“Brightly beams our Father’s mercy, from his lighthouse ever more.
But to us, he gives the keeping of the lights along the shore.
Let the Lower Lights be burning, seen a gleam across the wave,
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman, you may rescue, you may save.”
My father sang that song, too, along with “Josephine, please no lean on the Bell.” He had an album of Red Foley singing that. Hymnody rang through our house frequently, the words of the songs infecting themselves into the souls of his rag-tag gaggle of sons. My father’s most frequent critiques of the music I liked – Stones, Beach Boys, Herman and those loveable Hermits – his most frequent critiques of my music was that he couldn’t understand the words – or that the words didn’t mean anything.
“Oh, yeah,” I would say, “Meaningful lyrics – like ‘boop boop dittum datum waddum choo.”
He didn’t much appreciate my side of the argument – so he turned Red Foley up a little louder, and my refutation was drowned in “Beyond the Sunset.”
In the classic of early western literature, The Aeneid, Virgil the poet has Aeneas shout to his men: “Let us go singing as far as we go – the road will seem less tedious.” There is something about singing … something about the meter and the rhyme, the rhythms and melodies that captures one in ways that prose simply never will. If you listen – really listen – to the ache inside the mind of a twelve year old as they face the horror of middle school – you will hear it form a song. If you listen as a teen-age boy or girl is crushed by the death of first love – you will be told “it’s like that song …” and in music the soul finds ventilation. If you sit by the bedside of the dying, and listen while they prepare the tribute they desire – “I’d like them to sing this song … is much more common than, “Preacher, would you say this…”
Singing invades who we are in a way that very little else does.
Singing is easy to remember! There are 271 words in the Gettysburg address … one of the most significant examples of the power of the English Language. 271 words. Not many can recite it. Yet it is only a dozen or so words longer than the common text to “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” And a hundreds of words shorter than “American Pie – which everyone of my generation could sing by heart – and we didn’t have any idea what it meant!
From the earliest days of our faith, the teachers knew that this should be used to help bolster the infant church – that she should be taught to sing – and that the songs she sang should be useful to her life. Thus were born in our midst, hymns.
Hymns appear at the very beginning of the church. The very beginning. Paul, writing to the congregation at Cesarea Philippi, quotes an already existing hymn:
Phil 2:6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
Phil 2:7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
and being found in human form,
Phil 2:8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Phil 2:9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
Phil 2:10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
Phil 2:11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
These words were meant to be sung – we do not have the tune and even the pronunciation of their Greek origins is lost to us – but we know it was a hymn of praise to God and to Jesus. Preachers dissect these verses to try to help explain the relationship of God to Jesus – and Jesus to God. They sort the phrases to ask questions, “Did Jesus go willingly to the Cross?” “What does it mean to be ‘obedient to the point of death…?’”
The songs of the church cannot help but teach. They help us learn about God as we sing them. They remind us of great truths as we sing them. They help us brand into our memories the gracious and mighty deeds of Christ, and of the faithful.
Hymns teach us and touch us. They show us truths of the faith and of the faithful, and they lighten our hearts along the road. Hymns transport us beyond ourselves – into the lives of others who have born the name of Christ.
“Young John who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless in Patmos died
Peter who pulled the teeming nets, head down was crucified. Head down was crucified.”
Red Foley sang Let the lower lights be burning, which is a reminder to us that, while the true light of our lives is Christ – it is up to the faithful to shine here and now – on this shore – to reflect a light out for those who might be lost – foundering upon stormy seas. He sang Beyond the Sunset to remind the children of God not to get too caught up in this world – for another awaits us bright and fair and re-connected to those we love. And when we sing the songs of the faith – they surely connect us to one another – and to the endless line of saints in glory and saints whose lives have not yet begun. Our hymns are our treasure.
Thus Sing! In our culture, we have grown to think that you have to be able to sing in order to sing. The Church has never recognized the validity of that statement. I have listened from the front to congregations in their singing for 30 years – and I have never in all that time heard one voice that God would find objectionable – and I cannot say how I have yearned that some of the stilled voices would sing along – even if they sang, “Soft as the voice of an angel.” Amen.