Two very different events over the last few years reveal how important the power of song is. The first event is something that many of you will remember. In fact, it is hard to believe that it was three years ago when it occurred, and that was in the mountains of the Atacama in Chile, when those miners were buried underground. From August 5th to October 12th, thirty-three miners were trapped underground. You remember it well, don’t you? It seems only like yesterday that we sat every day waiting for the reports to come in as to whether there would be an engineering or even a spiritual miracle to save those trapped miners. The world was sitting on the verge of a precipice waiting. It was an amazing time!
Much has been written subsequently about their relationships and the technology that ultimately saved them. But what is sometimes forgotten is that in the midst of that pit, those thirty-three men had something that kept them alive and that was the power of song. Two men down there, Jose Henriquez and Edison Pena, each believed in the power of song.
Jose Henriquez believed in it because he was an Evangelical pastor. He was used to singing every day. It was a part of his life. He organized the miners to sing. Sometimes it was the national anthem, sometimes it was a popular song, but more often than not it was a Gospel piece. Edison Pena, another one of the miners who had not been a miner for anywhere as long as Henriquez, was a lover of Elvis Presley, and because he of this he couldn’t help but move with the beat of the song .
Between Pena and Henriquez they got all the men singing, and even though they knew they were taking valuable oxygen from being trapped down there in the pit, sing they did. Those songs united them and distracted them and empowered them, and gave them a sense of hope. While they had the breath to sing to God, they did.
Another totally different event was at The National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa this past summer. It was an event where more than six hundred people gathered to hear speeches and to pray. Politicians were on display. There were people of notoriety in the audience. There were pastors and ministers and Christians from all over the country gathered for The National Prayer Breakfast. It was a big, high event in one of the great congress centres in Ottawa. It was majestic. It was as far away from the bowels of the earth in the Atacama as you could get!
Singing at this event and highlighting in many ways the line-up of greats was one of Canada’s most famous opera singers. He was applauded and he was understood to be one of the great contributors to this event. His name appeared on all the bulletin boards and all the advertisements. So, I went there expecting to hear some great, great classical music: maybe some Puccini, maybe some Verdi, maybe some Mozart, but when I got there, I looked at the agenda, and he was going to be singing some old fashioned hymns.
I thought to myself at the time, “Seems like a bit of a waste to have this great voice singing what we mere mortals can sing any Sunday.” I went up to him, because I know him quite well and we chatted before the event. He had done his warm-up; he was having a bit of a quiet time sort of reflecting on what would follow. I helped fold some of the things he had brought with him, and we just sat at the table, and I thought I just had to ask him this: “Don’t you get bored singing the same old songs over and over again, songs that any Tom, Dick or Harry or Jane can sing? Doesn’t it seem beneath you? Doesn’t it bore you?”
He looked at me with incredulity, smiled and said, “But I sing for God! And every time I get up it is like a new song, because God every day is new to me.”
Finally, it came to the event and the Speaker had spoken, and some of the dignitaries had read the Scripture rather badly, and finally he gets up to sing, and he sings these glorious hymns. It was as if his heart was transformed in the singing of them. Everyone left, not talking about the speeches, but talking about the songs. So-much-so that at the end of the Prayer Breakfast, when there was a closing song before the Benediction, everyone joined him, and this song that you would wait to hear as a performance became an anthem for us all. It was quite remarkable! He was right; my skepticism was not founded.
I think that is the power of song, is it not? It is the power of a new song. Today’s passage from Psalm 40 is like the psalmist saying “Amen” to the men in the bowels of the Atacama, “Amen” to the great opera singer in Ottawa, “Amen” this is why I wrote this Psalm! I want the world to hear the new song. He says, “I will sing to the Lord a new song for he has rescued me. I will sing to God!” This is what Psalm 40 is all about. It is the recognition of the power of the song of faith.
What had gone on in the psalmist’s mind that he felt there was a need for a new song? He describes the need as being in “a miry bog” or being in “a pit” or “crying for help”. As Walter Brueggemann says, “If you are in a miry pit, then you are sinking further down, not just standing still. If you are in a miry bog, you need someone to rescue you, for you cannot rescue yourself. If you are in a desolate pit, then you are alone, and no one is going to be able to take you out.” So, the psalmist cries and he says, “I was in a miry bog, I was in a desolate pit, and I cried unto the Lord and I asked the Lord to rescue me, and I asked the Lord to lift me up.”
We do not know what transpired in the psalmist’s life that caused him such agony and grief. Clearly, he must have been guilty about something or something terrible had happened in his life for which he had remorse. Maybe it was David who wrote this Psalm and he is referring to his affair with Bathsheba, and the guilt of having Bathsheba’s husband killed. Maybe it was an indiscretion. Maybe it was the breaking of the religious law. Maybe it was a criminal act. Maybe it was an act of vengeance and violence. Who knows? But what we do know is that this psalmist felt there was no way out of the predicament he was in. He was in too deep to be able to rescue himself, and he needed something to lift him up.
The song that he sung was a statement that God had heard that cry and that God had lifted him up out of the miry pit, and for whatever reason, he had experienced forgiveness. But what kind of song was it that the psalmist had sung? Well, it was clearly a song of redemption and renewal. The psalmist had tried everything, I think, to assuage his guilt or to plaster over his broken consciousness, but it hadn’t worked.
He had tried all the formal religion that he could put his hands on, but he declared “the Lord does not want the sacrifice of burnt offerings.” The Lord doesn’t want all the external things that are used to try and placate God. It doesn’t matter what public acts of atonement we do; they are not enough. It is not out there. It is not some public expression that is needed. It is not some religious act. It is in the heart!
Finally, the psalmist says, “Here I stand. I have to come face-to-face with the reality with whatever it is that I have done wrong, and I know that all my religiosity and all my attempts to please God are not going to get me out of this miry pit. This has got to be by grace, and by grace alone. I have to be forgiven this. I have to be able to start again. I have to be true to myself. God does not want burnt offerings. God wants a heart that knows where it stands. That is what God wants!”
One of the greatest exponents of this is a man called Tom Watson. All of you are thinking “I know he is going to be talking about the golfer who won many British Opens.” Alas, it is not that Tom Watson to whom I refer. It is the Tom Watson, who was a seventeenth century preacher in London and a theologian. Now, that is my kind of Tom Watson! He was famous for writing great books on divinity. But one of the things that made Watson so great was that he was brought up in a Puritan home in a non-conformist family that read the Scriptures and took the Bible seriously.
He was such an incredible intellect that as a young man he went to Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge. While he was at the University of Cambridge, he felt this great sense of call. He had read the works of Martin Luther, he was familiar with Reformation writings, and he became convinced that grace is what was needed in the heart of a grateful sinner. So he became an Anglican. He joined the Anglican Church, the Church of England – the State church. He eventually was given a pulpit in London, and for seventeen years he preached his heart out.
For seventeen years he was supportive of the monarchy of Charles I, and even Charles II. He did not join Cromwell and his cronies, but he maintained his Puritan faith and his Puritan love of the Scriptures. Eventually, it became too much, and in 1662 in Britain, they passed The Act of Uniformity. This Act declared that all ministers, preachers, parishes, everyone had to conform to The Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church. Well, he couldn’t do it.
He didn’t mind using The Book of Common Prayer in worship, but he felt that his theology was as much of the heart as it was of the book, and that it just wasn’t enough to simply go through rituals and read prayers; it had to come from within. In a classical Puritan sense he felt he couldn’t comply with The Act of Uniformity. So he was informed by his national church that he should step down. He was removed from his pulpit for preaching the Gospel.
In his final sermon, when it seemed that his congregation was decimated – for they loved him – he talked about the need for both a faith that is founded on a solid doctrine, but also a faith that is moved by the heart. He was a lover of Psalm 40. The reason for this is that he felt that the psalmist captured that tension – that tension between realizing sometimes you are in the miry bog and you need a lift out, and sometimes you want to sing and glorify and praise God.
Finally, about ten years or so later – maybe a little longer – there was an Act passed called The Act of Indulgence. This Act allowed those who had been removed from their pulpits to return. There was a greater openness to the way The Book of Common Prayer was interpreted. England changed with The Act of Indulgence and Tom Watson went back to his pulpit. Eventually, he was found dead, on his knees at the rail of the church where he served. He said many great things in his life, but according to Victor Shepherd, he said one really great thing and this is it: “The eye is made for both seeing and weeping. Sin must first be seen before it is wept for.”
He realized, you see, that there is a need sometimes for us to cry out to the Lord.
Like the psalmist who cried out to the Lord first, he saw with his eyes his need. He realized what was wrong in his life and once he did he could experience the power of the grace of God. He was aware of who he was, and that is why his song is so powerful! That is why when he breaks out of this, and he says “I will sing a new song to the Lord” you can feel the joy; you can feel the release in the psalmist. It is as if all of a sudden the gates have been opened wide. It is magnificent!
When I was in Ottawa, one of the most tragic events that occurred while I ministered there was of this delightful family of parents and two children, and the children were given every opportunity in life. The daughter was particularly outstanding as an athlete, and frequently she would participate in winter sports. She would go over into Quebec and she would ski in the Gatineau. She would loved being in the outdoors in the winter.
One day, her father, who was a decent sort, had some friends over, and they had a few drinks, and then another friend said, “Well, why don’t we continue this party and go to another venue.” They went to another venue, and he had some more drinks, and then he had some more drinks, and then he ended up in another place and had some more drinks, and he hardly remembered the evening at all. The only problem was that at three o’clock in the morning, there was a telephone call from a hospital outside of Hull, informing him that his daughter had been in a ski accident and had died.
The father was so inebriated he couldn’t even get into the car to go over to Hull. Finally, they sobered him up and he went over. His wife was already waiting for him. He was devastated! I have never seen a man more devastated in my whole life! He really felt his daughter had died because of his excess. You couldn’t shake him from it. For days, he made a direct correlation between these two totally different events. You couldn’t convince him otherwise. He lived in incredible, paralyzing guilt! He was inconsolable. He was embarrassed, yes – so he should be. He was humiliated, yes – it may be a good thing. But to connect those two things, only in his own mind did he do that. Nobody else did.
His own mind was trapped with that conviction. No one had an idea how to get him out of this. At his daughter’s funeral, we read Psalm 40, and I believe in my whole heart that when people read that they see in that story of that psalmist themselves. He identified with that psalmist, and he knew he could lie to everyone, he could put on a brave face, he beat himself up – it didn’t matter! The fact of the matter is that there was only one thing and one thing only that was going to get him out of that desolate pit and that was the forgiving grace of God. And, that was the starting point for that father’s eventual healing.
Not that the grief was gone, not that his shame disappeared, but that he came to the truth of what had occurred, and like the psalmist had to stand up like a man and say “I understand it.” What was it that Tom Watson said? “Sin must first be seen before it is wept for.” But sometimes we see sins when they aren’t there, and rather than turning to Christ, we just stay in them. This is a new Psalm. This is a Psalm of joy; this is not a Psalm of sorrow. This song is for everyone. “I will sing a new song to the Lord for he has rescued me. He has done wonderful things for me! I have been lifted up!”
The reason why the Psalms are so powerful is not only because Jesus referred to them, and he referred to them numerous times both overtly and inadvertently. The influence was there – from him saying “Now I feel like I am standing on solid ground as opposed to being on the boggy mire.” Is that not a foundation for a parable that Jesus taught? No, it is all there. The Psalms are eternal. The Psalms speak of the human condition. The Psalms speak about the grace of God. That is why they are so powerful, and why they are sung every day as a new song as that great opera singer said, because God is always new to him.
This might make some of us feel a little aged, but it is over thirty years ago that the rock group U2 had their album that was called War. Some of you will remember it. In their first performance of their new album, which was in Dundee, in Scotland, in 1983 they had a new song on their album, and the new song was called Forty. In that song, there is this line: “I will sing, I will sing a new song to the Lord.” The reason it is there is because U2 was so concerned about the sectarian violence in Ireland, so worried about the death and the destruction, so worried about the conflicts and the deaths and the disunity within their nation that they genuinely felt, and they said so, Bono said so, “I genuinely feel that the only hope for peace is in God. Never mind all our religious duties and peccadilloes here and there, the fact of the matter is that the only one who can save us from this is God.” And, why did they call their song Forty? It was because it was based on Psalm 40 that we read today.
The crowd went out into the streets of Dundee into a sectarian Scotland – Scotland can be sectarian at times – singing “I will sing a new song. I will sing a song unto the Lord.” To crowds who went to hear them again in Hartford, Connecticut, and down one of the long roads where all the insurance buildings are, the crowd poured out into the streets, and there they were singing, “I will sing, I will sing a new song to the Lord, for the Lord has delivered us and rescued us.” This group, who had gone to hear a rock concert, had come out singing a hymn!
God bless you too for continuing to do that. Why? It is because that is what the psalmist had in mind. He said, “I will sing my song of deliverance to the congregation. I want others to sing this song. I want others to know. I have such a passion about what God has done for me that I just want everyone to sing this song!” Is this the passion we have for our faith? Is this the flame of true, honest, heartfelt faith that we possess?
Are we beyond the concern we have for formal, outward religiosity and have we really got this burning flame of a new song in our hearts this day? If we do, then when we sing, like that great opera singer, we sing it to God, and every day we recognize the grace of God. When we see others in “the miry pit” like that father in Ottawa, we sing the new song to them. When we experience the barrenness of our spiritual lives, we sing a new song to God. When we feel we are in the miry pit, we sing the new song. The psalmist would say: “Amen! That is why I wrote it, and I want you to sing it!” Amen.