Psalm 98
I realize today is Christ the King
Sunday but I thought I would break from protocol and talk about giving thanks. I know for most folks Thanksgiving means
turkey, Pilgrims and football. But when
I am serious about giving thanks, I go straight to the Psalms. One of my
favorites is Psalm 98, a delightful song written at the end of the Babylonian
Captivity. It captures a nation’s joy as
God welcomes the Hebrews home. The Jews had
spent a generation in captivity. Their
sadness and despair is captured in Psalm 137, “How can you sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?” But with news that
the Persians were releasing the Jews, sheer delight leapt from the lips of the
Psalmist as he “sang a new song to the Lord.”
Some of you may think I am getting a bit
too excited over a song written 2400 years ago. For me, the Psalms are as relevant today as
they were when they were first created. They are songs of joy, sorrows,
delights, and disappointments. That
stuff never goes out of date. Did you
know the inspiration for “Joy to the
World” was Psalm 98? Psalms live forever
because they express the very essence of who we are in our ongoing relationship
with God. I like to think of the
Psalmist as yesterday’s folk music. The Psalmists remind me of Pete Seeger, Bob
Dylan, Mavis Staples, or Doc Watson.
I have been fortunate enough to witness
each of those folks in concert, but perhaps my favorite was Doc Watson. I
realize in the last 50 years there have been a plethora of great guitar players. But most of them weren’t blind. Doc was born in Deep Gap NC in 1923. He contracted an eye infection as an infant
and was blind before his first birth day.
Doc referred to his blindness as a hindrance, not a disability. He grew up listening to his father and mother
singing gospel songs in their Baptist
Church United States
At 14 Merle decided he wanted to follow
in his famous father’s footsteps. Doc’s
wife Rosa Lee taught Merle his first chords.
The boy was a natural. Together Doc
and Merle toured and made more than 20 records.
It all came to a tragic end in 1985.
In a freakish accident Merle rolled his tractor down a hill and was
killed instantly. Pain still swelled in
Doc’s voice when he spoke of his son but he did not allow tragedy to still his
voice. Doc continued to use his music to
heal anyone with a broken heart. Yes Doc
sang about prison, lost love, and all those tragic stories that accompany
Appalachian folklore. But even when he sang a sad song he sang as a witness to
his God who could heal all pain.
What a gift to be able to sing in the
midst of personal tragedy. How often,
when our lives go sideways, do we allow the circumstances to completely derail
us? Some folks wonder why God would place
such an obstacle in their way. They look
for cosmic reasons for the misfortune.
The hard truth is when adversity occurs, often the pain is
self-inflicted. Health problems can be related
to heath choices. Financial problems are
usually connected to priority choices.
Relational problems are usually linked to behavioral choices. Add to that the reality that we live in a
world where too many folks are only concerned with their own agenda. How are we to do to respond to this obvious
recipe for destruction?
Perhaps we should try singing. Why are we so quick to blame God for our
calamities? Why not give thanks that God seems to never leave us no matter who
deep a hole we may have dug. I’ve shared the story of Doc Watson, but I suspect
each of you has a friend or family member that seems to handle adversity better
than the rest of us. How do they do it?
I suspect they have an unquenchable faith in God, and I suspect they love to
sing, even if they can’t hold a tune.
Because he spent a good part of his
early life in the spinning room of a Cotton Mill, my father was deaf in one ear
and the other one wasn’t much better.
Even with the miracle of hearing aids, he was pretty much has been
reduced to reading lips. When more
than one person was talking around him it was virtually impossible for him to
hear anything because of the multiple sounds. So he would start humming to
himself. My father loved music but he
always sang out of tune. When Dad started
humming, it was so far off key it drove the rest of us crazy. But it didn’t matter. Amidst the chaos of all
the noise swirling through his head, he hummed.
Sometimes it resembled a hymn.
Sometimes I thought he was recreating a jazz favorite. It really didn’t
matter. Whatever he was humming was a song of salvation that triumphed over the
chaos.
Listen once again to the amazing words
of Psalm 98. “Sing a new song to the
Lord for God has done marvelous things. God
has remembered to be steadfast in love and faithfulness. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. Let the sea roar, let the floods clap their
hands. For the Lord will judge the world with righteousness and the people with
equity.”
I
can’t imagine not having a song in my heart. It would be like taking for
granted that each morning the sun rose. How can one live without inspiration. I
have a friend who gets excited by reading the obituaries and discovering his name
is not there. I watch the way you celebrate your children and
grandchildren? I’ve yet to hear a grandparent
remain silent over a child’s first step or first word. So why don’t we
celebrate, why don’t we sing more often?
What if each morning we got up excited about the possibilities before us? What if each evening we gave thanks for
clean running water, road systems, refrigeration, vaccinations, farmers, and
all those unnamed folks that make our life comfortable? What if, as we prepare to retire for the
evening, we spend just a moment remembering that in the best of times and the worst
of times, God still knows us and God still loves us? That would certainly give us something to
sing about. As the great saxophonist
Charlie Parker explained, “Music is your own experience, your own thoughts,
your own wisdom, sung. When you sing what you thought was ordinary, you create
something you never imagined possible.”
Or to borrow words from Harry Chapin,
Music is our life, not our livelihood.
We
sing to make us happy,
We sing to make
us feel good.
We sing from our heart and we sing from our
soul.
It doesn’t matter how well we sing,
It just makes us whole.
We all need to sing, not for an
audience, but for our mental and spiritual health. We need to sing a song to the Lord, always
remembering, that even in the midst of overwhelming tragedy or personal grief, the
Lord continues to do be with us, giving us reason to sing even it might be the
blues . We need to celebrate God’s hand
in our lives so we can sing songs of praise, songs of joy and songs of hope.
Now I know many of you swear you can’t
sing a note. So let me teach you a song you can whisper or shout each day.
Repeat
after me:
Sing,
Sing a new song,
Sing a new song to the Lord,
For God has done
marvelous things. Amen.
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