Sermon: On the Hill of the Lord

One Lent a few years ago in Sheffield, I decided to write out the Book of Psalms by hand, and get it sponsored to raise money for the choir tour.  It was quite an adventure.  There are 150 psalms in all, 2500 verses, 40000 words.  I began on Ash Wednesday and finished on Easter Day writing Psalm 150 out in public after the morning service. It was not the Lindisfarne Gospels, yet I glimpsed what it might have been like to work in the scriptorium of a monastery, painstakingly writing out the scriptures, often starting a page again when I went wrong, disguising the small mistakes, worrying in case a lovingly completed page should be spoiled by spilling coffee over it, or the cat walking across it.  

I saw the psalms in new ways.  In a digital age, I’d forgotten how powerful it is to write day after day with pen and ink.  I felt I was directly touching the experience of the psalmists: their joy and gratitude, their sorrow and despair, their hatred of their enemies and their hope that God would act to save them.  I was struck by their amazing variety: there were little psalms and big ones, sad psalms and joyful ones, noisy psalms and quiet ones, psalms of vengeance and psalms of love.  It was interesting to see the choices people made when it came to sponsoring their favourites. Psalm 23 came out on top, of course (‘The Lord is my shepherd’), followed by 121 (‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills’), 139 (‘O lord thou hast searched me out and known me’), 137 (‘By the waters of Babylon’), 46 (‘God is our refuge and strength’) and 150 (‘O praise God in his holiness’). 

Today we come to the end of another choir year, and at evensong we shall say farewell to the boy and girl choristers and to the choral scholars who are leaving us.  This morning, the girls are singing the top line, and the boys are in the nave singing with the congregation.  It is hard to say goodbye when our boys, girls and men are so much part of our lives here.  So the two most important words this afternoon will be ‘thank you’.  I know I shall speak for all of you when I say that.  Among the many things I want to say thank-you for is their singing of the psalms.  The choristers know what I think is the mark of a great Cathedral choir.  It’s the daily singing of the Psalms.  The Psalms are not only the hardest part of the choral service to sing well: they are also the very heart of our daily prayer.  It is this discipline that makes for greatness, like a pianist knowing inside out Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues.  If you can sing the psalms, you can sing anything.  

Take today’s psalm: ‘O Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle: or who shall rest upon thy holy hill?’ – an apt question for a choir’s last Sunday.  For what is singing in choir if it isn’t going up to the hill of the Lord (literally here in Durham) to serve in his holy place?  The psalm probably recalls a ceremony that took place at the door of the shrine. There would be a short catechism, a question-and-answer dialogue for those going in to take part in services.  In this entrance rite, a priest would ask the temple singers at the threshold: ‘who shall dwell in thy tabernacle?’  It is what we do here when people become members of the Cathedral foundation. I am sure our leavers recall their admission as choristers and songmen when at threshold of the quire, under the Scott screen, I asked them:  Will you do your best always to serve God in your music and in your life, and will you respect the honour this Cathedral Church and acknowledge those in authority in its life?  I will they said.  And then, after a prayer and blessing, they crossed the threshold, came through the screen and took their place in the quire, the heart of this church on God’s holy hill.  

But the Psalm takes us well beyond churchgoing.  Indeed, the answer it gives to that question doesn’t mention the sanctuary at all.  Instead, it turns out to be about the whole of life.  ‘Who shall rest upon thy holy hill?’  ‘Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life and doeth the thing which is right, and speaketh the truth from his heart’: this is the kind of person God looks for to serve him.  The list of qualities is searching: such people do not deceive others, or wish them harm or speak ill of them; they are not proud, but are realistic about themselves, and humble; they keep their promises and don’t let others down, even when it is inconvenient or hard; they do not use their money foolishly and don’t gain at the expense of the innocent.  ‘Whoso doeth these things shall never fall.’ 

We might ask why it matters; after all, if we sing the right notes and stand and sit in unison and process in straight lines and wear black shoes, why worry about the rest?  Well, because the God of Israel does not see as human beings see: ‘they look on the outward things, but the Lord looks on the heart’, as Samuel put it when Israel was looking for a king.  That means serving God with all of ourselves and not just playing a part.  It means being the same on the inside as we are on the outside; or as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, practising our religion in the secret place where no-one else knows what we are doing but only our heavenly Father.  This is what it means to have integrity, to be ‘pure in heart’, ‘sincere’: to will one thing and direct our lives towards a single purpose, which is to love God with all our hearts, and our neighbours as ourselves.  

The Psalms are the book of God’s praises.  Those of you who are leaving the choir will never forget how you once sang God’s praises in this wonderful place, surrounded by so much that is beautiful.  But I’d love to think that what Beethoven wrote on the manuscript of his Missa Solemnis will be true of your music too: ‘from the heart: may it go to the heart’.  You have touched many lives here.  Who knows how many people have been brought back to life, found new strength and a reason for living thanks to your music?  But I hope it has touched you too: that you came to know and love God in new ways through the worship, the music, the building, the people you got to know and admire and love.  My prayer is that you will always be people of whom this psalm is true, that you live all the time in God’s presence, that you know what is of lasting value in life, and that you make a difference to the world because you care about what is just and those who need it most.  So do what is right, and speak the truth from your heart, and you will never fall. Be faithful to Christ and carry on singing.  And thank you.