Transfiguration Sunday 2011
Later this morning, during the eleven o’clock hour, the Furman Singers under the direction of Dr. Hugh Floyd will fill this room with glorious music as they lead in worship in this place. And when they do, they will become the successors of “Asaph and his kindred,” as 1 Chronicles 16:7 identifies the singers in Jerusalem who were appointed by King David to lead ancient Israel in the praise and worship of God.The connection between music and religion is probably as old as music and as old as religion. The book of Job suggests that music is as old as creation itself, as when God “laid the cornerstone” of “the foundation of the earth” and “the morning stars sang together” (Job 38:7). In Genesis 4, there is an ancient folk genealogy of the descendents of Adam and Eve, one of whom is named “Jubal,” “the ancestor of all those who play the lyre and the pipe” (v 21). According to Genesis 4, that is also around the time that people began to call on the name of the Lord (v 26), so even in this ancient folk genealogy, music and religion are not too far apart.
From Genesis to Revelation, the verb “to sing” and the noun “song” occur nearly 250 times. Four of those nearly 250 times are in this morning’s Old Testament lesson from 1 Chronicles 16. The job of “singing praises to the Lord” belonged to Asaph and his kindred, according to verse 7. “Sing” to the Lord, and “Sing praises” to God, says verse 9. And “the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord,” says verse 33. It’s a singing-full chapter, actually. “Sing to the Lord, all the earth,” says v 23; and verses 41-42 point out that that those who were chosen and appointed “to render thanks to the Lord. . . . had with them trumpets and cymbals for the music, and instruments for sacred song.” There were harps and lyres also, according to verse 5. There was a whole lot of music going on in the worship that David appointed in Jerusalem.
Not everyone is enamored with music in worship, however. Back in August of 2001, members of the First Baptist diaconate gathered in the Fellowship Hall for an ice-cream social and to share their “Hopes and Dreams” for this congregation. One person at the table at which I was sitting talked about his hopes and dreams for the music ministry at First Baptist, because that was the most important part of the church to him; it was the music that drew him here and the music that kept him here, he said. Three or four persons later, around the table, it was another deacon’s time to speak, and this one said something like this: “You mentioned the music. I have to tell you that if we only sang two verses of two hymns every Sunday morning, and that’s all the music there was, that would be more than enough music for me.” Ah, the “perspectival diversity” of the congregation of First Baptist Greenville! What some of us are most passionate about, others of us can do without entirely!
Listen to what the great Christian thinker and writer C.S. Lewis said about going to church and singing hymns. “My own experience is that when I first became a Christian . . . I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls; and then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag; and, of course, I found that this meant being a target. It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to Church. It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to Church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house. If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament, and you can’t do it without going to Church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit” (God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, pp. 61-62).
Lewis never changed his opinion of the literary and musical qualities of church music—he always went to the earliest Sunday morning service at the Anglican church he attended in Oxford in order to avoid the music of the later services. But he admits that he came to recognize “the devotion and benefit” of those “fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music.” (By the way, if you stay for 11:00 worship this morning, you will hear the Furman Singers offer first-rate poems by e.e. cummings and John Donne and Christina Rosetti set to first-rate music. C. S. Lewis never had it that good where he went to church in Oxford.) It was in the music that Lewis detested that he discovered the devotion of the “old saint” whose boots he was not “fit to clean.” Music creates that kind of community. Music awakens that kind of harmony. Even for those of us who are not overly fond of it, music draws us out of the dissonance of our solitary conceits into the consonance of the body of Christ, the communion of saints, the cohort of foot-washers, one of another.
In verses 9-10 of 1 Chronicles 16, “singing” to the Lord is connected to “seeking” the strength and presence of the Lord. Many of you know Kyle Matthews’ song “Sing Down” about the Civil Rights-era march from Selma to Montgomery: “The men held hands just to keep from runnin’ as the buckshot whistled past their ears. They had no choice but to raise their voices so the marchin’ songs were all that they could hear. They tried to sing down the dark clouds, choke back the fear; tried to sing down their anger over all the lost years. Tried to sing down the one sound that was most loud and clear: the silence of good people ringing in their ears.” That’s a song about seeking strength and presence in singing that overcomes dissonance and danger by unifying people for whom being committed to a common cause made them a target.
Even for those of us who cannot or will not sing, the singing of the congregation and seeking the strength and presence of the Lord go hand-in-hand. So those of us who can sing and do sing are not singing for ourselves alone. We are singing also for those who cannot or will not, just as the old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew was singing for C. S. Lewis when he could not or would not sing. Those who sing, sing for all for the strength and presence of the Lord.
Singing, seeking, and remembering, according to verse 12. Did you know that clinical studies of Alzheimer’s patients have shown that music can enhance memory recall and improve learning? Those studies have shown that music leads to positive changes in mood and emotional states in Alzheimer’s patients and increased awareness of self and others and the surrounding environment, which can be accompanied by increased emotional intimacy and social interaction with spouses and families and caregivers.
The esteemed neurologist and psychiatrist Dr. Oliver Sacks commented before a Senate Special Committee on Aging, “The power of music very remarkable. . . . One sees Parkinsonian patients unable to walk, but able to dance perfectly well or patients almost unable to talk, who are able to sing perfectly well.” The power of music is very remarkable, indeed. “The wife of a man with severe dementia said, “When I was encouraged by a music therapist to sing to my husband who had been lost in the fog of Alzheimer’s disease for so many years, he looked at me and seemed to recognize me. On the last day of his life, he opened his eyes and looked into mine when I sang his favorite hymn. I’ll always treasure that last moment we shared together. Music therapy gave me that memory, the gift I will never forget” (http://www.musictherapy.org/).
Our singing the praise of God and the glory of God and the works of God and the goodness of God and the steadfast love of God creates memories for the future the shape of which we do not yet know, and it re-calls memories of the past in the present that sustain us in God and with God. The power of music is very remarkable: singing, seeking, and remembering.
This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.
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