown that she was carrying twins at this point), a permanent, safe place in his family. The song ends with “all is well” B major chord.

THE POEM

CANTICLE FOR TAMAR

Born into Patriarchal Times,
condemned to Patriarchal crimes,
when a woman’s security and worth
was measured by a fertile womb,
and the number of children she birthed.

Humanity’s great blindness
is shortsightedness,
our plans lasting so longer than
the passage of the sun
from its rising to its setting;
while God peers far into the future,
to events yet to happen,
and our lifetime’s purpose
is not isolated to just our time of life,
but a stone upon which
many other lives are built.

It matters not what Er, your first,
did to displease God so greatly,
nor Onan’s great sin of greed
which compelled him to spill his seed.
As stones, their lives were brittle and broken,
unable to support the future ahead.
But your life was the one stone
upon which the future of salvation
was to be established and built.

Judah, the fourth born of Jacob,
was ready to condemn you
to the infertile life of widowhood,
as readily as he abandoned
his brother, Joseph, selling him
into slavery to the Ishmaelites.

Exhausted from desperation
God’s love rested with you,
God’s peace and wisdom
Comforting you in your discontent.
God’s Spirit places the veil
over you face as you prepare your body,
and sets you at the gates of the city.

You entice Judah, over Inflated with wealth,
drink, and lust, to give to you
what his sons could not.
He complies and lies with you,
giving you his seal and staff,
for your sexual favors.
Your payment is your filled womb
promising you and humanity
security and hope for salvation.

Humanity’s understanding of honor
is as poverty stricken as our sight.
As you present your swollen womb,
you present to Judah his staff and seal.
God’s Spirit opens the mind and vision
of dim lit and dimwitted Judah.
Within your womb is the foundation
upon which will be built
the House of David.

The dismantled scaffold upon which
you were to be burned,
will be the wood upon which
will bear humanity’s salvation.
Through you, through your womb,
our eyes are open by God
to peer into the future
and gaze upon salvation.

© 2021 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

Last night, I completed the seventh of ten musical compositions honoring many of the prominent women of the Hebrew Scriptures. The music and the poem is influenced by the story of Esther (the Book of Esther). The Jewish holiday, Purim, is celebrated remembering the courage of this woman in salvation history.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF ESTHER’S STORY

Esther, an orphan adopted by her Uncle Mordecai, lived in the diaspora during the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people. The king of Persia seeking a new wife gathered all eligible, beautiful virgins of his kingdom into his harem. Esther was one of those virgins in his harem. Not revealing her Jewish heritage, she offers herself to the king, who, apparently pleased with her made her his queen. Within the royal court, there was a power struggle between Esther’s Uncle Mordecai and Haman, a official of the Persian empire. Haman, seeking more and more power, seeks to eliminate Mordecai and all the Jews exiled to Persia. Haman’s plan to begin a war of genocide on the Jewish people is sanctioned by the king. Mordecai warns Esther of Haman’s treachery and plan. To go unsummoned to the king’s bedchamber was a crime punishable by death. Esther is a woman of great courage who places the lives of her people before her own. As she leaves, she says that if she perishes, she perishes, but nothing will deter from pleading her cause before the king. Esther enters the king’s bedchamber uninvited. Instead of having her executed, the king welcomes her and accepts her invitation to two massive banquets to which Esther’s enemies were also invited. Beguiled by her charms during the second banquet, the king listens in earnest as she reveals the intent and the treachery of Haman. Haman and his family end up executed, the Jewish people in exile are saved from genocide, and Mordecai is elevated to a position of power. Esther’s influence grows daily in the Persian Empire as its queen.

While Esther is celebrated as a heroine within the Jewish faith, not all like her story. The overly pietistic/righteous consider her behavior immoral. Esther did not give a second thought about losing her virginity to the king prior to marriage. Also, Esther had no trouble following the rules and lifestyle of women living in a harem. There are Rabbi’s that are upset that the presence of God is implicit rather than explicit in the story. No where within the story is God called by name. Also, the requirement of following Mosaic Law is largely ignored by Esther, who disregards the dietary laws of the Jewish faith. On top of this, Esther enters into marriage with a Gentile.

In spite of all the objections from the religiously rigid segment of the Jewish faith, the story of Esther is celebrated by most of the Jewish faithful. The story is consistent with the Canticles of both Hannah and Mary, in which God lowers to servitude the rich, powerful and mighty, and raises to prominence the poor, the powerless, and the vulnerable. The Catholic Church would call this “God’s preferential option for the poor.” God’s love is always with the most vulnerable, e.g. the widows and orphans. God never abandons those who are devoted to God.

THE MUSIC

ABOUT THE MUSIC

There are three main sections of music in the song. The first section is in C minor. There is a repeating motif (musical theme) representing Esther, the strong melody and chords meant to represent her strength as a woman of action. The second section, modulating to the key of Eb major, and more gentle in sound, represents her vulnerability as a Jewish woman in exile, prepared to sacrifice her life for her people. The third section is a recap of the first, with a Coda (ending).

THE POEM

The function of divine mediation
to which we assign our religions,
can impede rather than aid
our connection to God,
obstructing our pathway to holiness.
Jewish, exiled, and a woman,
in the shadows of Persia,
living among the enslaved,
the marginalized and powerless.
you make your own path to God.
Your virginity and beauty,
highly regarded, sought after assets
in a royal harem, you sacrifice
on the royal altar/bed of the king,
so that your people’s voices
may speak through your voice.
You close your ears to the
pietistic wagging of tongues,
and religious condemnation
arising from rigid fundamentalism,
and enter the king’s bedchamber.

Ancient and modern politicians
in the pursuit of power and wealth
feed on fear and persecution
of the powerless and vulnerable,
breeding massacres of the innocent
and mass genocide of peoples.
The murderous contempt for your people,
the planned destruction of your family
planned by political enemies
and sanctioned by the king,
lead you unsummoned, uninvited
to the bedchamber of the king.
Your voice, the sole defense
of your people, finds you at his door.
To enter uninvited is a death sentence.
It is far better to perish,
your voice stopped forever
by the executioner’s axe
than to remain silent.
Armed only with justice and courage,
you enter to confront your fate.

Death did not greet you that night.
Was it your beauty, your charm,
your political intelligence that
inspired the king to welcome
your presence and your invitation
to plead your cause?
Was it your eloquent discourse
that unmasked the treachery
of your enemies?
Or, was it God that guided you
to the king’s harem,
to the bedchamber of the king,
placing your body, your virginity,
your life at the disposal of the king?

Our pathway to God is littered
by human, institutional constructs,
less divinely influenced, and
more often twisted by human reason.
These constructs wish to reveal
only one true way, one true path
to the Divine, refusing to acknowledge
the many pathways open to God.
Though you were Jewish,
God led you by a different path,
the only one by which you were able
to save yourself and your people.
It is often that the way to God
is not through the powerful
and the mighty of the earth,
but through the most vulnerable,
the widows and orphans,
to whom God always listens
and whom God never abandons.
© 2021, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE POEM

I am thinking of the poem/reflections in this collection of Canticles as a form of the epic poem, essentially telling the story of a person in poetic form. However, these stories also contain a moral or a teaching directly related to the story. In the case of Esther, I find two morals or lessons. 1) There is not just one path only to God, but many paths upon which God guides us to holiness. This requires us at times, to purposely choose differently from what is taught by our particular religion in order to grow into a deeper relationship with God and others. 2) Throughout both Hebrew and Christian scriptures, we find God often works not through the powerful and the mighty but through the most vulnerable, insignificant, and most powerless. Those whom God loves, God will never abandon.