Sermon and moment for all ages copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first reading is from the poem \u201cDarshan Singh and Christian Harmony,\u201d by Coleman Barks, Gourd Seed (Maypop Books, 1983), p. 59.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The second reading was from John Calvin\u2019s essay \u201cSinging Psalms in Church.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs to public prayers, there are two kinds: the one consists of words alone; the other includes music. And this is no recent invention. For since the very beginning of the church it has been this way, as we may learn from history books. Nor does St. Paul himself speak only of prayer by word of mouth, but also of singing. And in truth, we know from experience that song has a great power and strength to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a heart more vehement and ardent. One must always watch lest the song be light and frivolous; rather, it should have weight and majesty, as St. Augustine says. And thus there is a great difference between the music that is made to entertain people at home and at table, and the Psalms which are sung in church\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third very short reading was a Vietnamese folk poem titled \u201cThe Singer with a Bad Voice,\u201d trans. by John Balaban, Ca Dao Vietnam (Copper Canyon Press, 2003).<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n [This sermon was interspersed with five hymns from recent Unitarian Universalist hymnals, as noted below.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n A question that I\u2019ve been asking myself for some years now is this: why do we sing certain songs in our Sunday services, and not other songs? So I propose that we consider five songs that we often sing, then either sing them or listen to them sung, and think about why we do sing them. We can also think about why it might be strange that we sing them at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To begin, a quick explanation of why we sing at all in our services. In Western civilizations before the Protestants split from the Roman Catholics, most religious services did not have anyone singing singing except for some kind of rehearsed choir; if you weren\u2019t in the choir, you didn\u2019t sing. But Protestants like John Calvin, as we heard in the second reading, decided that everyone should sing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Puritans who started our congregation followed Calvin, and sang only psalms from the Bible. In the 18th century, they began singing hymns, that is, songs of praise to God that were not psalms. In the 19th century, the repertoire expanded further to include spiritual songs and gospel music, in which mention of God was less prominent. By the middle twentieth century, this congregation began singing songs that had no mention of God at all. We have come quite far from John Calvin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this brings us to the first song that I\u2019d like us to consider, a song which has no explicit mention of any deity whatsoever. Let\u2019s stay seated, and we\u2019ll sing just the last verse of hymn #1064, \u201cBlue Boat Home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [The congregation sang “Blue Boat Home,” #1064 in Singing the Journey. Recording of the songwriter, Peter Mayer, singing this song.<\/a> Note that Mayer sings this song a bit differently from the version that appears in the hymnal.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBlue Boat Home\u201d doesn\u2019t mention God or any other deity whatsoever. Nevertheless, I\u2019d call it a spiritual song. The song gives thanks, and it tries to make sense of the wonder of the universe. Expressing gratitude and wonder should be considered in some sense spiritual. \u201cBlue Boat Home\u201d is often considered an ecology song, which is another part of its spiritual attraction for us — we Unitarian Universalists have found the spiritual in Nature since Ralph Waldo Emerson\u2019s day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But why have we latched onto \u201cBlue Boat Home,\u201d and not some other ecology song? For instance, why don\u2019t we sing another spiritual ecology-oriented song that\u2019s just as good, \u201cSwimming to the Other Side,\u201d written by Pat Humphries at about the same time? I\u2019m glad we do sing \u201cBlue Boat Home,\u201d but I see no particular reason why we sing it and not the Pat Humphries song. Oftentimes, our song choices seem to be based on random chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s another one of our favorite songs that I can\u2019t figure out why we sing, and that\u2019s the song \u201cThere Is More Love Somewhere.\u201d While \u201cBlue Boat Home\u201d is a composed song that sounds like a folk song, \u201cThere Is Move Love Somewhere\u201d is a genuine honest-to-goodness folk song. \u201cThere Is More Love Somewhere\u201d probably comes from Bessie Jones, who was recorded singing it for folklorist Alan Lomax in November of 1961. As is true of many American folk songs, it\u2019s hard to say exactly where this song comes from. It probably has roots in Africa (Bessie Jones\u2019s grandfather was born in Africa). Bessie Jones sang a couple of Christian verses that we usually don\u2019t sing: \u201cThere is Jesus somewhere,\u201d and \u201cThere is heaven somewhere,\u201d so it probably has European Christian roots, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve heard that some Unitarian Universalists have changed the words to this song so it says, \u201cThere is more love right here.\u201d Folk songs can change over time, but once you start singing \u201cThere is more love right here,\u201d I think you\u2019ve just written a new song with an entirely different meaning; a song that ignore the realities of the African American tradition out of which the song originally arose. When we sing \u201cThere is more love \u201csomewhere,\u201d it reminds us that we do not live in a utopia; the moral arc of the universe is still trying to bend towards justice. When I sing \u201cThere is more love — somewhere,\u201d that reminds me that we are put here on earth to help one another, and to help one another we have to understand that many of us have plenty of problems. This is a song of longing and striving for a better world. With that in mind, let\u2019s sing the song, and see if you agree with me. No need to open your hymnal. We\u2019ll sing two verses, \u201cThere is more love somewhere, I\u2019m going to keep on till I find it\u201d; and then \u201cThere is more hope somewhere\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n [The congregation sang “There Is More Love Somewhere,” #95 in Singing the Living Tradition. Recording of Bessie Jones singing this song<\/a> \u2014 Bernice Johnson Reagon’s recording.<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most popular of all hymns and spiritual songs here in the U.S., across a wide range of religious traditions, is the song \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d This song was not especially popular until after the Second World War, when professional musicians began making recordings of it. We think we know exactly how \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d sounds, but often what we actually know is the 1970 hit recording by Judy Collins, or the 1946 recording by Mahalia Jackson. Those professionally recorded versions don\u2019t sound like older versions of the song. So the choir is going to sing for us an old version of \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d from 1835, the year the words were paired with the tune we now know best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [The choir sang the original arrangement of “Amazing Grace.” Recording of this arrangement.<\/a>] <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d has taken on many different guises since that old 1835 version. Originally, the words were sung to a different tune. Even after the words were paired with the present tune, in 1835, the words continued to be sung to a wide variety of tunes, right up into the 1920s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the 1930s, the editors of songbooks and hymnals somehow settled on the present tune. Once professional musicians like Mahalia Jackson made recordings of it, I guess no one could imagine singing the words to any other tune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the 1950s and 1960s, \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d became one of the most powerful songs for African Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement, providing strength and courage and vision. \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d had been written by a former slave-holder who saw the evil of his ways and reformed; in that story, African Americans fighting for Civil Rights saw hope for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes White people heard a similar message in \u201cAmazing Grace.\u201d In the 1970s, country singer Johnny Cash began singing the song in his prison concerts. In an interview with Bill Moyers, Cash said, \u201cFor the three minutes that song is going on, everybody is free. It just frees the spirit and frees the person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the 1970s, \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d is often played by bagpipers in cemeteries when someone is buried. Then it provides comfort to people who are in grief. (And it keeps evolving — wait till you hear the offertory Mary Beth is going to play, in which the tune to Amazing Grace goes places you won\u2019t expect.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The funny thing is that prior to being recorded by professional musicians, \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d belonged to White and Black Southerners living at the cultural peripheries. That poem by Coleman Barks we heard in the first reading describes how the song sounded when the country folk sang it: \u201cThe whinge and whang of a loudness I know\u2026.\u201d Whinge and whang mean the song did not have the prettiness of a Judy Collins recording, nor the professionalism of a Mahalia Jackson recording. It would have sounded loud, and nasal, and unrestrained, and ecstatic, and — well, that old country singing sounded like bad singing to the educated city folks. To the city folks, it sounded like the kind of singing we heard about in the third reading, singing that causes dogs to bark and bulls to bellow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So why did the educated city folk, after ignoring the song for over a century, suddenly decide \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d was worth singing? Perhaps it\u2019s because we are slowly, over time, becoming more tolerant of the different subcultures in our country. So instead of being dismissive of uneducated whinge and whang, we can open ourselves to the strangenesses of other people\u2019s musics. We are coming to realize, as Peter Schickele used to say, \u201call musics are created equal.\u201d We are slowly broadening our perspectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next song I\u2019d like to consider with you seems very comforting and familiar, but it\u2019s actually very strange: \u201c\u2019Tis a Gift To Be Simple.\u201d Let\u2019s sing that right now. Don\u2019t bother opening your hymnals, sing from memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSermon: \u201cWhy Do We Sing What We Sing?\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n