{"id":8914,"date":"2011-04-17T09:15:37","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T14:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=8914"},"modified":"2011-04-17T20:43:35","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T01:43:35","slug":"when-they-had-sung-the-hymn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2011\/04\/17\/when-they-had-sung-the-hymn\/","title":{"rendered":"“When they had sung the hymn…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the measures of good preaching is that even when you \u201cknow how the story turns out,\u201d you hear it afresh\u00a0through the words of the homilist. When I read Barbara Brown Taylor\u2019s recent essay in the Christian Century, \u201cAnd Jesus Sang,\u201d I already knew that Jesus sang the Hallel psalms at the end of the Last Supper. But I found that I\u00a0wanted to hear it again. I was engaged by her gift for language and intrigued by her imaginative engagement with the subject. By the end, I also realized something new\u2014namely, that I have never actually imagined Jesus singing. We sing to Jesus, but do we ever imagine ourselves singing with<\/em> him? Yet we affirm that Christ is truly present in the assembly of his people precisely when they pray and sing.<\/p>\n

This elegant meditation merits reading, and re-reading. Here is a clip:<\/p>\n

\u2026Or maybe the Gospel writers thought everyone knew the tunes to some of the most famous things Jesus said\u2014like the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer or his last words from the cross. When I first learned my way through Luke, my teacher told me that the Magnificat was sung in the early church, along with the Song of Simeon. Why not the Lord’s Prayer? Maybe the music just vanished after everyone who knew it died, so that only the words remained for those who came later. Music speaks to our soft parts, and soft parts are as vulnerable as flesh, as grass, as the lilies of the field. Maybe that is what happened to Jesus’ music. It went back to where it came from until he comes again, singing us back into the presence of God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can read the whole thing here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“How is it possible to be truly human without ever making music?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46,91,20],"tags":[1235,380],"class_list":["post-8914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homiletics","category-liturgical-year","category-music-general","tag-barbara-brown-taylor","tag-the-christian-century"],"yoast_head":"\n"When they had sung the hymn..." - 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\/2011\/04\/17\/when-they-had-sung-the-hymn\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""When they had sung the hymn..." - 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