Making a Joyful Noise

 This is the little meditation I gave today to close out a weekend retreat by the choir of First Congregational Church of Bellevue, United Church of Christ, in which I sing. It was well received by the choir members who heard it.

Making a Joyful Noise

First Congregational Church of Bellevue United Church of Christ

Choir Retreat

November 13, 2022

 

Scripture: Palm 98:4-6

 

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

 

I know of course that I don’t have sell any of you on the value of sacred music. We all sing in or direct a church choir, and most if not all of you are better musicians than I am. I have, however, had a kind of experience with sacred music that, as far as I know, none of you have had. That’s the experience of being a church pastor who plans worship services, sings in the church choir, and is the music director’s supervisor. I thought maybe sharing with you some of my experiences in the church I served the longest might be worthwhile this morning.

The church I served the longest in my career as a church pastor was Monroe Congregational United Church of Christ in Monroe, Washington. That church has been around since 1905. Like so many UCC churches, especially small UCC churches, it was significantly smaller when it called me as pastor in 2002 than it had been decades earlier. I served that church for nearly 13 years, and my wife Jane (who some of you may remember from the time years ago when she served here briefly as a bridge pastor) was first on staff with me and then succeeded me as the church’s pastor when I resigned. She’s still there.

When I started my service at the church in 2002, the church had a Music Director who’d been there for a year or so before I showed up. He was actually on the search committee that selected me as their candidate for the call to the church as pastor. His name is Keith, and he’s still there, working now with my wife as his supervisor. Keith is no Stephen O’Bent and no Dennis Coleman (but then who is?), but he is a good choir director and a good organist and pianist. I understand that he’s particularly good at accompanying solo singers. I joined the Monroe church’s choir as soon as I started there as pastor in March, 2002. That little church had, and has, some remarkably good singers as members of the congregation. There are two particularly gifted sopranos. The choir never numbered more than about 12 while I was there, and it was often smaller than that. Yet somehow Keith got us to sound pretty good given the talent he had to work with.

Now, I found that I could mostly leave the selection of the choir music up to Keith, but occasionally I had to step in and say no. There were two problems I occasionally had to deal with. One was the theology of some of the choral pieces Keith chose. He chooses choir pieces that are very good musically but not always so good theologically. See, I’ve been preaching and writing against something called substitutionary sacrificial atonement theology for a very long time. That’s the theology that says that Jesus suffered and died in our place to pay the price that had to be paid to God so that God would forgive human sin. Ah, No! Ask me later if you want to know what’s wrong with it, for I know that most people think it is what Christianity is. In any event, Keith would sometimes give the choir a piece of music that was perfectly acceptable musically but had bad theology in it. I’d have to say to him, No, Keith. We’re not going to sing that. The theology is all wrong. Sometimes the problem went the other way. I remember one year I was planning an upbeat, joyous service for Easter Sunday. Keith gave the choir an Easter anthem that was theologically OK but that was slow, pensive, in a minor key. It might have been beautiful. I guess in its way it was. But I said, No, Keith. That doesn’t fit the service I’m planning. Mercifully, Keith always accepted my decisions gracefully.

I tell this story only to make a point. Psalm 98 calls us to “make a joyful noise to the Lord.” It calls us to “break forth into joyous song and sing praises.” Doing that authentically and well isn’t as easy as Psalm 98 makes it sound. At least, it’s not that easy for those of us who know something about both music and theology and take them seriously. What we sing has to be solid theologically. It’s tone and mood have to fit the worship service in which we sing it. Stephen of course knows all that, and I suppose all of you do. Still, I hope you appreciate the work that has to go into making not just a joyful noise but an appropriate one as well. Under Stephen’s direction, you all do that better than any church choir I’ve ever been in, or ever heard for that matter. When people ask me about Bellevue First Congregational the first thing I say is, Every Sunday you will hear world class music. We sing it in a sanctuary that has perfectly awful acoustics for the spoken voice but magnificent acoustics for music. That the congregation tolerates those acoustics speaks, I think, to how important sacred music is to the people of our church. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate that importance.

That’s because sacred music can convey the meaning of our faith more powerfully than the spoken word ever can. Yes, I preached nearly every Sunday for close to sixteen years. Good preaching is important, but music has a power that mere speaking never can have. They say the person who sings prays twice, once with the words and once with the music. Now, Psalm 98 don’t say make a joyful noise on the trombone. I suppose there were no trombones in ancient Israel. And, frankly, I never thought of the trombone as an instrument for sacred music until I started attending Bellevue First. But when our choir gets singing some joyous anthem with Stephen and his friends on the trombone and other brass instruments, what we produce is indeed the most powerful, moving, joyous noise to God I’ve ever heard.

Now, most if not all of you are better musicians and singers than I am. But here’s what I hope for you. And, to be honest, I’m saying this as much to myself as I am to you. Don’t get so caught up in the mechanics of singing that you miss the meaning of the music. Sometimes the music is joyful. Sometimes it is quiet and contemplative. Sometimes it’s about justice. Sometimes its about prayer. Music can express an endless variety of meanings and moods and do it far better than the best preacher ever can. Worship without good music is, for me, hardly worship at all. So I want to say thank you to all of you. You make worship at Bellevue First truly special. I hope you know how unusual a church choir you are. And I hope our music moves you and strengthens your faith as much as I’m sure it does for those who hear us out there in the congregation. May it be so. Amen.