Sunday, Jan. 20 - Second Sunday after Epiphany
What Elvis was to rock’n’roll, David was to the blues. So says someone who knows something about both rock’n’roll and the psalms of David. U2’s front man, Bono, is a bona fide rock star himself, so he knows one when he sees one. David was a star, Bono says, the Elvis of the Bible, if we can believe the chiseling of Michelangelo. And unusually for such a “rock star,” with his lust for power, lust for women, lust for life, he had the humility of one who knew his gift worked harder than he ever would.
That gift of David’s gave us Psalm 40, among many other songs in the Hebrew hymnbook. It’s a psalm composed by David and dedicated to the choirmaster of Israel. In other words, the people of God are meant to sing it when they gather to worship.
Curiously, a version of it that U2 adapted from the Bible is often sung at the end of its concerts. It was the last song on the 1983 album called War. Throughout the album the group lament the inveterate violence of the world and yearn for peace. With only 40 minutes left of reserved time in the recording studio, U2 members were looking for something soulful to end the album with. They read Psalm 40, wrote the words and tune, and recorded it that quickly. And now, more than 20 years later, they still sometimes close concerts with their Psalm 40 song. It’s a song that celebrates the new song God puts in their mouths to sing, but at the same time it sings of the longing that comes from the persistence of pain in and around us. How long, how long, to sing this song? they sing. Concertgoers chant it along with them as a kind of dirge-like yet praise-like prayer. I had thought of it as a nagging question, Bono says, pulling at the hem of an invisible deity whose presence we glimpse only when we act in love. How long hunger? How long hatred? How long until creation grows up and the chaos of its precocious, hell-bent adolescence has been discarded? I thought it odd that the vocalizing of such questions could bring such comfort—to me, too.[1]
This is one surprising thing that happens when we sing and pray honestly to the Lord, even in the midst of our pain and problems. We find in the very act of singing this way an unexpected comfort and hope. It’s a kind of musical therapy, don’t you know?!
There’s a hymn written by William Cowper that didn’t make it into this Baptist hymnbook, but was included in the 1975 version, that begins:
Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings;
It is the Lord who rises
With healing in His wings;
When comforts are declining,
He grants the soul again
A season of clear shining,
To cheer it after rain.
Cowper himself suffered from bouts of depression, but his friendship with John Newton (he of “Amazing Grace” fame), and his love for music were solace to him. We have an example of this in the life of David himself. What the Bible called an evil spirit continually tormented King Saul. It may have been what we would call melancholy or depression, but what we know for certain is that when David came to Saul and played his lyre or harp before the king, the madness left him, and he returned to his right mind.
The usual way of thinking about these things is probably that first, something changes in a person’s situation, and then the music changes. You change your tune only after your life has changed: only after experiencing a change from being anxious to being calm, from being in danger to being secure, from being sick to being well—only then does the Lord put a new song of praise in your mouth. As if something first has to happen for good that the new song then reflects. But what if that change comes about because the Lord has put a new song in your mouth? What if the movement from lament to praise happens because the music has first changed you? What if our experience has as much to do with what we sing as what we sing has to do with our experience?
When we come to worship on Sundays, if all we were to sing or pray reflected the way people were feeling at that moment, it would be cacophony in here. We would do nothing but compete for whose reality won the day—those who are up or those who are down. But when you come to worship at Wilshire, we ask you to sing and pray with words and tunes that are honest to the full breadth of human experience. There will be laments of “How long, O Lord, how long?” And like this psalm, there will be praise. We don’t sing only mournful dirges in church as if honesty demands that we give the devil his due. But neither do we sing only happy-clappy songs, as if to pretend that if you are a Christian, life is one big song of joy.
You get the full range of emotion in worship if you really put yourself into it, but you get it with a hopeful arc. The gospel story itself has a movement from promising beginning to the tragedy of sin to the resolution of God’s deliverance. The whole thing is true, but the last thing is the truest of all. So sometimes when you come to worship and you are invited to believe something or feel something that doesn’t feel yet quite true to your experience, you are supposed to piggyback on the faith of others until it is true for you. And the gospel—whether in Old Testament form like that of the anointed one, David, or in the New Testament form of the anointed one, Jesus—always sees this final promise of God’s gift of deliverance from despair to joy.
Music has the power to heal us and touch us, even when it is not obviously religious. And of course we can believe that it can do so because whether it is religious or not, it is a creation of a good God. So music therapy is becoming a popular dimension of treatment for certain kinds of brain damage or disorders.
Trevor Gibbons was a carpenter installing windows on the fourth floor of a new building when he had his first stroke. The confusion and dizziness caused him to lose his balance and fall, resulting in an additional spinal cord injury. Almost a year later ,after suffering another stroke and undergoing cervical spine surgery, he began sub-acute rehabilitation. Harnessed in an immobilizing body brace, Trevor had difficulty talking. His vocal chords had been damaged, and he was dealing with tremendous physical and emotional pain. What he could not express verbally about this life-changing situation found another outlet through the simple melodies of gospel songs.
Encouraged by his music therapist, Trevor began singing and writing his own music. During one improvisation he was “sitting at the window watching all the cars go by, wondering why [he felt] so empty inside,” which became the first words of his very first song. He is now in the process of producing his second album, which will contain 10 of his original songs.
Music is my inspiration, my escape from sadness and loneliness and pain. When I start to sing it opens up my mind and I think “there’s nothing I can’t do.”[2]
There are actual physical as well as emotional healing effects of music therapy. When first introduced to music therapy, 84-year-old Nova Longest was skeptical about its ability to help his Parkinson’s symptoms. However, after four weeks of therapy, he and his family noticed that he was “freezing” less (stopping and not being able to move), stumbling less, standing straighter, and talking more clearly and strongly.
Says he: I was able to resume my daily walks without the use of a cane. My family and friends have stated that they have noticed a marked improvement not only in my motor abilities, but also in my attitude and outlook on life.[3]
Now, musical therapy doesn’t cure all depression or bring healing to everyone in every way. The point of Psalm 40 is not, however, to sing the praises of music, but rather to sing the praises of the God who puts healing music in our mouths. David even tells of the world’s hopeless and silly alternatives that people turn to in order to change their own tune without receiving a new song from the true God. Happy are those, he says, who make the Lord their trust, and do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods.
Sometimes the people who turn to false gods for help really think they are turning to gods for help.
In May 2006, Bimbala Das married a snake—a cobra, to be precise. Because Hindus venerate cobras, the residents of Atala, India, believed that Mrs. Das’ serpentine nuptials would bring good luck to their town. Commenting on her relationship with the snake, Das said, We communicate in a peculiar way. (You think?) It seems snake charmers were not able to lure the cobra out of its home for the wedding, so a bronze replica was used as a stand-in. (No wisecracks, please, from women who think you don’t have to marry a cobra to marry a snake.)
[4]
The false gods to which people turn to change their luck or fortunes are usually simply worldly substitutes for God. Athletes inject themselves with steroids to achieve records, students steal tests or cheat in other ways to make higher scores, lonely or loveless souls resort to promiscuous sex or pornography to give them a taste of happiness, and others try bizarre forms of self-help to chase away fear or despair or poverty or desperation.
David’s point is that no one and no thing in the created world has the power to alter your life for good and for good other than the Creator of the created world. By turning to the Lord of life and singing God’s song, you will find yourself living in the power and presence of the God who knows you best and loves you most.
In 1534 Martin Luther wrote a letter to a dear friend who was apparently suffering from some kind of depression. He said in part,
When you are sad … and when melancholy threatens to get the upper hand, say: “Arise, I must play a song unto the Lord … for the Scriptures teach us that it pleases him to hear a joyful song and the music of stringed instruments. Then begin striking the keys and singing in accompaniment, as David and Elisha did, until your sad thoughts vanish. If the devil returns and plants sad thoughts and worries in your mind, resist him manfully and say, ‘Begone, devil! I must now play and sing unto my Lord Christ.’”[5]
Sounds like Luther, doesn’t it? Does it sounds like you? We are now invited say in our hearts together, Begone, devil! We must now play and sing unto our Lord Christ.
[1] From the article
Psalm Like It Hot, in
The Guardian, Oct. 31, 1999 (http://www.atu2.com/news/article.src?ID=668&Key=psalms&Year=&Cat).
[2]http://www.bethabe.org/Success_Stories199.html
[3]http://www.centerformusictherapy.com/client-profile.html
[4] “
Quotables & ’Toons,” World (June17, 2006).
[5] To Matthias Weller,
Letters of Spiritual Counsel (http://books.google.com/books?id=XdIX8_EMTbQC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=martin+luther+sing+devil&source=web&ots=HLq59Y8UKV&sig=rVY4pmQesQsQeFm2MbxvQWfHy6g#PPA96,M1).
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