Singing the Good News
Psalm 150
May 18, 2014[1]
On the afternoon of March 30th
of this year, the Charlottesville District Youth sponsored a “Fifth Sunday”
Worship Service that was held here in Cunningham Church. Approximately 60 youth attended. It was a true service of worship that
culminated in the sharing of Holy Communion.
The entire service was very moving; but the most amazing thing to me was
the music. I expected a group of
teenagers to surround themselves with Christian rock music but there was no
band here. To my surprise, the greatest
energy of the service came from the singing of hymns. Just as we have been doing this morning, the
kids would call out the hymn number of their favorite hymns and we would sing
two verses. We spent more than 45 minutes
singing hymns—hymns of all varieties., mostly hymns from the traditional United Methodist Hymnal.
Those youth had discovered
something that Methodists have known for hundreds of years and that people of
all faiths have known for thousands of years—the power of music to connect us
with God. As we sing these songs of
faith, we find a perfect example of something in which the sum is greater than
its parts. It isn’t only the basic
ingredients of rhythm and pitch, melody and text, spun together in a particular
way. Until a human voice lifts its voice
in song, all we have are notes on a page.
It isn’t only the skill of a gifted musician like Wally White; we
certainly are blessed to have Wally share his gifts with us week after week,
but the power of the hymn is greater than the musician. I have heard lots of talented musicians
perform the music with great technical ability but no soul. It isn’t only the poetry. Some of our hymns are beautiful poems
complete with rhyme, meter and imagery, but others are simply statements of
faith, straight from the heart. It isn’t
only religious theme or the setting. It
isn’t only the emotional connection. In
some way that I can’t fully explain, our hymns of faith have an ability to lift
our souls to God.
The Psalm that we read this
morning commands us to “praise the Lord.”
The Psalmist tells us to Praise the Lord in his sanctuary, in community.
The Psalmist tells us to praise
the Lord for his mighty deeds. He
invites us to remember the ways God has blessed us in our past as a way of
acknowledging God’s power to save us in the present and in the future.
The Psalmist tells us to praise
the Lord through our music—with the lute and the harp with tambourines and
dance; with strings and pipe; with cymbals, even the loud crashing
cymbals.
The Psalmist urges, “let
everything that breathes, praise the Lord!”
This is not a suggestion—this is stated in the imperative. Do it.
But it isn’t a command being
forced on us from the outside. I don’t
sing hymns because someone told me to. I
can’t help but sing. From my earliest
days in church, the hymns of faith have been part of my life.
·
I remember, even as a toddler, going to Sunday
School, sitting in those little wooden folding chairs, singing “Jesus Loves Me,
this I know.”
·
I remember sitting in the second or third row
with my best friend, Keith. As we
learned to read, we practiced our reading skills on the words of the
hymns. We even took turns finding ways
to twist the hymn titles out of context.
We sang gospel hymns then—what many have called the “Old Hymns” but
which, in fact, weren’t so old. Most of
the so-called “Gospel Hymns” dated back to the childhood of my parents. If you really want to sing “the old songs,”
you would need to go back to the days of Martin Luther and J. S. Bach. Or even further back to the days of plain
chant.
·
I remember when my concept of singing my faith expanded,
at a time when Christian Folk Musicals were just becoming the “thing to
do.” You may not realize it, but the
song “Pass It On” actually originated as part of a musical written by Ralph
Carmichael and Kurt Kaiser entitled “Tell It Like It Is.” I learned that song directly from Kurt Kaiser
himself, when he appeared at a Youth for Christ rally in Winona Lake, Indiana.
·
I rediscovered the majesty of the formal hymns
of the church while singing with my high school and college choirs, and while
practicing for a time some other religious traditions.
·
Hymns have been formed a part of the most
important times in my life. When Carol
and I got married, one of the most memorable moments of the ceremony was when
the entire congregation stood to give thanks by singing “Now Thank We All Our
God.” Within thirty minutes after my
mother died, my dad and my brothers and sisters and I all stood in a circle in
that room affirming the truth that “Yes, Jesus Loves Me.” The day of my ordination was made especially
meaningful because of the way my ordination class stood and sang “I’d rather be
a servant in your heavenly house than to be a king living anywhere else… Lord, I offer up myself to you.”
John Wesley knew the power of
hymn singing to lift our souls. Have you
ever read his “Directions for Singing” in the front of our hymnal? You will find it in the introductory pages,
the page with the Roman numeral vii. I
know that many will become fixated on paragraph IV, the one that says, “Sing
lustily and with a good courage.” But I
hope you also will let your eyes move down to paragraph VII: “Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you
sing. Aim at pleasing him more than
yourself, or any other creature. In
order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that
your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually,
so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you
when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.”[2]
St. Augustine, the Bishop of
Hippo, is often quoted as having said, “He who sings prays twice.” That is a nice catch-phrase, but it isn’t
quite accurate. I understand that a
better translation of the Latin that Augustine wrote puts it this way, “For he who sings praise, does
not only praise, but also praises joyously; he who sings praise, is not only
singing, but also loving Him whom he is singing about/to/for. There is a
praise-filled public proclamation in the praise of someone who is
confessing/acknowledging (God), in the song of the lover (there is) there is
deep love.”[3]
What makes our hymn singing so special is the song
that we bring to it—not whether we can sing skillfully or not, but whether our
song represents the song of the love. Do
you have great love for God? Then sing
out! Not because someone told you to,
but because you can’t help it. Let your
song be an act of loving God. “Let
everything that breathes, praise the Lord!”
May it be so!
Copyright © 2014 by Thomas E. Frost. All rights reserved.
[1]
Preached at Cunningham United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia.
[2]
John Wesley, “Directions for Singing,” from Selected
Hymns, 1761. Reprinted in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville:
The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), vii.
[3]
Fr. John Zuhisdorf, “Who sings well
prays twice… NOT!” from Father Z’s Blog,
posted on the internet on June 19, 2006 at http://wdtprs.com/blog/2006/06/who-sings-well-prays-twice-not/.
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