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Singing the Living Tradition
A Sermon Given
by Rev. Roger Fritts
on September 28, 2003
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
When religious communities gather to worship, the hymnal is
often the written document that binds them together. When I sit in another
church or temple waiting for a service or a program to start, I often pick up
the hymnal and look through it. In particular I read the preface or the
introduction for clues about the theology of the congregation. The hymnal is
the written document that glues a congregation together into a community.
Occasionally I will visit a congregation that has no hymnal and does not
include congregational singing. I found this when I visited Willow Creek
Community Church outside Chicago. Willow Creek owes its tremendous size of
about 12,000 people, in part, to the fact that its music program from the
beginning has been based on a a Christian Rock Band. Willow Creek had no
hymnals, no choir and no organ. The founders had gone door to door in the
1970s asking people who do not attend church why they did not attend. A
surprising number said that they did not attend because they did not like to
sing.
I on the other hand, have always loved to sing hymns, and I have always
been attracted to churches with strong music programs. Here at Cedar Lane
Unitarian Universalist Church music has always been an important part of our
worship service. We have and outstanding choir, a state of the art organ and
an outstanding music staff in Richard and Mary Darne.
The music in our worship service has its roots in the changes that Martin
Luther made in the roman catholic liturgy nearly five hundred years ago.
Luther said:
I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God.
. . . My heart bubbles up and overflows in response to music, which has so
often refreshed me and delivered me from dire plagues.
Martin Luther encouraged the development of trained church choirs, writing:
. . . one begins to see with amazement the great and perfect wisdom of
God in his wonderful work of music, where one voice takes a simple part and
around it sing three, four or five other voices, leaping springing round
about, marvelously gracing the simple part, like a square dance in heaven .
. .
Luther=s
greatest musical reform was congregational song. In the Middle Ages the
liturgy was almost entirely restricted to the priest and the choir. Luther so
developed hymn singing by the congregation that he may be considered the
founder of congregational song. Music was the point at which his doctrine of
the priesthood of all believers received its most concrete realization. This
was the point at which Lutheranism was thoroughly democratic. All the people
sang. In 1524 Luther published a hymn book. His congregations learned to sing.
Practices were set during the week for the entire congregation. A Jesuit
testified that "the hymns of Luther killed more souls than his sermons."
English hymn singing became popular because of Isaac Watts who first
published his book Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1705. After Watts, John
and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism, firmly established hymn singing
in congregations in England and America. In 1761 John Wesley wrote his "Rules
for Hymn Singing," which still appear at the beginning of the Methodist Hymnal
today:
- Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you
can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a
cross to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing.
- Sing lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were
half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more
afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you
sung the songs of Satan.
- Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the
rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy harmony, but strive to
unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.
- Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run
before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move
therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This
drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to
drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at
first.
- Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. .
. .
I would add one additional rule for Unitarian Universalists. Stop reading
ahead to see whether or not you agree with the lyrics!
The first Unitarian Universalist hymnal was Hymns of the Spirit.
Although the Unitarian and the Universalists did not merge into one
association until 1961, this 1937 "red hymnal" was a joint project of the
Universalists and the Unitarians. It took five years to complete. It contains
sixteen complete orders of service, including the texts of opening words,
prayers and litanies, what we now call responsive readings. It is heavily
theistic, with frequent references to God, the Lord, and Jesus. The focus is
more on the music than on the lyrics. The names of the hymns refer to the
tunes and not to the words.
Twenty-seven years later Hymns for the Celebration of Life, what
came to be know as the "blue hymnal" was published. This 1964 hymnal was a
radical departure from the past, the first humanist Unitarian Universalist
hymnal. The Lord’s Prayer, for example, which appeared several times in the
red hymnal was nowhere to be found in the blue hymnal. The blue hymnal had no
section at all called prayer. Instead the 1964 hymnal reflected the desire of
many Unitarian Universalists to experiment with new forms of worship. Also the
commission tried to include words for all the great world religions. For the
first time our blue hymnal included passages from Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic and
Jewish sources. The hymnal was carefully constructed so that it would serve us
for many years into the future.
Within ten years the Blue hymnal was hopelessly out-of-date. In the late
1960s our nation was shaken by the Black Power movement, the women’s
liberation movement, Earth Day and the environmental movement, and other
cultural revolutions. Hymn names like "Man is the Earth Upright and Proud" did
not fit with our desire to live in harmony with the earth. Almost every
reading, every hymn in the blue hymnal was written by a white male. Many
hymns, and many readings were in phase of man, men, the Lord, the King,
Fathers or brotherhood. Here are just a few examples:
The Mind of Man
The Man of Integrity
Man-Making
The Man of Life Upright
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
Our Friend, Our Brother, Our Lord
O Brother Man
Man Lives Not for Himself Alone
Happy the Man
The Son of Man
The Parliament of Man
and so on.
By the mid 1970s there was only one of these hymns that many women in the
congregation felt comfortable singing. It was entitled Turn Back O Man,
for Swear Thy Foolish Ways.
Some congregations supplied their members with hymnals and pencils to
change the sexist words in the blue hymnal. Some congregations took to
printing revised words to the hymns in the order of service. In response to
complains, in 1979 the Unitarian Universalist Association published a small
pamphlet called 25 Familiar Hymns in new form, hymns with the male
language removed. But what was really needed was a completely new hymnal.
Finally, in the late 1980s the UUA Board of Trustees established a new
hymnal commission. As part of its work the commission did a study to discover
what were our most popular hymns, and what was missing that people wanted
included. Morning Has Broken was the most popular, number 38 in the
gray hymnal, a song of praise for the morning. However, in its effort to
remove sexist language, the commission struggled with the hymn. The end of the
second verse reads Awhere
his feet pass." Some feel that the pronoun "his" refers back to the black-bird
in the first verse, and in the second verse the poet is telling us that it is
a male black bird, walking through the garden. However, the commission decided
that his referred to God.
The hymn that was not in the red or the blue hymnal that many Unitarian
Universalists wanted added was Amazing Grace, numbers 205 and 206. The
commission also struggled with this hymn. About half the Unitarian
Universalists consulted, objected to the word "wretch" in the second verse.
They claimed that this was a reference to original sin, which most Unitarian
Universalists do not believe in. "I am not a wretch," they said. Others
pointed out that John Newton was talking about himself, referring to the fact
that he was a slave trader and that "Amazing Grace" was the moment that he
realized that what he was doing was evil. As a compromise, the commission
suggested that those who were offended by the word "wretch" could replace it
with the word soul.
In the readings, a section of prayers, which was missing from the blue
hymnal was added back. The Lord’s Prayer is number 513, although it is
not exactly the traditional wording, reflecting the ambivalence among
Unitarian Universalists about conventional religious language. It is followed
by a modern version. "Our Father in heaven" is replaced with
AGod, lover
of us all."
This month is the tenth anniversary of Singing the Living Tradition.
- Unlike the blue hymnal it is filled with words by women as well as men,
words by people of color as well as words by white men.
- Unlike the blue hymnal, it has not become outdated in ten years.
- Unlike the blue hymnal, people in this congregation often ask where they
can buy a copy of the hymnal that they can take home for their personal
library. People have told me over the past ten years that they use the
hymnal in their homes as a meditation manual. To get through the hard times
in life they read through the readings for comfort and inspiration.
Personally, when I read certain lines I am almost always moved to tears. For
example, since the last two years I have found myself returning again and
again to reading #483:
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the
least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and
lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great
heron feeds.
On a beautiful day I often think of the poem #504:
i thank you God for most this
amazing
day
Several of you in the congregation told me of your own favorites.
One of you called to say that #128 is your favorite.
For all that is our life we sing our thanks and praise; for all life is a
gift which we are called to use to build the common good and make our own
days glad.
Susan Archer told me, "What I love most about the hymnal is how it breaks
away from our European centered heritage. The readings and music reflect
culture from around the world."
Warren Thompson wrote, "I am especially fond of hymn # 159, This is My
Song, because it makes a great plea for world peace.
Susan Clark wrote, "One tune missing from the blue and red hymnals was
Slane, one that I grew to love while attending an Episcopal girls school.
I was delighted to look in the index of hymn tunes in Singing the Living
Tradition, and see Slane for hymns #20 Be Thou My Vision and #298
Wake, Now, My Senses.
Mary Clare England wrote to me of her love for reading # 530, which begins,
"Out of the stars on their flight, out of the dust of eternity here we have
come." She said, "I was thrilled when I first heard these words read by Bob
Weston himself back in the 1950s, when he had come to Lexington, Kentucky to
do a service for a small group of us hoping to become a church. I was stunned
to realize that Unitarianism had more to offer than rationality, as I listened
to the poetic mythology of Weston’s beautiful words."
And Vicky Strella wrote of her love of hymn #21. She said, "It begins ‘For
the beauty of the earth, for the splendor of the skies,’ and ends, ‘Lord of
all to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.’ As a child in the
Unitarian Universalist Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts, one line in
particular, ‘for the love which from our birth over and around us lies,’
embodied all that church and being Unitarian Universalist meant to me at that
time in my life. They are simple words that enveloped me and still do, with a
profound sense of well being, of being in a special place within a community
of people who knew, loved and supported one another." Vicky concludes, "I
always stumble over the current hymnal version replacing ‘source’ for ‘Lord,’
so if you hear a voice singing out ‘lord of all,’ it’s probably me!"
Of course, Singing the Living Tradition is not by any means the
perfect hymnal. It is a minister’s hymnal, not a music director’s hymnal. The
commission would have benefitted greatly if it had in it membership more
professional musicians who work in our congregations. Because of the
preponderance of clergy instead of musicians, on the commission, the words of
the hymnal are wonderful, but there are numerous problems with the music. In
another ten years a new generation will need to fix these short comings.
Still, if the intent of a hymn book is:
To set up an environment for a hallowed ceremony,
To bring forth an experience of the religious realm,
To function as a device for the communication of thought,
To soothe the heart from pressing concerns,
To suggest new opportunities and fresh possibilities,
To bring order and harmony to our worship,
To share in the delight of religious community,
Then Singing the Living Tradition has succeeded to a remarkable
degree.
A mega church may have eliminated hymns in favor of a rock band. But, I
like congregational song. I am committed to congregational singing. Like
Martin Luther, I find that "My heart bubbles up and overflows in response to
music, which has so often refreshed me and delivered me from dire plagues."
And we do not sing for ourselves alone.
Each week new people come here Sunday morning. They may be lonely, broken,
or grieving. They may be searching for a goal, a purpose, or for meaningful
contact with a reality beyond themselves. In the vibrations of the organ, the
swell of the voices, and in the poetry of the readings, they find a message of
joy, hope, faith, and love.
Through hymns and poetry we comfort and renew the human spirit.
Office@CedarLane.org
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