Worship & Prayer
Praising and Knowing God: What it means to sing!
On a snowy evening in January, we met at Lyndon with Andi Smith to hear the third of his four talks on Praising and Knowing God. This session was all about why we sing and immediately we were engaged by 2 stories. The first had resonance involving an organist, a minister and a congregation, all of whom thought that something different was going to happen at a certain point in a hymn. All gave way with a wry smile as the organist had the last word! The second involved a moving story from a Welsh mining town, where a woman recalled what it meant for her community to sing. As a child her Mother would encourage her in the late afternoon to be quiet, to put her ear to the floor and to listen for the miners singing below ground. If she could hear them singing the hymns from the chapel, it meant that her father was still alive and that they would soon be reunited.
We sing to express our joy; to celebrate that we are alive; to give our praises and glory to God and that through this act we might be restored and transformed. We began by reading scripture, the songs of Miriam and Moses found in Exodus 15: 1-22, some of the earliest traditions of song recorded in the Bible. They celebrate with joy the salvation and deliverance of the community from Egypt and God’s steadfast faithfulness. Through the process of singing truth which involves the heart as well as the mind, faith was built along with community. Our sense of tradition was enlarged as we understood that our desire to sing is intrinsic to being human and that we belong to a tradition that goes back 4000 years, rather than just to the 1700s.
We went on to read Paul, exhorting the Ephesians (5: 15-20) to be filled with the Spirit and to sing psalms and spiritual songs to each other, that their discipleship would be strengthened. For Andi, singing was not about a solo performance but rather about being caught in a community of song, that could uphold you when you were in too much pain or conflict to sing, providing you with a sense that others could sing for you and carry you through on a tide of faith.
And of final importance was the idea that as we sing, our own story and that of our community, can get caught up in the Story of God. As we sing truth our world view can be challenged and we can be lifted to a higher place where different possibilities can be imagined and made real. To illustrate this Andi spoke of the power of the African American spirituals, that looked beyond the realities of racism and oppression to a clearer day where God who values, desires liberation and freedom. As we sing we can make real the idea of living in the Kingdom that is at once present but also future - the here and yet to come.
Some interesting debate ensued round the importance of recognising the depth and complexity of the traditions and the importance of celebrating a variety and diversity of worship through hymns and song. Should we do this through being tolerant or through an active radical choice to not only celebrate in a way that was meaningful to us but also actively participate in a way that was meaningful to others? Actively choosing at times to worship in a style that was not our preferred way would reflect God’s grace and challenge our own greediness.
Andi’s fourth and final session will be held at Lyndon on Thursday 11th February at 7.30pm where the topic will be prayer and patience. All are very welcome.
Julia Monaghan
13.01.2010