The Lord is My Song
Preacher: Tim Jenkins (+ The Rev. Andrew Van Kirk)
Passage: Psalm 66:1-8
Series: Resources of the Church
It says in your bulletin that the Rev’d Deacon Logan Hurst is preaching. I am not he. When Logan’s wife Liz came down with COVID earlier in the week, we realized that putting all our eggs in the Logan preaching basket was going to run the risk of us having an empty preaching basket. So this week’s sermon ended up falling to Father Andrew. And then, when later in the week, Father Andrew’s wife coincidentally tested positive for COVID, this week’s sermon fell to me.
Now, the good news for me was, while Logan was merely scheduled to preach, Father Andrew had actually written a sermon by the time he had to isolate. So this sermon has turned into a bit of a group project. If there is something in it you don’t like, you can feel pretty confident that Father Andrew wrote it. And if there is something really profound that you hear this morning, well, that is also probably Father Andrew. But, I digress.
Today we’re beginning a summer sermon series that’s focused on the resources of the Church to support our individual spiritual lives. Today’s sermon is on music. Next week we’ll talk about blessing (What is it? Why do we do it? What does it mean?). Then we’ll talk about the Offices (and if you don’t know what that even means, you’ll learn). And finally we’ll talk about the prayers; not prayer generally but the prayers that are specific to our Prayer Book tradition. Music, blessing, offices, and prayers; today is music.
Now, this may come as a bit of a surprise, considering that I am one of the people who is typically asking the congregation, week after week, to stand and sing, but my aim in this sermon is not to convince you to sing. Instead I want to convince you that the music of the church is a resource for your spiritual life, even if you persistently rebuff my invitations to join the Praise Band or kind of just look around while everyone is singing.
The non-singers actually have this tid-bit going for them: the gospels themselves rarely mention music. Jesus mentions music in the parable of the Prodigal Son, and there’s the line about kids playing flutes in the marketplace — but there’s precious little music in the gospels. Paul and Silas sing in Acts; Paul writes of ‘spiritual songs’ in his letters (and probably quotes them); there’s lots of music in Revelation. But though we know Jesus must have sung, it’s only mentioned once.
So, rather than a gospel, our scriptural text today is Psalm 66, the Psalm we read together. It begins like this:
Be joyful in God, all you lands;
sing the glory of his Name;
sing the glory of his praise.
Note the imperative sense of the verb ‘sing.’ That means you should do it.
Ok. Ok. I’ll let it go.
This is one of many Psalms that is self-referential. Like our opening hymns today (“O for a thousand tongues to sing” / “When in our music God is glorified”), Psalm 66 is a song that refers to singing. There is a whole hymnal in our Bible — that’s what the Psalter is — but not all of them reflect on the reasons for singing like this.
The part of the Psalm we have explains why we should sing. Verse 2: “Say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds!’” Verse 4: “Come now and see the works of God, how wonderful he is in doing towards all people.” Verse 5 refers to the crossing of the Red Sea in the Exodus; the dramatic, freedom-giving, nation-making act of God. Verse 6 has God the ruler of nations; verse 7 is another exhortation; then verse 8 is more personal — this God of power, the one over all the nations, also “holds our souls in life, and will not allow our feet to slip.” The basic framework for the song is that God is a God of power and great deeds, and by singing we identify and celebrate him.
Verse 8 is not actually the end of the Psalm. Would you pull out that red Book of Common Prayer below the seat of the chair in front of you, and turn to page 674. [If you’re online this morning, grab your copy of The Book of Common Prayer or even a Bible and turn to Psalm 66.] Psalm 66 actually begins on page 673, but the part I want you to see is on the following pages, 674 and 675.
Psalm 66 actually consists of two parts. We read most of the first part together. This first part is a corporate song; it was — in its original use in the Temple in Jerusalem thousands of years ago — to be sung by the choir or the whole congregation. I don’t want to get bogged down in the historical reconstructions of post-exilic Second Temple music; just look at the pronouns: our, us — this part was congregational music.
In our prayer book there is a little white space between verses 11 and 12. And then verse 12 begins: “I will…” Whoa. That’s different; it’s not “We will…” The plural has changed to a singular. Scholars believe this second part of the Psalm would have been chanted by an individual making their offering at the Temple. The corporate, congregational song first; the individual solo second.
It’s as if the individual part is a variation on a theme; a sort of reworking of the melody of the first part for an individual. This was probably narrowly true in the musical sense; the individual’s chant follows the same meter and rhythm of the choir’s chant.
But I don’t mean it just narrowly; I mean it broadly too. What’s true musically is true spiritually: the music of the people of God sets the tone, provides a framework, defines a melody by which the person of God understands and responds to God’s work in his or her life.
Rather than God’s doings towards “all people” in verse 4, it’s “what he has done for me” in verse 14. Rather than “holding our souls in life” in verse 8, God has “attended to the voice of my prayer” and “not withheld his love from me” in verse 17 and 18.
Verses 1-11, the congregational music of the people of God singing about their corporate experience of God — sets the framework for the individual experience of God. The song of the people of God (verses 1-11), becomes the basis for the song of the person of God (verses 12-18).
The music of the church — our hymns, praise songs, canons, rounds, even that VBS CD that your kids can’t get enough of — that music is the verses 1-11 of the Christian life. The framework it makes, the spiritual melody it writes, is the story of Jesus Christ. The story of God’s love, forgiveness, sacrifice; the story of new life. And it will teach us, if we will but let it, how to sing our equivalent of verses 12-18. It will teach us how to make sense of God’s work in our life; how to see it; share it; praise it; witness to it. Sing it.
The third verse of “O for a thousand tongues to sing” is “Jesus! the Name that charms our fears and bids our sorrows cease.” That’s not just description; it is prescriptive — it tells us where to find Jesus, where to look for him and praise him in life.
That music works this way is Biblical — you can see it, right there, splayed across pages 674 and 675. You can also put your prayer book away now.
I want to close with two reflections on the particular quality of music to tell the story of God’s love, human sin, Christ’s grace and peace. The first is that music — both words and instruments — often is far closer to perfect than the people that wrote it.
Now, in Father Andrew’s original sermon, he, at this point, would tell you about the Dinka language service, which was made up of refugees from South Sudan, that he regularly served while serving the Church of the Ascension in Dallas. That is his story, and I was prepared to just read it to you this morning, but last night, as I was preparing for this morning, it occurred to me that I could make the same point by telling you about Horatio Spafford.
Horatio Spafford, his story, and the hymn he penned, are things I think about often. His hymn is not in our hymnal, but maybe you’ve heard it: “It Is Well with My Soul” It is a beautiful hymn, with a tragic story.
On November 22, 1873, Horatio’s wife and 4 daughters were mid-voyage, crossing the Atlantic on the steamship, when it was hit by another ship. Two hundred and twenty-six people were lost in this collision, including all 4 of Horatio’s daughters. His wife eventually informed him of this tragedy with a telegram: “Saved alone.”
Shortly afterwards, as Spafford traveled to meet his grieving wife, he was inspired to write “It Is Well with My Soul” as his ship passed near where his daughters had died. He wrote:
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
This is an incredible story, and this is usually where people stop when they tell the story. There is a part that gets left out, which is, after some years and more tragedy, Horatio Spafford would go on to form a cult, which is not very pious of him, and kind of kills the mood when you’re introducing the song in worship.
And yet the hymn itself is truer than the person who wrote it. This ends up being true often with these songs. It’s why in Father Andrew’s story that the sisters and brothers from Nigeria and Sudan would sing the hymns that were brought to their countries by the British Empire; the music was more noble, more true, more perfect, than its authors.
We see this same thing, incidentally, in our national music: which is always better, closer to the ideal, than the national life being lived out at any one moment. Music reminds us of our aspirations and ideals, even when we fail to meet them.
The second thing is that music tells the truth of our faith in a way words alone never can. I hate to admit this. I have a degree in Biblical Studies AND Preaching. For me, this thing I’m doing, it’s how I get dialed in at church, but that’s not true for everyone. People like my wife, it probably won’t surprise you, connect far greater to the music of a service than the preaching. I get it.
There is a quote I think about a lot, by a man named Yip Harburg. You may not have heard his name before, although I am pretty sure you’ve heard of at least one of the songs he wrote. Yip Harburg wrote the lyrics to “Over the Rainbow.” He once said, “Words make you think thoughts, music makes you feel a feeling, but a song makes you feel a thought.” Music undoubtedly makes us receptive to the movement of our heart — yes, even to the Spirit — in a way that nothing else can.
Beyond the hour or so you spend within these walls each Sunday, there are lots of opportunities to let the music of the Church shape the melody of your life, lots of chances to make you “feel thoughts.” Or I guess you could let Drake and Doja Cat and Walker Hayes, he’s the guy that wrote that song about Applebee’s being fancy, you could let those people write you a melody.
And, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Christians should listen to only Christian music; there’s a lot of Christian music too that isn’t worth listening to, but I do think Christians should be intentional about the sort of music that they let shape their stories of love and hurt, forgiveness and hope. For those are things of God; that’s a melody to let Jesus play.
I mentioned earlier, in defense of the non-singers, that Jesus doesn’t do a lot of singing in the gospels. It’s true. No one is breaking into song. This is not Jesus Christ Superstar.
But, there is this one time. After the Last Supper, Mark 14:26 says this: “When [Jesus and his disciples] had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” Immediately before he went out to face his arrest, torture, and death, Jesus sang a hymn. He relied on the music of the people of God in his darkest hour.
That hymn was likely Psalm 118. Which contains this line, “The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” “The LORD is…my song, and he has become my salvation.” Jesus sang those words. That song, those lyrics gave him the strength to suffer on our behalf, to die for us, and rise again. That’s a pretty good reason to let the music of the Church, music about Christ and our salvation, play on in our hearts.
Amen.