Love Songs to God
Posted on January 29th, 2010 Posted under Sermons.St. David’s United Church
Rev. Dan Chambers
January 24, 2010
Psalm 104:1-4, 10-23, 31-35
Love Songs to God
I will sing to God as long as I live;
I will sing praise to God all the days of my life.
Psalm 104:33
Introduction to the Psalm
To the ancients, the world was filled with music. In the psalms, we hear about trees that clap their hands and mountains that break into song, streams and brooks that laugh and oceans that roar. The whole world is a chorus singing of God’s greatness. The earth hums the wonder of creation.
You might have thought it a stretch when Pythagoras talked about the music of the spheres. But he’s not alone. The journalist, philanthropist and explorer, Laurens van der Post, describes a poignant scene in the Kalahari desert. He is camped there with local bushmen and they’re sitting around a campfire. Otherwise it’s very dark. No city lights, anywhere. No house lights or street lights or bridge lights. As you move away from the campfire, everything is pitch black. Except the stars. Van der Post wrote the stars hang low in the sky, their brilliance is not only seen but heard. He describes the sound of the stars as “this intense electric murmur at one’s ears.”
We are surrounded by music, even more than we know.
In a word, the world is an amazing place – thanks be to God! While all creation sings praise, while the animals sing, tweet, bark, screech, howl or grunt praise to God, we do too. We join the happy chorus. Children on the school ground singing their jump rope song as the jump rope twirls and smacks the ground sing the praise song of life: “Andy Spandy sugary candy, French almond rock; bread and butter, for your supper, all your mother’s got.”
A soccer crowd goes wild when their team scores, the cheer reaches to heaven. It’s a scream of delight and the release of tension but also an expression of the sheer beauty of the human body in motion, accomplishing something immensely difficult requiring speed, coordination, timing and strength. In the beauty of it all, we shout our “yes!” to life itself.
The Psalms are like a net of words that try to capture the range of human experience and lift it to God in song. The great 19th century hymnist, Isaac Watts, wrote,
When we read a prose psalm from the Bible, God speaks to us;
but when we sing a metrical psalm, we speak to God.
Something happens when we sing love songs to God. Something in us opens.
Hard places soften. Defenses are lowered. That’s the terrifying part. That’s what can make it difficult to say “I love you,” whether it’s to another person or to God. It makes us feel vulnerable.
Two lovers share an embrace. She whispers in his ear, “I love you.”
He says, “Thanks.”
Not the correct liturgical response.
I remember when the movie Oliver came out in the 1970’s. I haven’t seen this movie since, what, 1973? and still I remember the scene with poor Nancy and nasty Bill Sykes. She, needing a whiff of tenderness in her life, lonely and lost, tentatively asks, “Do you love me, Bill?”
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
“Why do you ask that? I sleep with you don’t I?”
My mother, sitting next to me in the theater, scoffed in disgust. At 12, I didn’t get the full impact. “Why?” I asked.
“It’s just an awful thing to say,” she replied.
Sometimes we just need to hear that we’re loved; a little reassurance. And sometimes, we just need to say it, whether it’s to another person, or to God, or to life itself. To say or sing “I love you” open us to the depth of life.
The Psalms are love songs to God, and when we sing them we’re brought into closer intimacy with the Source of all life. Singing itself is something magical. It’s more powerful than words, as it reaches deeper into the soul and offers a greater range of expression. That’s why tyrants and dictators suppress poets and musicians as well as political writers; they know the power that can be unleashed through music. That’s why Plato wrote, “Let me make the songs of the nation, and I don’t care who makes the laws.” To which someone rephrased, “I don’t mind who writes the theological books, as long as I can write the hymns.”
Music unites people in a powerful way. Unfortunately, in North America we don’t sing in public much anymore. The occasional “happy birthday,” perhaps, or maybe an evening of karaoke. The exception may happen at a rock concert. Often there’s a mass of people right in front of the stage and that’s the place to be, in the “mosh pit,” because there you have the full experience of the music. Garth Brooks did something in the early 90’s that has caught on and rock stars continue the tradition. Towards the end of a concert, as they’re singing one of their hits, they’ll take the microphone and point it to the people standing and dancing in the mosh pit, and the audience shouts out the song in unison.
The opera singer who often sings the national anthem for the Canucks home game has picked up that practice. He’ll sing, “O Canada, my home and native land, true patriot love, in all thy sons command…” then he breaks off and points the microphone at the audience who sing as robustly as if it were their favourite rock song, “with glowing hearts we see thee rise the true North strong and free…” With that gesture, he’s broken the decades old tradition of half-hearted, lukewarm singing of the national anthem. Brilliant. And in the singing, the audience has a sense of connection with their team and their country. It’s a bonding moment.
Those of you who remember the civil rights movement will no doubt remember the songs of that era and how important they were to unite a stunningly diverse group of people. But there you had it, marching on the streets of Montgomery or by the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, black people standing next to white people, Catholics and Protestants and Jews arm in arm singing, We Shall Overcome…
If you have come to Canada from another country, no doubt you have folksongs that pull on your heartstrings and awaken a sense of connection to your homeland: Jerusalem, the ‘other’ national anthem of Britain; perhaps Beethoven’s 9th from Germany; or the lovely sakura from Japan. We hear our folk music and think fondly of home.
Singing is also a lens into the soul and reveals much of who we are. I didn’t realize this when I lived and taught in Japan and people would on occasion ask me to get up and sing. I remember the first time very clearly. It was horrific. I was attending the teacher and staff party for the high school where I taught, with a room of 70-80 people, and I’d was asked to stand up front and sing a song. Now, there’s no greater nightmare for me than that. I was hugely embarrassed, and greatly intimidated and felt resentful for being treated like a circus bear.
What I didn’t realize is that this is part of their culture. Years ago, Janet and her family had a Japanese exchange student join them for Christmas dinner. As is often the case, the Japanese student was quite shy, a characteristic augmented by her struggle with conversational English. After supper one night, Janet’s dad teased her by saying, “Michiko, why don’t you sing us a song?” He had no expectation that she would do this. He only hoped to set her at ease and that she would laugh at his joke.
But she didn’t. Without hesitation, she said, “Alright. I’ll sing you a traditional Japanese song,” and there in the Gear living room, in her innocent voice she sang a song from her homeland.
Irv was deeply moved. He also felt quite chastened by her beautiful response, and so, to make the playing field more even, made his three daughters get up and sing a song.
Singing reveals something of who we are. And if that’s the case, it says something quite amazing about the people of Haiti. Did you see this in the news last week? As we received news of the massive destruction of Port au Prince, as scene after scene of a city turned to rubble and the cries of a people poured onto our TV, radio, papers and magazines, another scene was also captured. A parade of Haitians marched arm in arm down the remains of a street, singing. They sang of hope. They sang of courage. They sang as a “yes” to life even in the midst of death. They sang together as a reminder that they are not alone in their suffering and their struggle, they are not alone in their grief and their loss, they are not alone in their determination to survive.
Here in church we’re given the opportunity to do the same. Here we come together to sing our “yes” to life even in the midst of death. Here we sing for the sheer pleasure of it, we sing for joy, we sing as an act of lament and praise, we sing as a way to wrap ourselves in a cloak of courage and hope. In all this, we sing a love song to God.
I asked Bob Black, our resident drummer, if he had a hymn of the heart he’d like to lift up. He didn’t have to think long: Abide with Me, he said, quietly. “Why is this important to you, Bob?” I asked.
He remembered that it was a hymn he used to sing even as a boy back in Scotland and it reminds him of back then and back there. He also said that it reminds him of his beloved Betty.
So we’ll sing this together, as a love song to God and of a love that abides with us, even still.
