Every pastor knows that there are some things in a
congregation that should not be
tampered with! At least, every smart
pastor knows that. There are some things about a church that a pastor can’t
change drastically without expecting a lot of push-back from the congregation. One
of those things is music. Every congregation cherishes certain kinds of music;
and a pastor meddles with that at his or her own peril. After you called me as
your pastor, if I had replaced all our hymnals with new ones that didn’t
contain any of the hymns that you like to sing, you wouldn’t have been terribly
thrilled about it. If I had then installed a praise band with drums, guitars,
and tambourines to lead worship every Sunday morning, some of you might have
liked it, but the rest of you… not so much. And if I had ripped out the organ,
thrown the piano in the dumpster, and given away all our handbells… well, let’s
just say that my obituary would have run in several newspapers the following
week! Congregations don’t like it when anyone fiddles with their music! That’s
because music is a vital part of our faith experience. Music feeds us in a way
that no sermon possibly can. During a sermon, we may think about God’s ways, but when we hear music sometimes we can
almost feel them.
Music touches us in the deepest places of our soul. Many
writers have considered the effect that music has on the listeners. “After
silence,” said philosopher Aldous Huxley, “that which comes nearest to
expressing the inexpressible is music.” Writer Victor Hugo echoed this thought
when he said, “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that
which cannot remain silent.” Much more recently, J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry
Potter books, put these words into the mouth of her creation Albus Dumbledore, the
headmaster of Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: “Ah, music! A magic
far beyond all we do here!”
Yes, indeed; it does sometimes seem like music can work
magic.
Imagine a Sunday morning when you wake up grumpy and grouchy
– a “wrong side of the bed” morning if there ever was one! You drag yourself to
church, thinking all the way here that you have better things to do than waste
an hour sitting in a pew. You’re ready to endure worship on that morning
instead of participate in it.
But the first hymn is “Holy, Holy, Holy.” As that familiar hymn
offers images of heaven, cherubim and seraphim worshipping God and the saints
bowing down in praise, the music lifts you up into the presence of someone who
is far greater than we are. A sense of awe floods over you. The music has
helped you to begin an “attitude adjustment.”
The sermon is about Jesus Christ, and about his loving
presence that never leaves you, in this life or the next. Jesus was the last
thing on your mind when you got up that morning. The sermon does remind you
that Jesus is always there. But you don’t really feel Jesus’ presence until you’re singing the hymn “In the Garden”
after the sermon. You sing, “He walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells
me I am his own…” and all of a sudden, you know that Jesus is right there sitting in the pew next to
you.
The last hymn on that morning is “Stand Up, Stand Up for
Jesus.” You learned that song when you were a kid in Sunday school. It takes
you back to a time when you literally stood
up from your chairs when your class sang it, together with the teacher that
you loved so much. You’re never able to be grouchy when you sing that hymn!
The end of the story is that when you leave worship, you
feel a new sense of God’s glory, the presence of Jesus Christ in your life, and
the love of God’s Spirit that you have known for so many years in a community
of faith.
As much as I’d like to believe that an upbeat call to
worship, well-crafted prayers, and an inspiring sermon can do that for all of
you, I know better. The kind of transformation that I’ve just described usually
happens through music. And thank God for that! Music is one of the most
effective tools that God uses to speak to our hearts and to transform our
lives. God speaks to us through our minds, surely. I am the last person to
suggest that we should take our minds out of gear while we worship! But God
also speaks to us through our feelings; and one of the most effective tools for
that kind of communication with God is music! We tend not to trust our
feelings. That’s because we’ve been told over and over again that thinking is
better than feeling. After all, thinking is logical; while feelings are subject
to all kinds of whims and fancies. The trouble with that argument is that our
logic only goes so far. Logic can’t penetrate into the deep mystery that lies
at the very center of our being. Only feelings can go there. And music. It can
go there, too.
Try to remember the last time that you sang one of the great
hymns that are frequently played at funerals: “Amazing Grace,” “Rock of Ages,”
or “Abide With Me.” I don’t know about you, but those hymns always fill me with
a deep sense of peace. It’s a feeling of peace that isn’t logical. The gospels
even call it the peace “that passes all understanding.” It’s one of God’s
richest gifts. And it we most often experience it through music.
Well, I’ve talked a lot about
music. I hope that all my talking has helped you to recall some of the times
that you have felt God’s living presence through music. That’s why we have
music during our worship, after all. The hymns aren’t just for our
entertainment: the religious equivalent of a half-time band show at a football
game. No, we have up music during worship because it is one of the deepest
expressions of our hearts that we can offer up to God; and because it’s one of
the most profound ways that God can speak back to us.
And so, this morning, we celebrate music. We are grateful
for the ability to enjoy it, and for the ability to participate in it. We celebrate
the music makers, too: all those who have praised God in song, in dance, and
with instruments down throughout the centuries; and those who compose music and
write hymn lyrics so that we can make music ourselves. And we celebrate those
in our community of faith who have God-given talents for making music on behalf
of all the rest of us. They lift us up on music’s wings! And as they lift us
up, they give us a gift – the gift of touching the God who is beyond what our
minds can comprehend; the God who cannot be expressed by words; the God who
lives in the deep, mysterious places of our hearts, deeper even than words.
But not deeper than music.
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