COMMENTARY: The Danger of Singing

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) (UNDATED) Please write about “the joy of singing,” asks a church musician. He leads music in a congregation that refuses to sing. They have a long history of “the choir […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) Please write about “the joy of singing,” asks a church musician. He leads music in a congregation that refuses to sing. They have a long history of “the choir doing all the singing,” he says. “The general church member has no idea what the `joy of singing’ is all about.”


He isn’t the first minister of music to lament silence in the pews. How can they not sing? ask mystified songsters. How can they be surrounded by the joy of sound and not want to join in?

My read is that some simply cannot sing and are embarrassed; some think hymns are an unnecessary intrusion on a private worship experience; some think music is best done by experts; some are intimidated by glowers around them; and some _ probably fewer than we think _ take the haughty attitude that singing is beneath them.

It seems to me the issue isn’t the “joy of singing,” but the danger of singing.

Singing does expose inadequacy. This is a fundamental issue for those who seek God. Many hesitate to offer their ministries to God because they feel untrained or outshone. Many feel unworthy to make a sound in God’s presence. Silence is a hiding place _ from a tuneless soul, as well as from a tuneless voice.

The danger of singing is that, yes, it would expose one’s inadequacy, but even worse, it would reveal God as one who doesn’t measure adequacy. Where would we hide then? If we cannot earn God’s favor, then how do we deal with a lifetime spent trying to earn favor? Whose favor did we want? Why did we think their favor mattered? How lost are we, anyway?

A second danger in singing is losing control. I don’t mean dancing on the pew, although that would be an interesting sight in some churches. I mean a more basic loss of control, namely, if we sing, then part of us is out there, beyond our wall, beyond our safety zone.

When we sing, we say words we normally don’t say _ words like “gladness,” “shame,” “holy.” We give voice to needs _ “Just as I am without one plea,” “that saved a wretch like me,” “hopes and fears of all the years” _ we spend our lives trying to stifle.


It isn’t that we are too stiff to bend the knee before Jesus, but that we cannot bear any awareness of needing to bend

As in prayer and speaking, we don’t know what will come out if we open our lips. The aching in our hearts might be revealed. Our anger and hatred might be exposed. Our sins might be known. They might smell the self-loathing on our breath. Better to stay silent.

In a sense, it is a wonder we sing at all. We aren’t clean enough, we don’t like the sound of our own voices, we are trapped in cycles of sin and despair that leave us wanting only to hide. To stand in church and sing words like “lost” and “joy” takes more courage than many can muster.

And yet some congregations do sing. When the music starts, they leap to their feet. Some hold hymnbooks, some follow words on a large screen. Some attempt harmony, some barely cling to the melody. The issue isn’t technique. What makes the difference, I think, is that they are the broken. They know their need of God. They have tasted bitter gall. They know failure, they know unfairness, they know pain, they know grief. They simply must sing to the God of all hope.

Imagine this _ it will never happen, of course, because the fearful are well-defended _ but imagine this. The music minister bids the choir to cease, takes his or her hands off the keyboard, and then, when the halls resound in awkward silence, asks the congregation in a voice as gentle as that of Jesus, “Friends, what are you afraid of? What pain stills the song God has planted in your hearts? What emptiness do you fill with pride? Come, let us weep together, for the joy of singing starts in a baptism of tears.”

DEA END EHRICH

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