The National Association of Pastoral Musicians held their annual convention virtually this summer. Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso gave the opening address on the function of music in times of distress. In a time when it is not safe for our choirs to gather to sing, when so many of us cannot safely gather for worship, and when our nation seems divided in many ways, how can we sing?
Dutch theologian and poet, Huub Oosterhuis said, “Singing is discovered and invented, It is born at times when there is no other possible way for people to express themselves – at the grave, for example, when four or five people with untrained, clumsy voices sing words that are greater and smaller than their faith and their experience.”
In the Old Testament we read that the people of Judah were captured and taken into exile by the Babylonians. The Psalmist puts their sorrow to song in Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon there we sat weeping when we remembered Zion…..how could we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land?
African-Americans captured and held in exile in this country as slaves may have asked the same question as the Jews. Yet sing they did. They sang their sorrow, their hopes, and their dreams of a better world. We now have a great treasury of Spirituals from this era.
Crisis often moves artists to creativity, and music especially has a way of bringing out what is within us. This is why music is essential to the liturgy. Nothing can express the transformation of the eucharist quite like the human voice. Our faith is not a private matter. It must be expressed, it must be lived, it must be sung.
When we feel so divided as a world, and even sometimes as a church, we must sing – not forcing a
unison, but luxuriating in many new
harmonies produced by the Spirit. God is at work in this moment. And we have our work to do, our song to sing.
“There is no time that is not the right time for a song.” – Bishop Mark Seitz