Why Sing? | Page 8 of 11

In Augustine’s Confessions, he observes that when sacred words are joined to pleasant music, “our souls are moved and are more religiously and with a warmer devotion kindled to piety than if they are not so sung.”

Augustine recalled, “when I remember the tears which I poured out at the time when I was first recovering my faith, and that now I am moved not by the chant but by the words being sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and entirely appropriate modulation, then I again recognize the great utility of music in worship.  (SINGING, IN THE BODY AND IN THE SPIRIT by Steve Guthrie)

But having indulged in the sensual with abandon, Augustine was especially cautious about physical delight, and the power of song to move him gave him cause for concern.  In singing, was bodily sense overpowering reason?  He fluctuated between the danger of too much pleasure from song and the beneficial effect that a solid theological text wedded to a fine melody might have on his heart.

“When it happens to me that the music moves me more than the subject of the song, I confess myself to commit a sin deserving punishment, and then I would prefer not to have heard the singer.” Concern over the sensual effect of song was embedded in the famous and classic Christian hymn Veni Creator Spiritus…..

CREATOR SPIRIT, BY WHOSE AID
THE WORLD’S FOUNDATIONS FIRST WERE LAID
COME, VISIT EVERY PIOUS MIND
COME, POUR THY JOYS ON HUMAN KIND
REFINE AND PURGE OUR EARTHY PARTS
BUT O, INFLAME AND FIRE OUR HEARTS
OUR FRAILTIES HELP, OUR VICE CONTROL
SUBMIT THE SENSES TO THE SOUL
AND, WHEN REBELLIOUS THEY ARE GROWN
THEN LAY THY HAND AND HOLD THEM DOWN

What is the writer of this hymn asking the Spirit to do?

The book of Ephesians is full of “before and after” metaphors that warn the reader of the ongoing battle to “put off and put on.” Previously, we were dead in the life we lived, following the ways of this world.  It was all about gratifying the sinful nature, following its thoughts and desires. 

But God made us alive with Christ. (Ephesians 1:1-5)

Before, his wrath kept us at a distance, but now we are no longer foreigners and aliens, but have access to God. (Ephesians 2:12-19)

Those persons without God have lost all sensitivity, giving themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in ever kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.  The new believer, however, is to put away their former way of life, to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteous and holiness. (Ephesians 4:20-24)

In the Christian community there is not to be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or greed.  Obscenities, coarse joking and foolish talk are now inappropriate. (Ephesians 5:3-17)

The problem here is that to deny the physical part of us is to deny half the person God has made.  But everything is to be brought out into the light, not just the mind.  So how does God work this out?  How does he sanctify all that he has made, both body and spirit? What does renewal in the Spirit look like?

When the Holy Spirit goes to work, as he does in bringing the bones to life in Ezekiel, the human part is not delivered from the body – instead the Spirit takes those dry bones and breathes new life into them – they are restored, revitalized, animated.  They are given a brand new start!

Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.
(Romans 6:13)

Now if we go with the way Augustine thought, our attention is redirected away from the body, toward the mind and the soul.  Scripture seems to demonstrate that the Holy Spirit strives to bring all the person, body and soul together, into life and wholeness.

Does Paul just leave his readers with some sobering instruction as to how to avoid the world, without giving some positive instruction as to how they might solve this dichotomy? 

Steve Guthrie (currently teaching in Nashville) proposes that: "music is one way in which the Holy Spirit brings the life of sense and embodied experience from darkness into the light.  The sensualist, the one who as abused body and sense, more than anyone needs to have body and sense engaged by the Spirit.

In songs, hymns, and spiritual songs, the world of bodily experience is enlisted in praise, redefined doxologically, and reoriented toward the worship of God and the benefit of the community.  The senses are not held down, as in Charlemagne’s hymn, but by the Spirit, lifted to God in song." (J.E.T.S. page 641)

Tom Smail in his book on the Holy Spirit says, “humanity has fallen into unresponsiveness.”  The work of the Sprit then becomes to “relate with sensitivity to the created order and to one another.  Paul says it this way…

Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
(Ephesians 4:19)

This passage could be rendered, “having ceased to feel.”  Just like the dry bones of Ezekiel, they are dead, lifeless.  An alcoholic loses any appreciation for the taste of what they drink.  The person addicted to pornographic images loses any ability to perceive and respond to the beauty of love.  The Spirit, then, comes along and turns us from sensual people into sensible people.

As we sing together we attend to the activity of our own bodies in making sound, and we regard and respond to our own song as we hear it resonate in the space around us.  We hear and attune ourselves to the sound of other’s voices.  We respond not only to people, but to the physical qualities of the sound we are creating with others and the physical and acoustical properties of the space in which we sing.

Moreover, we submit ourselves together to a tempo, a pattern of melody and rhythm, and we respond dynamically to the shape and movement of our musical interaction.  Through the use of melody, harmony and rhythm, we enter a world where others exist besides the self.  Music joins the world that is inside us with the world outside.     (page 642)

And if that weren’t enough reason to sing, Guthrie points out that ”music may be one means by which the Holy Spirit makes us people who feel and respond.  We are brought to our senses.  We are drawn out of the darkness of self-absorption and become aware of the world around us, and of our place within it and responsibility to it.  In song we move in a dance of sympathy with the others who are singing, and by the body are drawn out of ourselves and into the body.”

Bonhoeffer says that “It is the voice of the church that is heard in singing together.  It is not you that sings, it is the Church that is singing.”  Life Together 45  When all our voices sing together, the voice of the church is what we hear.  It is of a quality and substance that an individual voice can never have.

But it is defined by the character and spirit of the individual voices singing.  A group of believers singing together is a powerful witness to the unity of one voice, while at the same time individual distinctiveness is preserved and augmented.