By Jeff Brummel
It was the German reformer Martin Luther who said, “Let me write the hymns.” In addition to being the main figure of the Lutheran Reformation in the 16th century, Luther was also a musician who wrote dozens of hymns. He knew how the power of music — all art, really — could be used to teach and inspire the church. In addition to Luther, all other 16th-century reformers put significant importance on accessible participatory music in corporate worship.
Out of all the expressions of art, music has such immediacy in accessibility and impact — an almost primal way of grabbing our attention. I love that as children we dance before we can walk, we draw and color before we write and we sing before we talk. God has created us in God’s own image, which is expressed through sublime beauty. Just go outside the day after a spring storm and look at the brilliant blue sky and see how the swaying trees “clap their hands” in praise and thanksgiving to God. Simply put, we art! But we do so with purpose.
Our hymns comfort us, teach us and inspire us as we worship a loving God. Today, we lean into hymns as a reminder of how God is with us. These hymns offer us a reminder that God is past, present and always with us. Wherever the stormy blasts of life find us, God is with us, and we can sing, no matter what, “You are there …” from Psalm 139.
We are a people of words. Our faith is unique in that even the central figure of Christianity is the Word of God who dwells among us. It is this beautiful Word of God whom we hear today in this very hour from the mouths of the worshiping body of Christ in unity. We sing our faith, and we comfort those around us with song as Jesus sends us his Holy Comforter through the musical notes you experience today. As the Holy Spirit moves among us, the very tones from our voices, bells, pipes and vibrating strings touch us, searing text into our hearts and minds, warming our very souls as we care for one another in song. We experience the Divine in the very way God has made us so unique in all creation — through art in song.