LEARNING TO SING A
NEW SONG
I have a reputation as someone who should not sing.
Despite my baritone voice, which I think is quite mellifluous, I have never
been invited to sing in a quartet. Don’t sing, I’ve been told.
This
goes against the early childhood training I received from Sesame Street. Joe Raposo wrote a song for the Street in 1971 called Sing.
You know this song (show words:
Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud
Sing out strong
Sing of good things not bad
Sing of happy not sad.
Sing, sing a song
Make it simple to last
Your whole life long
Don't worry that it's not
Good enough for anyone
Else to hear
Just sing, sing a song.
Sing, sing a song
Let the world sing along
Sing of love there could be
Sing for you and for me.
Sing, sing a song
Make it simple to last
Your whole life long
Don't worry that it's not
Good enough for anyone
Else to hear
Just sing, sing a song.
.). I was encouraged by the chorus, “Don’t worry
that it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear, just sing, sing a song.” Was
Sesame Street wrong? Should some
songs not be heard?
What
makes a song good?
I
researched this question (Googled it) and discovered one source that said that
there are three things that make a song good. For a song to be considered good…
It has to have soul – the song has to
speak to the listener. Thus Justin Bieber’s Baby,
baby, baby does not rate as a timeless classic. No, there must be a
relevant message.
It catches the ear – the song gets our
attention. This refers to the rhythms and melody. This kind of song sticks in
your mind so that you find yourself singing the words in your head
uncontrollably and at times you least expect.
Its message is bigger than its sound –
that means that if you favor country music, the message will get you even if it
is from another genre like (gag) rap.
As
Christians, we are singing a song for the world to hear. As a church we sing
the song of Christ, but is anybody listening? Are they saying “don’t sing”?
Does our song not catch their ears?
Drastic
changes have taken place in the last few decades and today we live in a secular
environment that demands that the church rediscover its ministry and mission.
It demands that we reconsider the song we sing.
Psalm
137 offers insight into the challenge of singing a new song in the world to
which God has called His people.
1. Can we sing the old song?
The Psalmist is a Jewish exile. He was ripped from the
familiar world of Jerusalem and dragged to Babylon in chains. Babylon was a
vastly different world; an idolatrous world. There, the Psalmist found new
rhythms of life, new and foreign core values, and new ways of looking at
relationships.
For
Jews, the land of Israel held out so much hope and promise. The land was a
symbol of God’s blessing and favor. Taken out of their homeland they must have
felt like God had abandoned them. How do you sing your songs of hope in the
land of your captivity? “By the rivers of
Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion” (1).
This is
the common experience of faithful people and churches today who want to follow
Jesus. Considering how profoundly our culture and its values have changed, they
cry out, “How do we do church in these strange times?”
Like the
Psalmist, our elders remember the “good old days.” You remember the revivals
and the crusades? How people went forward to receive Jesus? How the churches
were filled in those days? Remember when we had Sunday evening services and
almost everyone came? Remember when church events were the social highlight of
the week?
Those
are good memories. It is good to remember. We need to be mindful that the past
always seems better than it really was. There were good things but we forget
why they were good, what made them good. It is good to remember but when we
romanticize the past we end up using that rod to try and measure the present.
Times have changed. If we deny the reality of this change we deny the need
to change.
Can we
sing the old song? Yes, but we need to know that not everyone knows the tune or
the words. Some songs are best appreciated in context, like the old revival
songs that accompanied a great experience in the tent meeting, or the protest
songs of 70s, or Twisted Sister in the 80s. Context is best appreciated by
those who were there.
2. Is our song relevant?
The Psalmist was discouraged with the strangeness of
Babylon. Too much change, too quick. They were so discouraged they hung up
their instruments and said, “we will not sing.” But their captors mocked them
and said “Sing. Entertain us. Give us something to laugh at.” As the Psalmist
wrote, “…our tormentors demanded songs of
joy; they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” (3).
The
sacred song about the temple in Jerusalem had no meaning for the pagan
Babylonian a thousand miles away. It was not relevant. It did not speak to the
captor’s heart.
As I
said, our context has changed. In 1955, 68% of Canadians attended a place of
worship on a weekly basis. More Canadians attended church per capita than in
the U.S. In 2008, 13% of Canadians attended church on a given Sunday. In some
cities it is lower than that. Pastors compete with brunch as the activity of
choice on Sunday morning.
The song
sung in the 50s was effective in its day. We can call it the Attractional model. I like to equate
this model with the movie Field of Dreams.
The main character, a corn farmer named Ray, hears a whisper telling him, “If
you build it, he will come.” Ray cuts down a huge section of corn and builds a
baseball diamond in hopes that his long-dead father will visit.
The
church has long operated on this model. If you build it, they will come. Just
build a thousand-seat church and the people will come. In this old paradigm, a
preacher could stand in the pulpit and wait for people to come. Back then,
assumptions and authority were rarely challenged.
Attractional
churches are seen by the unchurched as existing for the members, maintaining
what we have. Stepping into one of those churches is like walking into a tiny
café in a small western Manitoba town. Everyone looks at you and you feel like
the stranger that you are. You know you don’t belong.
Is our
song relevant for our times?
Just so you know, I’m not talking about hymns vs.
choruses. We would be naïve if we thought that people were sitting at home
waiting for us to change our worship style. People who are searching for
meaning in life are not overly concerned about song styles.
3. Do we sing a song of frustration?
Psalm 137 ends harshly. Frustrated with the strangeness
of this new reality, this foreign land, the Psalmist gets angry. He remembers
what the Edomites did in v. 7 and curses them. Edom was allied to Judah until
they saw that Judah was going to lose the war to Babylon, so they switched
sides (Obad. 11). Edomites were the children of Esau, so the betrayal was
great. The Psalmist was also angry at the invaders, the Babylonians, for
turning their world upside down. This is why he writes, “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the
rocks” (9). How do you like that song?
Anger
can get destructive as these last verses show. Raw emotions overwhelm restraint
and we lash out.
We can
feel like this, we – the church. We feel trapped in a foreign world – powerless
– afraid. Traditional marriage is being broken down. Sexual immorality rules
our culture. We long for the days of modesty and self-control. We get angry.
The
temptation for the Evangelical church today is to stand on a soapbox and speak
out in anger against the ills of society. We sound angry. We are angry. Our
righteous God is offended!
As we speak
in anger though, we are not speaking in the words of Jesus and in the love of
Jesus, who said, “For the Son of Man came
to seek and to save what was lost” (Lk 19:10) and “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but
to save the world through Him” (Jn 3:17).
Do we
sing a song of anger? Do we speak against ____ instead of for Christ?
4. How do we sing the new song?
The Psalmist asks a question in v. 4 that we now return
to, because it is the most important question in the psalm, “How can we sing the songs of the LORD while
in a foreign land?”
Psalm
137 captures the real truth, the humanness of the church’s journey into the 21st
century. We know that times have changed, but we think that the church doesn’t
have to. Technology changes faster than we can upgrade our iPhones; we wish we
could slow it down. The church must adapt to our changing times. To think that
the church experience can stay the same is illogical. Changing our worship
style is only cosmetic. The heart of the church needs to change.
The
Attractional mentality of the church must make way for a new attitude and new
presuppositions. We can call this Discovering
what it means to be Missional.
What
does it mean to be missional?
To be
missional means to adopt the posture, thinking, behaviors, and practices of a missionary in order to engage others
with the gospel message. No one can say: “I am not called to be a missionary”
and thus do not have to evangelize friends and neighbors. Missional living is
the embodiment of the mission of Jesus in us. If we call ourselves Christians,
we are to be like Jesus. As the
Father sent Jesus into the world, Jesus sends us into the world with His
message. This is why the church exists – to fulfill the mission of telling the
world that Jesus is Lord.
Mission
is not a program of the church. Mission defines the people who are called
Christians.
In the
past, some have said that the church is like a hospital for the spiritually
ill. If that were true then the waiting room would be full. The church is not a
hospital; the church is a sending station. We are all EMTs sent out to find the
sick and the lost and to bring them the good news that will heal them and find
them.
We can
no longer consider the church as an institution where outsiders must come in
order to receive a product – the gospel. The missional church attempts to take
Christ to the lost, each one of us being personally engaged in reaching our
community. We are the sent ones:
·
The church is sent by Jesus Christ (Jn. 17:18;
Mt 28:19-20).
·
The church is sent with the Cross (1 Cor. 1:18).
·
The church is sent in Community (Acts 2:42-47).
·
The church is sent to every culture (John 1:14;
Acts 17:22-34)
·
The church is sent for the King and His Kingdom
(Mt. 10:7; Luke 4:43).
These are the five distinctives that form the foundation
of the missional perspective.
This is
the new song we must learn to sing.
Perhaps this song does not sound new to you. Maybe you
see these things happening in our church already. I do too. In the last number
of years I have seen the church leave these walls and engage the community
around us. Now we have a name for it and let us pray that it continues. Let’s
sing this song louder and with passion.
What
makes a song worthy of the Lord? Remember the three qualities of a good song
from the introduction? Consider those qualities:
It has to have the
Spirit of God – the Spirit of God is a sending Spirit. The Holy Spirit
sends us, tells us to go. This song is not sung in the basements of cathedrals;
it sings in the streets.
It catches the
attention of the world – It is relevant without sacrificing the essence of
the gospel; it captures people’s hearts with its genuineness, its sincerity.
The love and singular purpose of the church in action is attractive.
Its message is
bigger than the medium – We invite people not to join a club, but to
receive Jesus into their lives. We invite them to join the community of those
who follow Christ, a worldwide family comprising many churches and
denominations.
This is
the song we sing. Will you accept the commission to go and be the gospel to
your neighbor? Who is my neighbor? I hope you will accept the challenge to find
out and be a blessing to someone today.[i]
AMEN
[i]
The content of this sermon has been adapted from the book by Gary V. Nelson, Borderland Churches: A Congregation’s
Introduction to Missional Living. St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2008.
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