“A New Dimension in the World of Sound”

Our reading today comes from Psalm 98:

Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth;

       break forth into joyous song and sing praises.

     Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre,

       with the lyre and the sound of melody.

#1 (breaking in) I just love the lyre, and doesn’t everyone? When I think of worship, I think of the lyre. It is simply – classic. Classic and true, faithful worship. This is what I say: Give me that old time religion!

Ahem, If I may continue….

     With trumpets and the sound of the horn

       make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD.

               #2 (breaking in) Now that is what I call music! Trumpets, horns, let’s come into the Bronze Age, and it is about time!  Really, who listens to the lyre anymore anyway?  Can you name one person who drives around in their chariot these days with lyre music on their radio?  What we need is contemporary music to appeal to the younger generations! 

#1   Oh, pleeze! Next thing you know you will be demanding that we get rid of the old hymnal and get a new one! As if Psalms 1 to 63 don’t say it all!

#2   Now that you mention it, we do need to sing some of the more up to date psalms, particularly those written after good old King David finally put down his lyre for the last time!  I think if we had a little bit more of the Songs of Songs and its love ballads we’d get a lot more teens in here!

#1 Lyre!

#2 Trumpets!

Enough!  I say let all creation get a turn in making our music!

⁷    Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;

       the world and those who live in it.

⁸    Let the floods clap their hands;

       let the hills sing together for joy

⁹    at the presence of the LORD, for he is coming

       to judge the earth.

     He will judge the world with righteousness,

            and the peoples with equity.

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            In the Book of Ecclesiastes, we read that there is nothing new under the sun, and never is this more true than when it comes to disagreements about whether and what kinds of music we should have in our worship services. 

            We just had some fun with Psalm 98, imagining as we read it that the worshippers in the temple in Jerusalem were having their own arguments about what instruments were proper for the worship of God, about what songs were appropriate for religious services. We don’t know whether there were such arguments way back then, but given that those sort of disagreements have periodically characterized the Christian community over the past two millenia, it seems likely that they had similar discussions.

Did you, know for instance, that congregational singing did not exist until Martin Luther introduced it in the 16^th century? Prior to that, singing was reserved to choirs of those in the religious order, monks and nuns. And you will recall that when the founders came over here from England, the singing in worship was unaccompanied by instruments, and what was sung was limited to the psalms. The cantor would “line” a phrase from one of the psalms – sing it out – and then the congregation would sing it back in the same fashion; and then onto the next phrase, and the next, and so on.

            And than along came Isaac Watts, often called the “Father of English Hymnody.” Watts led the way in the inclusion of “original songs of Christian experience”, that is, poetry based not on the psalms or other paraphrased texts from the Bible, but on emotional subjectivity – on  the believer’s experience of their faith. Such as “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”, published first in 1707. It caused an uproar.  The same reaction has periodically attended the release of new hymnals, such as revised versions of The Pilgrim Hymnal, which we have in our pews, and the wave of inclusive language hymnals that came into being in the 1990s. Not to mention the controversy around doing away with hymnals altogether, as many of the larger churches have done, with canned music and the words scrolled out on large projection screens.

As to instruments in worship, the pump organ was not introduced into American churches until the late 19^th century; the piano first being included as late as 1910; and of course the guitar coming on the scene in the 1960’s.

So pity the poor church Music Director these days.  Our pews are filled with folk who came of age during the heyday of traditional organ music, folk who sing out lustily when accompanied by the rich and varied tones of a magnificent pipe organ, folk for whom worship is just not really worship unless it concludes with a toccata by Bach or a fugue by Buxtehude. And our pews are filled with folk, often the younger generations, who may never have heard a pipe organ before, who have never listened to a classical music station or attended a symphony, and who find the sound alien and strange – but folk who love and appreciate the sound of a piano or guitar.  And beyond the folk we have in here, we have all the folk out there who we hope will want to join us, many of whom don’t know anything at all about music for worship, or congregational singing.

The poor church Music Director these days knows that no one style of music is inherently good or evil, faithful or not appropriate for the worship of God. She knows that what is important is that it edify and be fitting for our cultural context. So, in the face of these conflicting musical backgrounds, tastes, and preferences, what does she do?

What she does is what our Music Director, Donna Murphy, does. What the search committee who asked Donna to come here asked her to do. Which is try her best to keep us all happy, realizing that it is likely that folk who like just one style or another are bound at times to be less than perfectly satisfied.

So at times the choir will be upstairs in the balcony, singing their hearts out to the accompaniment of our magnificent Mander pipe organ, and at other times they will be down here on the floor of the Meeting House, singing a spiritual or jazzy number that was made to be accompanied by the piano.

And on one Sunday we will have that magnificent classical postlude, and on another, a simpler, more meditative piece on the studio grand.

And often we will have both on the same day, and Donna will do her best to move quietly from one instrument to the other, since so far we have been unable to figure out how to install a transporter beam in here. 

Our Music Director works hard to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, to paraphrase Psalm 98, and to help us all make a joyful noise as well. And so it is up to us, with all our differing musical tastes and preferences and backgrounds, to do our part.

It is up to us to figure out if we cannot find a way to worship God together not only when the musical offerings are just what we love, but also when they are just not what we would have chosen had we had our own personal preference.  

When we say to ourselves, “I think I will stay home this Sunday because the music is not to my liking”, it is up to us to remember that we come here not to a concert hall, but to God’s sanctuary; not to be entertained, but to worship together; not because it is about me and what I want, but about God and God’s desire that we together raise our voices in praise.

When one shouts “Lyre” and the other responds “Trumpet!”; when one proclaims “the Red Hymnal!” and the other responds “No, the Green!”; when one says “tomato” and the other says “to-mah-to”; let us remember these words from the hymn we are about to sing together:

 “Let every instrument be tuned for praise! Let all rejoice who have a voice to raise! And may God give us faith to sing always, ‘Alleluia!’”.

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