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| David Lose looks quite pleased with himself. |
"Singing Songs Old and New"
Ephesians 5: 15-20
Full disclosure: It took us like 25 minutes to walk the 3 blocks between our hotel and Central Lutheran Church because our little group of six is terrible at maps. When we walked into the church, worship had already started. We registered, then took our seats a few minutes into the sermon. So...maybe I missed some key parts. Keep that in mind as you read on.
Shortly after sliding into my seat, Lose began to talk about the phenomenon of hearing a song on the radio--a song one hadn't heard in years--and upon hearing it, being able to recall every word. At this, he launched into the chorus of "American Pie," with the 1,800 person congregation joining him. At the conclusion of the chorus, the assembly seemed genuinely amazed by the experience, and I sat stunned. These are not my people, I thought.
As Lose continued, he did talk about song having different functions--of building comradery, of helping to pass the long, difficult hours in certain dark periods of life, of uniting, of teaching the faith. He continued on in this vein for a while, fleshing out several examples, making some tidy connections. And as he concluded, he challenged those assembled to imagine a world without song. And then he asked us to imagine if the congregation would lead the world in song. And then we proceeded to BUTCHER "Amazing Grace" in a way I have never experienced...and I have sung "Amazing Grace" with a room full of people with advanced dementia.
As you can probably tell, this message bothered me. Deeply. I mean, it was all very nice. It was all very sweet. But come on! Music is so much more than nice and sweet! Maybe it's my reading of Moss informing my thoughts here, but music is so much more than what he's even touching on. And what Paul is calling the Ephesians to in this letter is so much more than nice and sweet hymn-sings. Music can be a weapon, subversion, unifying, sanctifying. I was waiting for the thunder of this message and only got a light mist, reminiscent of the drizzle falling as we walked to the church.
Even more than the surface nature of the message, I was bothered by the...well...the churchy-ness of it all. It felt like church people talking about and enjoying how great it is to be church people and how great it is to sing church songs. Which is wonderful. If you are a church person. I picked up on church music quickly because I love music and because one space I could regularly make music was in church. But your average unchurched millenial isn't going to walk in off the street knowing the verses to "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." Sorry, Luther. So, what then? In Lose's imagined congregation leading the world in song, what song are they singing? And would anyone else know the words?
I was also bothered by the smallness of the vision. It seemed in Lose's final vision that he was asking the world to join in one song, blending in harmony as they sang the words. But what hymnal would the world be using (because it was made clear it would be from a hymnal)? What version? What tempo? What language would the words be in? This is a long-winded way of saying that what I heard in this message was a vision of the world that doesn't actually take a pluralistic, multicultural, varied, beautiful, diverse world seriously. And that bothers me. Deeply.
Music? Yes. But singing the old songs because that's all you know? No. Definitely not.
It also felt like a very odd way to begin a festival of homiletics - with a talk about church music that had very little to do with discerning the good news of scripture. And what you said, although I don't expect millenials who grow up in a secular society to be able to walk in and sing only songs they know in worship. :-) I know, that's not what you meant exactly.
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