Love Songs
Sunday, May 20th, 2007
Seventh of Easter
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Psalm 97
In the movie ‘Music & Lyrics’, Hugh Grant plays a self-professed has-been music star from the 80’s. While he is an excellent musician, he is not nearly so confident when it comes to writing lyrics, and so ends up hiring Drew Barrymore, who waters plants for a living, but has a knack for putting words together, to help him write a song he’s been hired to complete in 48 hours. Long story short, by the end of the movie, he and she are in love, he finally writes his song for her from his heart, sings it to her in front of a massive crowd, and wins her over for good, and they live happily ever after.
It’s a typical Hollywood romantic comedy. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and neither do the actors, which was nice.
But this isn’t a time for movie reviews, is it?
What connected the theme of the movie with our passage this morning, this enthronement psalm, technically speaking, is that in its own way, it is a love song to God.
How many of you, as young people, wrote or received notes or letters, poems, or love songs, or songs dedicated to you by the one who loved you?
Leslie will tell you I don’t write the love poems I used to write her NEARLY as often as I used to. But it is true, believe it or not, I DID write them.
Expressing our love for someone in words or songs is nothing new. And it was not new in ancient Israel either. They are what have become for us today our hymns and praise songs that we sing in our services, or in meetings, or on our own driving down the road with a CD or cassette or radio station playing over the speakers. Sometimes we’ve even been heard to be singing them on our own with no music playing at ALL!
What is it about songs and singing that reaches down deep inside us and touches our emotions so? What is it about words set in a pattern, a tempo, that reach through our intellect and wrap themselves around our hearts?
The cabin where Leslie and I spent our honeymoon is nestled in the hills by a small lake outside of London Kentucky, and the owner had been given a calligraphy print of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, entitled God’s World – here it is:
O WORLD, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag to crush!
To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is as stretcheth me apart.
Lord, I do fear thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.
My soul is all but out of me,
—let fall no burning leaf;
prithee, let no bird call.
I took a picture of the print and have it framed still to this day.
There is power in words, and that power lies in how they can evoke in us both thoughts and emotions that in turn allow US to express how WE feel or THINK about someONE or someTHING.
Last Sunday morning, in the wake of the deaths we experienced within this family called Jerusalem, we still gathered, and the first song we sang, at the beginning of the opening assembly for Sunday School, was ‘Because He Lives’ – and speaking for myself, I can tell you that even before we began to sing, the emotions were pouring out. That song has a deep resonance with me as I suspect it does with many of you on many levels. Not the least of which is found in the beauty of the lyrics themselves – affirming a faith and a hope in a risen Christ no matter what circumstances we happen to be facing on any given day.
We find that same sentiment as we read through – or sing through – the Psalms.
There were days while Leslie and I were still courting on which I was overwhelmed at the beauty of her – inward AND outward – and sometimes the only way I COULD express to her how I felt was through verse in some form. I don’t think I ever actually wrote a SONG for her, but that was due mainly to my insecurity in my musical talents than in my inability to put words together.
It happens today, sometimes on a regular basis, when we turn to God. We want to express our love for God, and while some of us are able to express it through the spoken word, others of us find the purest expression of our love for God through the singing of those hymns that we’ve known since … well, forever. We don’t remember not knowing them. They have always been part of the way we express our worship. ‘It is Well With My Soul’, ‘Amazing Grace’, ‘Great Is Thy Faithfulness’ … ‘In The Garden’, as well as ‘To God Be The Glory’ and ‘Love Lifted Me.’
Ultimately, I think that is what the psalms are. Yes, there are ‘types’ of psalms, imprecatory, enthronement, whatever you want to call them, and they DO have a historical setting that we do well to take into account when we read and especially when we study them – this one actually intentionally uses light and dark imagery – the lightning and the dark cloud, the flame going before God – that would at the time have normally been used in the worship of or the description of Baal – using that same imagery on purpose wasn’t a case of the writer saying “oh, that’s a good way to put it, I’ll use it when I speak of Yahweh!” it is a way for the psalmist to say ‘The true God is more than you Baal worshippers believe your god to be and more!”.
The psalms DO bring the full range of human emotion to bear on the worship of God, but when all is said and done, they are putting into verse form what is coming from our hearts in response to what God has done for us – whether God has delivered us FROM the enemy, or seems to be delivering us TO the enemy; whether we are feeling like we could take on the WORLD with one hand tied behind our back and STILL win or whether we are at the weakest, lowest, most vulnerable point of our existence.
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
It means that we can feel free to bring whatever it is we are feeling to the worship of God. We already know, perhaps even on an unacknowledged level, that God KNOWS us and knows what we are going through, as our responsive reading spoke of earlier (from Psalm 139). It means that, just as in a normal, healthy human relationship, we can feel free to express ALL the range of emotions that we CAN feel TOWARDS God and have the full confidence that God will be able to handle it. And if the God that we have in our heads can’t, then as Dave McNeely shared with us during our revival, that God should die, and the God who is INDEED author and creator of the Universe, as well as of our salvation, WILL remain – and will remain worthy of our love and our praise.
Let’s pray.
Seventh of Easter
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Psalm 97
1The Lord is king! Let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! 2Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. 3Fire goes before him, and consumes his adversaries on every side. 4His lightnings light up the world; the earth sees and trembles. 5The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. 6The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all the peoples behold his glory. 7All worshipers of images are put to shame, those who make their boast in worthless idols; all gods bow down before him. 8Zion hears and is glad, and the towns of Judah rejoice, because of your judgments, O God. 9For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods. 10The Lord loves those who hate evil; he guards the lives of his faithful; he rescues them from the hand of the wicked. 11 Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart. 12Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!
In the movie ‘Music & Lyrics’, Hugh Grant plays a self-professed has-been music star from the 80’s. While he is an excellent musician, he is not nearly so confident when it comes to writing lyrics, and so ends up hiring Drew Barrymore, who waters plants for a living, but has a knack for putting words together, to help him write a song he’s been hired to complete in 48 hours. Long story short, by the end of the movie, he and she are in love, he finally writes his song for her from his heart, sings it to her in front of a massive crowd, and wins her over for good, and they live happily ever after.
It’s a typical Hollywood romantic comedy. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and neither do the actors, which was nice.
But this isn’t a time for movie reviews, is it?
What connected the theme of the movie with our passage this morning, this enthronement psalm, technically speaking, is that in its own way, it is a love song to God.
How many of you, as young people, wrote or received notes or letters, poems, or love songs, or songs dedicated to you by the one who loved you?
Leslie will tell you I don’t write the love poems I used to write her NEARLY as often as I used to. But it is true, believe it or not, I DID write them.
Expressing our love for someone in words or songs is nothing new. And it was not new in ancient Israel either. They are what have become for us today our hymns and praise songs that we sing in our services, or in meetings, or on our own driving down the road with a CD or cassette or radio station playing over the speakers. Sometimes we’ve even been heard to be singing them on our own with no music playing at ALL!
What is it about songs and singing that reaches down deep inside us and touches our emotions so? What is it about words set in a pattern, a tempo, that reach through our intellect and wrap themselves around our hearts?
The cabin where Leslie and I spent our honeymoon is nestled in the hills by a small lake outside of London Kentucky, and the owner had been given a calligraphy print of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, entitled God’s World – here it is:
O WORLD, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag to crush!
To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is as stretcheth me apart.
Lord, I do fear thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.
My soul is all but out of me,
—let fall no burning leaf;
prithee, let no bird call.
I took a picture of the print and have it framed still to this day.
There is power in words, and that power lies in how they can evoke in us both thoughts and emotions that in turn allow US to express how WE feel or THINK about someONE or someTHING.
Last Sunday morning, in the wake of the deaths we experienced within this family called Jerusalem, we still gathered, and the first song we sang, at the beginning of the opening assembly for Sunday School, was ‘Because He Lives’ – and speaking for myself, I can tell you that even before we began to sing, the emotions were pouring out. That song has a deep resonance with me as I suspect it does with many of you on many levels. Not the least of which is found in the beauty of the lyrics themselves – affirming a faith and a hope in a risen Christ no matter what circumstances we happen to be facing on any given day.
We find that same sentiment as we read through – or sing through – the Psalms.
There were days while Leslie and I were still courting on which I was overwhelmed at the beauty of her – inward AND outward – and sometimes the only way I COULD express to her how I felt was through verse in some form. I don’t think I ever actually wrote a SONG for her, but that was due mainly to my insecurity in my musical talents than in my inability to put words together.
It happens today, sometimes on a regular basis, when we turn to God. We want to express our love for God, and while some of us are able to express it through the spoken word, others of us find the purest expression of our love for God through the singing of those hymns that we’ve known since … well, forever. We don’t remember not knowing them. They have always been part of the way we express our worship. ‘It is Well With My Soul’, ‘Amazing Grace’, ‘Great Is Thy Faithfulness’ … ‘In The Garden’, as well as ‘To God Be The Glory’ and ‘Love Lifted Me.’
Ultimately, I think that is what the psalms are. Yes, there are ‘types’ of psalms, imprecatory, enthronement, whatever you want to call them, and they DO have a historical setting that we do well to take into account when we read and especially when we study them – this one actually intentionally uses light and dark imagery – the lightning and the dark cloud, the flame going before God – that would at the time have normally been used in the worship of or the description of Baal – using that same imagery on purpose wasn’t a case of the writer saying “oh, that’s a good way to put it, I’ll use it when I speak of Yahweh!” it is a way for the psalmist to say ‘The true God is more than you Baal worshippers believe your god to be and more!”.
The psalms DO bring the full range of human emotion to bear on the worship of God, but when all is said and done, they are putting into verse form what is coming from our hearts in response to what God has done for us – whether God has delivered us FROM the enemy, or seems to be delivering us TO the enemy; whether we are feeling like we could take on the WORLD with one hand tied behind our back and STILL win or whether we are at the weakest, lowest, most vulnerable point of our existence.
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
It means that we can feel free to bring whatever it is we are feeling to the worship of God. We already know, perhaps even on an unacknowledged level, that God KNOWS us and knows what we are going through, as our responsive reading spoke of earlier (from Psalm 139). It means that, just as in a normal, healthy human relationship, we can feel free to express ALL the range of emotions that we CAN feel TOWARDS God and have the full confidence that God will be able to handle it. And if the God that we have in our heads can’t, then as Dave McNeely shared with us during our revival, that God should die, and the God who is INDEED author and creator of the Universe, as well as of our salvation, WILL remain – and will remain worthy of our love and our praise.
Let’s pray.
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