making love to cecilia

Simon and Garfunkel wrote the song ‘Cecilia’ in 1969 and it featured in their 1970 classic album ‘Bridge over troubled water’.  The song appears somewhat coarse, though less so by modern standards. It’s leading line is

‘Making love in the afternoon to Cecilia up in my bedroom

I got up to wash my face when I went back to bed someone had taken my place’

But Cecilia is not simply a groupie girlfriend.  Cecilia is the goddess of music.  Saint Cecilia appears to have been the christianised (and sanitized) expression of the ancient goddess expressed in the Greek ‘Muses’ (from whom we get our word ‘music’).  Paul Simon was writing about his love for music and the frustration of the creative process in writing music.  Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians, and her name is often invoked before a performance. One performer who said a prayer to St. Cecilia before he sang was the famous tenor, Luciano Pavarotti.

But herein lies the rub.  Music, which is a gift from God along with other artistic expression, so easily becomes more than a gift, it becomes a god.  It becomes and end in itself.  When this happens it has become that seductive siren song that seduces men blissfully to their doom.  Music has become a god in our culture.  It is the rhythm of life in a hedonistic world.  The tragedy is this same idolatry invades the church.  We ‘adore’ music and musicians rather than God.  Our worship is often merely sensual (evoked by instruments) rather than spiritual (evoked by the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ).

Paul focuses our singing where it ought to be focussed when he writes:

Eph 5:18-19 (ESV)
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart

Col 3:16 (ESV)
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Our praise must not arise from musical manipulation, the mere delight in aesthetic and sensual expression.  It must arise from a heart filled with Christ through the Spirit.  For only then will it be worship ‘in spirit and truth’.  Only when this is the spring will we worship Christ and not Cecilia.