December 27, 2009
Singing the New Song - Psalm 96
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadThe summer of 2007 was probably the worst summer that I can remember. It was certainly the hottest and driest summer than any of us can remember with the worst drought and hottest weather in recorded history. I’ve never had seasonal depression, but I certainly had a taste of it then. There was a cypress tree outside of the window of my office at Matthews Presbyterian Church and it was getting browner everything I looked at it. I was certain that it was going to die. I did a daily devotion in a chair that overlooked that big cypress tree. Normally, it was a perfect place for me to pray, looking at that cypress tree that only God could have made. But the cypress tree was dying, like the rest of God’s earth. God and I had some very hard conversations around that Cyprus tree. It represented, to me, God’s earth, the same one that he has promised us numerous times over that he loves very much. The Cyprus tree’s demise, you see, was not my fault. You cannot blame that on anything that anybody did, so therefore it raised somewhat of a theological crisis for me. “Where was God,” I would wonder and I would often ask. Why was God abandoning his beautiful earth? And, when the rain comes and gives us some relief — if it ever comes I wondered — should we thank God for it? If so, is God also responsible for the drought.” Even though God had just given me and my wife a beautiful baby girl at the time, I could not get away from this awful drought and all its messy implications.
Then one day I read Psalm 96 is that seat overlooking the Cyprus tree. “Sing to the Lord a new song,” it said. “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among the people.” Despite how I felt at the time, that’s exactly what I decided to do. Just for clarification, the tree did not immediately turn lush and green again. In fact, the drought continued for another six months. My questions certainly still persisted. And yes, the rain finally did come, and now it’s coming in droves, and I could not be more grateful. Though I have not looked at it, the Cyprus tree is indeed lush again.
Be that as it may, the Psalmist tells us to “sing to the Lord a new song.” By the way, this is not some sort of song that we just make up. I do that sometimes with my three year old, and it’s a blast. But this new song that we’re supposed to sing to the Lord has already been written for us. Its parts are already harmonized, and its words are already written down, by none less than God himself. We just have to show up and sing it, and hopefully sing it like we mean it.
Before we look at exactly what this song is, let’s look at what it is not. In the last forty-eight hours, I have driven back and forth to Greenwood to be with Leah’s family. That ride is the most desolate rides in the world, so there was nothing to do for those five total hours than to listen to music. Oh, and by the way, you can also figure out what much of the world sings just by reading a few headlines. This new song, then, is not about fear. It may have some fear in it, but it’s the solution to our fears that we’re supposed to sing. The song is not violent. It does not pit us over and against someone else. In fact, it’s a song specifically of peace and it’s for the whole world. Let me repeat that and say that it’s for the whole world, including the Nigerian born terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempt to blow up the Detroit Bound Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day. The song talks about “Peace on Earth, and good will to men.”
The song is not about sex. Every other song that we hear on the radio these days is, as is every other headline. This new song is also not designed to sell us anything. It’s not about consumerism. It’s not a marketing tool. It’s not a self help song, at all. It might not make you feel better about yourself. It is not one of those mushy elevator songs. It is not one of those songs that helps is escape and pretend for a few minutes that we’re in la-la land. I went to Germany with the Army when I was in college, and for the first week, I was jet lagged and homesick. But I read a book called “Beach Music” by Pat Conroy which was based in Charleston, and I promise you that when I was reading it, I was back home.
This new song is not that at all. This new song, actually, is a song that we sang at the Christmas Eve service. “Joy to the world, the Lord has come. Let Earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare him room and heaven and nature sing. No more let sins or sorrows reign, or thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessing flow as far as the curse is found,” we sang. Or, “O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come, ye, o come ye to Bethlehem. Come and behold him, born the King of Angels. O come let us adore him,” we sang. Or “O little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie, above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
We sang all of those songs on Christmas Eve. If you read the rest of Psalm 96, it sounds eerily familiar. God has heard our prayer. God has heard the whole earth moaning in pain, and God has given us a light. So the whole earth rejoices in singing, even that Cyprus tree outside my office in Matthews. Those songs that we sang are hundreds of years old. Psalm 96 is thousands of years old. But it’s still fundamentally a new song. I sure didn’t read it in the headlines of this morning’s paper. I did not hear it in Whitmire, South Carolina as I was coming to and from Greenwood. It’s a new song, and it’s a beautiful song. In fact, the shepherds first heard it from angels, and it was so beautiful they just sat there in the dead of night in silence.
It changes everything about us, you know. This Christmas may not find you jolly. As I said on Christmas Eve, Jesus came to us in the middle of the darkest night. I’m not denying the night. But Christmas is a time to be joyful and hopeful, because God has given us a light and a new song named Jesus, “the name that is above every name so that at the Name of Jesus, every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” That’s a new song. It’s a new day. It’s Christmas day. So let us all sing to the Lord a new song, now and forever.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
