If you really want to leave a lasting impression on somebody, how do you do it? If you truly need for somebody to remember whatever you think is important, how are you going to make sure they won't forget?
Well, one technique is, of course, to use words. Lots and lots of words. That’s what I tend to do. That, I guess, is the occupational disease of preachers. If you have worked with me on some church project, you know that not only am I likely to sit down and discuss it with you, but also I will probably send you a letter listing all the work that needs to be done. Words, words, words; talk, talk, talk. And if you are on the church council, you know that the next morning after the council has met you will find me stuffing your mailbox with notes made at the meeting, so that you will not forget, and I will not forget, what we did. Words, words, words; talk, talk, talk, and memos.
It's not just Baptist preachers, of course; it's the Washington way. We write memos to each other. We push words at each other. And a few years ago when the government felt that there was entirely too much paper and that there were altogether too many unnecessary memos being circulated, what happened? Old Washington hands will know exactly what happened. Around the offices went a lengthy, detailed memo explaining that there should not be so many memos! And then the instructions were that this memo should be copied and put into everybody's hands!
Words, words, words. Talk, talk, talk. We want to share something and we use words; we want to teach or to communicate and we use talk. And that is necessary. But does it leave the most lasting impression? Does it assure that we will remember?
How many remember the lectures you got in your high school classrooms? How many of us recall the facts and figures we read in our textbooks? Would someone please recite the periodic chart of the elements? I could do that at one time. Now how many remember last Sunday’s sermon? What hurts, of course, is that I couldn’t tell you if you were right or wrong because I don’t remember it!
No, mere talk does not assure a lasting impression, and the superabundance of words does not make certain that somebody has learned. Moses faced this concern as he came close to the end of his life. The Book of Deuteronomy is chock full of admonitions to hear and remember and do the will of God. The great concern of Moses as he gives the law of God there on the banks of the Jordan is that after he is gone and after the people enter the land, they remember and do as God has commanded. But how will they remember? How can Moses be sure that they will recall all that they are to do? What can he do to see to it that he has made a lasting impression?
God gives him an answer: write a song. If you want them to remember, write and teach them a song. "Now therefore write this song, and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the people of Israel …when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness, for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their descendants."
So: when you want to create a lasting impression, what do you do? You sing and teach a song. Let me broaden that. When you really want to learn to teach, you do it with music and poetry; start with something that finds the heart as well as the intellect. You do it with both right brain and left brain. And, as the old tune has it, "The song may be ended, but the melody lingers on."
Today what I hope to do is to open you up to genuine learning by urging you to use all the gifts of art and feeling God has given you. I hope to say to you that our God has given us a great gift by making us creatures of feeling as well as of fact, he wants to prepare you and me for the dry days, the testing days. He wants us to store up resources for the times of testing, and he has given us a way to do that. He has said to us, if you want to learn what you are going to need to know for the difficult days, sing it. Feel it. Do more than learn facts and figures about doctrine. Learn to s1ng your faith, to feel your faith; learn to plant it down deep in the consciousness, and it will be yours when you need it.
"Now therefore write this song, and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the people of Israel ... when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness, for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their descendants". And then the next two chapters of Deuteronomy are in fact a great Psalm of remembrance, history, praise, and promise.
Now it is certainly true that when you learn something as music or as poetry or, for that matter, in any other artistic form, you learn it more deeply. The folks who make commercials know this. For years they have been bombarding us with little ditties and jingles, so that you can’t quite get, "Reach out, reach out and touch someone" out of your head. You can’t miss the product when the song is ringing out, "It’s the real thing." The business world understands that if you want to get a message across, sing it.
You know, when I was in the seventh grade, they wanted us to learn the names of all the presidents in order. I am not at all sure why it is important to know that, but it seems to be a rite of passage; you cannot make it through seventh grade without knowing the names of the presidents in order. Now how are you going to do that? How will you remember a jumble of names? If you asked me today to do it, I probably could not, but I'll tell you what I do remember to this good hour; I remember a peculiar little jingle they taught us, a jingle made up of the first two or three letters of each president's name. And so to learn the names of the presidents, in order, what I learned was Wash Ad Jeff, Mad, Mon Ad Jack, Van Har Ty, Po Tay Fill, Pier Bu Con, John Grant Hay, Gar Ar Cleve, Har Cleve Mac, Roo Ta Will, Hard Coo Hoo, Roo Tru. It ends with Tru because Tru was president when I was in the 7th grade. I cannot begin to tell you who has been president since then. Most of them have not been worth remembering anyway. The facts are lost unless packaged in song.
The song is ended, but the melody, the memory lingers on. We deeply remember things when they are packaged with art, and music, and poetry, with feelings.
But now see why God wants us to learn the truth with song. The wisdom of God is not only that God knows that a singing faith is one that is remembered. It is also that God knows that we are going to get preoccupied, we are going to get caught up in other pursuits; but that a time of need, a time of testing will come and we had better have a reservoir we can draw on. And the best reservoir is a song.
Listen to the way the command to Moses is framed: You are about to sleep with your fathers; then this people will rise and play the harlot after the strange gods of the land ... and will forsake me and break my covenant.
Sounds a little like what every parent thinks as that son, that daughter, is off to college. Pretty soon I won’t be right there to tell them what to do, and I’m afraid they’ll forget everything I ever taught them. But … but … says the Lord to Moses, the days will come when many evils and troubles have come upon them, and this song shall confront them as a witness … for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their descendants.
That's what our God is giving us: a resource that will spring to mind when the days of trouble come. A reservoir that goes deeper than concepts, wider than abstractions, broader than mere ideas. Our God is saying to us, learn with the heart, learn with all your senses, learn the faith and learn his ways deep down. And then when the tough days come, you'll be surprised how much will jump to the surface and be there for you.
I have a good friend who has been through a lot of sorrow. He lost his first wife to cancer several years ago. Then in a short while his oldest daughter also died. And there were a number of other tragic and difficult circumstances in his life. But he said as he spoke one Sunday at our church that what got him through were all the scriptures and all the songs that he had memorized as a child and had thought he had forgotten. Those things which he had learned and taken in as poetry and as music, those things now became a precious reserve to get him past the tough times. The song is ended, but still the melody lingers on. Our God shows us that if we will let our feelings take hold as well as our brains, if we will let the arts penetrate us, he will build in us a reservoir of help in time of need.
From time to time I am called on to perform funerals for people and families who have little or no faith. One of the local funeral homes calls on me to do this when they have a family who typically thinks Grandma may have been brought up a Baptist but they aren't quite sure … you know what I mean, just plain secular. I have found, however, that however secular and however lacking in vital faith they may be, I can usually get them to stumble through a recitation of the 23rd Psalm, and that that will help. Even the most secular of people have had enough exposure to the Bible that they know a bit of that psalm, and it will help to recall it in a difficult and trying time. The song is ended, but the melody, if planted in the heart, will linger on.
What then am I really saying? And what practical suggestions come out of all this? We have been working together the last four Sundays on the importance of knowing and teaching the faith. What am I really saying as we finish up on this emphasis?
First, obviously, sing your faith; or if you cannot or will not sing it, use the arts – painting poetry, music, something, to build your reserves. Let the hymnal be second only to the Bible as a means of exposure to the great themes of the faith. Prepare yourself for times of testing by committing to memory some of the world's great passages. Expose yourself to the world's great music, great art, great literature. I remember that as a seminary student, I had been working hard one semester, trying to learn the subject of Christian apologetics. Now Christian apologetics is that branch of theology and philosophy which is concerned to try to persuade non-Christians of the truth of the Christian faith. Apologetics tries to answer questions such as, How do I know there is a God? How can I be sure that Christ is God in human flesh? What is the evidence for the Resurrection … all that kind of thing, very heady, very wordy, very complicated. And I had been working hard to t make sense of it all. But one evening I went to a performance in the Seminary chapel: Handel's Messiah. That night, sitting there listening to "I know that my redeemer liveth," drinking in "By man came also the resurrection and the life," and jumping to my feet with all the others at the sound of, "Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth" … that night I could not help say, How can anyone hear this and not believe? This – music -- a song speaks with power. So sing your faith, use the arts to build up a reserve. Come with me to the National Gallery of Art, where one of our members, Sumner Rhodes, will show you your God in paintings by Georgia O’Keefe, and your reserves will build. Come with me to the Anacostia Museum, see the exhibit on the black church in America, and hear the sounds of freedom and faith. It will build your reserves.
Second, teach with the arts and with the music of your heart. Oh, yes, I know most of us think we aren't talented. But with what you have you can influence and teach somebody else if you use your feelings as well as your facts. How many of us had mothers who went about the house doing their chores and singing "Sweet Hour of Prayer" or humming "Amazing Grace" or maybe even warbling away in what the opera calls a bad voice but what the angels affirm as heavenly? And has that not stayed with you? For me it was my father, who loved to sing, and who sang around our house and in church as well; and I can still hear him, "0 Lord Most Holy," "The Lord's Prayer" -- and when the tough days came … when a neighbor, my best friend, was killed by a hit and run driver, my father nourished himself and me with the music of Stainer's Crucifixion: "God so loved the world that he gave his only son." Teach with music, with art, with poetry, with everything you can bring; do not depend on mere words to share with somebody, but use all that God has given. I know at least one Christian who does his evangelism by taking people to the art gallery and sharing with them paintings of the crucified Christ. The song so planted may end, but the melody will linger on.
And third: not only ought we to sing our faith and poeticize our faith; not only ought we to use the arts to build up our own reserves; and not only ought we to use the arts to teach others at a deeper level; but we ought also to share fully and joyously in the worship of God, using everything at our disposal. Our worship should be built around our God's command to Moses: teach the people of Israel this song and confront them as a witness.
We are as Baptists in a very wordy, talkative worship tradition. Some folks, especially preachers, think of everything but preaching as the preliminaries, something just to be over and done with so we can get down to the real thing. But I believe that is a mistake. That is a short circuit. And that won't last, that won't linger on.
Here at our church we try to build worship services as a unit, a teaching unit. We try to communicate one central truth through preaching and prayer and Scripture and song. And we've at least made a beginning doing what worship ought to do. But how much more we could do! We need to do more for the eyes: not only liturgical colors and a little stained glass, but more with banners and dance and even film and drama. We need to do more for taste and smell: not only the elements of the Lord's supper, but maybe there are other ways to teach through those senses too. Never mind the details; we'll explore those in months to come. But hear at least this: participate, participate, in all of our worship. Come on time and come singing. Come with minds open and ready to explore what is being taught. Come and let your own creative powers be opened up. Fill yourself with the music of God's heaven; for if you cannot preach like Peter and you cannot pray like Paul, if you cannot sing like angels, still, still, in one way or another, you can share the love of Jesus.
And on that day when your song must end and there is no more you can say, no new lesson to learn, then the melody you have caught will linger on.
