Watts Street Baptist Church - A Great Singing Congregation

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A Great Singing Congregation
Posted on Mon Sep 22 2008

Mel Williams

A GREAT SINGING CONGREGATION
a sermon by Mel Williams
Watts Street Baptist Church
21 September 2008

“With gratitude in your hearts, sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God.”
-    Colossians 3:16

There are times when words fail us. There are times when we are clogged with confusion and pain. There are times when we cannot or will not speak about our faith. There are times when our faith doesn’t motivate us to action. That’s the reason God gave us hymns. Most all of our hymns are prayers; the hymnbook is our prayer book.

We have come here today to sing our faith—in this feast of hymns. It will not surprise you to hear me say that when we sing together, amazing things happen. With singing we summon the forces of goodness. Singing combines text, melody, and community in a rallying cry for God’s comfort, compassion, justice and peace.

People who sing together can change the world. Today has been proclaimed as International Day of Prayer for Peace. Prayer can stop war. Prayer can stop injustice. But in all our efforts to move our world toward peace and justice, it is often singing—sung prayers—that leads the way. Witness the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s. Dr. Sam Cook was the first African American professor to teach at Duke. He was closely involved with Martin Luther King in the various non-violent protests in the South. Dr. Cook came to preach at Watts Street a few years ago. While he was here, I asked him what was the planning like before those marches. He said, “At night we would gather crowds of people in our churches, and we’d pray and sing. The next day we’d go into the streets to march for justice. And we’d sing as we marched.”

We can hardly think of Civil Rights Marches without thinking “We shall overcome.” Or “I’m gonna keep right on a-walking. I’m gonna keep right on a-talking, marching to freedom land.” In most major movements in our country, music and singing have brought passion, power, and God to our human efforts.

That’s why I believe singing is not optional. That’s why I believe we are called to be a great singing congregation. It’s not because some of us love to sing (which is true!), but singing is essential to our very life. Could we worship without singing? Probably not.

We come to church to praise God. We can do that with our bodies and our words. But most often, we praise God with our voices. We sing our praise. Our hymns are prayers.

But what if you don’t feel like singing? What if you’re having a bad day? What if you’ve got low energy? What if you’re bored? Sing anyway. Why? Because in worship we are not merely spectators, we are actors. The architecture of this sanctuary can sometimes mislead us into thinking that you in the congregation are spectators and that the ministers and choir are the actors, and God is the prompter. But this week Kelly Sasser reminded all of us parents that when any of our teen-agers seem bored in church (and it happens to adults too), we need to get clear about our theology of worship. Kelly reminded us of Soren Kierkegaard’s view that we should approach worship as a drama. The ministers and choir are prompters in the drama. Members of the congregation are the actors. God is the audience.

That means we are singing for God. We are praying for God. We are preaching for God. We are offering our money for God. We are all actors—active participants in the worship drama. That means we praise God whether we feel like it or not. The rule of all actors is “the show must go on.” The worship must go on. Whether we feel like it or not, we come back here to sing our part—and the singing will change us. We pray and sing, so that the deed—the acting—will change us and—change God.   That is, our praying and singing summons God into action.

And then God summons us to action. One of the ways God summons us is through the glad singing of hymns. Let’s face the facts. We don’t usually remember sermons; they are forgettable. But we remember hymns; they are memorable.

Singing hymns is a delightful community event. Singing together can infuse us, inspirit us, inspire us, and encourage us. God rides on singing. So, when we leave here, we leave with more energy than when we arrived. We leave with new zeal, new resolve. We leave here ready to make a difference—to change the world.

My point is this: Our singing leads us to shape the world to be the way God intends. When we praise God, when we sing to God, we find ourselves worrying about the things God worries about. Our song joins God’s song—and we carry God’s song into the world. As my mentor and friend Don Saliers has written:
    To rightly sing to the glory of God
    is also to be disposed toward the world
    as the arena of God’s mercy and justice.

Our singing moves us to do justice. Our singing moves us to be God’s people. Our singing carries God’s loving kindness and justice into the world.

That’s good news. And we all need good news. So let’s sing the good news.

Hymn no. 550: “There’s Within My Heart a Melody”

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