Stand, Serve, Sing

It’s an ancient insight: Music tunes the soul. Music doesn’t just express what we’re feeling. It forms emotions.

Emotions aren’t simply sensations. Emotions, as Robert Solomon has argued, are judgments about the world. Anger is a judgment concerning an outrage or injustice; fear is a judgment that a threat is present; ecstasy is a judgment about beauty. If music tunes our emotions, it trains our judgments concerning the world, guiding the way we perceive and respond to reality.

To put it in the terms that James K. A. Smith has been using of late: Music shapes our loves, and we are what we love.

Music attunes us to each other, and thus forms us as a body. Stephen Guthrie has written, “As we sing together we attend to the activity of our own bodies in making sound, and we regard and respond to our own song as we hear it resonate in the space around us. We hear and attune ourselves to the sound of others’ voices. We respond not only to people, but to the physical qualities of sound we are creating with others and the physical and acoustical properties of the space in which we sing. Moreover, we submit ourselves together to a tempo, a pattern of melody and rhythm, and we respond dynamically to the shape and movement of our musical interaction.”

Given the power of music to shape our emotional tenors and moods, to evoke with our most cherished memories, and to unite us with one another, it’s not surprising that music plays a gigantic role in the lives of young people. Given the power of music, it’s no surprise that the church has historically placed a high priority on liturgical music.

All that is true, but in Scripture the power of music has less to do with its formative effects on us and more to do with its role as service of God. We need to be careful not to let our understanding of music or liturgy in general slide into an immanent, sociological or anthropological understanding of worship, as if it would do its work even if God is absent. We worship God, and the formative and transformative power of worship is ultimately God’s action in response to our song. Worship involves drawing near to God, so that He might change us and the world.

We can see this in the way that Chronicles revises the language of temple service and sacrifice after David brings the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem. The Levite’s service to God in His house is rearranged to include music. Moses required priests to “stand and serve” in the tabernacle; David tells them to “stand, serve, and sing” in the temple. (The following paragraphs summarize sections of my From Silence to Song.) In Leviticus and Numbers, Levites “bear” (nasa’) the tabernacle, with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant. In Chronicles, though, this word for transport becomes a term for singing (1 Chronicles 15:27). The priests and Levites bear up the Lord’s throne on their shoulders; but they now bear up the Lord’s throne on their song. In Exodus, the glory of God comes from Sinai to the tabernacle when the tabernacle was finished and sacrifices were offered. In 2 Chronicles 5, the glory fills the house in response to the Levites’ singing. In 1 Chronicles 6:31-32 the word abodah, typically used in the Pentateuch for they physical labor of transport, is associated with the ministry of music before the tent that contained the ark.

1 Chronicles 23:25-32 confirms this shift in responsibilities. Levites no longer need to move the ark and other furnishings around. They’re going to be permanently housed in the temple. So they can devote themselves to other things, including morning and evening song.

Already under Mosaic Torah, sacrifice was accompanied by trumpet sounds that memorialized Israel before God (Numbers 10:9-10). That is expanded in Chronicles, with musical memorials offered continually (tamid; 1 Chronicles 16:4-6), like the sacrifices that continually ascending before Yahweh’s throne. The Levites offer a sacrifice of praise in song, and God hears; God pays attention; God remembers; God acts.

The ark was portable during the Mosaic era, but under the kings it remained stationary in the temple. But Israel didn’t need to carry the ark into battle. They could bear the throne of God with song. Music made the glory of God portable. Song formed an aural throne.

It still does. When we sing, we lift God up on our praises. We send up signals to heaven. We memorialize the covenant before God. And He becomes a terror to our enemies. He acts to change the world. Liturgical song does form singers, but liturgical song is culturally transformative primarily because God responds to transform culture.