Songs of Life

St. Paul’s United Methodist Church
Psalm 100, Rev. George Harper, February 8, 2009

 

NOW David Buness is one of my very best friends, But it hasn't always been that way. There was a period when I felt that David was using the music he selected for the congregation to sing as a way of negating everything I was trying to say.

The first time I noticed that was a Sunday when I had preached about commitment, how we should all dedicate ourselves to the service of God right now. And Dave led the congregation in singing "I shall Not be moved."

The next week I preached on tithing and how we should be glad to give to the work of the Lord. I pled for each one of us to give all we could, because the work cannot go forward without the sacrifice of each of us. And David reached way back for the old hymn "Jesus Paid It All."

Another Sunday he chose a good hymn —but not for right after I had preached about gossiping. He had people sing "I love to Tell The Story."

And I know it wasn't just a coincidence the Sunday I preached a temperance sermon, giving facts and figures about the dangers of beverage alcohol. I really got into it, and ended up saying that all the beverage alcohol in this town should be thrown into the Missouri river. And Dave pops up with the closing hymn for that day: "Shall We Gather At The River?"

Time went by, and I told the congregation that I was considering resigning, and he was way too quick with the last hymn "O Why Not Tonight?"

That did it. I decided to retire. I told the church that it was Jesus who led me here and it was Jesus who was leading me to retire. And Dave didn't even smile when he said "Let's all sing' What a friend we have in Jesus.'"

Of course, I made all that up, just to introduce the idea of "singing commercials. " This business of singing what we believe is nothing new. We Methodists have used hymns and songs to say what we feel ever since the days of the boys who invented singing commercials: John and Charles Wesley. In their day, great anthems were sung in Latin by Cathedral choirs couldn't cut it with the common working people of England and early America. So the Wesleys gave them tunes they could sing and words they could remember to express their own faith.

Ocean travel and commerce was often dangerous, and the church was a light house on the craggy shore, warning and guiding hapless seafarers to safety.

The new church emphasis on being saved, rescued from the wreckage of sin, found a ready expression in songs like:

JESUS SAVIOR, PILOT ME (CHOIR)

Visit Methodist churches in Great Britain today and you will find them loaded with symbols of the sea-faring days.

Across the seas in the new world, people were not all staying by the Atlantic sea shore. A new wide land was opening up on this side of the Atlantic. They were moving out across the prairies of the United States and Canada. They needed wheels instead of oars and sails. "Wagon wheels, carry me home."..and a nationwide rail road system was tying the states together. Here in the early white settlement of Montana one of our young Methodist preachers often sang a gospel song that was popular when the railroads were stretching out toward us in Montana . A popular saloon and dance hall owner in downtown Helena heard Young Brother Van sing "The Gospel Train Is Coming", and he said "Brother Van Orsdel, if you will sing that gospel train song again tomorrow night at church I promise to personally bring 40 sinners to your service." The next night he was there, sitting in the front row, with well over the forty men he had promised to bring, and a few dance hall girls for good measure. Will sang "The Gospel Trains a" Coming" plus some other favorites like "Diamonds in the Rough" and "Harvest Time."

The saloon owner got more than he had bargained that night. At the end of the service he answered Brother Van's call to the altar. He and his wife committed their lives to Christ, sold his business to start a more respectable one, and became staunch members of this church :

GOSPEL TRAIN (solo by Dave Buness)

A few years later, gospel singers were glad to have a new medium for spreading their message. Hearing the voice of Jesus in prayer was a simple procedure:

TURN YOUR RADIO ON. LISTEN TO THE MUSIC IN THE AIR. TURN YOUR RADIO ON; HEAVEN'S GLORIES SHARE. TURN THE LIGHTS DOWN LOW; LISTEN TO THE MASTER'S RADIO. GET IN TOUCH WITH GOD; TURN YOUR RADIO ON. (Fitz)

Then television came along and we were watching our men walk on the moon, and catching glimpses of galaxies in a universe vast beyond our imagining, and big songs like this expressed our expanded thought:

HOW GREAT THOU ART. First stanza and chorus, by CHOIR.

Here on earth, the Spirit of Jesus has been constantly expanding the scope of His church's concern for all the world God loves so much...for all little children ..."Jesus loves the little children, ALL the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white...they are precious in His sight; Jesus loves the children of the world."

Here in America we recognized more rights for women as well as children. In 1955 or 6 the Methodist Church was ready to allow women to become ordained clergy. We began to see the real place of women in the Gospel stories and the first Christian churches. New hymns recognize this fact; like No. 274 in our hymnal: "Woman In the Night."

CONGREGATION SINGS # 274

And, in and through it all, right in our midst for over 300 years, there was developing America's own original contribution to the world of religion and music: the black Spirituals. They always bring us back to the elemental needs of human beings living in a real world, and a universal yearning for peace, personal and world wide.

"Nobody Knows the Trouble I Sees", "Standing in the Need of Prayer," "Were You There when they Crucified my Lord?" Songs of real life from the heart...

NANCY: PRECIOUS LORD, TAKE MY HAND... Hymnal 474

SO WE CAN BE PARDONED IF WE ADD A SONG FROM OUR OWN YOUTH CULTURE. Our kids sing it at summer camp, and the Men's Walk To Emmaus group even rocks to it when they are feeling their oats:

JESUS IS THE ROCK THAT ROLLS MY BLUES AWAY (VOLUNTEER GROUP)

The metaphors are mixed and it may not be a literal statement of your theology, but you get the idea and the feeling that your life is anchored on the one hand and motivated on the other by the Spirit of God that we know best in Jesus the Christ.

So our modern church hymnals ...add the little black book to the big red book...give us a variety of music and words to fit our situations and our beliefs for today and tomorrow.

But there are great hymns that fit the times in Rome, 100 A.D., in Europe in the middle ages. In Wesley's England of the 1700's, in Montana 150 years ago, or this Feb. 8 day, 2009 A.D .

Let us sing a great hymn for any time of church history, Hymn No 188: JOYFUL, JOYFUL WE ADORE THEE.