November 1

How have our lives been enriched by the Professor from Wittenberg who accidently jump-started the Reformation? Let’s listen to some of his thoughts on one subject that was as dear to him as preaching: This from a brief essay entitled, The Value and Power of Music: Music is one of the fairest and most glorious gifts of God. To it Satan is exceedingly hostile. Thereby many temptations and evil thoughts are driven away; the devil cannot withstand it. Music is one of the best arts: the notes give life to the text; it expels the spirit of sadness, as one observes in King Saul. Some of the nobles and usurers imagine that they have saved three thousand gulden yearly by cutting down music for my Gracious Elector. Meanwhile they spend thirty thousand gulden in useless ways in its place. Kings, princes, and lords must support music, for it is the duty of great potentates and rulers to maintain the liberal arts and laws…

Luther taught the Western world to sing. He did away with the mostly Latin hymns sung by clerics. He wanted everyone to sing and to sing in their native tongue. Many of Luther’s enemies feared his music as much as they feared his preaching. Songs stick with a person. Sermons much less so. Within a few years of his poster being placed upon doors throughout Wittenberg, schools were dedicating four hours per week to singing. And it wasn’t just the young academics who were breaking out in song, entire congregations would gather midweek to learn the hymns so that they would sound decent on Sunday! How about that? Moreover, they were instructed to continue singing once they got home!

The Reverend Lucy Winkett, Rector of St. James in Piccadilly, tells us that: “Every member of the congregation participated in the service by singing the hymns and metrical psalms. This meant that for the first time women’s voices were being heard in church.” She goes on to quote Luther himself who said, “When people engage in music, singing in four or five parts, it’s like a square dance in heaven.”

As one who has – either out of necessity, or habit, or simple joy – participated as a worship leader these many years, I feel a kindred spirit with the old German. I’m not sure, even now, whether I am a preacher who happens to play music or a musician who happens to preach. I don’t suppose it really matters. But what I am sure of is that there is no better place this side of heaven than a congregation full of believers engaged in sincere worship.  Preaching can be hit and miss – at times inspiring hope while at other times inflicting abject misery. But when we worship together, connections are made between earth and heaven that no sermon can quite match. I leave you with one more Luther quote – this where he is spouting off with a bit of his delicious snark: “A person who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.”