On the bulletin board in the choir room at the Pasadena Church, there was a poster with a line drawing of someone in a choir robe and the caption: “The one who sings prays twice.”
The quote is attributed to St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa in the late fourth century and one of the most influential theologians in the history of Christianity. I’ve never seen the quote in context, so I’m not sure of all that Augustine had in mind, but as a ten-year-old choir member, I knew he was right. Singing is a full-body experience in which mind and heart and lungs and mouth combine to express a range of emotions and thoughts far more powerfully than speech alone.
As one whose faith was formed by singing, hymns and service music matter to me. Much of what I believe is better expressed in music than in creeds or confessions or essays. I’ve been a pastor and teacher of theology for more than thirty years, but singing “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” or “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” is much more meaningful to me than trying to explain the doctrine of the atonement. These hymns are not just texts; they are words married to sounds that resonate deeply in the heart. The act of singing (or even hearing hymns sung) conveys much more than spoken words. Hymns carry but also create faith.
Years of hymn singing plants words and music in the heart and mind. They become a reservoir of resources to be drawn upon. Sometimes they come almost unbidden as the word that is needed in times of stress. In 1984, Presbyterian minister Benjamin Weir was held hostage for sixteen months in Lebanon. Ben and his wife Carol were mission co-workers affiliated with the Near East School of Theology and American University in Beirut. (Ben was elected moderator of the General Assembly in 1986.) When I heard him speak about his experience, one of the things I remember most clearly was his description of the way hymns and psalms came back to him while he was held in solitary confinement. Repeating over and over beloved songs and Scripture passages kept him and his faith alive.
Growing up as a choir member in a generation when children were required to memorize relatively long songs with vocabulary sometimes beyond their grade level, I know a lot of hymns by heart. Some I learned intentionally, but most I have just picked up through the years. Often hymns come to mind almost unbidden, a line here, a fragment there. Occasionally, this is irritating — the common experience of having a melody in your head you can’t get rid of. Sometimes, however, this leads to the rediscovery of old words with renewed meaning.
One such experience happened to me recently. I don’t remember learning the hymn “Abide with Me, Fast Falls the Eventide.” I didn’t grow up going to evening services, and it was not popular as a funeral hymn in my congregational context. It is part of the generic Protestant background music in the United States. But it is not one I have particularly liked. The tune is mournful; the words always struck me as implying that God is static, a quality not really in keeping with how the Bible portrays God. But lately, the last two lines of the second verse run on in my head: “Change and decay in all around I see. O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”
Even though many people voted for “change” in the recent national elections, the changes we are now experiencing in the financial world seem profoundly dislocating. Those who are retired or anticipating retirement are deeply nervous about whether the future they imagined will bear any resemblance to reality. Those who live paycheck-to-paycheck greet each new day of layoffs with profound anxiety wondering whether they will be next. Congregations, seminaries, colleges, not-for-profit agencies, arts organizations, and others who depend on endowment income in order to fulfill their mission wrestle with deep budget cuts and possibly with their ability to continue the work they are called to do. “Change” seems all too often to be synonymous with “decay” and this is frightening.
In such a context, the theme that God is the One who is not and cannot be threatened by the changes of this world is a welcome and necessary word. In this sense, calling on God as One “who changest not” is to invoke God’s constancy, continuity, and reliability. God has been this way before with God’s people, and the Bible promises that God will not let us down and will not let us go. Even when this may be challenging to believe, sometimes the act of singing these promises is enough.
That’s when it’s nice to have hymns.
CYNTHIA M. CAMPBELL is president of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, Ill.
