by W. David O. Taylor
In his book Worship in the Early Church, the New Testament scholar Ralph Martin asserts that the church was born in song. Proof of this is not hard to come by. Like characters in a musical theatre production, the protagonists of Luke’s Gospel find mere speech insufficient to the task of expressing the astonishing events they witness and proclaim. The Virgin Mary breaks out in song in response to Elizabeth’s benediction. Zechariah sings his way out of silence at the pronouncement of his son’s name. The angel choir sings of God’s fantastic glory, while Simeon erupts in verse at the sight of the Christ child, and the early church sings the Psalter, the songs of David, which become the songs of Christ himself, even as the church at the end of the age joins the everlasting chorus of heaven: “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
Yet while singing has always been welcomed into the life of the church, not any kind of song has been seen to satisfy the requirement of faithful music making. What is sung, how it is sung, and the character that the practice of song produces has always been crucial. Singing that generates unity, for example, has been a longstanding concern of the church. “Almost from the beginning,” writes the musicologist Calvin Stapert, “music was an expression of, a metaphor for, and a means toward unity.”
For Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the second century, when Jesus Christ was sung rightly, it became a sign of the church’s “harmonious love.” Saint Ambrose, two centuries later, argued that the singing of a psalm in particular represented a “pledge of peace and harmony, which produces one song from various and sundry voices.” And there is no doubt that the Psalter, as the perennial worship book of the saints, has served to guide and to inspire God’s people in their practices of communal and liturgical song.
For the faithful Israelite, the Torah was not only to be learned, it was also to be sung; so too for Christians down through the ages, the Word of God was not only to be written upon one’s heart, it was also to be placed upon one’s lips in song, and, across the centuries, the psalms supplied both the text and the model for faithful song.
Christians have likewise taken continuous delight in singing the canticles of the gospels and the prophets. This includes the sung-speech of Mary’s Magnificat (Lk. 1:46-55), Zachariah’s Benedictus (Lk. 1:67-79), and Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis (Lk. 2:29-32). It includes the angels’ spectacular choral performance in the Gloria of Luke 2:14. And it includes the songs of Moses (Exod. 15; Deut. 32), the Spirit-inspired prayer of Hannah (1 Sam. 2), and the glorious confession of Isaiah (Isa. 6), along with his prophetic announcement in Isaiah 9.
Christians have chanted and caroled and belted out such texts, not simply because they have believed that God has commanded such song, nor only because they have discovered in such song the heart of faithful praise in the lives of faithful saints. They have done so, most fundamentally, because they have heard the voice of Christ in such songs; they have done so because they have encountered the living God in such songs; and they have done so because they have been powerfully transformed by the Spirit of God through such songs. And much like Randall Goodgame has experienced firsthand, they have done so because they have been profoundly shaped by the words and ways of God, which we discover supremely in Holy Scripture, that living testament to the God who meets us in the face of Jesus Christ and by the power of his Holy Spirit.
Two things in particular stand out to me about the Scripture Hymnal project: one is Randall Goodgame’s desire that Christians re-discover the joy of singing together the life-giving words of God, and the other is his hope that, in doing so, Christians will discover the beauty of being transformed by the life-giving words of God. And there are two images that help to guide us, as singers, in this work of corporate song.
The first is the image of a dog gnawing away at a bone. This is how Eugene Peterson describes the term “meditate” which we encounter all throughout the psalms. In Psalm 1:2, for instance, the righteous person is described as one who meditates on the law, or torah, of the Lord. In Psalm 77:12, the psalmist ponders the work of the Lord and meditates on his mighty deeds. And all throughout Psalm 119, the psalmist meditates on the Lord’s precepts and promises.
But as Peterson points out, the language of “meditate,” or in the Hebrew, hagah, must not be confused for the work of intellectual scrutiny or the activity of “wolfing down” information that so often characterizes our experiences of reading in our modern, technological age. The language of “meditate” describes instead the act of rumination, participation, immersion, leisurely deliberation. It is, in other words, what a dog does when he gnaws on an especially tasty bone. As Peterson remarks in Eat This Book:
"There is a certain kind of writing that invites this kind of reading, soft purrs and low growls as we taste and savor, anticipate and take in the sweet and spicy, mouth-watering and soul-energizing morsel words—'O taste and see that the Lord is good!'" (Psalm 34:8).
A dog chewing (hagah) on a bone, using teeth and tongue, in order to enjoy his bone, Peterson believes, is what the Bible has in mind when it uses the language of “meditate.” When we meditate on the words of God, we seek to savor it, to feel it, and, ultimately, to eat it, or to borrow from the Book of Common Prayer, to “inwardly digest” it. And this is what hymns like the kind we find here allow us to do in spades. We get to take upon our lips the tasty words of God and to taste them not just once in the act of congregational song, but at all times of the day and night, when we find ourselves recalling or relishing a particular timely word.
The second image that helps to guide our unified song is the image of “dwelling richly,” which we find in Colossians 3:16. When Saint Paul encourages the saints at Colossae to let the “word of Christ” dwell richly in them, he has two things in mind. He wants Christ himself to dwell richly in them and he wants the words that Christ speaks to dwell richly in them; and it is the latter which ought ultimately to lead to the former: from word to Word.
The operative metaphor here is one of “home.” Not only are we invited to let Christ make his home in our hearts, we are also invited to become ambulatory homes of Christ where the words of Christ might bear rich fruit in all of our lives—whether we are at home or at work, at play or at worship.
As Christ inhabits our lives more fully, we also become lodging places for others to encounter Christ himself. We become mobile shrines that take “the triune God out and about in the world,” conveying God’s blessings to others, as the Lutheran theologian John Kleinig vividly puts it. The more wholly Christ takes up residence in our hearts, then, the more fully we become like Christ himself and thus also a place where others might find themselves more fully at home with Christ. And, in the context of Colossians 3, such a work is performed gloriously, and uniquely, through the act of communal singing.
This, then, is the gift of Goodgame’s hymnbook. It offers to us a collection of hymns that allow us to savor the words of God in order that we might become more fully at home with the words of God, which, in turn, will usher us into the personal presence of God.
For example: We get to sink our teeth into the hopeful words of Job 19, with its promise of a Redeemer who stands sovereign over all powers of death. We get to taste deeply the lament of Psalm 3 and the gracious forgiveness of Psalm 51. We get to delight in the fact that two are indeed better than one, as Ecclesiastes 4:9 reminds us. And we get to drink deeply of the virtues of justice, mercy, and humility that ought to characterize all of God’s people, as Micah 6:8 articulates the matter.
We also get to savor the sacramental words of Jesus in John 6. We get to luxuriate in the sure Anchor for our soul, Christ himself, the High Priest of Hebrews 4, and in the intercessory work of the Spirit, as Romans 8 describes the third Person of the Trinity. And we get to find ourselves sated by the Lord’s Prayer of Matthew 6 and the eschatological promise of Revelation 15, with its vision of a Lamb who sits enthroned as the King of the nations.
In Eugene Peterson’s translation of Psalm 19:10b, God’s Word is described in gustatory terms: as “better than strawberries in spring, better than red, ripe strawberries.” This is, it seems to me, a perfect metaphor for Goodgame’s hymnbook and a marvelous way to imagine what occurs when we encounter the sweet presence of God in the honey-flavored revelation of God.
As we sing these hymns congregationally, then, may we find ourselves bursting with satisfaction as we savor the delectable words of God. May we find ourselves bound more deeply not only to the Word made Flesh but also to one another, through the very words of a word-speaking God, in ways that might astonish us afresh. And, finally, may we find ourselves caught up in something bigger than ourselves, namely, the joyful acclamation of angels and archangels, along with all the company of heaven, which sings the everlasting song of the One who meets and remakes us by his Spirit through the very act of corporate song here on earth.
W. David O. Taylor (ThD, Duke Divinity School) is associate professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. An Anglican priest, he has lectured widely on the arts, from Thailand to South Africa. Taylor has written for the Washington Post, Image Journal, and Religion News Service, among others. He is the author of several books, including Glimpses of the New Creation: Worship and the Formative Power of the Arts and Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life. In 2016, he produced a short film on the psalms with Bono and Eugene Peterson. He lives in Austin, Texas.