Transcript
Yes, Tucker, I'm the Dean of Continuing Education here, and we welcome all of you to the, it's so hard to keep up with these, there's so many, 56th Institute of Theology at Princeton Seminary. And because we have a one-week institute this year, we thought we best start it out in some sort of really special way. So we invited Bill Carter, and he provided a sheet with all the information about him because I probably wouldn't have
done it right, him and his musicians, and we invited them to get us off to a good start on singing a new song. So Bill, I'm going to turn it over to you. I'd like to introduce to you, on bass, Mr. Tony Marino, from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Mr. Tom Whaley, from Beach Lake, Pennsylvania, on drums. And the professor, Al Hamm, from Vespa, New York.
[music]
There are two statues in my study at First Presbyterian Church in Clark Summit, Pennsylvania. One depicts Moses with the Ten Commandments, kind of fiercely. It reminds me of my ongoing work as Minister of Word and Sacrament. I am a graduate of this institution. I have been ordained to preach and teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am a child and grandchild of the Church and a servant of the Living God.
And so Moses sits up there, on top of my bookshelf, right next to my 22-volume set of Calvin's commentaries. At the other end of the room, however, there is another statue. This was a gift from my dear friend, Harry Fribern, who is here somewhere tonight. The statue sits somewhat appropriately by the windowsill. It portrays a clown playing the piano. It reminds me of the hundreds of nights I have performed as a jazz pianist in clubs
and concert halls. And when I sit at my desk in between these two, they form a parenthesis around my life. In fact, sometimes, late at night, after a session meeting, I'll go in there and the two statues are talking to one another. At times, the conversation has been muted, if not out of earshot. In 1982, I entered this school as a professional jazz musician. I was the only student in my M.Div class who had a distinction
of playing in every Elks club in upstate New York. I went from a schedule of five nights a week out with musicians like these to five nights a week thinking I probably should go over to Spear Library. I was certain that the focus of my life would change when I graduated and entered the ministry, and to some extent it did. To this day, I still spend most of my time with respectable daytime folk in the suburbs
of Scranton, Pennsylvania. But the Lord has a funny way of returning you to your roots, keeping you in touch with who you are at your deepest level. Moses the preacher and Bozo the pianist have kept talking with one another all these years, and I have begun to hear some things in their conversation that I want to share with you tonight. The music of jazz has many implications for Christian faith, Christian life, Christian ministry. And at times,
for me, jazz has even become something of a metaphor for faith and life. So tonight, I want to talk about what I've heard, and I want to let you hear some of it for yourself. But first, to cleanse your palate, tune. First, a little protocol. We're in church, so if you're really hip, you do not clap, you say amen. Before we get too wrapped up in our music tonight, I remind myself of Moses' voice, who is
calling me to my grounding as a preacher. Every preacher needs a text, and mine comes from Isaiah 42:10 to 16. Listen. Sing to the Lord a new song. God's praise from the end of the earth. Let the sea roar and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants. Let the desert and its towns lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of Silas sing for joy. Let them shout from the
tops of the mountains. Let them give glory to the Lord and declare God's praise in the coastlands. The Lord goes forth like a soldier, like a warrior. He stirs up his fury. He cries out. He shouts aloud. He shows himself mighty against all foes. For a long time I have held my peace. I have kept still and restrained myself. Now I will cry out like a woman in labor. I will gasp and pant. I will lay
waste mountains and hills and dry up all their herbage. I will turn the rivers into islands and dry up the pools. I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known, I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do and I will not forsake them. The word of the Lord. The theme this
week is a familiar phrase from scripture. Sing a new song to the Lord. It appears six times in the Psalms and as we've heard once in Isaiah 42. Twice it shows up in the Christian Apocalypse which we call the Book of Revelation. In each case the people of God are summoned to claim a new tune, to embrace a new lyric, to step to a new dance. God is doing something new and as a way of echoing
God's activity we are called upon to sing a new song to the Lord. According to these biblical texts, God is stirring up things in our world. A good way to participate in this new order is to make some new music to sing a new song. Which is exactly what we expect to hear at an event like this. We gather this week to think about newness. The century is on the brink of flipping over. American culture continues
to change and churn. Religious communities like ours are facing upheaval. There are all kinds of new songs out there. We hear multicultural melodies, strange tribal rhythms and challenging technological two-steps. Some of the songs are refreshing, others scare us to death. All of these songs are new. So we come to a week like this probably to sort out the shallow pop melodies played today and gone tomorrow from tunes that truly stir the heart and ground us
in hope. And that is an issue that music and theology have in common. Now the jazz tradition I'm claiming tonight can speak to our theological tradition. Now in many ways the jazz world is as fractured by denominationalism as the Protestant church. There are lines drawn between the Dixieland camp, the big band community, the bebop cult and the cool jazz lifestyle enclave. There are people who prefer the free jazz of the '60s over the hard bop of
the '50s. Or perhaps they prefer the hyphenated eclectic jazz of the last 20 years over the neo-orthodoxy movement of Wynton Marsalis. Whatever the case, jazz is a kind of music that specializes in new songs. In fact, some songs are so new that you will never hear them again in quite the same way. Even when there is an established tune with melody, harmony, rhythm, the music always sounds new. So the first thing we want to tell
you tonight is that new songs are always built from the stuff of old songs. We heard Isaiah do that, sing a new song to the Lord, as Walter Brueggemann comments on that text. If we listen to the singing, we discover that the new song is constituted by the same old words. The old words are recovered, reclaimed. The new song is not merely a return to a kinder, gentler age. Neither is it the trip down nostalgia avenue.
No, it is a radical rediscovery that the songs our mothers taught us to sing have awesome power and movement for a new day. The new song given by God is always a song that started back there in the past, but then is brought forward to this time, this place, and these circumstances. And we have for you a modest example. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Be thou my vision in case you didn't know it. That one
is anonymous, so we didn't have to apologize to anybody. This is what jazz musicians do. They take old songs and bring them forward into something brand new. When musicians make jazz, they participate in an act of new creation. They build new melodies in the basic building blocks of harmony, rhythm, and notes. The music is created on the spot with imagination, humor, and great freedom. Is it inspired by the Holy Spirit? Maybe, but like most acts of
God, the inspiration is revealed only in subtlety through hard work and flashes of unpredictable brilliance, like whatever it was Tony was doing to that bass. As someone notes, jazz is a music in which the line between composition and performance is blurred, for its essence is improvisation, that is, composing while performing. There may be a melody in a sequence of chords on paper, but little of the music is actually written down, even less is nailed down. This
often bewilders classically trained musicians who are frequently bound to the black notes on a manuscript. Most modern jazz musicians are excellent readers of printed music. Al, for instance, has been teaching saxophone and jazz for 30-some years. Their craft requires them performing in a variety of contexts. The four of us are playing for a wedding reception a week from this coming Saturday. Yet, for jazz musicians, music is made, not written. They'll tell you the truth that
written music is a contradiction in terms. Like sermons, or at least like my sermons, jazz tunes are also unfinished. Both sermon and jazz performance are completed not on the bandstand or in the chancel, but in the lives of those who are granted ears to hear. The impact can never be planned, cannot be managed, even if there are common assumptions about the music's form or feel or who solos next. Jazz musicians, therefore, play with an attitude of
nearly complete freedom. While they are highly proficient instrumentalists, they are astonishingly casual about making music. They practice hard off the bandstand in order that their performed music will become an act of play. This openness to music as an art in progress makes these musicians particularly receptive to the guidance of a spirit far beyond their own capacity. One night at the Deerhead Inn, which is a jazz club up in the Poconos, pianist Jim McNeill equipped me that
improvisation is an act of faith. What he meant is that the act of playing jazz, like many of the actions and practices of daily life, is an informed risk. Improvisation happens through nimble fingers, serious training in music theory, but more important, a willingness to jump into uncharted territory. It takes disciplined technical preparation to play the music, and it also takes great freedom. You work hard as a musician to lift the notes not on the page, but
off the page, to set them free into the air where they can really do some work. If a musician like me, since I'm a hack, hits a sour note or flubs a rhythm, neither can be replayed, they can only be forgiven, and there will be another opportunity to play better notes on another day. Some of these basic characteristics of jazz, I think, make it particularly congenial as a metaphor for Christian faith. Here's a tune I wrote
in Alexander Hall, somewhere probably in the Theology 01 class that I was skipping out of. It's a tune that is named after one of the landmarks of this place. I call it Route 206. It is a tune with a lot of stopping and going.
[music]
Thank you. Route 206, performed here for the first time in public. The question arises, how do you learn to play this kind of music? I can give you my answer. For a short time in high school, I took weekly piano lessons from a musician who was a legendary figure in our community. The word around town was that he was traveling and had just finished traveling with
some big bands, but had now settled down to a regular gig in a local tavern. He was basically moving from that tavern to the golf course, and that's about all he did. Even so, he rarely got out of bed much before noon, and hardly ever went out of his darkened house unless he had his golf bag in the back of the car. He had the complexion of a ghost, mumbled when he spoke, and he was the
honest-to-goodness article, a real half-alive professional musician. I used to cling to this man's insights, partly because I paid him 20 bucks for a lesson, which was a sum equivalent to my mowing four lawns. He taught me a great deal about the harmonies and rhythms of jazz, but most of all he taught me that when it comes to art, one learns only so much out of a book. I recall him sitting in the shadows
next to his piano. After sucking the life out of a cool menthol, he said, You know, Bill, I can teach you how to swing melodies and put down some hip chords, but that won't make you a musician. If you want to play jazz, you must study what you hear and play it. His wry wisdom had something to say to me, and I think for anyone who attempts to live the gospel. Jazz music swings in a way
that cannot be copied on paper. There is a mood and feeling to the music, which will never be duplicated by mechanically reproducing the notes from a written manuscript. To become jazz, music must be given a certain spin in the air. It's similar to the spoken word in that respect. Which is to say, if you want to learn how to play jazz music, you listen to some of the masters who have learned how to interpret old melodies
in a new way. If you want to learn faith, you put yourself in a communion of saints, those people who have worked it out long before you ever appeared on the scene. You put yourself in the pedagogical tradition of the Apostle Paul, who instructed the people of his churches with the words, Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. One of my exercises was to listen to a record and then figure out the notes. And
I remember the first time my teacher ever put on a record by Oscar Peterson. Anybody know Oscar Peterson? The man has 20 fingers, a great Canadian pianist. They're all big fingers. I think the piano must be electronically conditioned, but this is how he did it. He would just start playing. And I was instructed to play Gravy Waltz. The melody goes like this. That's what it looks like on paper when Peterson played it, though. However, it sounded
like this. Now I had to work that out. That's how it is when we try to put ourselves in the tradition of faith. I'm not simply rehashing Howard Wasson Willimon on this, but there are people after whom we model our lives. And there are musicians upon which we model our music. There is something about jazz which cannot be written down, only lived. You learn it by living the notes. You put yourself under the influence of those
who have done it long before you. You learn how to express yourself. And there are great emotional possibilities in this music. There is a full range of feelings which infuse the notes. Like the lyrics of biblical songs, jazz music can express an astonishing variety of human emotions within the Song of Isaiah tonight. We hear sounds of joy, cries for help, labor pains and peaceful silence, the thunder of praise and the screams of fury, all of them
appropriately human sounds and all of them appropriately offered to God. So it is with jazz. A jazz quartet can utter things in the presence of the Almighty that mere words cannot say. A saxophone can lament on behalf of the helpless. A piano can offer intercessions for the needy. A string bass can affirm the firm foundation of faith. Drums and cymbals can call pilgrims to break into joy. It depends upon the purposes for which the music is
intended. The difference between the music in a sanctuary and the music in the concert hall is in the sanctuary we offer the music and say, Amen. Which is why I insist we will not clap unless we are going to praise the Lord. As the Presbyterian Directory for Worship notes, instrumental music may be a form of prayer since words are not essential for prayer. So we would like to pray for you. This is a prayer from 1963,
a composition by John Coltrane. You may remember if you were alive back then, as I barely was, that in 1963 a church blew up and some young children were killed in Birmingham, Alabama. And Coltrane offered on his saxophone a prayer of lament which he called Alabama. We'd like to play that for you. Who needs words? Yet. Sooner or later we must, but not yet. Sometimes the music can speak for us in the fullness of human expression.
However, sometimes the music can speak of something far beyond us, too. Neal Leonard, a music critic, has written about the possibilities for transcendence which occur when people like you hear musicians like us. Among jazz fans, he notes, there have been moments when jazz answered needs that traditional faiths do not address. While the music has different meanings for different followers, black or white, male, female, young or old, rich or poor, in various psychological states or social situations,
for all devotees it provided some form of ecstasy or catharsis, transcending the limitation, the dreariness, and the desperation of ordinary existence. Something new not only happens as the music is made. Something new can happen as people hear the music. The song can change us. Not only does it sound new, it carries us to a new place. And God's song points beyond our pain to a redemptive future where all things indeed are made new. In a faithful
imagination of Isaiah, it is the Lord Almighty who brings about new life. According to Isaiah's text, God is a pregnant mother. God says, for a long time I have held my peace, about nine months. I have kept still and restrained myself. Now I will cry out like a woman in labor I will gasp and pant. A whole new creation is about to be born. Then the Lord goes on to say, I will bring the blind by
a road they do not know. By paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do and I shall not forsake them. In my mind, the best jazz musicians are not merely those who express themselves or cry out as in labor. No, they are the ones who lead us down a road we would not have known
any other way. More than expression, we want insight, particularly from the musical arts. We want to travel a road that takes us into the presence of God, which is first and foremost a beautiful presence where there is light, levity, refreshment, and new life. It's about half time, so why don't we sing a hymn, 280 in your hymnal, and we're going to do this three different ways. 280, the blue hymnal, although you may not need it. 280,
the blue hymnal, although you may not need it. What if we mess with the melody ever so slightly, it might sound verse two and three like that. What if we mess with the melody ever so slightly, it might sound verse two and three like that. What if we mess with the melody ever so slightly, it might sound verse two and three like that. What if we mess with the melody ever so slightly, it might sound verse
two and three like that. What if we mess with the melody ever so slightly, it might sound verse two and three like that. What if we mess with the melody ever so slightly, it might sound verse two and three like that. What if we mess with the melody ever so slightly, it might sound verse two and three like that. What if we mess with the melody ever so slightly, it might sound verse two and three like
that. This is coming off. We don't want the same old songs, always, they're comforting. A new song has the old tune in a new way. And in that process, we are pointed to some strength, some power far beyond our own. I think of John Coltrane, the gifted jazz musician who worked very hard to develop his craft. It was a life in Luther's terms of works. He would practice constantly, 12, 13, 16, 20 hours a day. When
John Coltrane played with the Miles Davis group, he would often improvise solos lasting 15 or 20 minutes. It annoyed his boss. The band would often play a tune, everybody would take a turn. Miles would nod at Coltrane, who would play, play, play. One night, Miles said, Trane, why do you play so long? John said, it took that long to get it all in. Another time, after a lengthy Coltrane improvisation, Miles said, Trane, why do you play
so many notes? John said, once I get started, I don't know how to stop. To which Miles replied, take the d*** horn out of your mouth. After he left Miles Davis and started his own group, however, something changed. One morning, Coltrane told his wife about a vision he had. I heard a song. It sounded like the angels. He spent his remaining years, approximately 1963 to 1967, searching for that song on his saxophone. And needless to say,
he used a lot of notes. There's an apocryphal story about a critic who years later asked him the same question that Miles Davis had asked. Coltrane, why do you play so many notes? And this time, he said, I'm looking for the right one. The interviewer said, what if you should find it? Coltrane thought for a minute and said, I'll play it again. Within this music, you hear a yearning for transcendence. We desire to sound the right
note, the holy note, the beautiful note. I may be a closet platonist, but I truly believe there is a realm of beauty and joy just out of our reach. An artist aspires to touch these things without controlling them, clinging to them. That's why we make music with the tips of our fingers or on the edge of our lips in order to touch the music without being able to hold it. You can be transformed by some higher
power, but it's your task to work out the implications of that transformation. You can strive for a lifetime to play the one note that really counts. But ultimately, you do have to find words to proclaim what you hear. In case you didn't notice, Moses is talking now, where the words come from. According to the fifth chapter of Revelation, there is a song beyond the bruises and brutalities of this age. At times, it's nearly impossible to hear.
When the world wears us down, we are tempted to so wallow in our pain that we neglect the music we were made to make. We can become so burdened by the world's injustice that we forget to praise its judge. Here again, we take our cue from the music makers among us. Most of the true praise makers in our society are hungry and underappreciated. Yet all of them know the secret strength of their art. Ask a jazz
musician, why do you work for near-poverty wages in abysmal conditions in uncertain times for people who do not value your God-given gifts? A musician may respond without blinking. The music is more important than me. It reminds me of a piece of graffiti I saw in a New York subway. It said, you can punch my lips so I can't blow my horn, but my fingers will find a piano. You can slam the piano lid on
my fingers, but you can't stop my toes from tapping like a drum. You can stomp on my foot to keep my toes from tapping, but my heart will keep swinging in four-four time. You can even start my heart from ticking, but the music of the saints shall never cease. I'd like to play a tune for you that I wrote. My younger daughter, Margaret Rose, I didn't realize she was named after the princess, was summoned awake
a few weeks before Christmas two years ago. It was going to be two, actually just a year and a half ago. When Meg was born, we didn't know that she would be diagnosed later with a severe case of apnea, which is why my wife walked in one time into the nursery and she was not breathing. That stopped. Shook her. Shook her again. Shook her a third time and then she began to breathe. That shook us, especially
right before Christmas. One time I was, shortly after that I was swamped by the experience, that and Advent and Christmas and everything else that gets piled on me at that time of year. And there was a huge mountain in the back of my house. I looked out and beyond any kind of my weakness or capacity, the dawn was breaking. And so this is called Dawn Shall Break Again. It's an Advent tune.
[music]
Is there truly a new song like this? Yes, there is. It can only be performed by those equipped to embrace it, by those who are converted to hear it, by those who are sufficiently transformed to dance to its rhythms. And if this is to happen, we must change some of our ways, particularly some of the ways we've done business as a church. Once again, we can learn a lesson from jazz. Now, for a number of years, one of the basic models for church work has been the managerial model of the American corporation. In a recent book on theology, Professor Daniel Meliori critiques this way of doing church work.
He writes, one obstacle to a proper understanding of the church is its accommodation to bureaucratic organization. Bureaucracy is a system of administration marked by anonymity, adherence to fixed rules, hierarchy of authority, and the proliferation of officials. The ultimate in modern bureaucracy is the reduction of relationships between people to communication with a machine. The church is subject, like all organizations, to bureaucratic pressures. When it forgets its own essence, the church attempts to mimic the organizational structures and
managerial techniques of profitable corporations. And I tell you, I am the head of staff of a multi-staff church. You ought to see our personnel policy, our personnel forms. It takes six months just to fill one out. Meliori writes, when the church succumbs to these pressures, it loses its true identity and its distinctive mission in the world. By implication, he is suggesting, other models may be more compatible with the life and work of the church. So,
how about a jazz group as a new model? Think of it. As Christians, we worship a God who is known as creator, an imaginative artist who's spun into being heaven and earth. We are witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, where we have seen divine power creating new possibility in places of despair. We trust in the Holy Spirit, always a risky thing to do, for the Spirit is as unfettered as the wind breathing new speech and
inspiring new activity. Why not an artistic model for our working together? You might not be able to think of many collaborations in the artist world, but a jazz quartet is one of the ones I know. In its classical form of saxophone, drum, bass, and piano, a jazz quartet holds great promise as a constructive model for how to work together. Think of it. This model is collaborative, is collegial without becoming entangled, connects tasks and process, holds together
efficiency and emotional fulfillment, creates results greater than the sum of individual efforts, is genuinely appreciative of each member's gifts and abilities, encourages freedom and responsibility, has a clearness of purpose, has a mission statement. We're going to make music, and yet it leads to a public performance of that mission in a way that changes people. And it assumes that everybody in the group is capable of performing to a common level of competence. If you ask me, and
you didn't, that's a pretty good way of doing church. The Apostle Paul uses the image of the human body in discussing the baptized community and all of its gifts. I prefer to think maybe in terms of a jazz quartet. You see, in a group like this, everybody has a role. The bass player, for instance, provides a swinging foundation. He states the harmony and establishes the pulse, for instance. The drummer keeps the fire stoked, reinforcing the rhythm
and provoking everybody to a continuing dialogue. The saxophonist states the melody, and it sounds something like this. The piano player, if needed, and in this case not, would add some chords to simply reinforce and to interact with everyone else. It might sound like this. For instance, what if we could get the church to work like that? With the church staff, and in some ways I think of the multiple staff I work with as something like this,
there are a variety of roles. The smaller the staff, the more fluidity. The larger the staff, the more discipline, as long as everybody can stick to their parts. The smaller the group, the more flexibility. The group gets larger, there can be all kinds of noise. You have to have more focused roles. But the point is, in the midst of all this, strangers start working together. In fact, some strangers introduce themselves together as they begin working together.
Like maybe you've seen the old Dizzy Gillespie gag. Guys, let's do it. I'd like to take a minute to introduce the band. Al, that's Tom. We're still looking for a bass player for the 12. Musician Stephen Nachmanovich writes about this. Shared art making is in itself the expression of the vehicle for and a stimulus to human relationships. The players in and by their play build their own society as a direct relationship between people, unmediated by anything
other than imagination. Group improvisation can be a catalyst to powerful and unique friendships. There is an intimacy that cannot be reached through words or deliberation, resembling in many ways the subtle, rich, and instantaneously communication between lovers. Nachmanovich calls that kind of entrainment. That's the occasion when you have two different rhythmic systems becoming a single pulse. Say, for instance, a group of people are hammering shingles on the roof. After a few minutes, their various poundings fall into
the same rhythm, and they don't have to talk about it. There are implications for Christian leadership in a model like this. First, we recognize that there is a steady pulse that we probably could all find. We simply have to work it out together, work long enough together to find it. Second, we recognize that the community of gifts is more gifted than the community of individuals. But there's a lot more happening in a group of people gathered
than there is if someone stands up in solos all the time. What's more, sometimes a leader must get out of the way and let other people do what they do best. We give up all pretense of group control, and by that we honor the giver of every gift. In his autobiography, Miles Davis said, That was my gift, you know, having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go,
letting them play what they knew and above it. I didn't know exactly what they would sound like together when I first took them up, but I picked smart and creative musicians in order that the music might fly. A jazz quartet gives an opportunity for each player to improvise and express some individual creativity, yet discipline of the group will not permit one musician to remain the soloist to the exclusion of others. Everyone in the band is given
a turn to contribute, and when competition seeps in, it's always in the form of playful encouragement. Can you imagine a music like this? Can you imagine a church that works like this? Only if God is God, and only if we relinquish all pretense and abandon all rigidity. Where did we ever get the idea that pews should be nailed to the floor? How did we ever allow preachers like me to imply that worship should always overdose on
words? How did we ever develop forms of ministry that actually quench the Holy Spirit? Maybe the one thing most needful for us is to repent, to turn around, to come home, to fall in love again with the one who first loved us. God's new song can change us provided we are willing to be changed. We can tell you about that because we have done jazz worship services all over the Northeast. From the vantage point of a
piano bench, I always enjoy watching people's expressions when they enter the sanctuary and discover what's happening. They picked up the bulletin from the usher. It looks so normal. Then the music starts swinging, and before you know it, it isn't long before people are actually grinning or breaking into laughter. By the benediction, almost everyone is tapping their toes to the glory of God, and these people are Presbyterians. Go figure. The presence of lively, swinging music and worship
has a profound impact on people. Many come to a jazz presentation or concert or something or service out of curiosity, and they depart as converts. Invariably, when we play in a church, someone asks, can you come again next week? They sense something has happened. In the words of Karl Barth, they perceive that in this congregation, the work of the Holy Spirit has become an event. Dogmatic's an outline. I've got the footnote if you want it. Can
it happen? Can the new song of heaven ring out here on earth? Can we recalibrate our hearts and minds in order to hear the music that God makes possible? I don't know. And ultimately, I don't think it matters. I'm Calvinist. And the new song we strive to hear is a tune that will ultimately swallow us up. It was, it is, it ever shall be a song of praise. What is the chief end of man, woman, child,
and beast? Doxology. You know that if you work your way through the hymnal. You know that if you work your way through the psalter. The psalter is called Tehilim, the book of played praises. It's a book of complaints. Until you get to the end, like the back of the hymnal and all the service music is there. The doxology, after every five books, the doxology of doxologies, Psalm 150. Which is to say there will be a day,
there may even be a day today, when all the complaints and laments are swallowed up. And it's up to us to decide if we're going to hum along. Isaiah has no doubt about it. It's there in the opening verses. Sing to the Lord a new song. His praise from the end of the earth. Let the sea roar and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants. Let the desert and its towns lift up their voice.
Let them give glory to the Lord and declare his praise in the joy of the coastlands. There's a song we like to do. It's called Joy. And it needs no further definition.
[music]
We are never sure how to end that one. And that's the point. For our praises shall never end. A faithful life begins and ends with the praise of God. As Leslie Newbigin writes, the first mark of God's faithful people
in a dangerous, dreary, postmodern world is that they are a people of praise. This, he notes, will be its most distinctive character. Praise is an activity almost totally absent in modern society. But the Christian congregation is a place where people find their true freedom, their true dignity, and their true equality in reverence to the one who is worthy of all the praise we can offer. We belong to God. We will listen to no other voice. We
will not pay attention to any other lover. We are God's people and the sheep of God's pasture. Therefore, all people that on earth do dwell sing to the Lord with cheerful voice. Him serve with mirth. A faithful life begins and ends in the praises of God. In praise we cut ourselves loose from all that enslaves or destroys, and we give ourselves to the God who both sets us free and never lets us go. This week we
gather to sing such a new song to the Lord. If we can only hear the tune, if we can only begin to discern the notes, if we can only start to sing the lyric, we will discover that our final destination is to arrive with the one who is the source of our lives. Our purpose is to praise the God from whom all things are made and in whose purposes all things shall be redeemed. To that end,
let everything with life and breath praise the Lord.
[music]
Al Hamm on saxophone. Tom Whaley on drums. Tony Marino on bass. Thank you. We'll send you out with a tune by Jelly Roll Morton, who's in the Dixieland camp, kind of. This is called King Porter Stomp. One, two, three, four.
[music]
Thank you very much. Thank you and good night.