CYBERCOLUMN: Can we keep from singing?_younger_60903

Posted 6/07/03

CYBERCOLUMN:
Can we keep from singing?

By Brett Younger

The persistent demand throughout the Bible that we sing may at first seem cruel to those of us whose musical gifts do not fill the buckets in which we cannot carry a tune. The cacophonous among us have learned to sing off-key at a volume that doesn't draw attention with a rhythm that only we recognize.

Fortunately for the disharmonious, singing—;at least the kind of singing described in Scripture—;has little to do with quality of voice and everything to do with openness of spirit. The tone deaf in Ephesus were glad to hear the Apostle Paul say their “singing and making melody to God” was to take place “in their hearts.” It's comforting for some of us to know that singing is not about what gets to the ear, so much as it is about what penetrates our souls. Maybe every now and then, just to make that clear, pastors should sing solos. Or maybe not.

We become too sensible to sing. We mistakenly admire efficiency more than spirit. We have a preoccupation with what seems useful. Without a song in our hearts, we become dull people, tempted to baptize our grouchiness and call it maturity. The opposite of singing is not silence, but critical restraint. Hell is the refusal of the heart that will not join in the melody of grace. God, deliver us from being the kind of rigid, clenched-teeth people who try to be more spiritual, more earnest than God. Faith doesn't burden us with the heaviness of the world but gives us a lightness of spirit.

Have you heard how it is that angels fly? G.K. Chesterton said, “Angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly.” Conversely, someone suggested that Satan fell to hell by the sheer weight of gravity. He took himself so seriously. Making melody in our hearts leaves us less pretentious, artificial and scared. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Without music, life would be a mistake.” Without music, life would be angrier and more selfish.

If there's no music bursting within us, if what's in our heart is not a melody, then we need to open ourselves again to the joy God has offered. The Christian hope is to be sung. We cannot explain the grace of God, and music comes closest to expressing the inexpressible. Music picks up where words fail.

That's why when you open the Bible you hear music: The prophet Miriam, tambourine in hand, singing at the Exodus; King David auditioning musicians to lead in worship; psalmists writing symphonies for harps, lyres, trumpets, timbrels, strings, pipes, and loud clashing cymbals (never a mention of guiet, soothing cellos). The hymns of the early church are sprinkled through the New Testament. At the annunciation, Mary bursts into the “Magnificat.” At Jesus' birth, a choir of angels break into song. Paul and Silas have Favorite Hymn Night in prison. In Revelation, “The Hallelujah Chorus” ushers in the kingdom of God. On virtually every page, there is the music of God above the ordinary, the song of the holy that transcends what is expected.

A theology student went to the philosopher Paul Tillich with some nagging questions about faith. Tillich responded to this young person by playing a recording of “Credo (I Believe)” from Bach's B Minor Mass. “Credo” does not explain the Nicene Creed, but surrounds it with violins, trumpets, flutes, oboes and voices. Tillich realized that the most satisfactory answers to that student's questions were more likely to be found in music than in sharper reasoning.

God loves us enough to invite us to sing. Is there any one of us so sunk into sinful, sullen silence that we cannot, that we will not, praise God for such love?

We have a song that we need to sing. There are people who don't just live but sing life—4-year-olds on their good days, poor people who don't consider themselves poor, truly funny comedians, the best writers, genuine Christians, the ones who sing alleluia for the good they have been given.

In the early 1960s, when racial conflict was first erupting in the Deep South, a Southern white person went to where the trouble was hottest to see for himself what was going on. He watched African-Americans asking for their rights and watched them being beaten back. He returned home, and a friend asked about what he had seen.

He said: “It looks bad. The culture's against them. The laws are against them. The FBI is against them.”

His friend said, “So, you think they're going to lose?”

“No, I think they're going to win.”

“You just said the laws are against them, the FBI is against them, and the whole culture is against them. Why do you think they'll win?”

“They have this song.”

We have a song, a song born within us each time we open our hearts to God's presence. We have 'the song of Gods goodness, the hymn of the Almighty's grace, the melody of the Creator's mercy, the psalm of the Spirit's love. How can we keep from singing?

Brett Younger is pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth

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