What song will you sing? For many of us, one of the greatest restrictions of the pandemic has been the need to refrain from singing together in public. So I asked on Facebook the other day, “What song have you most missed singing?” Or, perhaps better said, when we are able to be fully back together, and able to sing “lustily and with good courage, as Wesley said, what song will you most look forward to singing? The responses have been varied, and include “This is my Song,” “His Eye Is On the Sparrow,”, “In the Garden,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “How Great Thou Art,” several movements from Handel’s Messiah, and quite fittingly, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” Singing, and music in general, are inextricably linked to our lives and our faith. We are better versions of ourselves when we are engaging them.
What song will you sing? Emily Saliers, one of the members the folk rock duo, the Indigo Girls, sometimes collaborates with her father, Don Saliers, a musician and a theologian of worship. Together, they wrote A Song to Sing, A Life to Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice. In that book, Emily writes about her song, “She’s Saving Me,” which she wrote following the death of her adult sister Carrie. Speaking of the power of that song for her, she writes, “When I sing it, Carrie comes back to me, and Is with me. That is when I know that music can be a spiritual gift and that it has the power to bring to life those who have passed through death. So with music, I am never really alone.”
What song will you sing? In the sixth chapter of Isaiah, the prophet has a vision of God. In that vision, the Lord is exalted and being attended to by angels (seraphs) and they are saying the poetic line, which has entered into the musical tradition of the Church, “Holy, Holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of God’s glory.” The passage concludes with a call from God for someone to be “go” out to prophesy to the people, and Isaiah responds, “Here am I. Send me.” But the passage begins with what some have believed to be a throwaway line. “In the year that King Uzziah died…” But it makes sense to read the statement as indicating a significant shift for Isaiah and God’s people. And in that complicated time of changing, the song about holy glory came to them. In these complicated days, what songs will we sing?
We’ll discuss this in worship on Sunday. This Sunday is “Trinity Sunday”, and the Isaiah passage is one of the suggested scriptures for the day. The sermon is titled “What Song Will You Sing?” and it arises from Isaiah 6: 1-8. The Sanctuary Singers, accompanied by Nara Lee, will lead us musically, and we will have hymns, prayers and a moment for children.
Whether you have been part of the St. Mark’s community for decades, or will be joining us for the first time, we look forward to connecting with those of you in person worship or on the live stream at 10:30am this Sunday.