{"id":1384,"date":"2010-03-21T17:17:30","date_gmt":"2010-03-21T22:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=1384"},"modified":"2010-12-18T00:17:21","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T06:17:21","slug":"job-description-for-liturgical-musicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/21\/job-description-for-liturgical-musicians\/","title":{"rendered":"Job Description for Liturgical Musicians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m reading <em>Temple Themes in Christian Worship<\/em> by Margaret Barker. I am not here commenting on her thesis, which can summarized in a couple of quotes. \u201cEven if [the Christians] were not in the temple, they were thinking \u2018temple\u2019 as they met together.\u201d Barker proposes that temple theology runs throughout Christian theology, liturgical practice, sacramental mystagogy, etc. \u201cAny investigation of the origin of Christian worship must take into account the fact that Jesus was proclaimed as the Great High Priest \u2026 the\u00a0 central message of Christianity was the atonement \u2026. The hope for the Messiah was grounded in the royal high priesthood of the original temple; and that the Christians thought of themselves as a kingdom of priests.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Barker may be right or wrong, and the scholarly world is sorting out her claims. My interest here is to share one passage which shakes up our notion of temple musicians. Instead of being the group that props up congregational singing, or delights us with their performance, how about this as a job description for musicians in liturgy? (The first bolding is in Barker\u2019s text; the other two are mine.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen David brought the ark to Jerusalem, he appointed musicians, the Levites who were to serve before the ark of the Lord, to \u2018invoke, to thank and to praise the Lord the God of Israel\u2019 (1 Chron 16.4). <strong>Music invoked the presence.<\/strong> The Holy One was \u2018enthroned on the praises of Israel\u2019 (Ps 22.3), and the congregation praised and the glorified the Lord and stood in awe of him (Ps. 22.23). Now \u2018hallelu-jah\u2019 is probably the most familiar word that has survived from temple worship, and is said to mean \u2018Praise the Lord.\u2019 Apart from Psalm 135.3, it always occurs at the beginning or end of the psalm, and is often kept in its original form even today. \u2026 It must have been a significant temple term, whose meaning was known to those who needed the Scriptures in Greek. At the beginning of a psalm, hallelu-jah addresses the congregation: it is a plural form \u2018Praise the Lord\u2019. The Hebrew root <em>hll<\/em>, however, means not only \u2018praise\u2019 but also \u2018shine\u2019. Were the people commanded to make the Lord shine? Should we perhaps understand Psalm 22.23 as \u2018<em>Make him shine<\/em> \u2026 make Him glorious \u2026 stand in awe of Him,\u2019 rather than \u2018<em>praise Him<\/em> \u2026 glorify him \u2026 stand in awe of Him\u2019? <strong>The hallelujah at the beginning of the Psalms would then be an instruction to the musicians to cause the Lord\u2019s face to shine, to invoke His presence:<\/strong> <strong>\u2018Make the Lord shine forth!<\/strong>\u2019 This was the first duty of the Levites: \u2018To invoke, to thank and to praise the Lord\u2019, and so they sang: \u2018Thou who art enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth!\u2019 (Ps 80.1). The Levites made music when the temple was consecrated, singing \u2018with one voice\u2019, and then the presence of the Lord came; the cloud of the Glory of the Lord filled the temple (2 Chron 45. 11-14). Once the Lord had been enthroned in his temple, <strong>the music invited the Lord to shine forth from the holy of holies, to show Himself as King<\/strong>: \u2018For dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations (Ps. 22.28). He established his Kingdom. \u201c<\/p>\n<p>A new set of questions. Not \u201cIs it singable? Do we like it? Is it pitched too high? Is it old? Is it new?\u201d But rather, \u201cWill it make the Lord\u2019s face shine? Will it summon God? Will it invoke His presence that we may fall down and worship?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My interest here is to share one passage which shakes up our notion of temple musicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[717,718],"class_list":["post-1384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-general","tag-margaret-baker","tag-temple-worship"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Job Description for Liturgical Musicians - Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/21\/job-description-for-liturgical-musicians\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Job Description for Liturgical Musicians - 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