Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, January 21, 2024

“Make a joyful noise.”  “Come into his presence with singing.” In recent weeks Craig has gotten us talking about prayers.  Today I want to talk about singing. 

One of the things that led me to drift away from religion when I was younger was that very little of what religion involved made any sense to me, and no one really tried to explain it to me.  Church was different from anything else in life.  That was clear.  But why?  Just to be different?  As I grew older, I started realizing Church was supposed to help make sense of things that went on the rest of the week, a different more all-encompassing sense.  But – and this was a problem for me – Church itself didn’t make any sense. 

Every week it was the same pattern in my Presbyterian Church.  Organ playing, a hymn sung while the minister walked down the aisle, an Old Testament Reading, a prayer, a New Testament reading, an offering, the Doxology, a responsive reading, and so on, eventually a sermon.  And of course, I came to realize it was different at other churches.  Why do we do all this, I wondered?  Why our pattern? Why not the others?  There seemed to be no answer other than “this is the way,” “this is the way we’ve done it for ages and ages.”  For me, that didn’t make any sense. 

That was just how it was:  many things about going to church were different, even odd, yet left unexplained.  No one ever said, “here’s the deal;”  or “this is why we do it this way.”  This is why we sing; this is how and why we pray, and so forth. 

I mentioned “The Doxology.”  That was an especially puzzling word.  Most hymns are known by their first line.  I now know the Doxology is a special kind of hymn, one tacked on to the end of something else, like an offering.  It’s a word from the Greek meaning literally “a speaking of praise.”  The idea of singing such a thing reaches back to Jewish worship liturgy.  There are a few different Doxologies, but in most Churches, they use the same one each week.  There isn’t a Doxology in our Quaker Worship in Song hymnals (Quakers for the most part don’t use a Doxology) but there are a few in our brown hymnals, The Singing Church.  Let’s sing one: #556.  (This Doxology, by the way, comes from a psalm, Psalm 150). 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him, all creatures here below

Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  Amen

You can see it’s a joyful noise, a hymn of praise to God.  And it’s brief, just one stanza; it adds a little excitement to something that has just happened. Think of it as an exclamation point after whatever just proceeded it. 

No one ever said why we sang the Doxology right after the offering was taken. It was like the Bible: no one ever said what that was, either.  It was just there, and ponderous.  Also, a little odd.  No one ever said ‘here is a book written over time by many people telling stories about people being faithful to God, and people not being faithful to God, and about what happened next.  Thinking about all these stories can help you be more faithful to God.’   (Maybe you would explain what the Bible is in a different way than what I just said, but any explanation would be better than none at all.)

One of the many reasons I became a Quaker is that we have a simpler form of worship, and we often talk about why we do it the way we do.  Like why we settle into silence or stillness.  When we Quakers are not being silent, we talk about that, about why we fall silent to listen to God, and what we hope we do after one or another of us hears from God. 

Sunday School made a little more sense.  I learned some things there.  At the Presbyterian Church my family attended, there were two Bible passages we all learned by heart.  Perhaps you did, too.  (I know Ellen did.)  Both passages were Psalms.  We learned the 23d and the 100th Psalms. 

But still, as I recollect it, no one explained to me, then, what a Psalm was.  There they were in the middle of the Bible, pretty different from the stuff that came before or came after inn the Bible.  Sometimes they were part of what was read or recited as part of a Church service.  Why? I had no idea. 

 It was some years later that I realized that the psalms were songs.  Now I even know that the word “psalm” means “a sacred poem or song, especially one expressing praise or thanksgiving.”  The word “psalm” comes from a Greek word meaning “a song sung to a harp” or more simply “something plucked.”  That Greek word found its way into Church Latin, and then into English.  The Hebrew word, by the way, for that book in the Bible is “Tehillim,” meaning “songs of praise.”

Here at Durham Friends, we begin worship with a song, and we end worship with a song.  I like that.  I’m grateful that Dorothy Hinshaw and Nancy Marstaller play the piano for us.  And KJ Williams before, and Sukie Rice especially encouraged our singing, and Craig Freshley sings occasionally for us, and now Ezra and Laura.  Tess has a striking voice, and really, all of us sing.

You probably know not all Quakers do it this way.  It’s more an Evangelical or Friends United Meeting way of doing things than a Friends General Conference or Conservative Friends way of doing things.  I first became a Quaker at Germantown Meeting, part of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.  Hymn singing was definitely not part of the regular worship service there.  We gathered in silence, and we ended in silence.  Hymns might be sung as part of a midweek potluck supper gathering, but not during First Day Worship.  Not.  No. 

Psalms 23 and 100.  I spoke earlier of those two.  Today, I hear the 23d more often than the 100^th, but today it is the 100^th that is on my mind.  Like the Doxology, it urges us to praise God, but it says more.  Here it is, from the King James version of the Bible. 

100^th Psalm

¹Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.

² Serve the Lord with gladness:

come before his presence with singing.

³ Know ye that the Lord he is God:

it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves;

we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

⁴ Enter into his gates with thanksgiving,

and into his courts with praise:

be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

⁵ For the Lord is good;

his mercy is everlasting; and

his truth endureth to all generations.

It is not only a psalm – a song – it is also a psalm about singing – about singing a song of praise and thanksgiving.  It is a song giving us some guidance about how to worship God. 

If you look more closely, you’ll see that this psalm consists of four instructions followed by three reasons.  (Now here’s somebody explaining what the deal is – why we do things the way we do.)  The instructions are about how to worship God.  Remember Craig’s three kinds of prayer: please, thanks, sorry?  The instructions in the 100^th psalm – there are four of them —  are these:  sing, serve, know God, and be thankful. 

Sing:                ¹Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.

Serve:              ² Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

Know God:      ³ Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Be thankful:     ⁴ Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

Why should we do these things?  That’s the subject of the three reasons that come at the end of this psalm.  Like many Psalms, the 100^th takes a turn in its middle.  It starts out one way, and then it shifts to another.  Sometimes that’s a change in focus or in voice or in perspective.  Here the change is from encouraging us to sing our praises to God towards giving reasons for such singing:  serving, knowing and thanking God. 

In a nutshell, those reasons are goodness, mercy and truth. 

God is goodness through and through. 

God’s mercy extends to every person through all time. 

And God’s truth is rock-solid and eternal. 

Here are the words of the psalm.

⁵ For the Lord is good;

his mercy is everlasting; and

his truth endureth to all generations.

You might also be thinking that this Psalm is like a prayer, and I think you’d be right.  Psalms are songs, but they are also prayers of a sort, ones that praise God and voice our thanks. 

So I’m thinking, that’s a good reason we sing as we enter our worship (we make a joyful noise), and why we sing at the end.  That’s the deal.   We sing our praises to God, then we fall silent to hear what God has to say to us, and then we sing again in praise as we leave worship. 

Also posted on River View Friend