Élizabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre had been recognised in the court of the Sun King himself as a talented musician before her marriage, to organist Marin de la Guerre, had taken her away from Versailles and back to Paris. There she had maintained a musical career alongside her husband’s, and even had an opera performed (although she had to wait until after the death of Lully, who seems not to have appreciated her style, possibly as it demonstrates an Italian influence.) After the death of her only child and then her husband she wrote a set of ‘French cantatas on subjects drawn from scripture’, the first volume of which was published in 1707. They covered a variety of stories from the Bible, but for the purposes of this post we will consider the first only, based on the book of Esther.

The text, by Antoine Houdar de la Motte, is not so much a telling of the story from the Biblical book as a meditation on the feelings of the Hebrew woman in the court of Persian king. Sung by a single voice, accompanied by continuo, the text is nevertheless multi-perspectival, with some words describing and others appearing to take the voice of the king himself, or possibly a divine voice. The king appears to tell Esther that her ‘virtues and charms put her above the law’. One could, then, take this into a reflection the law and grace – while hoping to avoid the unhelpful and unnecessary implications of supersessionism that might offend Jewish friends.

I would like, instead, to reflect on the final aria, which sets the text:

Souvent la vérité timide
Du trône n’ose s’approcher ;
Si vous voulez qu’elle vous guide,
Roys, c’est à vous de la chercher ;
Chassez le mensonge perfide,
Qui l’oblige de se cacher.

[Often shy truth does not dare to approach the throne; if you want her to guide you, kings, it is up to you to seek her; hunt down the perfidious lie which forces her to hide.]

The word painting of Jacquet de la Guerre’s setting, in which the descending notes of the word timide imitate the shyness implied, drawing away from the intensity of the truth, is striking.

We often talk about ‘speaking truth to power’ and it is not my intention to downplay the obligation we have to do just that as we are able, but this text and setting seems to put the obligation the other way around: there is an obligation on power to seek truth. And, although not ourselves kings (except in the sense of being created as a ‘royal priesthood’ by Christ’s grace), we cannot deflect that duty onto others. We may not have much power, but nor do we have none, and it is therefore incumbent upon us to look for the truth.

But is the truth shy? Theologically speaking truth, as transcendental, is divine, and has been revealed in the κένωσις [kenosis – self-emptying] of the person of Christ: truth seeks us out as we try to seek it. It does not follow, however, that we have understood it fully, pinned it down, and therefore that fidelity to truth has to involve clinging to half-understood Sunday School lessons from years ago. We do not all have to be professional theologians, but we should respect the work that they do on our behalf, and perhaps try to inform ourselves about it, as we have capacity. We should also call out, within the Church, the (astonishingly – and offensively – common nowadays!) tendency of people in positions of ecclesiastical power to demean and dismiss disciplined theological work.

One change of perspective that helps sometimes in this is that seeking truth does not necessarily mean investigating propositions put before us and trying to discern whether they are true or false, but is often more about deciding which propositions deserve our attention. I would tentatively suggest that greater care on where we focus our considerations might well be part of what is needed to help the Church renew itself in faith and start to regain the trust of the communities we live in, that we might regain the possibility of speaking truth to power as the people of God sojourning in the worldly civitas.