What Singing the Psalms Does
One of the things we are trying to build at Trinity is a robust culture of Psalm singing. We’re at the very beginning of this work and so we’re trying a bunch of different routes to this destination - a bit of a convulsive start to what we pray will be a pervasive part of Trinity’s culture not only on Sundays, but in every context where we gather. We imagine parishes, elder meetings, men’s and women’s gatherings to be marked by singing the Psalms together. There are a number of different reasons for us to pursue this sort of thing, but there are a few particularly reasons that are vital to the cause of discipleship in our age.
We need instruction in how to pray in our age.
God promises us in Romans 8 that the Spirit will instruct us in how to pray, because we do not know how to pray as we ought. The primary tool the Spirit wields in teaching us how to pray in an age where all our allegiances can be so easily confused is the Psalter. Far too many Christians either abandon the Psalms altogether or see them merely as a kind of divine permission for self expression. The idea being that the Psalms are filled with all kinds of joy and doubts and anger, therefore we are allowed to express our own joys and doubts and anger. But the Psalms are not primarily about Divine permission. They are about Divine instruction. The Psalms reframe the world, they redefine it for us again. They help us to discern history and our neighbor and the acts of God all around us. Here is a collection of prayers that teach us to pray rightly in the face of God’s providential work all around us.
We need instruction in what to feel in our age.
In an age where people are either trained to abandon their emotional life altogether or they are utterly ruled by their emotional life. The Psalms teach us what to feel and when. Our emotional lives are simply the expression of our loves, our fears, our anxieties and our allegiances. They are vitally important in our obedience to God and they must not rule us. Rather, me must, as in everything else, submit them to God’s word. Here in the Psalms we learn how to conform our emotions to the realities described in its songs and prayers. We learn when to rejoice. We learn what to hate. We learn how to be thankful. Our age has often made a god of what we feel. Right and wrong, truth and falsehood are no longer in submission to God and his decrees, but rather are merely expressions of our own feelings. The Psalms offer an oftentimes jarring corrective to this sort of thing.
We need the right enemies and the right conflict in our age.
We live in a divided age and oftentimes those divisions are dictated to us from secular sources named CNN or Fox News. The problem isn’t so much the reality of division, its where they tend to draw the lines. The Psalms are the songs of God’s hosts - his armies. And if you approach them expecting that here, in the sphere of Christianity and religion we are escaping the divisions that are so prevalent in our day you will not understand them. Here are enemies defined by God. Here is a framework for understanding the good guys and bad guys, good and evil, and the great conflict at the heart of our history. We learn how and where to fight in the Psalms from God Himself.
So let us sing these Psalms with brothers and sisters, children and old, in defiance of the old dragon and his children. May we sing loudly, having our affections reordered and our allegiances set right.
Go to Church
My goal here is simple: I want you to go to church. I want the church to eat bread and wine together again and be shaped by the singing, reading and preaching of the word of God. My hope is that churches will unapologetically consider their work together (liturgy) as being absolutely essential for the functioning of society. There are, of course, caveats to be considered when gathering during the continuing spread of COVID-19, but those caveats are getting thinner as more and more data is made available (here are the CDC statistics breaking down mortality by age groups) and increasing numbers of epidemiologists release their collective take on the public and social response (Here is a link to the Great Barrington Declaration).
To summarize the data - COVID disproportionately harms older, compromised individuals and poses very little danger to younger, healthier members of the population. To summarize the statement from the scientists: the vast majority of the population needs to resume life as normal and expect to get COVID. Vulnerable populations should be isolated and supported when possible. Their assessment is that current masking and isolation policies are doing significant long-term harm to the health of the population and society.
So, with those things on the table, I’ll put the caveats right up front: Older, health-compromised members of the church should be accounted for and cared for in ways that protect them from the spread of the virus. This support should not be compulsory, but small additional offerings can be made to serve these people, even as you encourage them to be a part of the church. We offer outdoor seating and a radio transmission to nearby cars - where people can be with the church, receive communion, and worship with God’s people - even if from behind some steel and windows.
But regardless of how one goes about assessing the risks involved with gathering for worship, my argument below isn’t contingent on that assessment. Gathering for worship has always been riskier than not gathering for worship. There are social and health risks. These might be greater now than they were a year ago, but they are not so grave as they’ve been in the past as saints gathered for worship in far more devastating situations. The bigger issue is that we’ve spent the last 7 months inadvertently learning to avoid the risks associated with gathering for the church’s worship. We have learned that the church’s gathering in person is optional when its risky. We must unlearn this lesson. Coffee and your couch and an internet connection will always be safer and more convenient than dressing up, getting in your car and going to a place where a bunch of people are gathering in the name of the triune God.
Now, here are some reasons why the church must gather and worship:
1) You need the Church
The church, gathered as the people of God, administers the word and the sacrament to God’s people. These aren’t things you can receive adequately through an internet connection and some crackers and grape soda from the kitchen. These things require physical presence, they call for the practice of gathering and filling a space with song and prayer and preaching. The past few decades have seen many of us evangelicals reduce the worship of the church to either an intellectual event or an entertaining one. Those things can be done rather effectively online. But that is not what the covenant renewing worship of the church is. The church gathers together in the presence of God to renew her covenant together with Him. You can’t do that in your living room, whilst wearing your PJ’s and sending emoji’s to your friends on zoom. This is a tremendous and holy thing that requires the church’s physical presence.
This gathering, with its singing and confessing and praying and preaching and reading is not simply a nice pick-me-up for your private spirituality. It is the fundamental means by which the Triune God gives and sustains our faith. It is the primary means by which we commune together with his Spirit. It is the primary means by which we are to be exhorted to believe and to obey. It is meant to pour steel into your spine as you live courageously in a world gone mad. You do not merely go to church because you believe, you go to church in order to believe. Pastors, your people need the worship of the church. Do not withhold this fundamental means by which we are to feed and care for God’s sheep.
2) The City needs the Worship of the Church
The current virtue messaging of our day is that our city needs people to be isolated, masked, and to avoid any and all larger gatherings. This has been packaged as how to “love your neighbor” or as I just saw on a pretty nifty TV screen here at DIA, “Do the right thing.” Christians have been told to put others before themselves and refrain from gathering, or at least to exercise severe restrictions when gathering. I want to contend that the gathering of God’s people to worship is one of the most urgent needs our neighbors have - whether they recognize it, show up, or not. The gathered worship of the church has a leavening effect on the surrounding culture. The preached and sung Word of God, the confession of sin, the assurance of pardon, communion and a benediction wherein God’s people are sent out to bear witness to their neighbors of God’s good reign are some of the greatest gifts given to our city. Where it happens, it transforms the culture of a city. It alters the political and social discourse (just consider: as bad as the political discourse was in 2016, how much worse is 2020?). Where this practice is lost, there is incalculable loss to the surrounding city. The worship of the church preserves the world. And so, Love your neighbor by gathering for worship with the church.
3) God is worthy of our Worship
The church inherits glorious gifts when she gathers for worship. Her worship offers gifts to even pagan cultures. But mostly, the church gathers to honor and to give thanks to God as his covenant people. His name deserves to be praised and declared in our cities. He has given us and continues to give his people gift upon gift, kindness upon kindness. Should we not gather as God’s people to acknowledge these gifts, to give thanks for these gifts and to honor him by asking for more (Psalm 104)? There are crises that may occur that could prevent the church from gathering, but these must be rare and grave. This is the fundamental labor of God’s people that gives shape and life and meaning to all our other labors in the world - be they in the professional world or in seeking to serve our neighbors. We honor God here, together, so that we might honor him everywhere.
So Christian, go to church. Worship Jesus. If prudent for your particular situation, wear a mask, sit a little further apart or sit outside, but do not forsake the gathering together of God’s people. This forsaking is no longer merely the habit of some, it is increasingly the habit of most. You need it, our neighbors needs it, and God is worthy of it.
