Let All Who Breathe,
Sing!
Sermon for Green
Lake Church for May 19, 2018
Choir Festival
Psalm 150
Luke 15:17-27
When we lived on our
farm in Enumclaw, the first sign of spring was music, frog song.
Before the sun gained any strength after its winter journey to the
south, Long before the roses bloomed and the barn swallows and violet
greens arrived, even before the crocuses raised their flowers--while
the back pasture was still a colorless swamp and the calendar warned
of months of rain and possible snow—in February already, I would
come home late at night, turn off the radio, climb out of the car,
and step into darkness made rich and sweet by the music of frogs
singing in the ditch. The music always evoked a smile. Spring was
coming. Love was in the air.
The heart of our
faith is a singing conviction that the Eternal Spring approaches.
Alas, sorrow, injustice, catastrophe, and heartache are still very
much with us. Not yet does justice roll down like the great river.
Not yet has death been vanquished. Not yet do we see the unhindered
glory of the Kingdom of Heaven. Still, in worship we sing of the
glorious future, and in our united voices we taste already the advent
of our God and the triumph of love.
Music is far more
essential to faith than is theology—our words and theories about
all things pertaining to God. Music takes us so close to God that
many religious distinctions are effaced. Even the most sectarian
among us—those who imagine that we should read only books written
by people who share our denominational pedigree—even these radical
sectarians gladly sing hymns and anthems written by people of all
sorts of religious persuasion.
Today is our annual
choir festival. We honor the service of our choir and more broadly
celebrate the gift of music which stands central to our life as a
congregation and indeed stands central in our religion as Christians.
In preparation for
today, I asked people to tell me about music that touches their soul.
Here are some of what they wrote:
Karen Baker: There was always music growing up: singing, piano, and
other instruments. There is something so powerful in literally
sharing breath and space to sing together. Sometimes goosebumps
and/or tears come in the midst of a choir singing Randall Thompson's
Alleluia surrounded by all the parts. Then there was the sacredness
of a hot summer evening in Texas at an outdoor pop concert when the
3rd encore piece is "Be Thou My Vision." The band walked
off in middle leaving everyone finishing the piece a cappella and
then leaving in silence through the dark as we all acknowledged the
holiness of our shared space and song.
Or the power of spontaneous song (Don't Look Back in Anger by Oasis)
that became a rallying cry in Manchester after the bombing last May.
Some other favorites: the sound of rain on a tent, sharing the dawn
with the chorus of birds at Able Tasmin Park, New Zealand, bagpipes
skirling through the hills on my first day living Scotland (I mean,
c'mon!), or sitting at a pebble beach enjoying the rhythm of the
waves crashing followed by the light percussion of the small stones
being pulled back into the ocean...And of course the grunts and coos
of a newborn!
Sharon Roberts: My first clear memory of music is listening to my
father and his quartet practice barber shop harmony in our home.
“Goodbye My Coney Island Baby” is running through my memory now.
Friday evening meant fruit soup on toast to the soundtrack of George
Beverly Shae and more quartet music from the Blackwood Brothers on
the stereo. “Ezekiel saw a wheel, way up in the middle of the air!
An the little wheel run by faith, and the big wheel run by the grace
of God...”
My mother shared her love of musical theatre, playing her prized cast
recordings of Porgy and Bess and Showboat.
I discovered classical King FM when I was in middle school, and
soaring operas like Turandot and Madama Butterfly became part of my
internal soundtrack, along with the folk and rock music I listened to
on KJR on my little transistor radio.
Then at Auburn Academy I fell in love with a boy with curly red hair
who could play the piano like nobody else. And I set about
introducing this classical boy to all the music that I loved.
For most of 43 years, date night for the two of us has involved music
more often than not.
About 20 years ago, I added hearing my daughter sing at church or
choir concerts to my list of favorite musical memories.
So, give me church music, classical, gypsy jazz, rock, folk, new age,
Celtic reels, opera, show tunes, there is room for all of it, right
along with birdsong and the ocean roar.
One more from my
friend Burt Williams. In response to my request to “tell of the
music that thrills your soul,” Burt wrote:
The symphony—you know, the one on a stage with violins and cellos
and French horns and trombones and harps and timpani. Most recently,
the San Francisco Symphony offering up “The Planets” by Gustav
Holst, which concluded with a wordless women’s chorus completing
the final movement a capella from the lobby of the second tier of
Davies Hall, finally evaporating into total silence.
Or the time on Highway 6 a hundred miles west of Ely, Nevada, when I
stopped to attend to a personal matter and discovered that there was
simply no sound—no vehicles, no jets overhead, no birds, no
insects, no breeze in the sage brush. Just. Nothing.
Several people
mentioned singing the hymn “For All the Saints” in a college
church with hundreds or a thousand other young people and in that
experience discovering the grandeur and immensity of the human
community called church which stretches around the world and across
the millennia and includes even us, even me.
Others wrote of
hearing for the first time and then singing the Hallelujah chorus
from Handel’s Messiah and being completely overcome with tears and
breathless wonder at the power and glory of the music and the reality
beyond the music.
Laura Leeson wrote
of the contemporary praise song, "By Faith" (Keith and
Krysten Getty). It was the theme song for a Week of Prayer at an
Adventist high school. Laura was part of the praise group leading
music that week. The song permeated her entire being and still lives
as one of the sweetest, richest expressions of her faith.
I’ll share other
comments in the next Green Lake Church Gazette. I’m guessing all of
us could tell some story of the richness that music adds to our
lives.
Psalm 104 offers
these words:
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
You are dressed in a robe of light. You stretch out the starry
curtain of the heavens; 3 you lay out the rafters of your home in the
rain clouds. You make the clouds your chariot; you ride upon the
wings of the wind. . . .
You clothed the earth with floods of water, water that covered even
the mountains. 7 At your command, the water fled; at the sound of
your thunder, it hurried away. 8 Mountains rose and valleys sank to
the levels you decreed. . . .
Right now the island
of Hawaii is growing as lava emerges from Mt. Kilauea. We can watch
online video of lava flows bulldozing houses and pushing fiery
ribbons of lava into the ocean. Here in our own neighborhood we have
the dramatic example of Mt. Rainier reminding us that mountains grow
and shrink over time. Lava and ash builds the volcano and erosion
cuts it down. The Psalmist invites us to feel in these natural forces
the mighty hand of God. And then to sing.
Bless the Lord O my
soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name!
The ancient poet
continues:
The birds nest beside the streams and sing among the branches of the
trees. ...
The trees of the LORD are well cared for--the cedars of Lebanon that
he planted. 17 There the birds make their nests, and the storks make
their homes in the cypresses. . . .
You send the darkness, and it becomes night, when all the forest
animals prowl about. 21 Then the young lions roar for their prey,
stalking the food provided by God. 22 At dawn they slink back into
their dens to rest. 23 Then people go off to their work, where they
labor until evening.
The whole wonder of
life, the rhythm of the days and seasons, all of it speaks of God.
And when nature evokes wonder and calls us to sing, it is the
handiwork of God that is beckoning us.
And there is more.
The prophets imagine
a day when the entire earth will be at peace. Justice will roll down
like the mighty river. People will turn their implements of war into
garden tools and farm machinery. In that day, the joy will be so
contagious, so pervasive, even the trees of the field will begin to
dance.
You will live in joy and peace.
The mountains and hills will burst into song,
and the trees of the field will clap their hands! Isaiah 55:12
In the Bible’s
final book, we read again of music. The scene is the throne of God
and the vast assemblage of heavenly beings that comprise the royal
court. The poet writes:
Whenever the living beings give glory and honor and thanks to the one
sitting on the throne (the one who lives forever and ever), 10 the
twenty-four elders fall down and worship the one sitting on the
throne (the one who lives forever and ever). And they lay their
crowns before the throne and say, 11 "You are worthy, O Lord our
God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all
things, and they exist because you created what you pleased."
[Rev 4:9-11 NLT]
This “saying”
would be more aptly expressed, as “singing.” The realm of heaven
is continually noisy with the hallelujahs of the redeemed, people who
know what it is like to saved.
This theme reappears
late in the book.
After this, I heard what sounded like a vast crowd in heaven
shouting, "Praise the LORD! Salvation and glory and power belong
to our God. 2 His judgments are true and just. . . . He has avenged
the murder of his servants." 3 And again their voices rang out:
"Praise the LORD! [Rev 19:1-3 NLT]
As Adventists we
have developed a keen debater’s sense of theology. We know correct
from incorrect, As we move beyond the childhood of our religion, it
is time for us to push ever deeper into the wonder and glory that can
be most fully expressed by singing Hallelujah.
Thank you to the
organist and choir and other musicians who help us taste the glory of
the kingdom of God even here and even now.
Let everyone who has
breath, sing. As skillfully as we can. Let us join the human and
heavenly choirs, and, indeed, the choir of ocean and birds and wind
in the trees, and even the silent singers of ineffably vast desert
valleys and sweeping luminous skies.
Let everyone who has
breath, sing. Hallelujah.
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