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PRIOR TO THE SERMON, THE SENIOR CHOIR DELIVERED A STIRRING RENDITION OF SANCTUS, By Charles Gounod

The Elements of Worship: When In Our Music…

Texts: Matthew 26: 26-30; Colossians 3: 16-17

            I’d like to set the stage for what will follow today with some important lines from a poem by Jack Gilbert, called “A Brief for the Defense.”  In it, he chronicles scenes of hardship and pain, while simultaneously mounting a defense for the experience of beauty, and of pleasure.  Here’s Gilbert:

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,

but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

We must admit there will be music despite everything.

            Hang onto those lines.  They have everything to do with what I want to convey to you this morning – about music, about beauty, and about the habits we cultivate every week in this place.  There will be music, despite everything.

            For now, I’d like to describe a scene that took place in the heart of Havana on my visit to that city back in January.  It was evening and the sun had set, though the air was still pleasant and warm.  A small group of interested travelers, composed of academics, musicians, artists, teachers, and yes, a minister, made our way toward a small house located on a corner lot.  Outside the house was a courtyard, fenced in and surrounded by lush vegetation.  From inside the courtyard, the sound of drums could be heard, accompanied by singing.  We entered through a small gate, and joined a small crowd gathered around three drummers and a singer.  The singer would call out a line, and then everyone gathered would sing the line back at full volume.  Everyone knew the songs.  They were songs of praise, sung to ancient deities brought to Cuba from Africa, songs that have sustained people in the ruthless furnace of the world for several centuries.  There was a sense of festivity in that Havana courtyard.  But there was also a seriousness of purpose, as the music guided the participants into realms of the spirit that informed all of their living.  On a warm Havana night, songs of praise rose above the houses, rose above whatever life had delivered to those gathered in that space.  It was a reminder that there will be music, despite everything.

            It was a worship service that I witnessed that night.  Since returning from Cuba, I’ve wanted to reflect on the elements of our own worship, and the ways our own gatherings are designed to aid us in our living.  Just as ceremonies that originated in Africa and were adapted throughout the Americas provided an entire population with strength and inner resolve to withstand the furnace of the world, I believe our own worship can guide and orient us in a confusing and alienating moment.  Our worship is the centerpiece of our identity as a community, but each singular element is designed to speak to particular aspects of our lives, as we do our best to stay human amidst inhumane conditions. 

It’s true, sometimes services of Christian worship have been used to prop up the powerful, and there have been times when liturgies and ceremonies of the church have aided and abetted the worst tendencies of human beings.  It’s true, there are times that a church service can feel routine, lifeless, and mind-numbingly dull.  I’ve sat through more than a few of those, and I’ve probably presided over my fair share.  I myself sometimes conduct a lover’s quarrel with the elements of Christian worship, but it’s the lover’s side of that equation that sustains me.  Because at heart, I believe and I trust that these are practices meant to support and encourage, to upbuild and to nourish what is best in the human heart.  They’re practices that are meant to enhance our capacity for critical thought, and to warn us away from lives of passivity, indifference, and isolation.  Sunday matters – maybe more than any of us fully realize. 

            Last week I shared some insights related to the prelude, including what happens when we cross the threshold into this space.  Today I’d like to move just a little further into the order of worship by noting how, and asking why, music is used to begin each of our services.  There’s music playing during the prelude.  But following the prelude, the choir will immediately sing an anthem or, if the choir is singing at the opposite service, we’ll move directly into the singing of a hymn.  What does it mean that the very first thing we do in a service of worship is to sing a song, or listen to one?  What does it mean that before we do anything else, we turn to music?  Think about it – Scripture doesn’t come first.  Music does.  A public prayer doesn’t come first.  Music does.  The sermon does not come first.  Music does.  For that matter, even the call to worship, what can feel like the beginning of the liturgy – that doesn’t come first.  Before we even arrive at the call, there is music.  Why should that be?

It’s worth noting, parenthetically, that we’re not the only ones who do it.  Most other Christian traditions begin with music.  Not all, but most.  And a good many other religious traditions also begin with music.  Not all, but many.  If you find yourself in a synagogue some Friday, the service will likely begin with music.  If you go to a mosque, you’ll hear a melismatic call to prayer that is sung by the leader.  It’s not music per se, but it is definitely musical.  To move back to my opening scene in Havana, every ceremony to the orishas, to the spirits, begins with the drums.  There are, of course, some religious expressions that prize silence above all.  Still, they seem to be far more the exception than the rule.  And so what’s happening in all of those disparate moments of music across so many different traditions?  When people wish to touch the sacred, why is that music is such a crucial component of that reach?

 I am bold enough to say that where there is music, religion is almost always near at hand, with or without a determinate tradition, with or without conscious intentionality about touching the sacred.  I understand Woodstock and Bonnaroo and Coachella to be latter day open air revivals, updates of the sort found in 19^th century America.  I read jazz clubs as forms of secular devotion, and most of the rhythms found in rock and roll originated in the African religions I’ve been tracking.  Opera and orchestras – in the 19^th century, these often served as alternative spiritual practices for those disenchanted with established forms of religion.  I sometimes think that religion and music are like an old married couple who travel together, often bickering, but also able to understand, and to meet, the needs of that partner better than anyone else. 

That’s because in music, as in religion, we’re opened to the realm of feeling.  Both religion and music allow us to move beyond what is merely rational, opening toward an experience of the transcendent.  Music and religion both have the capacity to suspend our own individual egos, and to get us in touch with something greater than ourselves – even if it’s only an awareness of the others with whom we’re sharing the experience.  Music, like religion in the best sense of that word, renders our hearts and our minds porous, open, somewhere closer to free. 

It’s that very porousness, that very opening, that has made a lot of people, including a lot of Christians across the centuries, very nervous.  Despite an abundance of references throughout the whole of the Bible to the making of music – Jesus and his disciples sang a song prior to his arrest, and Paul counseled his congregations strengthen themselves by singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs – despite this, various theologians have worried about the power of music to supplant critical consciousness, allowing people to do what they ordinarily wouldn’t.  Augustine, in his Confessions, has this to say about music:

I waver between the danger that lies in gratifying the senses and the benefits which, as I know from experience, can accrue from singing. Without committing myself to an irrevocable opinion, I am inclined to approve of the custom of singing in church…Yet when I find the singing itself more moving than the truth which it conveys, I confess that this is a grievous sin, and at those times I would prefer not to hear the singer.[1]

Writing in the fifth century, Augustine is nervous about the way an experience of beauty might distract from a deeper experience of truth.  More than a thousand years after Augustine, John Calvin too embraced music in worship, but w