Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Sacred Singing (Tuesday 10)

Sacred Singing

Here is a bit of truth I’m sure you all probably didn’t know about your pastor.

Before I confide and confess to you this truth about myself, I encourage you to sit down.

Are you sitting?

Take a deep breath.

Ready?

Here is my confession: 

I

Can’t

Sing!

Phew. I feel better now that I’ve shared this with you.

Despite the fact that I can’t sing well, I love to sing. It is one of my favorite things to do when I’m cleaning the house, taking a long drive, or when I’m out on a run. Singing is important to me. The best way to explain why I love singing so much is share a quote from poet Maya Angelou who said this about ‘singing’: 

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”

We all have a song to sing. Just like we all have a story to tell. What matters is not how well we sing, but that we make the space to sing and allow others to join their voices with ours.

It is this very reason why I love church, especially our church. We sing and we sing beautifully. Now it helps we have a fantastic music director and a pair of organist who can really tickle those ivories. But what makes worship so enchanting and reverent is the song of the congregation.

Do you know why we sing in church? Song is a response, which engages the whole self in prayer. Song unites the faithful in common prayer wherever we gather for worship whether in church, home, or other special place. Throughout scripture we can find the people of singing as a way to worship and thank God for God’s presence in their lives.

So we sing.

And we use music. Music may serve as presentation and interpretation of Scripture, as response to the gospel, and as prayer, through psalms and canticles, hymns and anthems, spirituals and spiritual songs.

Essentially, music imparts spiritual truth to one's mind, heart, and soul.  It displays a dimension of meaning and feeling that mere words cannot. Or as Martin Luther once said, “Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.”

With that said, this week’s mid-week is a top ten:  Adam’s Top Ten Hymns!

(In no particular order….)

1.    O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (#88)—This is my favorite hymn of all time. If I could, I would sing this song every Sunday during Advent. “O come, thou Wisdom from on high, who orderest all things mightily:  to us the path of knowledge show; and teach us in her ways to go.”

2.    My Song is Love Unknown (#209)—“My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love to me, love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be. O who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh, and die?” This opening line is a path into a vivid and poignant reflection on Christ’s passion.

3.    What Wondrous Love is This (#215)—The melody is haunting. While I may not like all the theology in this hymn, the last line offer great hope and encouragement in the life of our faith:  “And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on….”

4.    Let us Build a House:  All Are Welcome (#301)—At the heart of Christ’s ministry was his radical hospitality. He welcomed everybody. This is my greatest hope for the church:  that all will know they are welcome at Christ’s table in our church. “Let us build a house where all are named, their songs and visions heard and loved and treasured…”

5.    We Shall Overcome (#379)—Though now associated primarily with the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20^th century, this spiritual most likely dates from the days of the slave trade. We need to sing this because it reminds us of what we are to do:  march for justice. It is not a marching song. It is not necessarily defiant. It is a promise: "We shall overcome someday. Deep in my heart, I do believe."

6.    Here In This Place:  Gather Us In (#401)—This song is a great source of comfort. No matter where we have been, God gathers us in. God gathers us in through the bread and cup, giving us compassion to drink and Godself to eat.

7.    God Be With you Till We Meet Again (#541/542)—Growing up, this song was the last hymn we sung every Sunday. To this day whenever I hear it, I’m taken back to the third pew on the right, sitting next to my brothers at Bethel Presbyterian Church.

8.    O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing (#610)—I love John and Charles Wesley. Charles wrote it about his conversion and now it is customarily the first hymn in Methodist hymnals worldwide. “To God all glory, praise, and love be now and ever given by saints below and saints above, the church in earth and heaven.” When we gather for worship, we gather with that great cloud of witnesses, in the company and communion of saints!

9.    I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art (#624)—It is the only hymn attributed to Presbyterian John Calvin. “Our hope is in no other save in thee; our faith is built upon thy promise free…”

10.                  Will You Come and Follow Me (#726)—Our faith is a journey. It is a process that is to be walked with others. Daily God calls us to be the light and love of Christ. “Will you love the ‘you’ you hid if I but call your name? Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same? Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around, through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?” Christ dwells in us. We must seek the risen Christ in all we meet!

Close calls:

11.                  Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine (#839)

12.                  A Mighty Fortress is Our God (#275)

13.                  I Love to Tell the Story (#462)

There you have it. My top 10 hymns/songs in our Presbyterian Hymnal:  Glory to God!

What would be your top ten? What have I left off!?

Have a wonderful week.

And see you at Kickapoo Park on Sunday for Worship in the Park!

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection on Being Surrounded

“Surround yourself with people who have instilled hope in you.”

This was a piece of advice I received early in my professional career.

Whether at home or in my study, I was encouraged to place pictures of those I can turn to when I’m in need of inspiration and courage.

On the wall in my study hang photographs of three people who remind me that this vast work in which I participate began long before I arrived, and will continue well after I’m gone. Each hangs in its own frame, as a reminder that their stories are their own. Even so, collectively, these stories intersect the hopeful vision of what humanity can become.

In one of these frames hangs the portrait of former slave and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. There is perhaps no greater story of overcoming oppression, injustice, and imprisonment.

As a slave Douglass was equated with ‘things,’ like cows, pigs, or oxen.  These ‘things’ were property, and so was Douglass.  Slaves resisted this categorization by appealing to their masters when overseers were unnecessarily violent or abusive. If their masters responded with compassion in one situation, the assumption was that similar treatment for other slaves would follow. This compassion acknowledged and therefore humanized slaves; this was something that the system of slavery could not afford in order to remain effective.

Douglass’s formative moment of self-discovery was his personal resistance to an overseer, which Douglass describes as his last flogging.  This scuffle ended with Douglass drawing blood from his overseer, rather than the other way around. Following this act of resistance, Douglass was never flogged again. 

Even more importantly, this incident was the turning point in Douglass’ ‘life as a slave.’  

“It rekindled in my breast these moldering embers of liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my own manhood.  I was a changed being after that fight.  I was nothing before; I WAS A MAN NOW.”^[1]  

Through this experience, Douglass experienced a selfhood resurrection ‘from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery, to the heave of comparative freedom.’  While still physically a slave, Douglass recovered his personhood, and began to experience his true identity as a ‘somebody.’

All of us are somebody’s. Like Douglass, all of us have a story to tell. While our struggles may not be as extreme or dramatic as Douglass’s, we glean from his narrative that we all posses the strength to somehow rise above those things, which keep our true selves at bay.

Perhaps some of us have already been liberated.

Others among us stand on shaking legs, as we search for the courage to be somebody.

Frederick Douglass hangs on my wall not just because of his role in shaping American history, but also his journey engaging the necessary work of being emancipated from the age-old lie that he could be only a slave and nothing else.

Douglass hangs on my wall as a reminder that I can

that you can

that we can

together,

be liberated into the freedom of our true identity.

Douglass hangs as a reminder of the profound belief in human equality and the hope that everyone may discover his/her true self.

So I ask, friends: who reminds of you of this in your space?

---

^[1] Douglass, Frederick. “Autobiographies: Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave; My bondage and my freedom; Life and times of Frederick Douglass.”  Ed. Gates Jr., Henry Louis (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1994), 286.