Songs of faith 081912
Margaret Scott
(Psalm 111) Ephesians 5:15-20
Worship today was full of music,
favourite hymns chosen by congregation sprinkled throughout the liturgy.
Children’s Message
Remember movie “Happy
Feet”? Mumble wasn’t like other penguins,
he couldn’t sing like them. They all had a song in their hearts that came out
of their mouths, but he didn’t, he just croaked. But what did he find out, do you remember?
He found out his song came
out in his feet…he was a great dancer!
All of us are different, we
have different songs in us that God gives us to sing…you might sing with your
voice, you might sing God’s song when you dance, you might sing God’s song when
you draw….
God’s song is love. God’s love for you which is this big it’s
bigger than all of us….God’s love for everyone else, that God wants us to sing
by acting loving, with our voices and our feet and our hands.
Sermon
…be filled with the Spirit, singing and making melody
to God….
When we are filled with the
Spirit, music is one way we let that Spirit out, a way to express God’s song in
our hearts: singing, making melody, giving thanks.
today’s selections come from
your deep places where there is a Spirit to be let out
We began worship with songs
of praise, as Ephesians calls us to do, but one glance at our hymnal will tell
us there’s more to Spirit songs than praise….at different times in our lives
the songs in our hearts come out in different ways—the Spirit of thanksgiving
of course, but also a Spirit of comfort in times of sorrow,
or strength at weak times, or
hope in days of despair.
For some, the song in our
heart has become a kind of theme song for all of life that we turn to at all
the different times, like this one, Trust
and Obey
It is wonderfully true that God’s
Spirit can fill us, if we let it, in all of life’s journey, its ups and downs,
twists and turns.
One of your choices I had
only come across once before. It’s
called Life’s Railway to Heaven. Many of you won’t know it either but it uses
the metaphor of a mountain railway for all of life’s journey
The last verse leads to the
end of life and it goes,
As you roll across the trestle,
spanning Jordan’s swelling tide,
you behold the union depot
into which your train will glide.
There you’ll meet the superintendent,
God the Father,
God the Son
with the hearty joyous plaudit,
“weary pilgrim, welcome home”
This shows another way we use
music to cope with life: we let the Spirit of future hope bubble up in bad
times as well as good, looking forward to heaven after death, as in our next
song,
When the roll is called up yonder
So far we have heard all
pretty old hymns, some from ancient texts and tunes, others from the 19th
and early 20th century.
Apart from our praise hymns
that are God centered, all somewhat individualistic and personal, lots of “I”
and me words. Even when they use “we”
language its all about US …what we get for ourselves from our relationship with
God: presence, comfort, strength, a home in heaven and so on.…and it’s wonderful,
but very human centered.
Isn’t there something more to
faith than praising God and celebrating what God does for us? It IS profound to
be able to witness to what God has done for us, but there’s a lot more to the
Christian life of faith than that.
Surely the music we love in
church, which sustains us beyond church, isn’t the primary point….surely faith
is something more than praising God and feeling good and getting through
difficult times?
If that’s what it’s all
about, no wonder the mainline church is dying from lack of relevance.
Another favourite is both a
little more recent, (1986 the year I came to Fairport) and takes us a
little deeper into the mystery of God.
Written between diagnosis and death, this song offers no answers, but
rest deeply in the unknown:
Hymn of Promise
This “unknown”, this mystery,
affirms that God can bring good out of bad, creation out of chaos, hope out of
hurt. THIS is the point of music, the
deep heart song of the cosmos that listens not to the music or words
themselves, but to the conductor, the music director, the composer of the heart
song, the “I am” Chris has been talking about.
And who better to express
that cosmic heart song than Jesus, the Lord of the Dance….another song from the
last ½ of the 20th century…who points away from US to the eternal “I am” who danced on earth to invite us into something eternal,
the Jesus who felt the song of God deep in his soul, and danced to that rhythm
even through death
Lord of the dance
So our minds are lifted away
from ourselves, full circle back to God, whom we praised at the beginning of
worship.
But we’re still missing something, something I
believe is utterly central to living the Jesus way, dancing with the Lord of
the Dance, hearing the harmony of the universe…..
And that missing something in
all these chosen hymns so far is one
reason the many people today don’t find the church relevant—one reason beyond
the obvious age of the songs!—and that’s purpose.
In all of these all time
favourites, we’re missing a vision for the transformation of the world back
into what God created it to be: by good stewardship of resources and earth, by
working for justice and alleviating poverty, by making a difference: in other
words bringing about the kin-dom of God on
earth as it is in heaven.
If what we’ve sung is all the
world hears, then as my father used to say, we’re too heavenly minded to be of
any earthly use.
It is truly marvelous to
consider ourselves “saved”, or know we are in relationship with God, or call
ourselves Christians and go to church: all good. It IS awesome to know that the Spirit
sustains us in all of life’s circumstances.
But the repentance Jesus
calls us to is real. If we’re ‘saved’
it’s not just FROM something, it’s FOR something. Conversion means change.
Not just individual and
inward change so we can get into heaven and be strengthened on the way there,
but corporate and outward change that produces disciples for nothing less than
the transformation of the world.
Seek first the kin-dom of God, we’ll pray in a moment. THAT’S our first call—to bring forth the kingdom of justice, bring
forth the kingdom of peace, bring forth the kingdom of mercy, bring forth the
kingdom of God. Nobody chose that
much more modern song.
But that’s our primary
calling—it was for Jesus, and it is for us if we follow him.
When we sing our final hymn
today, Here I am, Lord, let us really
hear the call of God in its words,
let us
deeply pray it as we sing it
and
let us mean it as we pray it
what we say with our lips may
we mean in our hearts and what we mean in our hearts may we practice in our
lives.
How do YOU sing God’s song?
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