It was offertory time in the morning worship, and everyone had settled down quietly – settling down, I suspect, for a little nap to get themselves ready for the big nap they would take during the sermon! And, as was customary, the organist began the slow and solemn strains of an offertory: music to collect money by, music to rest by, music to open the windows with. No one ever paid any attention to what the organist played for the offertory. And this time was no different; there was no reaction at all as the quiet but majestic music soothed the frazzled nerves of the worshippers. But then someone did recognize something familiar: what is that music, what is that song? Could it be? Yes, it was! The organist was playing a slowed-down version of "Yankee Doodle" and practically no one knew the difference!
What does that suggest about the way we deal with church music? What does that tell you about the faculties and energies we bring to worship? Is it possible, just possible, that too many of us hang up our minds along with our coats at the door?
In my home church in Louisville one Sunday evening we were about to have a baptismal service. And, again, as was the custom, the organist played soft music while the candidates found their way down in to the pool. Usually it was “Amazing Grace” or “I Love to Tell the Story”, something that pointed to the power of the Gospel to change lives. But tonight was different; it dawned on us, about the time the third candidate went under the water, that the organist was playing, "How Dry I Am". Since she was a Methodist we all accused her of doing a propaganda number on us full-immersion Baptists, but she insisted that all she was doing was playing something from the hymnal called "0 Happy Day That Fixed My Choice”!
Well, music communicates; it communicates at several levels. You see, music has an unusual power, because at its best in involves the whole personality, at its best it is an art that includes mind and heart, intellect and emotions and body. Music in the church, singing in the church, is an important act of worship, and, if we do it well, it will help us see the fullness of God. If we do it poorly it will depress us, or make us seem ridiculous, or, worst of all, will even make us blasphemous. If we do not sing in the right way, we can be guilty of belittling and downgrading the most exalted of all human activities, the worship of God.
Now the apostle Paul, struggling with a thousand issues in the Corinthian church, addresses himself to the theme of a proper worship, a proper way to understand what we are doing here before God. You’ll remember that the church in Corinth was so fragmented you can scarcely believe its survival would have been possible. You’ll remember, I hope, that here was a church split over who was the most spiritual, who had his theology straight, and who could proclaim the loudest and the longest. You’ll remember that here was a church beset with immorality, and yet there were folks who apparently didn’t want to address that kind of issue, they’d rather just have a high old time in the Lord. You’ll remember that here was a church in which rowdiness and public drunkenness got so bad that Paul had to insist that they clean up their act before they were to come to the Lord’s Table. And even there they had brought some terrible table manners. These folks were a mess, an awesome mess; and what was their answer? What was the response of some of them? To get on a spiritual kick and speak in tongues, unknown and unintelligible tongues, and just fail, miserably fail, to address real issues. They threw up a smokescreen of piosity in order to avoid dealing with the stuff that matters, really matters.
Now Paul’s response is a very wise one, I think. Paul does not directly confront the tongue-speakers and tell them to quit. He does not antagonize people by shutting them up. Instead what he does is to insist that something else be added, to argue to the inclusion of one vital ingredient in their worship, and that is the mind. The mind. Use your mind, as one of my schoolteachers used to say. Use the mind.
He says it this way, "I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also". With the mind also; don’t neglect the spirit, of course, but pray and sing with the mind also.
I
To sing with the mind, first of all, is to involve every facet of your being in the worship of God. To sing and to sing with the mind is to gather up all that you are, your whole personality, and to present it before the Lord in worship.
One way to think about worship is to think about it as an offering to God. What we do here is to offer ourselves, offer our praise to God. It’s not just a matter of coming here for enjoyment or for instruction; we are here because our God is worthy to be praised, and so we come to offer that praise to Him.
Now that means to me that I want to offer him the best that I have, the best that I am. I suppose at bottom that’s why we dress up to come to church – not really to impress other people, to look good to our neighbors, but we have a sense that we are in some special way coming into the presence of Almighty God and that we should present ourselves with the best that we have.
When I came here as your interim pastor, I said to you that I would pledge to come into this pulpit Sunday by Sunday having done my preparation. If I have fulfilled that, it is not only that I would be embarrassed before you if I did not; it is because I would be ashamed to waste the hour of worship before the Living God. When we worship we bring our best, we offer ourselves as fully as we can.
And so, says Paul, "Sing with the mind also". Think about what you are singing, test its meaning, understand it, engage with it, reflect on it. Don’t just blindly and mindlessly mouth words in a routine ritual, but make the words of your praise a part of your whole personality, offered up to God.
You’ll remember that when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he responded by quoting from Deuteronomy, but he did more than quote it, he added to it. The Old Testament witness says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all the heart and with all they soul and with all thy strength. " But Jesus saw deeper yet, for he added a phrase: "and with thy mind.” Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with heart and soul and mind and strength. Love God with the mind, sing with the mind also, and you will be offering to God your whole personality.
II
More than that, to sing with the mind also is to help build up the body of Christ; to sing with the mind creates spirit and substance within the church, it works toward resolving conflicts, it affirms a common faith. When we sing with the mind we are taking our stands together and are crying out to the powers that would divide us, "No, we are together, we sing one song, we share one anthem, we are one in the spirit".
Someone has observed that many of us pick up a good deal of our theology not from our reading of the Bible so much as from what we sing. We learn as much about God and the ways of God from what we sing as we do from what we read or what we hear. And that makes sense, when you think about it. As I said before, when you sing, you bring all the faculties together: mind and spirit, intellect and emotions and body. And that’s powerful reinforcement, that is powerful teaching. So that means, doesn’t it, that we should be careful what we sing, that it should be authentic, and that it should reflect the faith we hold.
You see, I’m afraid that we are in an era in which it’s entertainment that grabs us. We want to be entertained, we want the rhythm, the beat, the color, the flash; but the substance gets lost. The substance, the thought gets lost, and we forget about what it is to sing with the mind.
That is true whether it is a rock and roller belting out nothing but “Yeah, yeah, yeah” -- and by the way, sometimes it’s better that we do ignore the words – or whether its a situation like the one I heard about at an organists workshop. It seems that in England there is a particular style of organ playing at worship services in the great Cathedrals, and this style of organ playing involves ignoring the choir and doing your own thing on the organ. So on this one occasion, the organist was barreling along at full blast, and he fairly shouted to his page-turning assistant, "Tell me, can you hear the choir?" "Just barely sir, just barely" So the organist responded by adding another trumpet stop to his sound!
It’s easy, too easy, far too easy, to think of our singing as entertainment, and just ignore what is happening, what we are singing. But when you sing with the mind, help build up the body of Christ, you help heal divisions in the body, you affirm the church’s faith. And that is important. You teach, you teach yourselves and you teach others. Sing with the mind also.
III
And then, as I see it, to sing with the mind is to create a credible witness for the world. To sing with the mind means that the world outside the church will hear something that communicates, something that penetrates.
If you wonder where in the world some of the hymns come from that we sing each Sunday, if you wonder how your preacher manages to come up with some of these crazy songs, the answer is that it is important to me that we build a consistent, united, pointed witness. It is important to me that we in this church sing not just for the sake of singing, not just in order to feel good, though none of those things is bad. But it is important that we sing with the mind also. It is important that we create a credible witness.
Paul raises an important question for us. If the flute or the harp do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? When we sing and sing with the mind also, we are to sing a credible, distinctive, positive witness to the world.
My hunch is that if we were to examine closely and carefully all that we sing, we would find ourselves uncomfortable with some of it. If we took the time to think critically about everything that comes out of our mouths, then we might have some second thoughts about the witness we are offering.
For example, I once had a pastor who spent the better part of one of his sermons ripping to shreds that hymn chorus we like to sing, "Leaning on Jesus, leaning on Jesus, safe and secure from all alarms" His point was that we are not to seek safety, we are not to flee from responsibility and try to escape. Well, like it or not, I always have qualms of conscience whenever I am asked to sing, “Safe and secure from all alarms".
Or there was the time when a pastor had spent his time preaching about personal responsibility, about how we ought not to presume on God to rescue us when we’ve messed up. His point was, in essence, that we cannot expect God to clean up behind us when we have been irresponsible. Sermon ended, he announced the closing hymn, "Be not dismayed whate’er betide, God will take care of you". Well, down the tubes went credibility, didn’t it? No, sing with the mind, bring to mind all that you are, pay attention to what you sing, for it is teaching you and it is telling the world something about the faith you hold. Sing with the mind also.
In music the church has been given a great and mysterious gift, but it has to be used and used well. The word of Scripture for us is first, Sing. Sing. Do not stand idly by and complain that your voice is got good or that you find the song unfamiliar or that somebody near you might not think you are very good. Sing and sing with all your heart. But sing with the mind also, bringing all that you are to God, doing something which helps unite you with your fellow believers, offering up a credible witness to the world. You see, it’s rather as one Christian leader put it, "The trouble with the world is that the people who pray don’t think and the people who think don’t pray." May I change that a bit, "The trouble with the church is that the people who sing may not always think and the people who think don’t always sing." Hear again the word of the Scripture, "Sing with the mind also.”
