This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Wednesday, March 24, 2010. Midweek services from Ash Wednesday through Maundy Thursday will explore the theme, “Living as Christians.”
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Readings
2 Samuel 6:1–5
Psalm 98
Ephesians 5:18–20
Mark 14:22–26
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Prayer
You call us to return to you, Lord God, and to leave behind all things that keep us from giving ourselves fully to serve you. Speak to us through your Word, so that we may turn to face you and to give you glory; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Message
Last week, we turned our attention
to the conversation God has made us
to carry on with him: our life of prayer.
The Psalms, we heard, have served as the book of prayer
of the people of God, both Israel and the Church,
for thousands of years.
But at the same time, the Psalms themselves
have become the hymnal of the people of God.
We sing the Psalms as hymns.
And sometimes, the psalms lie hidden behind the words of our music,
serving as inspiration.
There’s a kind of wonderful energy
that flows among us and between us and God
when we combine words and melodies and rhythms and harmonies.
That’s what is going on among God’s people
in the passages of Scripture we have heard this evening.
Listen again to a few key verses:
From 2 Samuel:
David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the LORD
with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps
and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. (2 Samuel 6:5, NRSV)
And from Psalm 98:
O sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done marvelous things. …
Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD. (Psalm 98:1,5–6, NRSV)
And from Ephesians:
… be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns
and spiritual songs among yourselves,
singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts,
giving thanks to God the Father at all times
and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:18c–20, NRSV)
And finally, from Mark,
where we hear how Jesus shared his Last Supper with the disciples,
they end the meal in song:
When they had sung the hymn,
they went out to the Mount of Olives. (Mark 14:26, NRSV)
This is just a brief sampling of the myriad of passages in the Scriptures
that tell us how prayer and song join together
to give voice to the love and praise the people offer up to God.
And, in fact, not just people.
In Psalm 98, we read:
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
the world and those who live in it.
Let the floods clap their hands;
let the hills sing together for joy
at the presence of the LORD … . (Psalm 98:7-9a, NRSV)
These verses inspired one of our most beloved hymns.
From the mind and heart of St. Francis,
we have received these lines
from his soaring hymn, “All Creatures of Our God and King”:
All creatures of our God and King,
Lift up your voice with us and sing …
O rushing wind and breezes soft,
O clouds that ride the winds aloft;
Oh, praise him! (“All Creature of Our God and King,” LBW 527, sts. 1–2)
It’s hard, when we hear a great song,
one that moves and inspires and energizes us,
to sit still, and not to reflect our immersion in the music
with some kind of movement,
even if it’s only to tap our toes quietly inside our shoes.
That is to say that music and movement go together.
Our comfort with this partnership depends a little upon our upbringing
and partly upon the social conventions we observe.
If we went to worship in an African Methodist Episcopal Church,
we would expect people to worship in song with their whole bodies.
But if we went to a Lutheran Church of Norwegian background, for example,
the movements would be subtle, at most.
For us, our movements consist mostly of standing when we sing,
of adopting that ancient posture of praise.
Little children are more adventuresome,
swaying and clapping as they sing their Sunday School songs.
But if you go back and reread the passages we heard tonight,
or look up other verses that tell us about God’s people in worship,
pay attention to the descriptions of the movements:
+ dancing
+ processing
+ clapping
+ playing instruments of all sorts.
It’s a clear pattern and message
that when prayer and song combine in worship,
they enact our praise and thanksgiving to God.
And just as Jesus Christ embodies himself in the Sacraments
—in Water and Bread and Wine—
becoming for us present, tangible, visible,
we embody our prayers in song and movement,
offering up our whole being to the God who made us.
That’s why, when Christians gather for Communion,
standing and moving and singing are all parts of the liturgy.
We might not think of what we do as dance,
but it is—a binding together of body and voice and spirit.
This is what we do.
And so we sing and dance, mixing music and movement,
here and now as our prayer and offering of praise to God.
And we do this as our practice—our rehearsal—for our eternity in heaven,
as John reminds us in his Revelation:
After this I looked, and there as a great multitude that no one could count,
from every nation … standing before the throne and before the Lamb,
robed in white, with palm branches in their hands … .
… and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing:
Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor and power and might
be to our God forever and ever. Amen!” (Revelation 7:11–12, NRSV)