Why do we sing? ~ Ephesians 5:15-20

There’s a lot going on in our passage and at its heart is singing. Paul’s antidote for unwise living, his prescription for drunkenness, a way of redeeming time, and a means of understanding the will of the LORD - all of it connects to singing. Why? Given the difficulties of our world, the struggles we endure, the spiritual change that we long for but find so elusive singing can seem so, I don’t know, frivolous, silly – why sing? Yet, of the 5 participles describing life in the Spirit, 3 involve singing. Participles are verbs that function like adjectives attributing a quality of action to a noun. Singing is a verb that describes our religion and who were made to be. Christianity is a musical religion. The Kingdom is La La Land. A human being is a singing thing. It’s what we were made for. “The earth is a solar powered juke box.” (Gordon Hempton)

In that light, what I want to ask today is “What is at stake when the people of God sing?” What are we doing when we sing and how might it accomplish what Paul argues it does – actually being instrumental in helping us be “filled with the Spirit”?

We were made to be living musical instruments. There is an interesting connection that Paul is making between drunkenness and singing. More than a mere prohibitionism, what strikes me is that both drunkenness and worship share elements rather than reflecting polar opposites (remember the first filling of the Spirit in the book of Acts?). In other words, I suspect that drunkenness (NOT drinking!) relates less as an oppositional image of right versus wrong and more like what a counterfeit bill is to real currency. And so we worship and sing not only because it is right and proper to give thanks – but because alcohol despite its potential pleasures doesn’t fill us enough – can’t bring enough joy, isn’t celebratory enough, doesn’t fulfill our dreams, or engage our body and mind like singing does. I once asked my daughter Emma why she thought that Christians were commanded to sing. She surprised me by saying, “singing is the most joyful, full-bodied response we can give to a God we cannot hug.” I think she’s right. It uses both left and right brain and releases dopamine that elevates our mood. Paul understands that the command to sing is akin to hearing our mother command, “Go out and play!” It’s an odd command, of course. It’s what we want to do and what we were made for.

It's how we learn, for example. It provides quick access to all kinds of truths, facts, helps and comforts. It’s how we learned our A,B,C’s, it’s how I learned the books of the New Testament, it’s why advertisers write jingles. The Apostle Paul recognized this. In a parallel passage to Ephesians, Colossians 3:16, he writes: ¹⁶ Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. Do you want more of Jesus and to be filled with the Spirit? Sing. Music helps get the word of Christ into your bones.

Friends, what if God commands us to sing because He thought we would enjoy it. It’s what we were made for. And that means the more we enjoy it – the more we are being true to ourselves and true to our God. It brings us joy because it leads us to God.

Song: Rise by Kari Jobe

We were meant to be more than just a “you” and to sing to one another. But it’s not just people individually – the church is to be a symphony of good news, encouragement, and love. Did you notice that while we always imagine our worship to be addressing God, Paul also says our singing addresses one another. Why is this important?

First, it means that when I sing I remember that I am not alone, that my faith does not rest always on my own feeble belief - that Paul’s musical admonishment is to the Church in all its plurality – the near and the far, the local and the foreign, the living and the dead. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book Life Together, “It is not you that sings, it is the

church that is singing, and you, as a member . . . may share in its song. Thus all singing together that is right must serve to widen our spiritual horizon, make us see our little company as a member of the great Christian church on earth, and help us willingly and gladly to join our singing, be it feeble or good, to the song of the church.” So when we sing a song – never forget to look at who wrote the song and when. Later during our offering, for example, as we do every Sunday, we will sing the Doxology. It was written by Thomas Ken in 1674. It has been translated and sung by millions of Christians for hundreds of years. He

is your brother. When we sing to each other we remember that the Church is big and wide, old and deep, ancient yet relevant. If you are ever bored with the sermon – read your hymnal. It will lead you to a corporate faith – a body bigger than your own.

Second, as you sing don’t be afraid to look around and be present with those you sing with – they are your spiritual body. Whose head is lifted high and whose head is bowed low? Who sits and seems troubled, who raises their hands in joy, who seems at peace, who appears distressed? This isn’t voyeurism – it’s body life in the Spirit. So we must challenge the current trend of turning off lights and closing our eyes. It’s not about you. So don’t be afraid to pray for others as we sing, to sing for others who cannot, to use your joy to wrap the sorrowful, or bring your sorrow and despair into this place and sing a lament to God. We sing together.

Song: Hosanna (Praise is Rising)

Singing and offering God thanks and praise helps us grow in grace. Singing reminds us that we don’t have to worry. Too long we have become so anxious about being right and not joyful enough about not having to be – that this is God’s project and not our own. In one sense, we sing because we don’t have to fix the world. From a certain perspective, singing is graciously frivolous, wonderfully unnecessary. I like how it’s said in the Eucharistic rite of the Catholic Church: “You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift. Our praise of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness but makes us grow in your grace.” Why sing? It hardly feels like something that would change anything, do anything.  And yet we do so to remember whose we are, and what He will do. We sing songs of thanksgiving because God has won and will bring all together, but sometimes we forget.  

In the documentary Alive Inside, we are introduced to Henry – an elderly African-American man imprisoned by dementia. He is inert, unresponsive, incapable of answering the simplest of questions and barely alive. Henry has literally forgotten who he is. Take a look and see this as a parable for your life and the church.

Alive Inside: Henry

I love the words of Dr. Sacks – they almost sound like the

Apostle Paul’s: [When he listens to music] “Henry is restored to himself. He has remembered who he is and reacquired his identity for awhile through the power of music.” That’s why are commanded to sing – so that we might remember and reacquire our identity as those who are God’s, as those who were destined for love. Let’s sing and remember for a little while that we are God’s and that God is good..

Song: How CanI Keep from Singing, Chris Tomlin

But Now My Eyes Have Seen ~ Job Chapter 42 (last of the Poets series)

Making a great movie is not an easy task, but if a filmmaker succeeds in getting just about everything right, it still hinges on one thing: the ending. How are you going to let the

audience out of your story? Whether it’s a scary thriller like Psycho, a dramatic tear-jerker like Shawshank Redemption or the comedic genius of Tootsie, a proper ending can turn a good movie

into an unforgettable flick, an Oscar-winning picture, an I've-seen-it-fifty-times-and-am-willing-to-watch-it-again kind of film. Endings matter and the book of Job is no exception. And yet I

imagine that it left many of you wanting to throw your chair, screaming at the screen, “That’s not right!” But I would like to read the ending with you carefully, to attend to what the text says. I want to argue that the ending is more of a surprise than you might originally think and lets us out of the story by whispering a daring question, “Will you see?” 

Suffering + God Helps Us See

Job responds to God’s speeches by acknowledging that he has neither God's power nor God's wisdom. “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (42:3). He admits that one can say things, have a some “book-smarts” that don’t actually exist as true wisdom or real knowing. When I was a Ph.D. student writing my dissertation on domestic abuse during the Protestant Reformation, I came across an odd reference about some women who refused the order of the court to return to their abusive husbands, choosing rather to go to the loch or hole, meaning prison. I didn’t think much about it until I was offered by someone to receive a tour of that early modern jail

and I was awe-struck and terrified by the damp blackness, the aching chill and the stone walls that dripped and reeked of pain. I saw what I had only read and recognized that I had not understood, how hard it is to see.
It’s like hearing from seasoned parents how much you will love your child and how much they will break your heart while your wife is pregnant – you believe them but you do not see. It’s taking a language class and thinking you’re doing well until you are forced to form strange words overseas without any English to fall back on. It’s recognizing that well, you thought you knew – but you didn’t. Job thought he knew how the world worked. He accused God of creating a world of chaos, and God responded by showing Job a virtual tour of the world as it really is: a place of order, but also of freedom and beauty, not centered on human beings, full of wild creatures. And somehow, amidst pain and through that vision of creation, Job comes to know God better and to find hope.
After the divine speeches, Job says to God, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (42:5). After terrible suffering and through a grand vision of God's creation, Job sees God. And that vision moves him out of despair into life again. It transforms him. Here’s the point: The deepest things in life cannot simply be read or heard, if you wish to truly know. And suffering has the unique ability to bring us to knew place of insight and understanding, even wholeness, particularly when placed in the hands of God. Suffering strips us of our self-sufficiencies, by reminding us that as much as we like to play God – we are not God. As much as we think we know; we do not see.
One more note about Job’s response: verse six is notoriously difficult to translate. The NIV reads, “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (42:6). There are a number of problems with this translation. Without getting into all the details of the Hebrew, a better translation by Rabbis is this, “Therefore, I recant and relent, being but dust and ashes” (42:6).
Job does not abjectly despise himself on the ash heap, browbeaten into submission. Instead, he acknowledges that he spoke of things he did not understand. He recants, and he realizes anew his place in the world, a mortal human being.

But at the same time, this creature of “dust and ashes” is privileged to stand in the presence of God himself: “Now my eye sees you.” In suffering you learn that your job is to be nothing more (not nothing less) than human and that God wants for you nothing more than that as well.
Job is not the center of the universe. He knows that now. But he has a place; he has a role to play, and he takes up that role again in the verses that follow.

Shut up and pray.

If the book of Job has any advice for us –it’s less about why we suffer and more about how we should handle it when it comes. Job is not a theology on suffering but a theology of a sufferer. Here the play makes an important point:
After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: ‘My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done’ (42:7-8).
All English translations of these verses translate God's charge along these lines: “You have not spoken about me what is right.” But the Hebrew can also be translated, “You have not spoken to me rightly, as has my servant Job.”
This other translation points out what was true all along. For all their speaking about God, the “friends” never once in the book speak to God; they never once pray for their suffering friend. Job, on the other hand, moves from speaking only about God to speaking more and more directly to God. The friends theologize; Job prays.
The friends try to defend God; Job laments. The friends chide Job, “When you mock God, shouldn’t someone make you ashamed?” (11:2-3). But Job despairingly prays to God: “You have become cruel toward me. You use your power to persecute me . . . Surely no one would turn against the needy when they cry for help in their trouble.”
Job holds on to God with one hand and shakes his fist at God with the other. He stays in relationship with God, addressing God directly even from the depths of despair; and for this, he is commended by God in the end.

The friends must repent; Job mediates. And then Job the sufferer becomes Job the mediator. He becomes what he has prayed for all along. God commands his three companions to offer sacrifices. And Job, still presumably covered with boils, offers prayers on their behalf. He for whom they never prayed now prays for them; and God accepts the prayer of his suffering servant, Job. We don’t have the words of the prayer, but perhaps it begins, “Father, forgive them . . .”

Job and his wife chose to live again.

God restores Job’s fortunes, giving him twice as much wealth as before, and ten more children, and it seems to many readers a cheap ending to the book. It’s silly to even ask if Job’s ten new children replace those he and his wife lost. Of course they don’t! Children can’t be replaced. God is not bribing Job. “The real question is how much it costs Job to become a father again.” Like a Holocaust survivor whose greatest act of courage is to bear children after the cataclysm, Job and his wife chose against all odds to live again, to bear children into a world full of heart-rending beauty and heart-breaking pain. Job and his wife are chose to love again, even when they knew the cost of such love

Job’s relationship to his children remains the clearest example of his transformation. It seems that Job has learned to govern his world as God does. As Ellen Davis argues, the cautious patriarch of the prologue who offered “preemptive sacrifices” for his children has become a parent after God's own heart. He gives his children the same freedom that God gives creation, and, like God, he delights in their freedom and in their beauty. In the male-dominated societies of the ancient world, it was an affront for a father blessed with many sons to leave anything to daughters and yet Job gives them an inheritance along with their brothers. So the once-cautious patriarch is overturning the rules for the sake of love.
Davis writes, “The great question that God’s speech out of the whirlwind poses for Job and every other person of integrity is this: Can you love what you do not control?” It is a question worth pondering. Can you love and trust what you can’t fully understand: this wild and beautiful creation, its wild and beautiful Creator, your own wild and beautiful children?
Living again after unspeakable pain is a kind of resurrection. The book of Job does not espouse an explicit belief in resurrection. In fact, Job himself believes that death is the end of existence. Nevertheless, the trajectory of the whole book participates in that profound biblical movement from death to life. It is not surprising, therefore, that the later Jewish translators of the Septuagint add this verse to the book of Job: “And Job died, old and full of days. And it is written that he will rise again with those whom the Lord raises up.”
And perhaps that is an appropriate place to leave this story, waiting with God’s other servants, to be raised up, marveling at the beauty of children, the wildness of the world in all its fierceness and choosing to see.