Saturday, April 21, and Sunday, April 22, 2007
That hymn we just sang is about the song on the cover of your bulletin. It’s a hymn about getting to sing that new, 2000 year old, contemporary song. It’s a hymn about where that song comes from. The hymn we sang is like a description of the concert where this song was performed, a description of the worship service where this new, 2000 year old, contemporary song was used to praise God.
The way I printed the song on the bulletin cover shows you how it was performed, used in worship. First it begins with the Select Choir—28 leading voices—who sing:
Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for you were slain,
and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.
Then the Mass Choir—thousands and thousands of voices—join in:
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!
After that, the Congregation—the people gathered around the Altar of God—they’ve heard all of these moving words of praise and so they add their voices to the song:
To him who sits on the throne
and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might
forever and ever!
Finally, this new, 2000 year old, contemporary song comes to a close with a Quartet—four voices from the original Select Choir—lifting their voices in a final: “Amen!”
It must be an incredibly moving piece of music. I’d play you a recording of it, but there isn’t one. I’d have us try to sing it as choirs and congregation, but no one knows the music. It hasn’t been written down.
You see—and maybe you’ve already figured this out—even though this is a new song, a contemporary song, it’s also 2000 years old. We don’t know what the music sounds like. All we know is that it must be a tremendous song, because it is the song being sung in the throne room of God.
This new, 2000 year old, contemporary song is the one sung by the Four Creatures, the 24 Elders, the angels, and the saints who are gathered around the throne of God the Father in the vision that John received, the vision he wrote down in Revelation. In John’s vision, he sees all of the ones around God the Father singing praises to Jesus Christ—the Lamb who was slain, nailed to the cross to save His people. This song is 2000 years old, because it’s the song they started singing in heaven when Jesus rose from the dead, when He ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father.
One of my Seminary professors, Dr. Lou Brighton, wrote about this song saying, “There has never been a celebration like that which began when the Son returned to his heavenly Father. For some two thousand years it has been taking place, and it will continue forever. Heaven broke into joyful song and celebration when the Son came back victorious” (Revelation, CPH, 145).
The song you have on the cover of your bulletin, this song that comes from the Word of God in the book of Revelation, this song is 2000 years old, but it is still very, very contemporary.
“Contemporary” means to be happening at the same time. While this heavenly song is 2000 years old, we also have to remember it’s a song that heaven hasn’t stopped singing. It is a contemporary song, because the Four Creatures, the 24 Elders, the angels, and the saints are still singing it today, right now, contemporaneous with our worship. As we sing and praise God down here in worship today, they’re singing and praising God in heaven today. As we sing and praise for just one hour a week, they sing and praise all of the time, 24/7, a continuous, contemporary, non-stop, vibrant, living party for the Lord. Our worship here is just a glimpse into what that celebration might be like. . .just a glimpse, and sometimes I wish we could see more of what it will be like, what it means to praise the Lord.
Ten days ago I got back from the South Wisconsin District Pastors Conference, and I was demoralized. Instead of being lifted up by time spent with brothers in the ministry, I felt trampled on. The topic for the conference was essentially the new hymnal, the Lutheran Service Book that we have in our pews. I went expecting to gain new insights on how to use the hymnal, stories behind the hymns and liturgies, and ways to use the hymnal to teach the faith.
I got a few of those things from the conference, but mainly I got another message: any worship songs that are not hymns, songs that don’t conform to some pattern of what we’ve always had, any ways of constructing a worship service that are different from the hymnal are wrong and don’t bring glory to God. I left the conference feeling like the pastors with the loudest voices would not approve of what we do in worship, wouldn’t approve any attempt to add different kinds of styles of music into our worship. There was also very strong opinion expressed by some. . .just some voices. . .that music styles like rock and pop, things that have a backbeat, are inherently evil and cannot be used to worship the Lord.
It’s the same worship war that’s been going on for decades, but frankly, I’m tired of it. It happens on these big, denominational levels, but it also happens locally. I know that each of you has your own personal preferences about what style of music you’d like in worship, what you want the worship service to be like, what kind of preaching you prefer. I know you have debates among yourselves, debates in your own mind, debates with us as pastors, but frankly, I’m tired of it.
You see, here with this new, 2000 year old, contemporary song, we know it’s biblical, it’s approved by God, it’s being sung in His throne room, but we don’t know what it sounds like. It says the Four Creatures and the 24 Elders had harps—although the actual word there is kithara, a Greek instrument more elaborate than the harp we might imagine, an instrument that is a precursor in design and name to the guitar. That’s all we know about what it might have sounded like. It probably wasn’t the harp strumming that gets used in movies, and it certainly doesn’t say anything about organs and old Lutheran hymns.
So here is this biblical song, but it doesn’t prove one side right in the worship war. We don’t have the music for this 2000 year old song, and that’s probably because the sound is heavenly, beyond anything we can probably imagine. It isn’t traditional or contemporary; it isn’t a church hymn or a rock song; it’s something much more than either side of the worship war.
In Revelation, John doesn’t even try to describe the music. Maybe he didn’t describe it because it was so many different things, maybe it kept changing even as he heard it, maybe the music incorporated so many different styles, tempos, melodies, rhythms, instruments, and voices that he could hear all of the music of the God-given creativity and artistry that was unleashed into the world at Creation.
I imagine that over these 2000 years that this song in the throne room of God has been like a jazz vamp. I’m not saying it’s a jazz song; I’m saying it’s like what a jazz combo does. They start with a melody, play that through, and then each time around, they start changing the melody, messing with it, adding to it, taking away from it, going off in different directions, letting new sounds appear, disappear, reappear, until maybe you’re not even sure that it is the same song. A jazz combo, though, brings it all back together at the end, hitting that original melody for one more run through. I imagine that over 2000 years, this heavenly song has been going on like that vamp—the same words, the same essential song, but always looking to develop that song with different voices, instruments, sounds, tempos, rhythms.
Worship like that is kind of like someone saying to the group: “I have this way of singing; join with me.” Everyone jumps in, sings, and then someone else comes along and says, “That’s great. Will you try singing this way with me?” And then everyone tries that, let’s that song come to life, and then someone else says, “I think I could combine those two songs and make a new one.”
I don’t know exactly what that would look like in a weekend worship service, but I know the spirit when I see it. I know the spirit of collaboration—instead of competition. I know the spirit of letting all voices rejoice—instead of getting all of the voices into one line. I know the song by Bill Staines, “All God’s critters got a place in the choir/Some sing low, some sing high,/Some sing out loud on the telephone wires/Some just clap their hands or paws or anything they got now.” All God’s creatures got a place in the choir making whatever music they can.
At the Festival of Faith & Music that I attended a few weeks ago, I saw this band called Anathallo. They are an eight-person band playing this really diverse sounding kind of rock/folk music. Watching them was to watch a collaborative, worshipful spirit. They launch into tunes, everyone moving around on stage from instrument to instrument, people sharing duties, and you can just see the pure joy of making music, of raising a song to speak a truth about God. That’s a collaborative spirit—where even us who were watching were a part of things as they invited us to clap along, stomp our feet, be a part of the experience. That’s more akin to what I imagine is happening in that new, 2000 year old, contemporary song in heaven. There’s no one leader dictating what everyone must do, what the song always will sound like. It’s a collaborative spirit, a moving spirit, a way of letting all of the voices in the room be a part of making sounds for the Lord.
We tend to think of worship as being pastor-led with an organist keeping the tunes going, but worship is more collaborative than that. It’s always a combination of pastor, congregation, organist, choirs, and others. There have always been musicians who decided they could add something to the organ, so they bring their trumpets, guitars, flutes, violins, pianos, and bells. Worship is a collaboration; people are in choirs or ring bells or play instruments or turn the lights on or off or get communion ready or decorate the church or clean the church or welcome people.
And even when we start seeing people moving away from hymns and organs, it’s still a collaboration, a building on what has already been a part of worship. Rock bands playing hymns with their own style. I know a folk singer who wrote a folk song to a hymn tune and turned it into a song for a hymnal. There are rappers who quote “Amazing Grace” in their raps. Music is all about taking what people have done in the past, turning it into something of your own, putting your mark on it, and letting that new thing fly. We’re not done with what might be called traditional worship; we’re collaborating with it.
And that’s the collaborative spirit of the new, 2000 year old, contemporary song. Think of that choir in the throne room of God. It keeps getting bigger and bigger. Every time a believer in Christ dies, her soul is taken to be with Jesus, taken to rest in the throne room of God, waiting for the day when Jesus will come again to bring this world to an end and create a new world for us. Those believers arrive all of the time, arrive to join the choir, and the choir makes room for them. They’re welcomed into that choir: “Add your voices, raise your voices, make a joyful noise to the Lord.”
I’m not arguing today for any specific kind of music, any specific way to do worship here at Redeemer. That’s not my decision to make; that’s our decision to make. Worship is a collaborative spirit, a way of us all joining together to praise the Lord, a way to do something here on Earth that is a glimpse of what has been happening all of the time for 2000 years.
You are the redeemed people of God; this is your worship. Jesus Christ has saved you from your sins, so we sing and speak and move in worship to thank Him for our salvation. No one more is redeemed than another in this room, so worship isn’t just for some people because they’re more holy than you. You all have places in the choir. This is your worship.
This new, 2000 year old, contemporary song is your song, your story. The Lamb was killed for you to save you from your sins. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, returned to the Father, is reigning in glory until the day He comes to take you to live with Him forever. Worship is a collaboration, because we all share that story, that song, that Word of God, that truth.
A songwriter gets up on stage and sings her song to you. Maybe you find a connection with her song, but it’s her song. Worship is our song. The connection is Jesus Christ, and it’s our story of salvation. We sing this song together.
It’s that collaborative spirit that I see in John’s vision of the new, 2000 year old, contemporary song in Revelation. It’s that collaborative spirit that I desire to see here, so that as we sing, as we worship, as we unleash our collective, creative, artistic talents to the Lord, together we will raise the beautiful truth about Jesus Christ our Lord.
It begins with one group sings or plays or dances saying:
Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for you were slain,
and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.
Then another group, a larger group raises up the next part of the song with pictures or woodworking or decorations or instruments or stories saying:
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!
Then we all join with our voices or hands or anything we’ve got now:
To him who sits on the throne
and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might
forever and ever!
Finally, this new, 2000 year old, contemporary song comes to a close with someone singing: “Amen!”
Scripture text: English Standard Version, Copyright © 2000; 2001 by Crossway Bibles. All Rights Reserved.