SERMON TO GO Sing a New Song Psalm 96 May 19, 2013 Dr. Dale Miller Have you ever been so happy that you could hardly contain yourself? Perhaps you have experienced joy through a proposal of marriage, the birth of a child, an acceptance letter into college, or the news of a new job. VJ Day in Times Square is a photograph that portrays an American sailor kissing a woman in a white dress (perhaps a nurse?) in Times Square, New York, on August 14, 1945, celebrating the end of World War II. The photograph was published in Life magazine and became the image of celebrating the joy of ending the worldwide conflict. In 2005 Seward Johnson created a life-size bronze statue for use in a sixtieth-anniversary reenactment at Times Square. The response was so favorable that he went to sculpt 25 feet tall versions in plastic and aluminum, which have been displayed in several cities, including San Diego, California and Sarasota, Florida. Susan and I have driven past the sculpture in Sarasota. It is quite the eye-catching piece of art. Unfortunately, a year ago last April a Mercedes Benz jumped the curb and crashed into the statue, knocking a 3-foot-wide hole out of the sailor’s foot. The statue has been taken down by the city. The thought that I’m presenting this morning is this: When joy comes to us the enthusiasm of the moment becomes larger-than-life. However, it only takes a small incident to damage our excitement and cause us to retreat into the safety of business-as-usual. Psalm 96 is a psalm of celebration. It was used for the annual New Year’s worship in which the Hebrew people renewed their covenant together and celebrated God as their sovereign. The poetry of the psalm perfectly blends the God of creation and the God of history. The blending of a creating God and a God of history is an interesting dynamic, a dynamic that has been played out over hundreds of years. For Judaism near the time of Christ, rabbis debated what books should be added to the Law and the Prophets – resulting in that portion of the Old Testament we call the “Writings.” In third and fourth century Christianity, the great councils of the church settled on which gospels and epistles ought to be judged as the “canon” or norm of scripture.

The important consideration always involved discerning how God spoke or was revealed in new ways. In the first century AD, the Law and the Prophets were not enough for Judaism. New words and understandings and revelations of God rooted in Israel’s experiences following the exile and returning to the land needed inclusion. For the church, the Hebrew Scriptures were not enough. New words and understandings and revelations of God rooted in Christ’s life and ministry and church needed inclusion. Or, to put it in the language of our psalm this morning, new songs needed to be sung. While praise and doxology fill this psalm, such words do not seem to flow as easily in our time. Cynicism is more likely to be the expression of the day. Genuine praise is often confused with trying to affirm everything by helping everyone to feel good about themselves. This psalm invites us to go deeper, in search of an affirmation that is grounded in one’s relationship with God. That relationship with God can then melt away the superficial affirmations that may trigger cynicism. Listen for a moment to the verbs and nouns employed through Psalm 96: bless, ascribe, sing, song, salvation, revere, sanctuary, rejoice, exult. When we enter into the language of this psalm, we do so largely with the vocabulary of praise. Sometimes, however, our vocabulary words run the risk of becoming jargon, repeated from generation to generation, with little or no understanding of what they mean or why we even use them, save “that is what we have always said here.” “These are our traditions” can be little more than a pious way of saying “these are our ingrained habits.” Psalm 96 brings a critical word to such attitudes and lines in the sand: new songs need to be sung. There is another vocabulary at work in this psalm. It is a use of language that addresses the broadest audience possible: “peoples,” “nations,” “earth” occur repeatedly. And so does a tiny three-letter word: “all.” The psalmist summons “all the earth” to sing to God. “All the peoples” are called to declare God’s works. The psalmist bids rejoicing from “all” that fills the sea and “all the trees.” Why? For God is “above all gods.” Psalm 96 does not offer a parochial vision of what it means for one people or community to engage in relationship with and praise of God. The psalmist invokes a new song, one that sings the promise of God’s universal realm and sovereignty – and of the place given to all peoples and all nations in all the earth.

God not only makes room for all. God also makes it an imperative that we share in that welcoming and “homecoming” for all in the presence of God who created all. The second verse of Psalm 96 speaks of our telling God’s salvation. The Hebrew verb translated as telling is basar, “to tell good news.” To be a singer of this new song is to be an evangelist, which is simply a fancy word for someone who does not hide light under a bushel. We sometimes forget that the “old songs” of our faith that seem so familiar to us were at one time startling “new songs” that were somewhat offensive in their day. God consistently acts in new and unexpected ways, and God’s people are moved to add new songs to our repertoire of witness and celebration. Yes, I know that we love to sing the familiar songs of faith. And that would be all we ever had to do if God had stopped speaking and working two thousand years ago. We could keep doing what we have always done, singing what we have always sung, being among those we have always been among. But God keeps springing up in new ways and among new ones, urging us to sing new songs: songs of mission, ministry, compassion, and yes, songs new to our worship. Our spirits need to be open to the new songs that emerge from God’s fresh actions among us: taken for the sake of creation and redemption, as always, but actions that may take new directions – and may take us new directions. Do we want to do that kicking and screaming, digging in our heels, holding our breath until we turn beet red so we can keep things the way they are . . . at least in our memory? Or do we want to “sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth”? There’s that word “all” again. How will we allow God to work through us to bring all people into the choir? Faith does not take a “wait and see” attitude. Faith takes a “come and serve” – or should one say, “come and sing” – attitude. When we allow ourselves to be overcome by the joy of God, by the joy of following Jesus Christ, by the joy of being the Body of Christ, the Church, then we will give permission to ourselves to do whatever it takes to make God’s love real for ourselves and for everyone around us. Thanks be to God for inviting us to lend our voices to the new songs as well as the old.