Sermon Archive
The Church Choir as Icon!
Sermon preached by John Armes at Choral Evensong on Trinity Sunday, 26 May 2002, (Marking Robert Kidd's retirement as a Chorister and Church Musician after 72 years of service)
Jeremiah 10 1-16; Ephesians 4 1-16
It occurs to me that a church choir is an icon. Consider our own choir. I know that many people admire them. It's not so much their dutiful attendance at three services on a Sunday that they would wish to emulate it's their ability to eat sweets, do the crossword and hold animated conversations during sermons that they most envy. And, above all, their quiet dignity, perhaps best exhibited on those special moments when six or seven choristers leave the service just before the sermon is even preached.
But this is not what I mean when I describe the choir as an icon. What I mean is that the choir is in fact an excellent illustration of something very important about the life of the Christian community. Firstly, they are a mixture of all sorts of people. What draws them together is a love of music and the ability to sing - but it is their differences that makes them a choir. Secondly, they are committed to offering their gifts not for self-advancement, not even in the case of our choir for money, but to give glory to God. Thirdly, because they recognise that a choir is more than the sum of its parts, they are willing to enter into a disciplined activity. This requires study and rehearsal, the ability to listen to others whilst singing their own line in tune, in time and under the direction of the conductor? and according to a script written by someone else.
The end result is an interweaving of parts to make a whole - a performance, but more than a performance, an offering of praise that can warm and exalt and draw others in to make their own music. In other words, church music is founded on live performance, each performance being a new act of worship in which others too are gathered up and led to praise in their own way.
That at least is the theory and, to my untutored ear I would say that our choir is pretty good at turning the theory into practice. Rather better certainly than the St John's choir in the nineteenth century who were criticised variously for singing too loudly, for not singing at all and for drawling the last syllable of the responses. We can safely say that things took a definite turn for the better in the 20th century, in particular in its latter half, for obvious reasons. And it says a lot both for the choir members and the choir leaders over the years that they so clearly enjoy what they do.
Our reading from Ephesians speaks of the church as being one body, with one Spirit and that its many members are granted different gifts according to God's grace. These gifts are gathered, joined and knit together, as the body builds itself up in love under the direction of Christ the head of the body. Doesn't a good church choir offer a practical illustration of how this oneness in diversity is to be expressed? All different, seeking God's glory, and disciplined enough to offer their own interpretation of a script written by another - and to enjoy doing it. For a choir this is contained and focused in music, for the church as a whole the challenge is to interpret a much less specific score. But to sing our part, nevertheless, so that it too may be interwoven into a special harmony that inspires and leads others to make the music by which God and neighbour are loved.
On Trinity Sunday, of all days, it is important to remember that it is community that lies not just at the heart of faith but at the heart of God. Father, Son, Holy Spirit - Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer - are the diverse voices in which God sings not a melody but a harmony. A harmony in which our voices too can sing, for in Christ our humanness is invited into God's community.
Having said all this, of course, we have to recognise that music has been seen as something of a mixed blessing in churches. On the one hand, it is a wonderful metaphor for the sublime and indeed can transport us, perhaps more than any other art form, beyond the mundane to the heavenly. In one of his prayers, John Donne pictures heaven as a place where music transcends itself through one perfect silence - not a silence without music but through music. On the other hand, there have been those Christians through history who have regarded music as of the devil.
The objection has been twofold. The first is that music can become an end in itself, it can get between us and God, it can become an idol. The second is, and the two are linked, that music appeals to our senses and our senses are notoriously fickle and self-indulgent.
The first objection is an important warning. Idolatry is when we allow anything less than God to usurp the place of God in our lives. Jeremiah, in the first reading, is referring to actual idols made of wood, but his point is the same. He pours scorn on idols, they are 'like scarecrows in a melon field'. It is ludicrous to substitute something less than God, creations of God's own creatures, for God, the One who 'established the world' and 'stretched out the heavens'. The same must be said for music, or architecture, or indeed, for human relationships that get between us and God.
The second objection, that music is sensuous, I find puzzling. After all, did not God, in expressing himself in human form, as Ephesians puts it, descend 'to the lower parts? so that he might fill all things.' To bless the human, and indeed the material world, in this way is to bless the physical body, and that includes all its senses. Instruments use material means, wood, wind, levers, pistons, electronics to make sounds. Choral music, furthermore, comes from the body, it is received by the body, through its senses. It is, like all art, incarnational. Of course there can be a fine line between the sensuous and fleshly, on the one hand, and the indulgent and decadent on the other. But that music moves people, deeply, is surely not a reason to despise it. Music, music of many styles it should be emphasized, leads people into worship, it can be an intimation of eternity - it is a means to an end.
Look at our building - it is hardly the denial of the senses! The tradition of this church community, the confessional strand we represent in Christendom, affirms and celebrates the senses. It even takes the risk of enjoying the slightly frivolous, the luxurious. This is not for us an escape from the world, but a way of worshipping a God who has not only given us the beauty and riches of creation, but promises us a fulfilment that will exceed all that we can ask or desire.
The ministry of those called to be Church Musicians is a great one. Their musical community is an icon of as well as a part of the body of Christ. Their music speaks of the glory of God, the promise of heaven. They draw others into worship and help them to lift up their hearts to God. At St John's we know that, beyond our own members, each year hundreds of people worship with us for all sorts of reasons. It is our trust and our prayer that when they come they encounter Christ here and go out to greet the world again with the message of the gospel. That this encounter is often evoked by music and that the gospel they take with them is accompanied by a song in the heart and a tune on the lips I have no doubt.
In short: for music and for Church Musicians, thank God.
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