Sing Lustily and With Good Courage
(John Wesley, from notes on congregational singing)
Today there is no sermon – we will hear three short reflections on the role of music in worship. Tonight’s service led by rev Jeanette Mathews is focusing on the theme “Sing to the Lord a New Song”. This morning I thought we might explore “Sing to the Lord an Old Song”!!
The central place of singing in worship
Singing is one of the most fundamental forms of human activity. Art on cave walls might have preceded it as a form of human artistic expression but the roots of singing and ‘voice sounds’ is very ancient.
In ancient Israel the Psalms were sung. These had many forms: legal pleadings, songs of approach to the temple, songs prior to battle, songs of protest, cries for justice, celebrations of authority and the investiture of kings.
From the heritage of the synagogue singing passed into the early church. Fragments of ancient hymns or prayers have passed into our New Testament (e.g. Phil 2.6ff). Monastic chant developed through Gregorian Chant and plainsong to the Psalm settings that were chanted through the Middle Ages. We have inherited the settings of the Mass rising from the period of high European culture, the Oratorios of Handel and others. With the Wesleys and Isaac Watts came the use of popular folk tunes and even pub songs as vehicles for expressing the experience of faith.
Little fragments of all these musical and poetic traditions are found in the ‘red treasury’ of the hymn book we place in you hands each week!
Why sing?
Because it’s important! Football crowds sing. Seafarers hauling on the ropes sing shanties. Drunken crowds in pubs sing. Singing expresses something of human community and togetherness.
Singing in worship is far deeper than any of the above:
A congregation singing intelligently – listening to each other, reflecting on the words and putting meaning into what they saying and offering the whole to God – is one of the most wonderful things in the world!
Of course, not every one can sing. Fortunately the Scripture enjoins us to make a joyful noise to the Lord– not necessarily tuneful! John Wesley said to his congregations “Sing lustily and with good courage!” In other words, “Be in it – don’t be embarrassed”. But he also cautioned them “Do not bawl or try to be heard above everyone else!”
Above all, we should try to listen to the words, and work out what the hymn is all about.
How can we do this? There are two hints for this:
The hymn we’re about to sing (Baptist Praise and Worship (BPW) No 104: Our Father God thy name we praise, Tune: Mit Freuden Zart) is another great hymn of our tradition: It’s from the 16th C Anabaptist Ausbund. The Ausbund was a collection of about 50 hymns used by imprisoned Anabaptists. This group were terribly persecuted. They worshipped in secret, often in forests or isolated places for security from the authorities. The hymn is a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer but you can hear the isolation and the danger of their context in the words “assembled by thy grace, O lord” When they sing “As with our brethren here we meet” one can almost feel the lonliness of their meeting places. As they sing “as here we gather at thy feet” one can almost see the great trees of the forest reaching up into the mist all around them.
The hymn is a living link with some of the heroic ancestors of the free church tradition in which we stand. Let’s sing it and affirm our link with them as brothers and sisters in faith.
Treasures Old and New
Development in church music is probably one of the conflict areas in most churches. If I was to introduce smoke machines and electric guitars I suspect at least some of you might be a tad upset. But music evolves and develops and the church must engage that process too – even for a boring old fogey like me who is a fully paid up member of ‘the scripture chorus police’.
The text read this morning (Matthew 13.52) speaks of the wise scribe who “brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old”. Both belong in the church. Given that each of us has particular likes and dislikes we need patience and understanding to have a breadth of view.
Also, this doesn’t mean that ‘anything goes’ - there is a lot of old rubbish in the church’s collections of yesteryear and there is much fresh twaddle in the modern offerings that churches in various places endure. We need to sift and sort, discuss and agree. There are many factors involved in this process: theology, musical merit, suitability for worship, fitting in with the spirit and temper of the age and the church. Being knowledgeable about these issues is one of the requirements for the selection of good church music!
For instance one hymn we are not going to sing today is BPW No 57: Majesty! This was written in 1980 by Jack Hayford, California (Hollywood?). at the time of President Ronald Reagan (elected 1980) and the ascendancy of the Moral Majority (founded 1979). The power of socially conservative Christian voices in American society was being strongly asserted: because Jesus is King we should be exercising power in the government of our nation. This is reflected in the line of the hymn that reads
"Majesty, kingdom, authority, flow from his throne unto his own, his anthem raise!"
This is a hymn to the social and political dominance of Christians in their society. It is diametrically opposed to a Baptist view of the separation of church and State. In an address for the Baptist World Alliance earlier this year the eminent New York pastor Dr Gardner Taylor named the heart of the Baptist tradition as an enduring suspicion of the coming together of religious rhetoric and political power. Majesty! expresses just such an anti-Baptist spirit.
We will sing BPW 53: King of Glory, King of peace. This hymn was written by George Herbert, an English pastor, poet, and mystic. Some of his hymns are impenetrable – it’s hard to know just what they mean (e.g. some lines in No 457 in the Australian Hymn Book). He retired to the parish of Bemerton near Salisbury wrote sensitive and beautiful poetry. He wrote of the soul’s connection with God, and was one of the 17th century poets who furnished hymns without knowing it, because hymn singing was not common in churches of the day.
Note that Vs 2 line 3 of the BPW rendering (deepest love within my heart) has been bowdlerized from the original (“and the cream of all my heart”)! Those of more complex moral character (like myself) whose hearts contain mixed and murky feelings alongside love may feel free to join me in singing the original words.
Sometimes the old and the new look very similar. Our next hymn (BPW 19) is a recent one – written by Jacques Berthier of Taize. It is written in Latin! Young people from around the world gather at the Taize community. They come from many lands and many languages, but they are all equal before Latin!
It is an ostinato – it is sung over and over again. Words are less important than the spirit of the singing. Congregations used to this music find the music ebbs and flows, rises and subsides over the course of the singing. Listen to each other, feel the spirit in the music, go with the flow, see what the Spirit communicates to you in the experience. It requires trust, courage, faith and openness – qualities eminently suited to worship.
Battle Hymns and Songs of Peace
The musical tastes of the 19th century ran to martial hymns such as:
The metaphor of the soldier is not a dominant Biblical metaphor! Today militant religious faith is perceived very negatively. We must ask to what extent did these hymns legitimize a militaristic outlook on life? Is it just coincidence that many of them were written in Victorian times when the British Empire (and the British Army) were at their most powerful?
Hymns are connected with social realities: they mirror or encode social values and ways of looking at the world. That’s why we must critique and change them from time to time. They ‘wear out’ and are related to or linked with yesterday’s age and questions. We need to be aware of whether what we sing connects with wider social values of peace, sustainability, justice and renewal, or whether it relates to consumerism and individual choice, global empire, the entrenchment of power and injustice in the world or a disregard of the environment and the future.
Sometimes the new is most contaminated with the culture and supportive of shallow and even oppressive social patterns, what a friend of mine has called “God is my boyfriend” music.
Similarly, the old can sometimes embody wonderful truths. Our next Hymn (BPW 617) is drawn from the Scottish Paraphrases of 1781. The first version was actually written in 1745 – the year of the Battle of Culloden and the collapse of the ’45’, the rebellion of Charles Edward Stuart (Bonny Prince Charlie). It was written in a fever of expectation of war, at a time when the cause was going well. But the hymn looked more deeply and issued a call for peace, it saw the outcomes of the ways of war.
One early version started the last verse Come then, O House of Jacob, come. This is a clear but subtle reference to the Jacobite cause. This is a hymn to be sung when the country is going confidently to war, reminding us that defeat may not be far away, and that peace is the far greater prize.
We conclude today with two final hymns:
By gracious powers, so wonderfully sheltered (BPW 117) was written for the New Year, 1945 by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a Gestapo Interrogation prison. If you read his poems and letters from this time there is a sense of deep foreboding, a sense that he will not survive. Yet even deeper is the sense of faith and profound trust in God. It is one of the truly great hymns in our book.
Our closing hymn is Marching in the light of God, (BPW 487) a South African song from the peace struggle over apartheid – song of protest, of a mass movement. Perhaps the true successor to the battle hymns of the nineteenth century will be the protest and resistance hymns of the late 20th and 21st centuries. These hymns present a greater identification with the suffering people living in a post-colonial world where the church is often vibrant and booming.
Additional Resources from 9th October service
Call to Worship
Sing my tongue, the Saviour’s glory
Of his cross the mystery sing
Lift on high the wondrous trophy
Tell the triumph of the King!
We come to worship God
To tell in song and scripture his mighty acts,
To celebrate the presence and the power of the risen Christ
To experience the Spirit in our healing and the peace
That is found in Christian community.
Hymn 128: Martin Rinkart 1586- 1649. Written around 1630 during the Thirty Years War. Minister of Eilenburg: refugee centre and endured famine and pestilence. Rinkart was its only minister of religion and spent himself and his possessions in the service of others. Many stories are told of his courageous dealings with the occupying troops. The hymn must be read against that dark background: ‘When hope was dead, civil security annihilated, personal ambition crushed out of existence and when famine, violence and plague knocked at the door there was only one place from which to draw strength – faith in almighty God. This hymn is one of the greatest treasures of the church’s history.
Prayer
God of the Ages,
We come to this place filled with the prattle of the day
Of talkback radio, of idle gossip and the weekend papers
And the endless words that attend our work!
Save us Lord: Take us into the past today – to know again of your great acts
And the deep experiences of our ancestors in faith.
Take us into the future – show us again the sure promise of your kingdom
And the coming of justice and truth in human affairs
Then shall we live today in faith and hope and our speaking
And our being reflect the truth and the power of your gospel.
Amen
Prayer
Father of all
We pray for a suffering world
Those bereaved
Those ill
Those in prison
For all who are hungry and destitute
These people need your grace, and our love and support. As we pray for them quicken our resolve to respond to human need and work for justice among nations. Where those in need are close to us help us to open our hearts and our hands in practical aid.
We pray too for those who are rich and carefree
Those who are happy and laughing
For those in love and filled with joy
Those who are fit and tanned and bring envious glances on the beach or the catwalk
For those who are shopping today with deep pockets filled with cash
All these people too need your grace – for joy can be fleeting and riches unreliable, health can depart in a moment and even if these things remain for a while, what are they when so many are hungry and poor and in sorrow.
Lord, in a world where being rich and happy requires a little forgetfulness, hear our prayer for all such people, and for ourselves.
God of love, who in Jesus acted to redeem the world, its people and all creation
Tune our hearts to sing your grace,
Train our appetites to hunger for justice
Teach our minds to love your truth
And our feet to walk in your ways.
Amen.
Preached at Canberra Baptist Church, 9 & 10.30am 9th October 2005 - Jim Barr