Sermon: Carry on Singing

I'd like to dedicate this sermon to the songmen and senior boys who are leaving the choir this afternoon.  This is the last sermon they will ever hear as members of Durham Cathedral Choir, at least for now.  No doubt the choristers will tell you how many sermons they have heard and how many hours of listening that computes to.  I say listen, in the perennial hope of preachers that choristers listen to sermons and don't simply endure them.  (I suppose the same goes for those who patiently sit in the nave week by week.)  So for the choristers, here's the last of the line. 

Perhaps the Precentor has chosen today's hymns because of what they say about music-making.  ‘All that dedicated city, dearly loved by God on high, in exultant jubilation pours perpetual melody'.  ‘How shall I sing that majesty which angels do admire?  ‘Heaven is still with glory ringing; earth takes up the angels' cry'.  How could we worship without music?  And not just in time but in eternity.  In worlds distant from ours, the song of angels and archangels goes on perpetually.  Here on earth in our singing, we join in that heavenly song, practising what we shall one day do for ever. 

This music-making in worship: where does it come from?  Well, from when human beings first glimpsed God and were moved to worship him and found themselves breaking into song.  It's as if the words run out and some deeper form of speech is needed to touch both the mystery of our own longings and the mystery of the divine.

But for Jews and Christians there is one man who put music at the heart of the worship of God.  Our gradual psalm reminds us of him, the man whom the Old Testament calls ‘the sweet psalmist of Israel'. If any of the psalms were written by King David, this one was.  The 23^rd Psalm is the jewel in the Psalter.  It has brought strength to millions of people down the ages.  It's sung at times of hope like weddings, and times of sorrow, like funerals and services of remembrance.  ‘The Lord is my shepherd: therefore can I lack nothing'.  At the end the king says ‘I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever'.  He means the holy place where worship is offered, the shrine where he is guardian.  And the sanctuary is a place of perpetual music-making as so many of psalms remind us: ‘Sing we merrily unto God our strength; make a cheerful noise unto the God of Jacob.  Take the psalm, bring hither the tabret: the merry harp with the lute.  Blow up the trumpet in the new moon: even in the time appointed, and upon our solemn feast day.' 

Cathedral choirs spend a lot of time singing Psalms.  I often say that the real test of whether you are any good as a church choir is whether you can sing psalms.  It calls for skill, concentration and effort.  So why do we make so much of them in our services?  Because the praise of God and the offering of our lives to him lies at the heart of being a Christian.  The word psalm means a song of praise; the Psalms are the ‘Praises of Israel'.  The first duty of us all is to praise God.  The great commandment of the law was to love God with all our heart and soul and strength.  That means offering him our worth-ship.  We come to this service because of what the word eucharist means: ‘thankfulness'.  It's an act of love, our first duty and our greatest joy.  It's right that the Psalms, the ‘Book of Praises' should have a central place in the daily prayer of the church. 

And you, the choristers, have been at the heart of our praise of God.  In psalm-singing, and in all the other music you have given us, you have helped us to ‘glorify God and enjoy him for ever'.  On our behalf, you have offered praise, you have been our mouthpiece, our lips and voices before God himself.  You have shown us the beauty of holiness by opening windows into heaven.  You have touched us and moved us, and been a channel of God's grace.  And that has changed us; it has drawn us out of ourselves, raised our sights to new horizons of grace and truth. You have sung ‘in tune with heaven' and we have glimpsed it for ourselves.

But it isn't only praise you have offered on our behalf.  Worship has a minor key as well as a major.  As you know, the Psalms contain much that is dark and troubling, and often at evensong you are pouring out words of hurt, loneliness and despair and must have wondered whether the psalmist would ever come out of his ordeal alive.  I  today's psalm  David knows what it is to walk in ‘the valley of the shadow of death', and to have enemies who threaten him.  That's why Psalm 23 is such a comfort, because it doesn't pretend.  What it says is that even in dark times God walks with us, gives us strength, holds out hope: ‘for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me'. 

So you have been the voice of our lament as well as praise.  Who knows how many people have come to the Cathedral hopeless, distressed and sad, carrying awful burdens or longing for healing for themselves of someone they love.  The words of lament have become their own: ‘my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'  And how many more times have we found the psalms reflecting the tragedies of our world: cruelty, injustice, the abuses of power, the neglect of the poor?  Here too music has a part to play in making us more sensitive to the pain of the world, helping us to hear the cries of those who have no-one to save them.  Perhaps you have not only been the voice of an aching world to God, but his voice to us, calling us back to compassion, a Christianity that cares about people, that longs for the time when this world is healed of all its pain. 

So David king and psalmist sings in the valley of the shadow of death, and sings in the house of the Lord for ever, sings in the darkness and sings in the light.  What about you, the choristers and songmen who are leaving the choir today? 

None of us knows what life holds for us in the days and years that stretch ahead.  My wish and prayer for you today is that wherever your paths lead, you become what God wants you to be, make some difference to the world, care about others and are true to your dignity as human beings.  I hope you live long, happy and fulfilled lives.  I know you will never forget that you once sang the praises of God in this holy and beautiful place.  I hope that memory reminds you to sing through all the changing scenes of life in trouble and in joy.  When times are hard, don't stop.  God cares about your pain as much as your joy.  Be faithful to Christ and carry on singing, for song is the golden cord that binds this world to the next.  May your head be anointed with oil and your cup be full.  May loving-kindness and mercy follow you all the days of your life.  May you dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.  And thank you.