A Sermon for our Gospel Choir Sunday,
Rooke Chapel Congregation, 10/6/19
Our semester’s theme,
as many of you know by now,
is big questions.
And it’s likely, upon reading our text today from
1 Corinthians,
that you had a few questions of your own,
including, perhaps,
“What is Paul prattling on about?”
And, perhaps also,
“Why would Kurt choose this text?”
And finally, I imagine,
“Can’t we get back to the music?”
To the last of these questions I say, “Yes, very shortly.”
But I do wish to address the first two ever-so-briefly first,
if you’ll allow me.
The Corinthian Church –
which Paul loved, and also probably hated,
had a problem.
Actually, they had a lot of problems.
Corinth,
was famous and infamous as a city,
for depravity and crime and licentiousness.
And Paul started a church right there in the midst and muck of it.
He taught them about Jesus and grace
and community and beloved community.
And they struggled
they struggled with food,
and they struggled with worship,
and they struggled with belief.
and they struggled with practice.
And Paul wrote them letters.
Long letters.
To help them. To pastor them.
And we find Paul’s thesis, famously in 1 Cor 13,
just before the text we read:
the whole thing, Paul says, is about love.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts.
And then he goes on to mediate an apparent dispute,
about which is better:
Speaking in tongues,
or prophesying.
A common debate in your residence halls late at night, I’m sure.
But importantly, for Paul,
Prophesying is not about predicting the future,
but about seeking understanding.
And Paul says,
to sum up today’s reading.
Nothing matters,
if you can’t understand it.
The point of community,
the point of spiritual gifts,
is that you understand one another,
and thus understand God better.
This is the spirit of Pentecost,
the spirit of the early church:
let’s understand each other,
so we can understand God in our midst.
And he closes:
What should I do then? (A Big Question!)
I will pray with the spirit,
but I will pray with the mind also.
I will sing praise with the spirit,
but I will sing praise with the mind also
Or as the old King James put it:
I will sing with the spirit, I will sing with understanding
Paul knew then,
what we know now:
Music is the language of the church.
Hymns are our deepest theologies,
our richest stories,
our gifts to the next generation.
and the source of much spiritual connection.
What would Christmas be without Silent Night?
What would Funerals be without Abide with Me
or I want Jesus to Walk with Me
or Balm in Gilead.
For those of you who went to Sunday school as a kid,
I bet you can’t tell me many lessons you learned,
or names of your teachers,
but if I started singing “Jesus loves me.”
You would be able to sing along.
Karl Barth was one of the 20th century’s most important theologians.
It’s not especially important that you know who he is –
or even what he wrote.
But he wrote a lot.
And it is dense and important
within the development of Christian thought.
There’s an apocryphal story that once he was on an airplane,
and his seat mate recognized him
and asked him – this eminent theologian –
what he thought was the most important insight of the Christian faith.
Barth, the story goes,
thought deeply for the entire flight,
and as they were landing responded,
“Jesus loves me, this I know. For the bible tells me so.”
Music is the language of the church.
It is, for me, not optional.
I will sing with spirit. I will sing with understanding.
Each Sunday as our community grows,
something is happening here,
as we raise our voices together each week.
And I want us to note, this morning
that Gospel Music,
is part of our tradition.
If you are part of the American Church,
the black Gospel tradition,
its spirituals and songs and rhythms and patterns,
and stories, and theologies,
are part of your church.
If you are a fan of music,
Jazz or Rock n Roll or R&B,
Gospel Music is part of your tradition.
It has evolved and changed,
like everything else.
This morning we will sing a spiritual
(Done Made My Vow, arranged by Nolan Williams)
hundreds of years old,
passed from person to person in fields of enslaved humans.
And songs seeking to reclaim the Gospel rhythms of so-called
Contemporary Christian Music (Our God Medley, by Jonathan Nelson)
and everything in between.
Gospel music is in our blood and bones
Though not all our bodies have borne its passing on,
from generation to generation,
in the same way.
Some through sweat and toil,
and the legacies of slavery,
and the ongoing effects of racism on black souls and bodies.
Some through guilt and shame,
privilege and repentance,
and – God-willing –
one day reparation.
Passed on through efforts toward inclusivity,
and inclusion,
and resistance thereto.
It is part of us as a church.
A rich and nuanced legacy,
a source of spirit and nurture,
and a sure sign,
that God is able to make a way from no way.
And so, we pray with spirit,
and we pray with understanding.
We sing with spirit,
and we sing with understanding,
and we hope and pray and sing,
that we might be shaped,
toward faith and justice and mercy,
toward beloved community,
because God is already there,
beckoning us with song and understanding.
Amen.