Tidings of Peace
May, 2004
Pastor Johnson’s Message: We Want to Meet
Dear friends,
Sometimes a hymn that I learned as a young person passes through my
mind. It was an African hymn, one of the first bits of “global music” I
remember encountering. It began:
Jesus, we want to meet
On this, thy holy day.
We gather round thy throne
On this thy holy day.
Thou art our heavenly Friend,
Hear our prayers as they ascend;
On this, thy holy day.
I often
have that hymn in my mind on Sunday morning as I prepare for worship. To me it
expresses the joy and the wonder of being able to “gather round God’s throne”
each week.
That’s
why we come, isn’t it? There are certainly other reasons for coming to church.
Fellowship is important, faithfulness to the congregation of which you are a
part is important. But the ultimate reason is to spend time with Jesus.
I’ve been
trying, over the last few years, to be more faithful in daily prayer. This has
been a good thing for me. It is much too easy in the business of life to let
days go by without deliberately stopping for prayer—even for pastors.
Yet I find that the more time I spend in prayer during the week, the more I look forward to Sunday. I begin, on Saturday or even on Friday, feeling drawn toward the Lord’s day. I begin praying for God to use my ministry to the congregation, and Pastor Dean’s; for God’s words to be in the mouth of whichever one of us is preaching; for Christ to be strongly present in the sacrament with all those who receive. I begin praying for those who will be present; praying for those who will not be present.
When we
gather for worship, Christ is there. I’ve been moved again this season by the
gospel stories of the disciples after the resurrection—how confused they were,
how disheartened, and yet how that fog of confusion was lifted when they found
themselves in the presence of Christ. That’s why worship on Sunday is important
to me: there I encounter Christ, and he “melts the clouds of sin and sadness”
and “drives the dark of doubt away” (as Henry van Dyke put it).
Last
Sunday I preached about the story in John 21 of Jesus, meeting his dispirited
disciples as they were fishing on the Sea of Tiberius. There were two points to
be made in the story: (1) “There’s no place that God ain’t” (sorry if you
missed the story to which that was the punch line—check it out on Peace’s web
site!); and (2) There’s one place where we can be sure he is—at the Table to
which he invites us, where he comes to us in bread and wine, his Body and
Blood.
What a gift it is to be able to worship—indeed to meet Jesus “on this, thy holy day.” What a joy to “gather round the throne” of our heavenly Friend. What a comfort to allow him to “look into our hearts and minds.”
It comes
around each week, his holy day. Where else would we want to be?
Peace to you,
Pastor Richard O. Johnson
Classic Prayers
For this day’s sins, O God, grant us mercy: for
sloth that wasted the hours or for haste which outran its benedictions; for
fear that frustrated bold hopes or dullness that took everything for granted;
for anger that burst forth destructively or indifference that smothered the
soul; for suspicion wrongly held or for trust cheaply betrayed; for indecision
which avoided the evil or for compromise which disguised it. Amen.
In Ephesians 5:18-19, St.
Paul admonishes us to “be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord
with all your heart.” We Lutherans are
singing people; we sing hymns, of course, but we also sing a good bit of our
liturgy. That love of singing is deeply
rooted in our tradition. Luther himself
was an amateur musician of some accomplishment, and he was dedicated to
improving the use of music in worship.
In a culture where public
singing has almost disappeared except in church, so much singing may seem a bit
of an oddity. Why do we sing? J. R. Sydnor, in a book on hymnody, suggests
five reasons:
(1) We sing to express our feelings and our
ideas. It isn’t always easy to say what
we feel, particularly in areas as personal as faith. But there is something about music that helps us express the
feeling in our heart, and so we use music to make our feelings known.
(2) We sing to proclaim our faith to
others. Part of Luther’s genius was to
teach people to sing about their faith.
By reinforcing words with music, the gospel was spread much more
rapidly. The way you sing in church
describes your faith and how you feel about it. If you find singing the liturgy and hymns boring and so stand
silent or sing listlessly, a visitor can’t help but feel you are not very
excited about your faith.
(3) We sing because doing so binds us in closer
fellowship. There is a kind of unity
expressed when everyone joins in the same song, a unity that helps us
understand and experience our oneness in Christ.
(4) We sing because by doing
so, we learn the dimensions of Christian truth. The average Christian learns
more about basic Christian beliefs in a life-time of singing the liturgy and
hymns than from all the sermons and Sunday School lessons he or she hears. We
learn things better when they're set to music. When you are down and out and in
need of Jesus' love, you're not very likely to remember all the sermons you've
heard about how great Jesus is; but you may very well find words like “What a
Friend We Have in Jesus" drifting through your mind and heart.
(5) We sing because hymns sustain us in our daily life. They become a kind of “portable catechism” enabling us to carry our faith with us each day. St. Augustine once said, “The person who sings prays twice.”
In spite of all this, many
people don’t participate very enthusiastically in singing on Sunday
morning. Why? Some claim they can’t carry a tune in a bucket. But we don’t sing for the benefit of others,
or to make a beautiful sound. “Make a joyful noise to the Lord!” – that’s what
the Psalm says. We don’t sing for the
benefit of others or to make a beautiful sound. We are singing to God! He
already knows what your voice sounds like, and he loves it!
Some feel they are too old
or feeble to sing. John Wesley, who
really brought hymn-singing to the English, wrote about singing: “Let not a slight degree of weakness or
weariness hinder you. If it is a cross
to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing.”
Some claim they can’t sing a
hymn they don’t know, and they can’t learn anything new. This is reminiscent of U. S. Grant, who
remarked, “I only know two tunes; one is Yankee Doodle, and the other
isn’t.” Learning new hymns is
important. You could open your Bible
every day and read nothing but the 23rd Psalm; that may be comforting, but what
a treasure you would be missing! Nearly
everyone has learned “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Nothing you will ever be asked to sing in church is any more
difficult or challenging than that! If
you know that song, you can learn a new hymn.
Singing praise to God is not an extra, not a time-filler, not a
decoration and not an exercise for the musically gifted. It is a commandment
– and a joyous and rewarding one.