OLD STORIES, NEW SONGS
Psalm 96 (Psalm Series 2014)
September 21, 2014
Tim Phillips, Seattle First Baptist Church
Sing a new song … Although there is something to be said for old songs too.
Every time I hear Conrad Tovar sing the music of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, I think I
was born a generation too late: “I’ll be seeing you,” “Unforgettable,” “Autumn
Leaves,” or into the 60s, Louis Armstrong’s “What a wonderful world.”
Or when we sing one of those old old gospel songs, I find myself moved in a way
that some of the new songs – even with their much better theology and their
commendable attempts at inclusive language and their more contemporary musical
dynamics -- doesn’t seem really able to do.
I love some of the old songs.
Still, Vicky is right. From Isaiah to Revelation to the Psalms, the biblical tradition
seems to have a preference for singing a new song – although the irony, of course,
is that this instruction comes to us from very old stories. The Psalms themselves
represent the ancient stories of Israel’s liberation and the glory days of its national
institutions and the disorientation of its defeat and exile. They come to us from the
long history of personal stories about love and loss, celebration and sorrow, hope
and anger and despair.
Old stories. New songs.
And if the version of Psalm 96 we read together earlier in the service was a little
jarring, it is by design. The text is Eugene Peterson’s attempt to frame the old
story in the language of a new song. He wants to shake us up; to turn our yawning
(O there’s that old biblical text again) into a yearning for something new; to whet
our appetite for a new way of seeing our lives and a new way of being in the world
that can change both our lives and the world; to tell that old story in the language
of a new song.
Old stories. New Songs.
Now, if you are looking for a more traditional version of Psalm 96, you can turn to
the Psalter section of your hymnal where you will find it on page 684.
Psalm 96
1
O sing to God a new song; sing to God, all the earth.
2
Sing to God, bless God’s name; tell of God’s salvation from day to day.
3
Declare God’s glory among the nations, God’s marvelous works among all
the peoples.
4
For great is God, and greatly to be praised; God is to be revered above all
gods.
5
For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but God made the heavens.
6
Honor and majesty are before God; strength and beauty are in God’s
sanctuary.
7
Ascribe to God, O families of the peoples, ascribe to God glory and strength.
8
Ascribe to God the glory due God’s name; bring an offering, and come into
God’s courts.
9
Worship God in holy splendor; tremble before God, all the earth.
10
Say among the nations, “God is ruler! The world is firmly established; it
shall never be moved. God will judge the peoples; God will judge the peoples
with equity.”
11
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all
that fills it;
12
let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest
sing for joy
13
before God; for God is coming to judge the earth. God will judge the world
with righteousness, and the peoples with God’s truth.
This is, our friend, Walter Brueggemann tells us, an “enthronement psalm.” The
clue is in verse 10: “Say among the nations, ‘God is ruler!’
And, apparently, the old story is that, when a new king came to power, they
commissioned a new song that would be sung at the coronation. So “a new song”
meant a new administration and the inauguration of a new day.
Perhaps the closest we can come to this in our time is the practice of
commissioning an inaugural poem when a new President is sworn-in. The poet
takes in all the old stories and fashions them into a new song for a new
administration and the inauguration of a new day.
The connection between an “enthronement psalm” and an inaugural poem made
me curious so I went looking. And I discovered that, actually, the practice of an
inaugural poem has a relatively short history. There were poems written for
President Buchanan in 1857 and President Lincoln in 1865 but these were printed
and not read at the swearing-in ceremonies themselves.
For the 1961 inauguration of President Kennedy, the new President invited Robert
Frost to write and read a poem. For logistical reasons, the poem didn’t go very
well and the practice wasn’t revived again until President Clinton’s inauguration in
1993 when Maya Angelou gave us “On the Pulse of Morning,” that lyrical poem
that gathers up the old stories and says:
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
The old stories offer up a new song that gives birth again to the dream.
And I realized something reading through the inaugural poems of Maya Angelou
and Miller Williams and Elizabeth Alexander and Richard Blanco. They aren’t
really about inaugurating a new President. They’re about inaugurating a new
people.
In the 1997 inaugural poem Miller Williams says:
We have memorized America,
how it was born and who we have been and where.
In ceremonies and silence we say the words,
telling the stories, singing the old songs.
We like the places they take us. Mostly we do …
But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.
We mean to be the people we meant to be,
to keep on going where we meant to go.
But how do we fashion the future?
These old stories become a new song, not because they are installing a new
President but because they call us to be a new people. Maybe that’s true of Psalm
96 as well. It isn’t about enthroning a new divinity. It’s about creating a new
community.
And maybe it’s a coincidence but, as I read through these poems, I noticed that
there are a number of shared themes with Psalm 96.
For instance, Psalm 96 talks about declaring God’s “marvelous works” being done
among all people …
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew [Maya Angleou writes]
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
Or as Richard Blanco’s inaugural poem says from just a year and a half ago, and in
the wake of the gun violence that took the lives of elementary school children at
Sandy Hook school,
My face, your face, millions of faces in the morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arranged like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper –
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives –
to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows …
It seems like there is something about imagining the inauguration of a new day that
calls us to see each other – and the world -- in a new light. Imagine the earth itself
rejoicing, Psalm 96 says.
After all, our connection to the earth is one of the oldest stories of all. But it’s time
for a new song. It’s time for the inauguration of a new day when the heavens are
glad and the earth rejoices and all the trees of the forest sing for joy! And today
may be that day because there are climate change protests going on all over the
world.
“Declare God’s marvelous works among all the people,” Psalm 96 says, “let the
heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice, for God is coming to rule the people with
equity and the world with justice.”
Well, it’s about time, right? How long have we been waiting for that? Except that
the old stories and the new song are not really about the inauguration of a new
President. They’re about a new people. We sing a new song not for the
enthronement of a new deity but as a call to be a new community.
When Elizabeth Alexander wrote her inaugural poem, “Praise Song for the Day,”
she wrote:
Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”
Others by “first do no harm,” or “take no more
than you need.” What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light …
Maybe love stories are the oldest stories of all. And, if so, I think it’s time for a
new song – one that casts a “widening pool of light;” one that roots justice in
compassion; one that imagines the earth rejoicing and the trees of the forest singing
with joy.
It’s probably not a surprise to you that I would end these few minutes with
something about love. But what if it is the most powerful word of all?
And I was thinking about the song we sang at the beginning of worship last
Sunday. It’s a relatively new song: “In the midst of new dimensions, in the face of
changing ways.” We didn’t sing the verse that says:
We are man and we are woman, all persuasions, old and young,
Each a gift in your creation, each a love song to be sung.
What if today is inauguration day and the world is waiting for you to sing the love
song that you are?
Well, I would love to tell that story. It’s likely to be the most powerful word of all.
It’s true that the biblical tradition has a preference for new songs – the ones that
inaugurate a new day and call us to be a new people.
But I still love some of those old songs, including this one, “I love to tell the story
of unseen things above.” We will be singing verses 1 and 4, primarily because of
that last verse:
And when I sing in glory, I know the new, new song
will be the old, old story that I have loved so long.
Old stories. New songs. Love songs ready to be sung.
So today, let this be inauguration day – not for a president but for a people –
because today, if you hear God’s voice, do not harden your hearts.
NOTES
Walter Brueggemann’s comments on Psalm 96 are from his The Message of the Psalms (Minneapolis, Augsburg
Publishing House, 1984), pp.144-146. The inaugural poems are available online at www.poetry.about.com.