Community Church Sermons
July 16, 2006
John 4:19-24
R. Tim Meadows, Ph.D.
Associate Pastor
The surest way I know to start a controversy concerning worship is to bring up the subject of music. Music lies at the center of much of what we consider worship, but our musical tastes are determined early and are generally inflexible. You can appreciate the difficulty faced by those planning worship of trying to design a worship experience that everyone will feel allows them to connect to God.
Several years ago, VH1, the place of all things hip in music, launched a program that provides the basis for the solution I want to propose today, as a means of evaluating and appreciating all kinds of church music. The program was called “Behind The Music” and its purpose was to tell the stories of how some of our most popular tunes had come to be, what they meant to the artists associated with them, and how the artists and their songs reflected and affected the culture around them. Now, I’m thinking that if we can go behind the music of our hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs and understand some of what they communicate then just maybe we can better appreciate the music, whatever form it may take. Behind every hymn, psalm, and spiritual song, regardless of its tune is a message about God, about us, and about others. Today, I want to explore what all our of hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs reveal in these areas. Will you come with me “Behind The Music”?
I. Behind the Music: God: Our psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs reveal that God is a loving, expectant father. The creator and sustainer of the universe who can be trusted. Behind the music we find a God who can be engaged in every situation in life. A God who wants to be involved in our experience, but who grants us the freedom to choose our own paths. Our psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs combine to give us a picture of God’s majesty like that of a royal King and a picture of God’s intimacy like that of a loving parent. The combined image is as close to a complete picture as our human understanding of the divine can be given our natural limitations.
II. Behind The Music: Self: Our psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs reveal that the selfhood we all possess is a gift from God that comes with the blessing and the curse of freedom. Behind the music we find that we are a people created with the capacity and the need to relate to God and others. The nature of these relationships constitutes much of the focus of our music. Through music we describe our needs, desires, struggles, and hopes as we relate to God and to one another. Behind the music there is a person of worth created in the image of God.
III. Behind The Music: Others: Our psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs remind us that we were created to live life in community. Behind the music we find the stories of others who share our journey in life toward God. We are encouraged to know that we are not in this alone Our psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are also indicators of our life experience. They reflect our situations in life and where we found God in them. One of the key indicators of any culture is that culture’s music. If you really want to understand Christianity, look behind the music.
So what do we conclude from our journey behind the music? Let me suggest at least this much:
- Music is a universal language through which we can learn much about a culture’s experience with God, the self, and each other.
- What matters most when reviewing the music of any culture is not its style but its substance.
- As with any other human attempt to communicate things related to our God experience, our music is often insufficient at least, and incorrect at worst. Too often our pictures of God are too militaristic, too triumphal, or too culturally exclusive. Too often our pictures of the self are either egotistical or demeaning. Too often our pictures of one another are one dimensional and do not reflect the depth of real community. Recognizing these and other flaws however, I still contend that if you go behind the music of our hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs, you will find the heart of the Christian experience. So, as I did in the beginning, I invite you to come with me behind the music.