Angels We Have Heard on High

Surveying the collection of carols in American hymnody, one might be excused for thinking that Christmas was about angels.

The Christ child gets attention in carols like “O Holy Night” or “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and the magi of Matthew's gospel take center stage in “We Three Kings,” but we just can't get enough of those angels. Whether the heavenly host sings alleluia in “Silent Night,” or angels greet the newborn Christ with sweet anthems in “What Child Is This,” it's rare to find a Christmas carol that doesn't mention them. We just can't get enough of the angels proclaiming Christ's birth to a group of frightened shepherds.

The angels take center stage in the story of the first Christmas in “Angels We Have Heard on High.” In the structure of the song we are neither shepherds receiving the announcement of Christ's birth, nor are we angels declaring the news. We are instead a third party, wandering the countryside and arriving too late to witness the stunning tableau that transpired outside Bethlehem.

Imagine and take it in for a moment, what that spectacle would have been like. The gospel of Luke mentions a group of shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem tending their flocks of sheep, one presumes in connection with the sacrificial system at the Temple in nearby Jerusalem.

On the one hand is the landscape, barren except for the scrub, meadow muffins and a small flock of sheep that dot the area. Scattered through that flock are rough-spun shepherds, some sleeping, some possibly drunk and some watching the scene with whatever emotion sits in the hearts of a shepherd late at night. On the other hand is a heavenly visitor who has just appeared, illumined and illuminating with an unworldly light that burns with a wondrous terror.

Caesar and other rulers concern themselves with halls of power and faraway kingdoms. Whenever they have an important proclamation to share, like the birth of an heir, they send messengers throughout the realm to declare it to the mighty. The angelic messenger is here to declare that God has restored the royal line of David, Israel's golden king.

Fifteen hundred years earlier, Moses went to Pharaoh and declared that God had sent him to save Israel from slavery and genocide, and to deliver his people to their own land. Now the angel is declaring that God is sending a new Moses to free Israel again, but the announcement isn't going to Caesar or even to Herod. It's going to the beneficiaries of that news, a group of social outcasts who can't even give testimony in court.

It's hard to tell which is a bigger shock to the shepherds: that the messiah has been born, or that they're the ones who are receiving the birth announcement.

This is the scene of wild, uncontainable wonder expressed in the opening lines of “Angels We Have Heard on High.” That first verse comes from the shepherds themselves, struck senseless with wonder. They have seen a host of angels and heard those angels, lost in worship, as a heavenly song rolled over the plains and came echoing back from distant mountains.

This is their witness account of what they heard and what they saw, and frankly it is incredible.

By the time we arrive on the scene, it is 2,020 years later. The angels are gone. Their music, however glorious it once sounded, has faded into silence. There is no one left living whose great-grandfather might have been stirred by that song. All that remains is what purports to be a written record of their encounter, and whatever questions we have.

The first verse is the account of the shepherds; the second verse is ours, and it is addressed to the shepherds. Why this celebration? Why this singing? What could you possibly have heard to set you to such celebration?

These are all reasonable questions, whether they are asked as the shepherds rush toward Bethlehem, or two millennia later as we wonder at the story we have heard. Either way, the shepherds' response in the third verse is the only one suitable. They don't argue theology with us. (As for how they feel about it, that should be obvious from the major key and upbeat tempo to the carol.)

Nor do the shepherds even talk about what they think the birth of Jesus will mean for them personally, for their nation, or for the world. Their initial response is simply “Come to Bethlehem and see.”

What do we find there? A baby, certainly; some would say, no more. The remainder of the third verse, and the fourth verse as well, state what the shepherds themselves believed they would find: Christ the Lord, the newborn king, Lord of heaven and earth, laid in a manger.

And woven throughout the song at the end of every verse is the song of the angels itself, rendered in a rolling chorus that rises and falls in rapid tempo, the Latin Gloria in Excelsis Deo, “Glory to God in the highest.”

This, then, is our cue, as visitors to this pageantry. We have missed the angels, and are witness only to the record of what Luke tells us the shepherds found.

Follow the shepherds. Come to Bethlehem. What do you see there?



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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"Angels We Have Heard On High"

1. Angels we have heard on high Sweetly singing o’er the plain And the mountains in reply Echoing their joyous strains Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo! 2. Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains prolong? What the gladsome tidings be? Which inspire your heavenly songs? Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!

3. Come to Bethlehem and see Christ, whose birth the angels sing; Come, adore on bended knee, Christ, the Lord, the newborn King. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo! 4. See Him in a manger laid, Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth; Mary, Joseph, lend your aid, With us sing our Savior's birth. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!

'O Come, O Come, Immanuel'

This Sunday is the fourth Sunday of Advent, something I suspect has escaped the notice of many Christians in America.

What we popularly consider the Christmas season technically is the Advent season. Advent is a part of the traditional Christian calendar, beginning four Sundays before Christmas, and ending on Christmas itself. The four Sundays of Advent are marked by lighting candles on a wreath, each with a different theme. The fifth candle, the Christ candle, is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas. In a liturgical sense the Christmas season does not begin until Christmas itself, and lasts for 12 days before ending on Epiphany, or Twelfth Night.

Fortunately, this doesn't make a difference to any but the stodgiest and most annoying people. Luckily for the rest of us, they have their own churches where they can fret over these things and wait until Christmas before they start singing Christmas carols, without ruining the fun of the season for the rest of us. (You know who you are.)

Advent technically has its own set of carols, such as “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,” written by Charles Wesley; but for whatever reason these have not received the elevated status of Christmas carols. With some exceptions.

Chief among these exceptions is “O Come O Come Emmanuel.”

Like all other great songs, whether they are hymns, Christmas carols or something else, “O Come O Come Immanuel” is best learned not from a lyrics sheet but by immersion. You grow up hearing it sung as the last leaves fall from the trees and as the sky first grows leaden with winter. You first sing it yourself before you can read, and learn to lose yourself in its somber notes at an age when it still thrills you to watch your breath chill in the air around you.

Some Christmas carols contain lessons on the meaning of Christmas, or they retell a familiar story around the Nativity. Some try to do both. None of that applies in this case. There is no progression of ideas in this carol, no breakthrough or “aha” that it tries to impart. Each verse begins the same way as its fellows, and each verse ends the same way: God, come rescue us. We are suffering here for want of you.

“O Come O Come Immanuel” was not written as much as it was grown — not from among the mountains, fields and forest rivers, nor from the bustle and jostle of our cities. It springs instead from the eternal longing in the human heart to transcend this sullied flesh and to connect with God. It is the prayer of a soul chained to the earth while it longs to dance in fields of glory.

“O Come O Come Immanuel” is not merely a hymn. It is Advent itself, given words and stretched over a frame of music that glides by as regularly as the chimes that call monks to prayer. It is a song that exudes the universal yearning for relief from the tedium of mortality. We are exiled here, we are under sentence of death, we are oppressed, we are weary. Come save us.

And always, in the same cadence that it gives voice to our longing, the carol returns to that same patient reminder: “Rejoice! Rejoice. Immanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”

So we wait. Thousands of years ago God's people waited in faith for the coming of the promised deliverer, whose arrival we now celebrate from the vantage of a faith rewarded. We also wait for his promised return and the fulfillment of the deliverance that he began when he first arrived. And lastly we wait for him to come more fully into our hearts and change us.

You came into the darkness and you made a difference, Anglicans pray at this time of year. Come into the darkness again.

Even so. Come, Lord Jesus. We are waiting. Amen.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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O Come O Come Immanuel

1.O come, O come, Immanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 2. O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan's tyranny ; From depths of hell thy people save, And give them victory o'er the grave. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 3. O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer, Us mortals by thine advent here. Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, And death's dark shadows put to flight. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

4. O come, Thou Key of David, come And open wide our heav'nly home ; Make safe the way that leads on high, And close the path to misery. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 5. O come, Adonai, Lord of might, Who to thy tribes, on Sinai's height, In ancient times did give the law In cloud and majesty and awe. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'

If you want a quietly solemn way to end the midnight service, sing “Silent Night.” If you want a song that will transport the congregation to heavenly realms, go with “O Holy Night.” But if you want to get people out of their seats, charged up and ready to move, the Christmas carol you want is “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

The secret is in that tune. Written with an upbeat tempo and in a major key, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is the Christmas carol for a celebration. It's a versatile song, one that can sound heavenly when it's sung acapella or accompanied by a violin; but if you listen to the music, it's just as easy to imagine it played on trumpets like a quartet of heralds announcing a royal arrival. It's virtually impossible to get this song wrong. It can even be played on an organ and still come out inspiring.

We owe “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” to the prolific creativity of Charles Wesley, the credited author of more than 6,000 hymns. Wesley — who, like his brother John and their father, was an ordained minister of the Church of England — is also remembered as the founder of Methodism. The denomination takes its name from a prayer group the Charles Wesley founded while he was attending Christ Church, Oxford, that was known for its intensive, methodological approach to studying the Bible.

Wesley considered hymns, made easier to remember by virtue of being sung, a natural way to teach. He brought his meticulous approach to Bible study to bear so that the lyrics became not just recountings of stories in the Bible or passages of Scripture set to music, but miniature lessons in church doctrine. It would be as though contemporary theologian N.T. Wright put portions of “Surprised by Hope” to music, and then received airtime comparable to popular Christian singers like Chris Tomlin.

Originally published in 1739, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" underwent some minor changes under the revival preacher George Whitefield, who changed the opening lines of the first verse (from “Hark! how all the welkin rings / Glory to the King of Kings”) and added the familiar couplet that closes each verse. The song originally had the same tune as "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," but in 1855 musician William H. Cummings adapted Mendelssohn's song to fit the lyrics. For all that, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is no exception to the depth of Wesley's writing.

The carol begins by placing the singers in the position of the shepherds of Luke's gospel as the angels appear and announce the birth of Jesus. To modern sensibilities, this a nice place to be. The shepherds are a quaint pastoral touch, and most of us are happy to identify with them in the gospel narrative as the first to hear that Christ has come.

We lose sight of how radical and subversive Luke's gospel is on this point, because the truth is that the shepherds embody the sort of people we usually go out of our way to avoid. People in the first century were discouraged from buying anything directly from shepherds because it was a given that anything a shepherd tried to sell was probably stolen. Even their testimony was inadmissible in the courts. This wasn't a quaint or pastoral group of people; it was an assemblage of crack addicts from under the bridge who aren't allowed to vote.

It's among this group of felons and illiterates that Wesley's hymn places us, as they receive the unexpected announcement from the angels, along with the news that the new king has removed any barriers that may have kept the from God:

Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

That's standard Bible stuff. In the second verse Wesley starts to teach about the Incarnation.

In Bible studies I've attended or read, I've encountered some pretty surprising attitudes toward Jesus. It seems we like Jesus to be something unreal or unnatural. We see the miracles in the gospels and assume that he had special God powers, and that this is why people followed him; or we catch the doctrine of his sinless nature and assume that life was easy for him, free of temptation, doubt or fear.

This is an old error. Christian orthodoxy teaches that Jesus was not a demigod like Herakles or some other hero of Greco-Roman myth, but as fully human as he was fully God. The Bible makes a point of it. He gets hungry. He gets angry. He gets tired. He cries, and even has full-blown panic attacks. He even cooks food and folds the laundry. Wesley addresses that point of doctrine in Verse 2.

Christ, by highest heav’n adored.
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate deity,
Pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

The proclamation of the angels and the mystery of Christ revealed, Wesley in the third verse turns to the shepherds' response, which is to worship. But here Wesley sneaks in a reference to Easter, as he proclaims that Christ is come to see the end of death:

Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Ris’n with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

There are two other verses Charles Wesley wrote for the carol that George Whitefield cut. To this day, they are rarely sung. But reading these, you can see firsthand the attention that Charles Wesley gave to Scripture as he wrote:

Come, desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display thy saving pow’r,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner man:
Oh, to all thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

I hope your church incorporates this Christmas carol into worship at least once this Advent; and if it doesn't, I hope you can find time to enjoy it yourself, around the table with your family, or out caroling with your friends.

“Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is one of the greatest Christmas carols ever written. It's scarcely possible to imagine Christmas without this song.




Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'O Little Town of Bethlehem'

Christmas is coming, and if you want a deeper worship experience in church, that's good news. In addition to the latest worshiptainment song from the radio, chances are good that you're going to hear actual Christmas carols. And by “hear,” I actually mean “sing.”

Traditional Christmas carols have several advantages going for them that popular and trendy worship songs don't. For starters, because American society is largely influenced by Christianity, people usually are familiar with Christmas carols even if they grew up outside the church. They probably recognize with the tunes, and if they have the lyrics in front of them, they almost certainly can sing along with confidence from the start.

Secondly, unlike many contemporary songs which deal strictly with a reductionist gospel of loving God and receiving forgiveness of sins, most Christmas carols are heavy lifters when it comes to doctrine. They'll carry their own weight in every verse, if not on every line.

Carols like “The First Noël” retell the story of the first Christmas around the supporting cast of shepherds and magi, while “O Come All Ye Faithful” teaches good doctrine on the hypostatic union. “We Three Kings” explores the coming life of Christ down to his death and Resurrection, and “O Holy Night” reflects the gospel call for social justice.

And then there's “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” a four-verse meditation on the Nativity itself.

Written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal priest from the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia who had visited the Holy Land three years earlier, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is a song people know of but don't know. Without the lyrics in front of them, most people can sing the first line with great enthusiasm before trailing off into “Da dee da dee dee dum” on Line 2.

If you sang “O Little Town” in church as a child, you probably sang it accompanied by a battered and tuneless organ. When you finished singing, you may even have looked at the carol itself with a measure of pity for all the trauma it had just suffered. Many songs suffer horribly during congregational worship in church, especially when they're sung without enthusiasm and played on an organ.

If your church still uses hymnals you're more likely to find “O Little Town of Bethlehem” than a carol like “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” but there are no guarantees you'll sing it during Advent, on Christmas or during the days leading to Epiphany. It's more of a bench-warmer than a Christmas titan like “Silent Night.”

That's a shame, because this song has what it takes to be a winner. The melody fits comfortably within a one-octave range, and proceeds at a steady, easily managed pace. The carol is lyrically unassuming as well, starting out like the opening montage of a Hollywood movie before delving into its deeper themes.

The first verse of “O Little Town” begins with the camera tracking slowly across a field of stars against the cold night sky before it drops down toward Bethlehem. It's a small town, scarcely more than a village. Many of the houses are hovels, owned by working-class families, although a few are bigger. Winding through the village are roads made of dirt and frozen mud, beaten paths made by the steady footsteps of people and their livestock over the years.

It's night, so as the camera pans through town we see the darkened windows of the houses. The only light comes from the stars and moon above, except for one mysterous source. As our field of vision steadily shifts leftward we perceive an unearthly light, small but steady, coming from the edge of town.

The second verse takes us to a closeup of the manger. Mary is lying on a pile of straw. Her face and her entire body are streaked with dust and dirt, and she is leaden with exhaustion. It's more than 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and if it weren't for that Roman census, she and her husband wouldn't have made the trip. It's too much to manage when you're nine months pregnant, but it did have one benefit. All that travel made labor a lot faster than it would have been otherwise.

The scene in the manger is perfectly idyllic, the proverbial calm after the storm. A moment ago Jesus was screaming fit to raise the dead, but he has finally settled down. Right now he's nestled in the crook of Mary's arm, latched onto her breast and lazily drinking colostrum as his eyes close and his tiny body unclenches.

In a moment Jesus will fall asleep and then Mary will too, but that won't last long. He's going to wake up a lot the next few nights, and aggravate his parents to no end. That's how it works when you have an infant.

Now the camera pulls back from the manger scene, and pans up toward the heavens again. It's quiet in town. Aside from Joseph, who is trying to decide if he puts too much stock in his dreams, pretty much everyone in Bethlehem is asleep right now.

That’s a shame because the people in the town are missing quite a show. The gates of heaven are open wide, and the angelic host is looking in amazement at the scene below them. While the stars themselves announce the birth of Jesus to anyone who is watching, the angels are lost in worship to the God who is at once too vast to comprehend and yet so tiny and vulnerable that it beggars description.

As rare as it is that we sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” it's rarer still we sing the third and fourth verses. That's our loss. The third verse contemplates the unassuming gospel, which by its nature comes silently and without fanfare or acclaim to the meek; rather than with the might and bluster we ourselves often rely on to advance it.

The fourth verse moves to entreaty, asking for our own transformation. Two things I find compelling about this verse: Rather than focusing on the crucified Christ we focus on so much, it welcomes the infant Christ into our lives, and it does so with the title Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Why is this important? I can't speak for others, but too often I take the adult Man of Sorrows for granted. I pause, consider his death for my sins, breathe a quick prayer of contrition and ask for forgiveness, and then I move on, my life largely unchanged. You can't do that with a child.

I became a father 17 years ago. I can think of nothing that upended my life more than the arrival of my daughter on that October afternoon. My wife and I had altered our lives to accommodate one another, but either one of us could and often did manage just fine without the other around when it came to day-to-day living.

I went to work in the morning and came home in the evening, just as I had done before we got married. My wife did the same with her studies and teaching post at graduate school. The big change in our lifestyle after our wedding was that now, when we returned to the apartment for the evening, somebody else would be there. That was it.

Not so when Oldest Daughter arrived on the scene. She required our presence in her life constantly for food, for comfort, for cleaning and for education. If she was hungry, we had to drop everything and feed her. If she was upset, we did our best to comfort her immediately. As soon as she started babbling, we started babbling back to encourage her to speak. Even a trip to the supermarket or to a friend's house was altered fundamentally by her presence. She didn't run the house, but her well-being became our highest priority, even above our own. If she couldn't sleep because of an ear infection, we didn't either.

It's been 17 years now and Oldest Daughter has learned remarkably well to stand on her own two feet. She gets herself food, works her own job, and pursues her own learning at high school and at home. For all that, our lives remain ordered around her needs, her goals and her for her own sake, because we love her. The same is true for her sisters.

In that sacrificial and occasionally selfless devotion to her life and well-being, I see a shadow of the life-upending transformation that Christ can bring when the unassuming infant from the manger arrives in our midst and compels us to place someone else truly first.

That's not just singing a song. That's worship.




Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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The lyrics:

O Little Town of Bethlehem

1. O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light.
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

2. For Christ is born of Mary,
And gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth!
And praises sing to God the King
And peace to men on earth.

3. How silently, how silently

The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

4. O holy child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in;
Be born to us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell.
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.

worship

I think a lot of my discontent with the church over the spring, summer and even the fall, stemmed from profound dissatisfaction with the preaching, which was same-old, same-old.

But I also have not liked the worship here, for ages, because of its volume and its disconnect with me, with its unfamiliar tunes.

It’s a lot of what I was talking about with Natasha. The worship is scripted, with no real “jam session” quality. The music is melodies and lyrics I’m not familiar with, in a style that I do not feel at home with, and that change fairly regularly.

Here I think is the problem. Let me try it from this perspective. Brendan’s position is a worship leader. That means that he leads us in worship. It’s his job to stir the entire congregation into seeking God and expressing themselves in an attitude of worship toward God. This is a participatory experience, not a spectator one.

I’m going to compare this to the worship style we had at Saunders Station Presbyterian Church when I was a child. Worship at the time was done from a set of hymnals that the church had bought before we started to attend there, that collected hymns that had been mainstays of worship for decades if not for centuries. These were songs that we sang at different points in the liturgical calendar, year after year, and consequently they had a certain familiarity when they came back around.

Worship was led, not by a band, but by an organist. Nancy McNutt was a competent organist, if not an inspired one, and she played every song at the same tempo, whether it was “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” or “Amazing Grace.”

And yet for all the failings of that style of worship, there was no question that when she played, everyone in the congregation sang. It might be a song like “We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations” or “They’ll Know We Are Christians by our Love,” but everyone sang when it was time for the hymn. We might have sung without enthusiasm, but we sang, all of us, young and old, and you could hear our voices raised in song alongside the moan of the faithful old organ.

Compare that to the worship situation at churches across the country and probably throughout the Western world today. We have a team that gets up front with a drum set, a couple guitars, and in our case, a violinist. Worship mostly consists of the worship leader singing, and if anyone else sngs, they simply are following his lead, much as we follow the pastor’s lead during the sermon, in understanding the text.

I was at a community group meeting last Monday where two of the worship team sarted tapping on glass, on plates and on whatever else was available, with a pair of wooden skewers. It was, without a doubt, an act of spontaneous worship, an expression of the demiurge within us as it swelled up and burst forth like a geyser. It was, without a doubt, the finest worship I’ve had in any church setting in years.

What if God has left the building and isn't listening anymore?

A friend of mine preached a sermon yesterday on experiencing the presence of God. I don't recall exactly what he said, but it put me in mind of an image I've had lately of a choir singing to an empty auditorium, as a type of the American church. That started me thinking further, and I recalled this passage from the minor prophets:

I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!
— Amos 5:21-24

What if God has left the bulding? Would we even know? The news Amos brought must have seemed like a shock to the Israelites when they received it. The feasts they were celebrating were the ones that God had commanded they celebrate for all generations, the music was good, and if that was their style, I'm sure the Israelites "felt the presence of God" when they worshiped. If God isn't listening to our worship, and doesn't want our offerings, how would we even know?

It's not just a rhetorical question. Music is a great way for us to cover up our emptiness and feel spiritual. Younger churches in particular like their worship like they're having a rock concert. The music is loud, and the pounding pulse of the music beat induces an adrenaline rush that we all-too-easily accept as a sign that God is really moving in our midst, especially once the church reaches the tipping point and everyone's properly excited. Older-style charismatic churches play this game too: leaders launch into praise choruses with fast tempos and then at midway switch into slower, more worshipful songs. The pace and tone of the service is so well sculpted and so structured that if you go to the same service long enough, you realize what's happening and you can't help but ask whether these weekly moves of the Spirit -- which too often have tears right on cue -- are really nothing more than clever artifice. Nor are older churches, with their familiar songs played on the familiar sound of the organ, exempt. Sentiment for a familiar hymn, the safety of structure, and sculpted regimen are just as good for filling in the void as adrenaline and masterful manipulation.

What if God has left the building? Would we know?

One of the comforts of fundamentalism is that it provides surety. God is this way. To understand the Bible, you have to use this approach. Anyone who commits these sins is going to burn in hell forever. Among themselves at least, evangelicals aren't quite that severe -- at least many aren't -- but there's still a tendency to reduce God to clever sayings, tidy cliches, comforting Scripture verses and attitudes pertaining to divine sovereignty, grace, Christ's essential friendliness, and the coming judgment on the ungodly, non-Christian world.

What if we're structuring our churches, our doctrines, our Bible studies, and our lives just so we can hide from ourselves the fact that God is sick of the insincere flattery we shit out of our mouths every week about how much we love him ("If you love me, you will obey my commands"), want to see his kingdom come on earth as in heaven ("Do not be hearers of the word only, do what it says"), and how we love everyone (except gays, liberals, conservatives, blacks, whites, Arabs, Jews, Muslims, environmentalists, George Bush, Bill Clinton, James Dobson and Benny Hinn)?

Sometimes I wonder if God has told us fuck off, and we were so busy listening to ourselves being spiritual that we never heard him over the din.

If so, we'll probably be the last ones to notice. A friend of mine who is a Buddhist by philosophy told me a few weeks ago that he actually had been an evangelical Christian for a few years, back when he was a teen. He finally left the fold because he was sick of all the junk in the church.

Another friend of mine has said a few times that the attitude of other Christians toward her because she is gay has driven her away from any sort of church-based corporate worship. Yet another friend, raised Catholic, can't say a good thing about Christianity, although like the other two, remains intrigued by Jesus and by his message.

Usually when I read stuff like this online, there's some piece at the end that wraps it all up and points to a sign that the church still has it together, or that somebody else over yonder is showing us how to get back on track. Some really daring people will give three or four easy steps to put things right.

I suck at giving comfort. Deal with it. What if God has left the auditorium? What if he doesn't want our money, our religious holidays, or even our worship? How would we even know?

worship

"Worship is what church is all about." That's what the preacher said during church today. "Worship is what church is all about."

That's a wonderful aspiration. Just about every church would agree that worship is its core mission, but at least in my church it doesn't feel like that is the case. Worship is an active, dynamic encounter with God that can leave us euphoric, remorseful, contemplative or moved in some other way, but it should not leave us fundamentally unchanged. How often does any part of the church service affect us like that? It's a rarity, in my experience.

We generally equate worship with the musical component of church, and while some will quibble with that, since our entire lives are meant to be worship, I think that's a good place to start. It's when we sing in church that we begin to worship with our voices, our minds and even our bodies.

If that's the definition we're using, then in my experience at least, the focus at church is not on worship or on ritual but on teaching. In contrast to worship, which engages the spirit with God; teaching is a passive experience. We hear about God and what our response to him should be, but we don't actually engage with God in that way.

To the extent that anything is broken, I've no idea how to fix it. Should we make services longer? Church services in the United States are short. We schedule an hour of our mornings for God, no more, and resent if services run over. Maybe allotting more time from our Sundays would allow us to relax into God's presence more and to respond accordingly.

The misson that Jesus gave the church was to disciple the nations, and worship can support this, since music prompts meditation and reflection. Many's the time I've found myself or my children singing a song I learned at a past church, and many's the time those songs have started me thinking along new and unfamiliar lines of thought about God.

I've often complained that the songs we use at our church are shallow lyrically, and too focused on our experiences, what we've gained from God or what he's done for us, particularly through the Crucifixtion. Should we allow more time for musical component of the service? That would give worship leaders a greater opportunity to have a progression of themes and to incorporate more songs. Maybe they also could draw from other branches of worship music with new arrangements to make them feel fresh, contemporary and accessible in a new way.

I often feel like worship has become something like a component of a cheap Disney movie. When the talking has gone on long enough, it's time to throw in a song. The worship team may sing the song well, and it may even be popular with the congregation, but if it's the difference between "Be Prepared" and "Kiss the Girl," there's really no comparison. One of those is OK, but the other is excellent, and when it comes to worship, we only want the best.

Services in church these days are very much about the teaching. At least at the churches I've attended, the sermon runs for about half the service, and if anyone is talking about the service afterward, it's the sermon that they're discussing.

Even sermons would benefit from a stronger focus on worship. After all, worship contains a dynamic element absent from straight teaching, and songs used in worship will remain in our memory and on our lips long after the Sunday sermon has been forgotten.



Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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The worship style that pleases me

I find a large-group worship experience often leaves me standing around with my hands in pockets, wondering why everyone but me is getting something out of the service.

Instead, I prefer a small-group setting, with no more than six or seven people, while the worship leader plays the guitar. The actual songs don't matter that much -- i.e., hymns or praise choruses -- as long as they have intelligent lyrics, which I suppose is another way of saying I don't enjoy most praise choruses.