Make a Joyful Noise

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
June 21, 2009

Make a Joyful Noise to the Lord
Psalm 150

Can you imagine what Christmas would be like
if we didn’t have carols to sing?
What would Christmas be if we couldn’t sing
“O Come O Come Emmanuel”,
“Silent Night, Holy Night”,
or “Joy to the World!”?

Easter would still be a joy-filled day without music,
but how much richer our celebration
of that glorious day is when we can sing out,
“Jesus Christ is Risen Today… Alleluia!”

Music enriches our worship,
music makes worship deeper,
it helps us to feel our faith
in a way that words alone cannot do.

Music is a gift God has given us,
a gift that touches every part of our lives.
What would a birthday party be
without the Happy Birthday song?
Who hasn’t heard a song on the radio,
or even coming from a speaker in a mall
or the grocery store,
that suddenly evokes a memory
taking you to a time, a place
far from the here and now?

That happened to me on Friday night at Wolf Trap
when I heard Rain, a Beatles tribute band.
I grew up listening to the music of the Beatles,
and on Friday night as I listened to the band,
I was transported back in time,
back to my Junior High and High School days…
only the good ones, of course!
I don’t sing well at all,
but I was singing along with every tune.

Music has been an essential part of how we worship God
for as long as we have worshiped God.
Go back 3,000 years to the time of King David.
Even before he was anointed King of Israel and Judah,
David the shepherd boy expressed his devotion
to God through music.
Throughout his life, David wrote love songs to God
that we now call Psalms.
Songs of praise;
Songs of thanksgiving;
Songs of assurance:
“I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart.
I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you.
I will sing praise to your name.” (Psalm 9)

Go back further, back to Moses.
He too sang his praises to God:
After leading the children of Israel through the parted Red Sea
and watching the waters wash away Pharaoh’s pursuing army,
he sang out in joy and praise:
“I will sing to the Lord…
[for] he is my strength and my might
and he has become my salvation.”
(Exodus 15)

Page through the Old Testament
and you will find not only The Song of Moses,
but also The Song of Miriam,
The Song of Deborah,
the Song of Hannah,
song, upon song,
children of God lifting up their voices,
singing their praises.

Jump to the early years of the first century
as Peter, Paul and others fanned out to spread the good news
of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In those early years of the church
followers would gather in homes secretly
on Sunday morning to remember the Resurrection,
to celebrate Easter every Sunday morning.
In this way they started a tradition that we follow to this day
of observing the Sabbath on Sunday.

When they gathered, they would pray, and read from Scripture,
and always take a collection for the poor and the needy.
They would also sing.
We can find one of the first Christian hymns
in Paul’s letter to the Philippians:
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself,
and became obedient to the point of death
-- even death on a cross.”
(Philippians 2:5-8)

Music is woven into every worship service we have:
from the elaborate services we have on Christmas Eve and Easter
to the simplest of worship services,
including those we have outdoors.

We have at least seven different musical offerings
in a typical worship service.
We sing together five times:
usually three hymns,
a response after passing the peace,
and the doxology after we receive the offerings.
Deborah provides us with a Voluntary to help us
prepare for worship,
and she provides an anthem when we take the offering.

I’ve noticed that when we sing hymns,
there are quite a few folks who don’t sing,
don’t even open up a hymnal.
Perhaps you are self-conscious about your voice,
you don’t want to inflict your off-key ramblings
on those standing around you.

I know the feeling: I am not a very good singer, either.
But nowhere in the Bible does it say,
“Sing well and sing tunefully to the Lord.”
What the Psalmist says again and again is simple:
"Make a joyful noise”
to the Lord our God.

Make a joyful noise!
Don’t worry about the quality of your singing,
just sing, sing joyfully.
The Psalmist tells us
“come into God’s presence
making a joyful noise to God
with songs of praise.”
It’s that simple, for all of us,
whether we’ve got good voices,
or voices best left in the car,
with the windows rolled up.

Think about what we are doing when we sing:
we are praying, praying to God,
lifting up prayers of adoration and praise,
of confession, of thanksgiving;
every song we sing is a prayer.
If you are not singing,
you are not praying,
silent in God’s presence.

Every Sunday Deborah and I have both the joy and the challenge
of selecting music for our worship service.
Selecting hymns isn’t simply a matter
of the two of us getting together
and picking our favorites.
Our hymns have to fit the service,
complement the texts and the sermon,
and the other parts of the service.

Our opening hymns are generally songs of praise and thanksgiving,
focused on God: God the Creator,
God our Hope,
God our Strength,
the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We use the hymn to prepare ourselves for worship,
to help us to focus our hearts and minds on God.

Our middle hymn reinforces the word of the Lord
as we have just heard it through the text and the sermon.
And the closing hymn reminds us
that even as our worship services is coming to an end,
our service as disciples of Jesus Christ is about to begin.

We are a very diverse group,
so the challenge we have
is selecting hymns that resonate with
as many people as possible.
Some of you prefer more traditional hymns,
while others find that more contemporary hymns speak to you.
If we sing a hymn you don’t much care for,
it is likely that it is a favorite
of a person standing within hugging distance.

As much as we love traditional hymns,
hymns by Watts, or Wesley, or Crosby,
we do look for more contemporary hymns.
There has been an explosion in hymn writing over the past 50 years,
so there are hundreds, even thousands of titles
from which we can choose.
And we do try new things regularly:
Deborah and I do not limit our search
to what’s in the pew hymnal and the supplement.
This morning is a perfect example:
we are using hymns from a variety of sources.

We try especially to look for hymns that come from other cultures,
other parts of the world,
to remind us that the gospel of Jesus Christ
can be found in every corner of the world.
The hymn we will sing in a few minutes has a Jamaican melody
that has a great beat
and may well transport you to the Caribbean.
But even as you feel the sand in your feet
and the ocean breeze wafting over you,
pay attention to the faithfulness of the lyrics:
“All you works of God, bless the Lord!”

Soren Kierkegard reminds us that
it is easy to look at the setting of a worship service,
which looks very much like a theatrical setting,
and think of the congregation as the audience,
and the worship leaders as the actors.
But we’d be wrong to think that way, he argues.
Instead, you the congregation are the actors,
and God is the audience.
We worship leaders are the prompters.

You are the actor –
you are the ones who are called to gather,
pray, praise, confess,
listen, learn, respond, and sing.
You are the ones who are called to lift your voices to God
as you make a joyful noise in spoken prayers,
and sung prayers,
and as you respond to the word of the Lord.
Deborah, the choir, and all the musicians:
their main role is to prompt and inspire you,
for God is waiting to hear the sound of your voice,
no matter how off key.

We’ll sing four more times in this service.
If you have held back before, don’t.
Sing out with enthusiasm,
conviction and joy.
God is waiting to hear your voice,
your voice, each of our voices.
Every note you sing is a song of love for God,
a beautiful melody.

So lift up your voices in the rest of this service,
and in every service, every Sunday.
God is in his seat, waiting for you,
waiting for you to make a joyful noise to the Lord.

AMEN