September 17, 2023

Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21; Matthew 18:21-35

Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”

That last line is considered the oldest part of the Bible, the Song of Miriam. “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”

Does being old make something important? Now there’s a debate – I’ll skip that one this morning.

How about this: why would the oldest sentence in the Bible actually be a song? A song notably offered by a woman, notably by a woman who is referred to as a prophet. A prophet is someone who speaks on behalf of God, so what they say therefore has importance in the minds of religious folks. Miriam was a rare women given acknowledgement in the Bible.

The age of this line and its form as a song together make sense. The scriptures in many cases arose from oral traditions. They are remembered stories. And as a poem or a song, they would have been easier to remember over the generations. Songs are meant to be memorized and performed. It is far easier to remember something that is a song. And so, the words of Miriam and these other women survived and were set down in the Bible.

Just like epic Greek poems were memorized by the aiodos, a type of bard, these Middle Eastern songs would have been a way of keeping a story alive. The fact that women were presenting these words suggests there might have been a tradition of women serving in this role of storytellers and keepers of the ancient lore.

Music and song are entirely different ways of organizing information. Unlike the modern type of prose we might read every day, there would not have been ready access to writing.

Which is not surprising because the vast majority of people would have been illiterate in ancient times. That would have included kings and many of the people in the Bible. Jesus for example was unusual in that he seems to have been well read in the Hebrew scriptures.

Information would have been passed along verbally. However, it is hard to remember large amounts of information unless it is organized in some manner. Poetry using rhyme and meter is one organizing method. And the other, of course, is music and song.

Again, these were not always written down. Songs were memorized. But that is a matter of words, not necessarily sounds. There were ancient forms of musical notation in the Biblical world, but they fell out of use in Europe after the decline of the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Empire, or Byzantium, still used a version of those notes for both courtly and religious music. Other parts of the world had their own systems, with ancient systems in both India and China. We tend to ignore those when we focus on European traditions as being the ones that matter.

Music always seems to have existed in human society. Musical instruments have been found from the Paleolithic period, meaning the Stone Age, and were used by both humans and Neanderthals. Music is also considered culturally universal, meaning that it has existed and exists in all cultures. And the religious use of music also seems widespread across most traditions.

That being said, music is not common in many Islamic religious settings, though that is a matter of interpretation. If you have ever heard the call to prayer from a mosque, it might seem like someone is singing in Arabic. That sound is considered to be recitation rather than singing. Again, a matter of interpretation. I recall a rather pointed conservation with my Qur’an professor when I asked about how recitation was different from singing. Take my advice, don’t ask.

Conversely, singing is crucially important in both of the other Abrahamic religious traditions, Judaism and Christianity. The cantor is a mainstay of Jewish worship and the Hebrew texts are sung almost without exception during the service. By the way, “cantor” comes from the Latin word for singer and the term is also used in Christian churches.

Music however seems less integral to the worship aspects of the Christian service. It is more of a counterpoint. In fact, when planning a service, it is a common practice to alternate words with music to create an ordering of sounds to prevent excessive sameness. Too many words become a drone and too much music becomes a performance. There is an effort to balance the two to prevent wandering attention spans – which works on a good day.

Human beings gravitate toward music. And it should then be no surprise that music is a common element in religious life. But there are differences–differences across traditions and across time. Even to talk about the role of music in Christian worship is to qualify what one means even from decade to decade.

Music is in a sense an offering to God. It can be a form of prayer, as we heard this morning as we recited the Psalm. “Psalm” simply means a sacred song or a hymn.

There are even a few musical directions, of a sort, in the Psalms. In Psalm 4, for example, there is a note to the leader stating simply “with string instruments.” That suggests that you did not always use stringed instruments. Maybe it was just the tambourine like Miriam’s crew and perhaps a cappella.

And they would have been sung, even though we have no idea what they would have sounded like. No musical notations survive in writing. Instead, the music would likely have been passed down by the leaders to the singers. It would have been remembered through use alone. And when memories faded, that ancient music would have fallen silent.

There was a 7th century musical theorist named Isidore of Seville and he once said, “unless sounds are held by the memory of man, they perish, because they cannot be written down.” Which was not true, It was neither true in the centuries before Isidore opined this notion nor was it true in many parts of the world during his lifetime. Europeans would not catch on to this practice until the 13^th century.

There are not a lot of references to music in the New Testament. Paul encourages the Ephesians and the Colossians to sing psalms and hymns, but that is about it. Early Christians seemed to have listened because a Roman magistrate once wrote to the Emperor trying to figure out what he should do about these noisy Christians with all their singing.

The Roman Catholic worship service, the Mass, became a musical style as composers sought to present music designed to serve that form of worship. Music is an integral part of the Roman rite and that importance of music exists is similar traditions based on ritual, like among the Lutherans and Anglicans.

When you think of pipe organs and choirs, it is within these traditions that you get the grand style of church music that we enjoy on many a Sunday.

But other Christian traditions took a more restrained view on music, at least for a few centuries. The Reformed Christian side of the Reformation rejected any and all music and songs that were not spelled out in the Bible. Recall that I said there was not a lot in the New Testament. In the Hebrew scriptures, there were the Psalms.  So for many Christians, those Biblical hymns became the only acceptable form of music. No glorious musical pieces written for the church and for God. No pipe organs, no operatic flourishes. Often, these were sung without accompaniment.

Now, if we think about our own prayer book, there is a little bit of everything. That should be no surprise because we draw from both sides of that musical divide, with Anglican style worship with Congregational theology and governance.

We begin with a doxology, which is sung rather than recited. Then we have our chant, which after 15 years I still have no idea how to sing. My hats off to the quartet.

But if you follow along in the prayerbook, you will note an inconsistency. We are supposed to chant a second time after the scripture reading. Instead, we sing a hymn, a scandalous innovation that I inherited and that, to date, no one has called me out over. We will discuss this heresy at coffee hour.

Officially, we are only supposed to sing a Congregational Hymn before the sermon and then end with the Benedictory Hymn. I think chanting has not been anyone’s first love, so we added a hymn, displacing what had traditionally been a third moment in the service when we offered up a selection from the Psalms.

What are the Psalms? They are 150 ancient hymns written down in the Bible. At a point in time, some editors decided they should be in the Bible. There are more Psalms out there, by the way, more hymns written in the style and at the time of the final set of Psalms. Someone chose to leave them out.

The Psalms are hymns and they are also prayers. Prayers offered up to God is a musical format. They are in various forms, whether sung in thanksgiving or lamentation or intercession.

Hymns are occasionally like this but not always. Our hymns are more about thanksgiving, praise, and intercession. As the religious writer Anne Lamott once described it, our prayers are about saying to God: help, thanks, and wow. And so are our hymns. Notice that we are less likely to be singing in lamentation. Why might that be?

Did our relationship with God change? Do we no longer lament our suffering in worship? Do we no longer call out to God and ask why did this happen to me or to us? Are we to save all that lamentation for our own thoughts, our private prayers? Because it is too personal, too embarrassing? Why admit in public that something is wrong with our lives?

I think this is true to some extent. And I also think that our approach to worship and to the music during a service have similarly changed. When I am helping to plan a memorial service, no one ever requests funereal music even though that seems to be the appropriate genre. It is supposed to be a celebration of life, perhaps a cataloging of worldly virtues.

It is not supposed to be sad and therefore depressing.

Which has always seemed odd to me. What are you supposed to do when you miss someone? When you loved them and are struggling with their loss?

Maybe it is worth one sad song mixed in with all the well-staged celebrations.

I will be honest with you, I go out of my way to make people cry. When I think a memorial service is getting too far away from the reason we have gathered, I think about making it more personal, more reflective. That is not meant to be cruel, but to acknowledge that someone is gone and that people in the room would rather have them around. Even after a long life, even after a difficult end to a life, there is something to be said for a few tears and some appropriately sad music. Just my opinion.

Here’s a different question about the music we have in our service: who is it for? Who is this music for? Is it for God? Or is it for us? Like the Psalms, is it a prayer offered up to God or is it a way of orienting us toward God? Neither is a bad choice, but they are different.

Our Congregational Hymn was “Be Thou My Vision.” Topically, that is a hymn offered up to God to ask for guidance and wisdom and eventually a way back to God. Is that what you heard this morning? Is that how the hymn struck you a moment ago or was it more about the familiar strains of an old song?

It is a hymn of the old chestnut variety. One well known and I think eminently singable. But is it the message that matters or is it the acceptable words and tune?

I will hear on occasion objections to the lyrics of a hymn.  “Onward Christian Soldiers” and such, although that hymn is also the most requested at memorials. But I will just as often hear concerns about an unfamiliar tune or, heaven forbid, the wrong tune. If someone grew up with one tune and we chose a different one, I am sure to hear about the difference.

And that is perfectly fine – do not worry about offering such feedback. Music is about memory and emotion even when we are trying to convey a specific religious meaning. When I choose a hymn because I think the lyrics are relevant to what I am discussing in the sermon, it may be one of the so-called mystery hymns that most don’t recognize. That gets a thunbs down. Why? Because no one is hearing that relevance I imagined because it is being displaced by a sense of dissonance.

And it is worth asking ourselves, does God need our music? To be honest, God does not need anything from us. Need in the truest sense of requiring something.

Now, one might argue that God requires one thing from us, as taught by Jesus: we are to love God with all our hearts, all our souls, and all our minds. But even then, I wonder if we are mistaking our needs for those of God.

By loving God, we are opening ourselves up to love, to the positive feelings that make life better. Love of creation. Love of one another. Love of friends and family. Love generally. All of those feelings spread out from an initial openness to loving that we undertake when we love God. Jesus was very wise to turn us around from selfishness and isolation both asking us to love God and to love one another.

And music is an aspect of that love, that turn toward positive feelings. Music can change our mood. It can lift our spirits and shift our focus. In church, it can be performed for us, washing over our senses, or it can be a communal activity, allowing us to join in and to resonate with those around us. It is physical and it is psychological. It is ancient, as I mentioned, and it is culturally universal.

Maybe the forms change. Maybe the traditions vary from place to place. Maybe the style of music in church is high art and the music you play in the car is a little less grand and hifalutin.

And that is fine. A spiritual like “Down by the River to Pray” will hit differently if you grew up singing it, but that does not mean it is only for those who knew it all along. Music is a way for us to turn ourselves toward something: an idea, a mindset, a change of heart. Music can be a prayer offered up to God or a prayer to ourselves to refocus our hearts and souls and minds.

One might argue that the best prayers are about changing ourselves. They are about changing how we look at the world, how we are thinking in the moment.

There is one school of thought that our salvation only comes once we have turned our faces toward God. And one way of turning ourselves around is music. The beauty of music, the beauty of songs. The beauty of human voices and human creativity.

There is no certainty, no guaranty that music will make that possible. But then again, each moment of beauty, each moment of music offers that possibility, that chance, that moment when the world can change.

It is better to listen. Better to sing out loudly and well, so that the power of music might open us up to the love of God and remind us once again of the love we might offer in turn. Amen.