Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet

Music
can move us in ways that reach beyond discursive speech. That does not mean
that notes have no relation to words. Music is not a literal language, but it
is more than a metaphorical one. The best music hints at a universal language
that can redeem the cultural and geographical barriers of human communication. Even
when wordless, music is always dramatizing our desire to hear something truer
than we can ever say. The secret of music, then, is the way it elevates
language in extra-linguistic form.

For the
Christian, this elevation has a theological dimension. For example, we can hear
the Trinity in the way that instrumental sounds penetrate each other in order
to reveal a unity found only in difference.

But
music also has a Christological dimension. By letting us hear transcendence
within the limits of sound itself, it reminds us that the content of our words
cannot be separated from their physical, acoustical properties. When we
communicate, we vibrate. We long to be understood by others through the
intimate opening of that passageway we call the ear. Music, in other words,
keeps transcendence physical. It does not let us pretend that voices can be
separated from bodies.

The
most Christological piece of music I have ever heard is Gavin Bryars’s “Jesus’ Blood
Never Failed Me Yet.” In 1971, Bryars was working on a film about homeless
people and recorded, almost by accident, an old man singing: “Jesus’s blood
never failed me yet, Jesus’s blood never failed me yet, Jesus’s blood never
failed me yet. There’s one thing I know for he loves me so.”

The
song was not used in the movie, but Bryars was haunted by it. One day, as he
went out for coffee, he left it playing on loop at his studio. When he
returned, he found a group of people gathered around the tape listening in a
somber mood, with some of them openly weeping. Bryars never knew the tramp (as
he calls him on the liner notes), but he decided to compose an orchestral
accompaniment for his simple refrain.

At
first we hear only the tramp’s voice, but then the strings gently begin; as if
to say that no voice, no matter how rough and untutored, is without support. As
the music slowly progresses, the string quartet follows the tramp’s lead but
keeps a respectful distance, ready to provide full instrumental support while
honoring his vocal freedom.

With a
little auditory imagination, the strings become the “cloud of witnesses” (Heb.
12:1) that the Bible says surrounds us. And yet, even with the increasingly
intense intervention of the professional musicians, the old man sounds so
terribly alone. Just at the point that the swelling score seems like it might
steer off into a false transcendence, with the instruments eclipsing his voice,
another voice can be heard growling in the background.

That
voice belongs to Tom Waits, who at first sings just below the tramp’s range,
almost inaudibly. It is as if he has stepped beside the homeless man not to
lend him a hand but to be a friend. Waits’s voice then begins to rise as the
tramp’s voice seems to falter, as if Waits is now going to carry him home. What
is nearly impossible to do in life—aiding somebody without appearing
condescending or controlling—is accomplished here with a grace that might be
best expressed in musical form. Waits assumes without overcoming the tramp’s
tune, carrying it to new heights without leaving the tramp behind.

Bryars’s
composition is an act of aural atonement, a recapitulation of Christology in
acoustical form. Waits is the acoustical shape of the Son, lifting the tramp
with his low voice, and thus showing us how Jesus can take our discordant souls
and make them whole.

While
not a literal language, music is more than a metaphorical one: We might call it
an imaginary language. As an imaginary language, it strives to say something
objective about reality. It aims not at mystery in general but at universal
truth. Bryars’s composition, like all great music, I suppose, gives us a sonic foretaste
of what it might mean to enter—with the dispossessed at our side—into heaven.

Stephen H. Webb is a columnist for First Things. He is the author most recently of Mormon Christianity. His book on Bob Dylan is Dylan Redeemed.

Become a fan of First Things on Facebook, subscribe to First Things via RSS, and follow First Things on Twitter.