Singing In the New Day
My Advent sermon series has been on the Songs of the Season. There was "David's Song" (2 Samuel 23:1-7); "The Prophet's Song: A Song No One Wants to Hear!" (Luke 3:1-6); "Zechariah's Song: Singing in the New Day" (Luke 1:59-79), "Zion's Song: Singing the Blues Away" (Zephaniah 3:14-20). This coming Sunday we will consider "Mary's Song" (Luke 1:46-55); and on Christmas Eve, "The Angel's Song: Glory to God in the Highest" (Luke 2:14), the almighty, transcendent God who takes on flesh in human form and comes near to us in Jesus of Nazareth.
In addition to this sermon series, at Pine Island Church we have been learning a couple of new songs at worship: a candle lighting song with a Jewish tune, a John Bell song, "Cloth in the Cradle," which speaks of weaving our individual pieces of cloth together to make a welcoming cradle prepared to receive Jesus. We're also learning a "Gloria," which we will sing as a round on Christmas eve. It is always a challenge introducing new music, especially with so many traditional familiar carols of the season. There is a soothing comfort to the familiar carols embedded in the heart.
So what's with all this singing? Who sings anymore anyway? Let me share my story. I was raised in the church. I've been singing in the church my whole life. My mother directed my church's Junior Choir. Before I was old enough to sing in that choir, I remember rolling around the sanctuary floor under the pews as a toddler during choir rehearsals. I then sang in that choir from first grade on, then with my church's adult choir from seventh grade on. I directed that adult church choir for few months my senior year in high school. My mother saw that my brothers, sister and I each attended choir camp at the Westminster Choir College in Princeton. Music was my ticket into college. At Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA, I sang in the concert concert. We toured eight countries in Europe my freshman year, and toured the Eastern United States the other three years. As a mission worker in Brazil, I led singing at worship and organized a choir. We learned and sang hymns in four part harmony a capella. I've sung in community choruses in most of communities where I've served. I've sung in Founders Hall in Hershey with Lebanon Valley College Alumni Choir and the Air Force Band of the East, in Warners Theater in Erie with the Erie Symphony, in Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City with the Choral Society of the Hamptons. In Montauk, I took on the role of pastor choir director, where I led the adult choir and worked with a couple of teenage girls who sang occasionally. It was there that I became a disciple of John Bell, a gifted Scottish musician, theologian, itinerant speaker, whose mission is to enrich worship with creativity and song, particularly congregational singing.
Congregational singing, group singing of any sort has faded in our culture. Often times at funerals and special services, I look up and see people just sitting or standing there during the hymns. People still love good music, but music that is performed by others. Whether it is praise music performed by a gifted praise band in mega churches, or the talent shows on TV, it seems to be all about performance where worshiper or audience is passive recipient. Contrary to Christian worship, at which God is the audience, and worshipers are the active participants offering our service of praise to God for God's pleasure. Such a notion is a far cry from worship in most congregations today, who have come as passive observers to be entertained. I was, however, pleasantly surprised at the singing at Prince Harry's and Megan Markle's wedding, where the royal family was shown singing the hymns with considerable gusto. I was also quite taken by the hymns selected and sung in the National Cathedral at former president George H. W. Bush's funeral. My sister commented on this to me and wondered if this would be the last presidential funeral where the great hymns of the church would be sung.
Sacred choral music is one of the greatest gifts of the church to western civilization. I'm blessed for having been nurtured in it and taught to read music. I praise God that the School of Music at our local University still teaches and performs this treasure store of music. But John Bell and I advocate that there is a dynamic to singing as a congregation, which is powerful and has greater meaning and purpose than a fine moving performance. Bell and I believe that music goes deeper than performance. It is an expression of the heart. Our deep human longing and cries for love and justice, the mysteries of God are not easily expressed in prose. People of faith from the earliest time have turned to poetry and setting that human longing to music to express oneself. African American Spirituals were born out of suffering with a vision--a promised hope of a promised land, a new day. These songs were sung in the cotton and tobacco fields as a means of survival, of keeping their wits about them, and their hope alive when their experience said otherwise.
It was John Bell who taught me to think of the congregation as the choir. He started out in ministry in small Scottish congregations with no music programs or choirs. So he transformed the congregation into a choir. He has since traveled the world gathering tunes from Africa and Latin American traditions. He has composed, taught and led what he calls "wee" songs. Such songs can be quickly learned by lining them out. The leader sings. The congregation repeats the line. The texts are simple, normally Biblical verse(s) or truth, put to song. Such songs are typically simple tunes that anyone can sing. But they can get as complex and beautiful as a diverse group of people. A simple melody can then be layered with harmony lines, sometimes undergirded with an anchoring bass line, or a percussive life giving energy to the melody, or decorated with a soaring descant, or soloist flair in dialogue with the choir. Sung repeatedly, the song becomes like a mantra prayer that works its way into the mind, heart and soul. Such songs stick in you head throughout the week. They shape our faith, embolden faith to action, and lift one's mood. They redirect the mind from the onslaught of bad news, and help keep before us God's vision of a new day dawning. So when I teach such a new song, I am trying to rewrite the script of our week, reframing our worldview from despair to hope, from hope to joy.
One of the first Christmas gifts I received from my wife, Eileen, while we were just getting to know each other, and yes, before our sensitivity to inclusive language, is a poster which said, "He who sings, prays twice!" So true. When you sing, the message comes from a deeper place. The sound produced in singing has to ride on the breath created deep in the body's diaphragm. To sing it takes energy and the support of the diaphragm at our body's core.
I've been blessed to be taught and have the ability to read music. But what I'm talking about is not music on the page but what comes out of a singer's mouth and heart. A choral director I once sang with was frustrated by the choir's unresponsiveness. We were sluggish, not following the tempo, and not singing together. He stopped us, picked up the printed score from the music stand, lifted it to his nose and snifffed it. Then held it to his ear to listen to it, and said, "This isn't music. What comes out of our mouths, out of our hearts, what we make together, is music." Great music happens when we know the music printed on the page well enough to look up, listen to each other, follow the director to play with it together as a group, and yes even dance.
Much has been said and written about how society has sunk to such low levels of trust and civility, we wonder if civil society can be redeemed. Each person hell bend on his or her own individual agenda. The Christ child came for just that, to redeem this mess of humanity. Let's sing our way with them into the new day until it is so! The practice of congregational singing will lead us back home, back to the promised land, over into campground, to the beloved community, where once independent divergent voices at odds with each other come together and create something beautiful together, to the glory of God our creator, redeemer, sustainer.
In addition to this sermon series, at Pine Island Church we have been learning a couple of new songs at worship: a candle lighting song with a Jewish tune, a John Bell song, "Cloth in the Cradle," which speaks of weaving our individual pieces of cloth together to make a welcoming cradle prepared to receive Jesus. We're also learning a "Gloria," which we will sing as a round on Christmas eve. It is always a challenge introducing new music, especially with so many traditional familiar carols of the season. There is a soothing comfort to the familiar carols embedded in the heart.
Congregational singing, group singing of any sort has faded in our culture. Often times at funerals and special services, I look up and see people just sitting or standing there during the hymns. People still love good music, but music that is performed by others. Whether it is praise music performed by a gifted praise band in mega churches, or the talent shows on TV, it seems to be all about performance where worshiper or audience is passive recipient. Contrary to Christian worship, at which God is the audience, and worshipers are the active participants offering our service of praise to God for God's pleasure. Such a notion is a far cry from worship in most congregations today, who have come as passive observers to be entertained. I was, however, pleasantly surprised at the singing at Prince Harry's and Megan Markle's wedding, where the royal family was shown singing the hymns with considerable gusto. I was also quite taken by the hymns selected and sung in the National Cathedral at former president George H. W. Bush's funeral. My sister commented on this to me and wondered if this would be the last presidential funeral where the great hymns of the church would be sung.
Sacred choral music is one of the greatest gifts of the church to western civilization. I'm blessed for having been nurtured in it and taught to read music. I praise God that the School of Music at our local University still teaches and performs this treasure store of music. But John Bell and I advocate that there is a dynamic to singing as a congregation, which is powerful and has greater meaning and purpose than a fine moving performance. Bell and I believe that music goes deeper than performance. It is an expression of the heart. Our deep human longing and cries for love and justice, the mysteries of God are not easily expressed in prose. People of faith from the earliest time have turned to poetry and setting that human longing to music to express oneself. African American Spirituals were born out of suffering with a vision--a promised hope of a promised land, a new day. These songs were sung in the cotton and tobacco fields as a means of survival, of keeping their wits about them, and their hope alive when their experience said otherwise.
It was John Bell who taught me to think of the congregation as the choir. He started out in ministry in small Scottish congregations with no music programs or choirs. So he transformed the congregation into a choir. He has since traveled the world gathering tunes from Africa and Latin American traditions. He has composed, taught and led what he calls "wee" songs. Such songs can be quickly learned by lining them out. The leader sings. The congregation repeats the line. The texts are simple, normally Biblical verse(s) or truth, put to song. Such songs are typically simple tunes that anyone can sing. But they can get as complex and beautiful as a diverse group of people. A simple melody can then be layered with harmony lines, sometimes undergirded with an anchoring bass line, or a percussive life giving energy to the melody, or decorated with a soaring descant, or soloist flair in dialogue with the choir. Sung repeatedly, the song becomes like a mantra prayer that works its way into the mind, heart and soul. Such songs stick in you head throughout the week. They shape our faith, embolden faith to action, and lift one's mood. They redirect the mind from the onslaught of bad news, and help keep before us God's vision of a new day dawning. So when I teach such a new song, I am trying to rewrite the script of our week, reframing our worldview from despair to hope, from hope to joy.
One of the first Christmas gifts I received from my wife, Eileen, while we were just getting to know each other, and yes, before our sensitivity to inclusive language, is a poster which said, "He who sings, prays twice!" So true. When you sing, the message comes from a deeper place. The sound produced in singing has to ride on the breath created deep in the body's diaphragm. To sing it takes energy and the support of the diaphragm at our body's core.
I've been blessed to be taught and have the ability to read music. But what I'm talking about is not music on the page but what comes out of a singer's mouth and heart. A choral director I once sang with was frustrated by the choir's unresponsiveness. We were sluggish, not following the tempo, and not singing together. He stopped us, picked up the printed score from the music stand, lifted it to his nose and snifffed it. Then held it to his ear to listen to it, and said, "This isn't music. What comes out of our mouths, out of our hearts, what we make together, is music." Great music happens when we know the music printed on the page well enough to look up, listen to each other, follow the director to play with it together as a group, and yes even dance.
Much has been said and written about how society has sunk to such low levels of trust and civility, we wonder if civil society can be redeemed. Each person hell bend on his or her own individual agenda. The Christ child came for just that, to redeem this mess of humanity. Let's sing our way with them into the new day until it is so! The practice of congregational singing will lead us back home, back to the promised land, over into campground, to the beloved community, where once independent divergent voices at odds with each other come together and create something beautiful together, to the glory of God our creator, redeemer, sustainer.
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