Psalms are sung prayers. They can express the broken heart of a believer and the broken spirit of whole communities. They can launch into soaring anthems that enjoin choirs and orchestras to the heights of ecstasy and joy, or express the simple gratitude of a trusting soul toward God. Some can be sweetly hummed in the morning and lightly whispered before going to bed. Others rumble like the blues or rage like a rap. Love, hope, praise, awe, disillusionment, loss, sin, sickness and exile--the whole range of human experience has been offered to God in these prayer/songs throughout the millennia by Israel and the Church.
At Hopwood we join our ancestors in exploring these treasures as an act of our worship together. We have been blessed with the talent to set these ancient lyrics to tunes, and we can sing. Like all new songs, at first some of us may manage to get the tune right and jumble the words or we may sputter the words correctly and massacre the tune. Even the best of us may find ourselves tumbling head over heals until that portion of worship is completed. Liturgy means the work of the people in worship, and sometimes eking out a moment of worship is work.
It is, however, work worth doing. With time and memory, it is upon tunes that these prayers may travel. Both absent mindedly and intentionally a note of music will ring in our ears and the words will follow. They will link our life situation to the appeals made by the congregation in worship. Our isolated prayer will be joined to mass appeals already prayed and sung and heard. They will become songs for the journey.
Our Lord hollered the psalms from the cross like a bluesman, and lived them through the resurrection as the Messiah. Psalm 22 may begin: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
