12 Therefore, as God’s choice, holy and loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 13 Be tolerant with each other and, if someone has a complaint against anyone, forgive each other. As the Lord forgave you, so also forgive each other. 14 And over all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. 15 The peace of Christ must control your hearts—a peace into which you were called in one body. And be thankful people. 16 The word of Christ must live in you richly. Teach and warn each other with all wisdom by singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing to God with gratitude in your hearts. 17 Whatever you do, whether in speech or action, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus and give thanks to God the Father through him. (Common English Bible)
“Adventures in Churchland: A Visitor’s
Experience of Mainline Worship,” Week Two
The
Swedish town of Lulea sits in Lapland, on the northern coast just below the
Arctic circle. Population-wise, it is
about the size of Longview and Kelso combined, and like us, they boast a
community orchestra. Every year during
concert season, you can travel to their auditorium, buy a ticket, sit down, and
listen to them play, and if the online recordings of their soloists are any
indication, there is a lot of talent in this group.
But
it is also unlike any symphony or band you might ever have gone to see play…because
all of their instruments, to a one, are made almost entirely out of ice. It means that the auditorium is, essentially,
an igloo, and instead of gowns and tuxedos, the musicians wear parkas and
scarves. And it means the instruments
melt in springtime and are carved anew every autumn by an American ex-pat
sculptor. And he’ll tell you all about
how people view ice instruments as straining the very bounds of their credulity—after
all, how could you potentially coax any kind of decent sound from such a
concoction?—only to attend a performance and see, and hear, and realize that
the constant maintenance (the instruments must be tuned anew after every song,
such is the effect that the performer’s and audience’s breath has on them) is
entirely worth it. This is a powerful
form of art—even if the violins must be suspended by strings from the ceiling
in order to avoid having their performers hold them to their warm-blooded
shoulders and chins.
And
above the etherealness of sound vibrating off of ice, you could probably hear
the objections of a particularly cantankerous, Sam the Eagle-type of character,
muttering to his seatmates, “This just isn’t the way music used to be played!” Which, of course, misses the point entirely.
This
is a sermon series that will take us all the way up to Ash Wednesday and the
beginning of the church season of Lent.
And this is a series about something that may or may not be new in the
slightest to us: Sunday worship. For
those of us who were born and raised in the church and have lived in the church
our entire lives, worship may be second nature to us by this point: some tunes,
some prayers, some preachin’, some bread and juice, and it’s off to Sunday
brunch. But for those of us for whom
church is an entirely new experience, this may all come across as one tin-foil
hat away from something utterly bizarre to you.
I think I can safely say that after reading Dan Kimball’s 2013 book,
“Adventures in Churchland,” in which at one point he conveys, in vivid detail,
his initial worship experience at a church that I instantly recognized as a
mainline Protestant church—a church like ours with a pastor in robes and an
organ in the sanctuary and the serving of communion—none of which are typical
trappings in many evangelical churches.
And Dan, having come in off the street, was both bemused and confused by
everything this church did as a part of its worship…but we do some of the exact
same things, and so it stands to reason that perhaps our worship is confusing
for newcomers as well. So, the point of
this sermon series is to not only explain why we worship the way we do, but
hopefully to equip you to do the same when other folks ask you why we worship
the way we do! Last week, we began by
simply talking about where we worship—our sanctuary, the church building. This week, we begin to talk about the order
of worship itself, specifically music, as Dan’s account continues:
The people at this gathering were solemn
and serious. Everyone kept their voices
to a whisper. I found myself staring at
the carpet. It was this orange-red
color, and they must have recently had it cleaned, because it had a strong
chemical odor. After staring at the
carpet for several minutes, the combination of the color, the odor, the
whispers, and the depressing sound of the organ left me feeling a bit
light-headed. And then it began.
But
I also want to offer up a passage from later in his book, where he talks about
worship music:
I was once given a copy of a letter that
was written by a church member to a music leader in the church who was trying to
change the musical style of the worship service. It read, “I am no music scholar, but I feel I
know appropriate church music when I hear it.
Last Sunday’s new hymn—if you can call it that—sounded like a sentimental
love ballad one would expect to hear crooned in a saloon. If you insist on exposing us to rubbish like
this—in God’s house!—don’t be surprised if many of the faithful look for a new
place to worship. The hymns we grew up
with are all we need.”
You might assume that this letter was
written recently, but the irony is that it was written in 1863, and the song
this person was so concerned about was the hymn “Just As I Am.” Today, that hymn is considered a classic and
is sung in many different churches around the world. Yet when it was introduced into the church,
people were upset. It was different, a
change from what they normally sang.
Sadly, the person writing this letter…felt threatened by change.
So
let’s talk about worship music for a little bit today. Paul, in this passage of his letter to the
Colossians, makes it abundantly clear that worship music—psalms—have an
important place not just in the communal church life (ie, the entire assembly
at Colossus who would be listening to someone read Paul’s letter aloud to
them), but in the spiritual life of their homes and families as well, because
right after this passage, Paul begins giving instructions to married couples
and families (I exercised editorial control here by stopping at verse 17…my
sermon on verse 18, “Wives, obey your husbands,” would take a very different
tack to say the least…). Keep in mind as
well that right *before* this passage, Paul emphasizes the universality of the
church by repeating a common refrain that we see elsewhere in his letters: that
in Christ (or, in this case in Colossians, in the imago dei, the image of God), there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave
nor free, for Christ is in all things and in all people.
So…what
if Christ were in all styles of music, too?
I don’t mean *every* song—you will face an uphill battle trying to
convince me that Christ is in, say, “The Thong Song” or “Hips Don’t Lie.” But whatever genre of music, be it classical
hymns or rock and roll or jazz or rap, all of it has the equal capacity to bear
the message, image, and love of Christ.
Which
makes it all the more painful when we complain about how any given church does
music. Now, I’ll be the first to admit
that contemporary Christian music went through the freaking Dark Ages of music
composition during the 1990s, when every song was the same, about God’s love
for them or their love for God (while important, there seriously is way more to
sing about than God’s love. God’s
relationship with us cannot be reduced to a single dimension). Nowadays, Christian music artists compose
their music on a variety of topics, with a variety of influences.
And
that is probably the way it should be, especially if we remember that refrain
of Paul’s—in Christ, there is no Jew or Greek.
Well…music is in no small way a product of one’s culture, and so it
stands to reason that if in Christ there are all cultures (that is to say, in
Paul’s dichotomy, both Jewish and Gentile cultures alike), then so too in
Christ there are all forms of music.
Which
means, honestly, that we ought not to be, as this congregant from 1863 was,
adamantly frightened of new forms of worship music. The first part of that is because I really,
truly do feel like fear is the antithesis of faith, far more so than doubt
is. Doubt can sharpen a person’s faith
by causing them to wrestle with their beliefs, and beliefs that are hard-won
are, I think, far more durable than beliefs that are simply spoon-fed to
us. But fear prevents us from acting or
changing whereas faith is all about us acting and changing—and acting after we
have been changed by God’s transformative, earth-quaking, life-shaking grace.
And
the second part of that is that while God may be unchanging, we, His children,
emphatically are always changing, which means that our means to express and
communicate the Gospel must be ever-changing as well if the church is to remain
effective as the bearer of that message.
This
is why, really, I rather like the setup we have with our praise team—not simply
because they’re incredibly generous with their time as an all-volunteer band
and are extremely dedicated to their ministry for us—but because I can say from
firsthand experience how highly they prioritize searching out and trying out
new music on a regular basis. To be
honest, it is not something you usually see in churches that rely on hymnals—even
if you bring in special music once in a while, the hymnal is conducive to an
attitude of “all our songs are in this book.”
It arbitrarily limits the repertoire of a community’s musical praise of
God to two bookends.
That
does not mean that hymnals should not be used, or that they do not have a place
in the church—there is a reason why we always use them when our praise team
needs a Sunday off: I’m a big believer in experiencing a change of pace to our
usual style now because the last thing any church wants to do, but often still
does despite itself, is to get into a rut.
After
all, Paul doesn’t exhort us to sing only psalms, or only hymns, or only
spirituals—he calls us to sing all of them.
So as we sing hymns, we also sing psalms in the form of many of our
praise songs whose lyrics are rooted in the verses of the Psalms—if you don’t believe
me that our praise team is learning spirituals, all the more reason to come to
their Saturday jam sessions!
“Psalms,
hymns, and spirituals” is Paul’s musical equivalent of “neither Jew nor Greek.” It is meant to be encompassing. So, too, then, must our praise for God. It cannot, and must not, be delivered only
one way, or with only one instrument. We
are praising a Somebody who is universal, so our praise for Him should follow
suit. It means that if we are in Hawaii,
we should be thrilled to sing “Amazing Grace” accompanied by a ukulele, and
that if we are in sub-arctic Sweden, we should be exciting about singing “Just
As I Am” backed by a string quartet carved out of ice! Because, in the end, the same language is
spoken: the language of the glory of God.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview,
Washington
February
2, 2014
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