Sermon Archive

Says the Bible: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

And says the 18th-century playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Is not music the food of love?” (The Rivals [1775], Act 2, scene 1)

Yes, through music, our love for God is both nurtured and expressed. So the ancient psalmist says: “O sing to the Lord a new song.…Make a joyful noise to the Lord…”

Our congregation has a rich tradition of singing to the Lord, of making a joyful noise, and today we celebrate those who by leading us in music have nourished our souls and helped us offer love to God.

The 18th-century poet Alexander Pope once observed that “…some to church repair, not for doctrine, but the music there…” (Essay on Criticism, pt. 2, l. 142)

And I know for sure that some of you, perhaps many of you, do prefer anthems to sermons—well, maybe even most of you do! Indeed, I bet many of you would be inclined to say to me right now, “OK, Shafer. Stop talking about music, and let the choir do music.” But I need to say this about that. Today is a day for celebrating the choir, not a day for making them work a lot harder.

How comes it that music has such power to express love for God and to uplift, transform, refresh, and recreate human hearts and souls? How comes it that music possesses such great power for love and uplift that many hospices caring for people in their dying days have on staff a music therapist? I’ll never forget the young woman who ministered to my mother during the last, comatose days of her life, by playing musical tapes and singing songs to her, on the assumption that hearing would be the last sense through which my mother would experience the outside world as she slipped toward death. The last sense.

And many experts believe that hearing is also the very first sense through which fetuses in the womb experience the outside world, as we develop toward birth hearing the voice—yes, even the singing—of our mother and of others.

At the beginning of life, there is sound. And at the end of life, there is sound. Sound is both primal and final. Hearing is indeed the most basic of all our senses. And for most of us, it marks the boundaries, the beginning and the end, of our life on earth.

This is the phenomenon, I believe, that lies at the root of sound’s God-given power to create and recreate the human heart and soul. And the most exquisite forms of sound—those best able to nurture and heal and transfigure—the most exquisite forms of sound we call music.

In the beginning, there is sound. Genesis is the book in the Bible that describes beginnings. And the very first chapter describes God as creating everything that is through vibrations of sound: “And God said, ‘Let there be…,’ and there was…” (1:3, 6f, 9, 14f, 20, 24, 26) Then, in the fourth chapter (vv. 20–22), Genesis describes the birth of some of our primordial ancestors who pioneered certain of the fundamental skills needed for living—Tubal-Cain, the first maker of metal tools, Jabal, the first breeder of livestock, and Jubal, the first player of music. That making music is here mentioned in the company of such essential life-skills as breeding cattle and smithing shows just how essential to existence ancient Israel considered music to be.

So we should not be surprised that when King David founded Israel’s first shrine to God in Jerusalem, he also established there a guild of musicians to serve as choir and orchestra in a professional ministry of music to God. (1 Chron. 25:1–8) A later tradition, found in the Talmud of Judaism (Hullin 24b), states that the musical training of a temple singer took no fewer than five years.

The Psalms are a sample of the texts sung by these singers in the Jerusalem temple. Sadly, we have no idea of the musical score accompanying them, but rubrics imbedded in the Psalms offer examples of instructions furnished to the choirmasters about style, tone, instrumentation, cues, and even tunes.

Now it is not only Jews who are born singing. Christians are as well. Christian liturgy has at all times and in almost all places sung.

And through the ages making a joyful noise has served Christians well, first by awakening deeper meanings and second by inducing stronger feelings—doing these through tempo, pitch, volume, melody, harmony, and rhythm. Deeper meanings; stronger feelings. Yes, music is at once both cerebral and somatic.

Singing awakens deeper meaning in a text by requiring us to focus in a more concentrated fashion on the words and by offering us such interpretive media as rhythm and melody. And singing induces stronger feelings within us by leading us to explore in our bodies the resonance of music at levels deeper and more physical than just consciousness or will.

We’ve all experienced coming to worship filled with doubts and depression. And we’ve all experienced the power of music to buttress our faith and lift our spirits.

I invite you to experience with me now, for example, how music can awaken deeper meaning in the text of our First Lesson, Psalm 98, and how music can induce in us a stronger sense of the central emotion in this text—joy. Listen first to my reading of Psalm 98:4–9.

4 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.
5 Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
6 With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD.
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.
The Lord will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.

Now experience what happens when first a skilled hymn writer, Isaac Watts, takes these verses from Psalm 98 and recasts them in light of his Christian belief that Jesus is the Lord spoken of in Ps. 98; and experience what happens when next Watts’s words are set to an equally great piece of music, one adapted by the American choirmaster Lowell Mason from phrases in two tunes by George Frederick Handel. Please stand with me, and let’s sing together Hymn #40 [“Joy to the World”], a Christian version of Psalm 98. Let’s sing together the first 2 verses of Hymn #40.

I think you will agree that this hymn both unveils deeper levels of meaning in the text of the psalm and also leads us to a fuller, more visceral experience of joy than does the reading of the psalm alone.

At the beginning of life, there is sound. And at the end of life, there is sound.

Just as Genesis is the first book in the Bible, Revelation is the last. And just as Genesis is a book about the beginning of time, Revelation is a book about the ending of time. The fourth chapter of Revelation describes the sounds that are created in heaven as the beings gathered around the throne of God offer their song of love and praise.

Again, I invite you to experience with me how music can awaken deeper meaning in this text from the Book of Revelation, and how music can induce in us a stronger sense of the central emotions in this text—awe and wonder. Listen first as I read from Revelation 4:6a, 8–10:

6a …in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass,
like crystal. Around the throne … are four living creatures …
8 each of them with six wings, [and] full of eyes all around and inside. Day and night without ceasing they sing,
“Holy, holy, holy,
the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come.”
9 And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne…
10 the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne and sing.

Now experience what happens when first the hymn writer, Reginald Heber, takes these verses from Revelation 4 and recasts them poetically; and when next John Bacchus Dykes composes a great tune for Heber’s words. Please stand with me to sing Hymn #138, a hymnic version of Revelation 4 [“Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!”]. Let’s sing the first 2 verses of Hymn #138. [Pause after singing the first verse, and say:] And now listen to what the choir as our leader in the beauty and power of music can do to make our experience of this text even more glorious! Verse 2. [Sing the 2nd verse with descant.]

I think you will agree that this hymn both unveils deeper levels of meaning in the text of Revelation and also leads us to a fuller, more visceral experience of awe and wonder than does reading the passage alone.

The early Christian theologian Augustine once argued that to sing is to pray twice. I take him to have meant by that that to sing is to communicate with God twice as fully. And I believe Augustine is correct.

For music enables us to worship God and to express our love for God with more of ourselves—with our heart and soul and strength as well as our mind.

Music is a gift from God that leads to fuller communion with God. For music has the power to unloose and emancipate energies from deep within us so that we may soar into the realm of transcendence where earthly sorrow and grief are transfigured.

Music is a gift to us of joy and delight, a gift with which God graces creation from the beginning of time to its ending.

Thanks be to our choir for sharing with us the gift of God’s music and for leading us in offering our own joyful noise, our own songs of love and praise to God.

Let us pray: