Why Do We Sing?

 This is a short sermon I gave on September 24, 2023, as part of a short worship service for those attending the retreat of the chancel choir of First Congregational Church, UCC, of Bellevue, WA, at the outdoor chapel at Pilgrim Firs, our regional body's camp near Port Orchard, WA.

Why Do We Sing?

September 24, 2023

First Congregational UCC of Bellevue

Choir Retreat

 

Scripture: Jonah 3:10-4:3

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.

 

So here we are, some, if hardly all, of the choir of the First Congregational Church of Bellevue, United Church of Christ, on retreat in this beautiful setting of Pilgrim Firs. We’ve spent time together getting to know one another better. And we’ve sung. We’ve rehearsed some of the music we will present as part of worship back at the church. That’s what we do, mostly. We sing as part of our church’s worship. We are a core part of our church. Music is always important in worship. I can’t really imagine worship without it. But music is even more important at Bellevue First than it is at most Christian churches. Perhaps that’s because the great Dennis Coleman was Minister of Music here for so long, and now we have our gifted, energetic Stephen as our director. What a blessing this church has and has had with regard to its music!

We sing in worship, but I can’t help asking myself: Why do we? Why do we rehearse and present choral music as part of worship? I mean, what is Bellevue First really about? We have a Mission Statement, and it doesn’t mention music. It reads:

To be an inclusive faith presence in the city and beyond—claiming one God with many names and the Christian faith with many paths, offering an open welcome to all, affirming diversity, and advancing the work of justice in our world.

Inclusion. Affirmation of all. Diversity. Justice. Those are the things we say we are about. And I have to ask: What does music have to do with those things?

Well, I think it has to do with the God we worship and what our God calls us to do. We worship the God Jonah ran away from when God called him to go preach in Nineveh, the capital city of the feared and hated Assyrian Empire. Jonah says, “I ran away from you, God, because I know how gracious, kind and forgiving you are.” We do indeed worship a God of grace and forgiveness for all people, even, as it turns out in the Jonah story, the people of despised Nineveh. We worship a God who calls us to the things Jonah ran away from, to the work of proclaiming God’s vision of peace, nonviolence, and justice in a hurting world.

Our church has a long history of doing some of that work in this crazy world. I’ve done a little bit of it over the course of my ministry. I’m sure many of you have done some of it too, but, though our church answers God’s call better than most, there’s always more to do. God never stops calling us, and God never stops expecting us to say “Yes”to God’s call.

Giving God that “Yes” is a big part of who we are, but the most obvious and frequent thing we do is gather on Sunday morning for worship. Why? Well, there are at least two reasons why we do. One is that God calls to worship God. Why does God do that? Surely not because God needs our worship. No, it’s because we need our worship. We need worship because it brings us together as a community of faith and strengthens our connection with God. It makes us a Christian church and not just a collection of more or less likeminded people who do some good in the world.

The other reason has to do with the work to which the church is called beyond worship. That’s the work of responding to God’s call, the work of peace and justice, and that work isn’t easy in this world. We work against forces that want to preserve the ways of injustice, exclusion, and oppression that are so dominant among us. Sometimes when we do the work of justice we feel like we’re bashing our heads against a wall. The manifestations of injustice among us never go away. I mean, just look at how many unhoused people there are in the greater Seattle area, including Bellevue. I have a friend, a UCC minister, who has spent years working on that issue, and if anything the issue has only gotten worse. I frankly don’t know why he isn’t thoroughly burned out. Irritation. Frustration, Anger even. Burn out. It is nearly impossible to avoid them as we do the work to which God calls us.

That’s the other reason for us to gather for worship. See, one of the things that good worship can do is restore our souls. It can renew our strength. Jonah didn’t try to renew his strength. He just ran away from the difficult work God called him to do. But we, I trust, are not a bunch of Jonahs. We want to do the work. We want to support each other as our church does the work. Doing so compels us to strengthen our connection with God. It compels us to tend to our spiritual lives. We certainly don’t feel that happening after every worship service, or at least I don’t. But it happens, silently, even sneakily, over time as we worship again and again.

And music is perhaps the most effective part of worship in restoring our souls. Sure. We all like to hear a good sermon, and we hear them often at our church. We all feel the need to pray, and in worship we pray together as a community of God’s people. Those things are important in worship too, but there is something about music. They say the one who sings prays twice. The sacred music we sing has lyrics that connect us with God and express our resolve to do God’s work in the world. But we don’t speak those lyrics. We add music to them. Music touches our spirits at a level far deeper than words. Music is the language of the soul. Music touches our hearts in a way mere words never can. That, my friends, is why we sing.

Of course, actually singing choral music is also a chore. It doesn’t come easily to most of us. Yes, there’s the occasional musical genius among us, like, it seems, everyone in the Bent/O’Bent clan. But most of us aren’t musical geniuses. We’re just people who love to sing. Some of us are better at it than others of us are, but in church, that doesn’t matter. A church choir is a ministry not a performance group; but singing is still a matter of the ear, the voice, the lungs. A matter of choral technique, and all of us have to tend to our choral technique if we are going to sing well.

It's easy for us to get caught up in technique. To think that what matters as we sing is how well we do it. I’ve certainly fallen into that trap. I know I’m the weakest singer in the tenor section, but I’ve come back to sing with you all because I can’t not sing. Most of the time, singing is my primary spiritual practice. Perhaps it is yours too.

Perhaps you’ve had lots of singing lessons to develop your technique. If so, great. But let’s not lose sight of why we sing in church. It’s not to show off our singing skills. It’s not to entertain. Our singing in church isn’t performance, it is an act of worship. It is a way we renew our commitment to God and God’s ways. We hope (and believe) that our singing also does that for the people who hear us. So I beg you, and I beg myself, not to lose sight as we sing of why we’re doing it. Yes, we want our choir to sound good musically, and trust me, you do. That you do is wonderful, but it’s not why we sing. We sing to worship God. We sing to restore our souls. We sing to strengthen ourselves and those who hear us for the work to which God calls us. Sometimes that feels like going to Nineveh. We do it anyway, and music helps us keep at it. So let’s keep at it, shall we? Amen.