Sing a New Song

 A sermon given at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
5th September 2021
 
Psalm 40.1-10
Hebrews 10.1-10 

A couple of weeks ago I started my sermon on Psalm 49
            by referencing both Coldplay and Queen.
 
Well, this week I’m going to start
            with my favourite band of all time, the amazing U2.
 
Their third album War, released in 1983,
            opened with a song titled, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’,
            which is one of the band’s most overtly political songs.
 
Its lyrics describe their horror at the Troubles in Northern Ireland,
            and it focusses in on the 1972 Bloody Sunday incident in Derry,
            where British troops shot and killed unarmed civil rights protesters.
 
Here are a few lines from it:
 
            I can't believe the news today.
            I can't close my eyes and make it go away.
            Broken bottles under children's feet
            Bodies strewn across the dead-end street.
 
            And the battle's just begun
            There's many lost, but tell me who has won?
            The trenches dug within our hearts
            And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart
 
            Sunday, Bloody Sunday
            How long, how long must we sing this song?
 
This bleak cry of despair in the face of violence is deeply resonant
            of much that we have encountered in the Psalms over the last few weeks,
            as we’ve been journeying with them on Sunday mornings.
 
The line from the song that I think is particularly significant, is the repeated question:
            ‘How long, how long must we sing this song?’,
which echoes the cry of the Israelites in exile in Babylon,
            who lament in Psalm 137:
 
            Here our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth,
            saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
            How could we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land?
 
The band are biblically literate,
             and such resonances with the words of scripture
            are never accidental with them.
 
They know that singing and spirituality are deeply intertwined at an emotional level,
            as songs both ancient and contemporary can evoke both joy and sadness,
            both hope and futility.
 
Songs ask deep questions of our souls
            about what it is that we really long for,
and then they invite us to sing that new world into being.
 
It is not insignificant then, that the final song on the album War
            is a direct paraphrase of a Psalm,
with the lead singer Bono ending the album on a note of faith.
 
It is, of course, the song ‘40’, based on our Psalm for today.
 
Allegedly recorded and mixed in about half an hour,
            at the end of a recording session,
this song became the anthem
            with which the band concluded their live shows for many years,
sending the audience out on a note of hope, in a world of despair.
 
Let’s listen to it together now:
 
https://youtu.be/3z_LBNF_-xI
 
            I waited patiently for the Lord
            He inclined and heard my cry
            He lift me up out of the pits
            Out of the miry clay
 
            I will sing, sing a new song
            How long to sing this song?
            How long, how long, how long
 
            He set my feet upon a rock
            And made my footsteps firm
            Many will see
            Many will see and hear
 
            I will sing, sing a new song
            How long to sing this song?
            How long, how long, how long
            How long to sing this song?
 
I don’t know what this song does for you at an emotional level?
 
Maybe it’s not your kind of music at all, and if so that’s fine.
 
But for me, I imagine myself as part of a stadium crowd,
            with 80,000 people singing along in unison with the band
                        of their hope for a new song, a new world,
                        a new way of being;
and I hear the crowd carrying on singing,
            as the band leave the stage one by one,
until the audience are left to carry the new song out into their lives,
            to make it their song.
 
And so we come to Psalm 40:
 
            I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry.
            He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog,
            and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
            He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.
 
This “new song” that the psalm talks of
            is most likely a technical Hebrew term
            for what psalms scholars usually describe as the “song of thanksgiving”,
a song that is sung after the psalmist has been delivered by the Lord
            from the jaws of some crisis.
 
And through the Psalms you can trace a repeating pattern,
            which we’ve been looking at already
            as we’ve gone through our selection over the last few weeks.
 
There are the psalms of orientation,
            which assert that everything is well with the world,
            that God is in the heavens,
            and that people are where they should be.
 
These are the great psalms of praise,
            but we have seen that they can also tend
                        towards becoming a justification of the status quo,
            and even a mechanism for social control,
                        as people are encouraged to see their place in life as preordained by God,
                        whether they are wealthy and powerful, or poor and powerless.
 
Psalms of orientation can become a bit like
            a certain kind of contemporary Christian worship song,
which allows no room for the complexities of life,
            for sadness, injustice, or disappointment,
because they are focussed entirely and singly on proclaiming the goodness of God.
 
But then there are the psalms of disorientation,
            and these are the psalms that are sung
            when the songs of orientation no longer hold true.
 
These disorientation psalms reflect the reality
            that sometimes life is just awful, unfair, and intolerable.
 
Whether it’s illness, enemies, or bereavement,
            the psalms of disorientation speak to God
                        of the dark underbelly of existence,
            articulating the truth that sometimes things are just not as they should be,
                        and that sometimes there’s no justice.
 
And then we get the third kind of psalm, which we meet today in Psalm 40,
            and the great scholar of the Psalms Walter Brueggemann
                        says these are the psalms of new orientation, or reorientation.
 
He says that these psalms “bear witness
            to the surprising gift of new life,
            just when none had been expected.”
 
Psalms of new orientation recognize that the ship has sailed through the storm,
            and that a new shore has been reached.
 
But having sailed through the flood and the hurricane,
            there is no going back to the harbour of childlike “orientation.”
 
This isn’t some naïve Pollyanna-ish assertion of optimism
            in the face of disorientation.
 
This isn’t the spiritual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears
            and singing a happy song
to drown out the true reality of life’s trials.
            Far from it.
 
Rather, these psalms speak for those
            who have been brought through a deep crisis.
 
Those who have made this journey into darkness
            will have experienced a faith that speaks the truth,
                        a faith that can never again pretend that all will always be well,
                        and that all is as it should be.
 
And yet, Psalm 40 speaks of a new experience,
            of new life and grace,
of coming to know that despair is not all powerful,
            and that evil does not have the last word.
 
Those who learn to sing Psalms of new orientation
            are those who have stared life in the face,
            who have experienced the disappointments
                        and injustices and sadnesses of being,
            yet who nonetheless find themselves still yearning for God.
 
The words of praise and trust they articulate
            are not bold assertions of goodness in denial of evil,
but are rather hopeful expressions of faith
            found in the midst of the reality of life’s trials.
 
So let’s journey with Psalm 40,
            to see where it takes us,
as we come toward the end of our own journey
            through the raw emotions of the Psalms.
 
In verses 1-3 the psalmist recalls a past petition
            and the lord’s gracious response.
 
The testimony, “I waited patiently for the Lord,”
            indicates that our psalmist has done
                        what numerous psalms have encouraged him to do,
            which is to wait for God. (Psalms 25:3, 21; 27:14; 37:34; 39:7)
 
“Waiting” here is an expression of trust and reliance on God.
 
For our psalmist, only faithful waiting leads to God’s salvation,
            because such blessings are not available quickly.
 
Unlike those who seek easy and swift access to God’s presence
            through the bold words of the Psalms of orientation,
Psalm 40 knows the wisdom of waiting,
            of journeying through, rather than shortcutting around.
 
And it is this experience of salvation,
            long awaited and longed for,
that puts a “new song” in the psalmist’s mouth,
            a song of praise that testifies to the lord’s goodness.
 
It is an astonishing thing to say that God is good
            in the face of human suffering;
but like our psalmist, many who journey through difficulty
            have attested at the end of it to the goodness of God.
 
By singing this song,
            the psalmist leads others to trust in God’s salvation (verse 3).
And so the next two verses contain a beatitude (verse. 4-5)
            that encourages people to trust in God,
            as the way to live that yields blessing and contentment.
 
We may not get answers to our questions,
            nor will we be granted all the desires of our hearts,
            and any faith that promises such will ultimately be proved lacking.
 
The path to contentment is not found in what we get from God,
            but rather from simple trust in God,
            in the midst of life’s complexities and complications.
 
It is not for nothing that Jesus promises blessings
            on those who receive the kingdom of heaven like a child.
 
But verses 6-8 then raise a question about appropriate worship.
            What does it mean to sing songs to God in the face of difficulty?
            What does it mean to even praise God in a world of injustice?
 
The psalm rejects easy offerings of worship,
            such as might accompany the quick and swiftly trodden path to God
            offered by the psalms of orientation.
 
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire” says the psalmist (verse 6).
 
And I think here of those contemporary expressions of easy worship,
            where the words of the songs pound into the congregation
                        an expectation of God’s immediacy in all circumstances,
            and then the preacher asks the congregation
                        to contribute generously to the offering in response.
 
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire” says the psalmist.
 
Worship is not some quid pro quo arrangement
            where God’s presence is purchased by our offerings of money or time.
We do not power through our doubts into God’s presence
            by dint of our own efforts.
 
Rather, God comes to us by grace, in the midst of life’s troubles,
            drawing us into the holy presence
            as unexpectedly as encountering sunshine on a stormy day.
 
Any offering we make, any sacrifice we offer,
            is always and only in response to what God has already done for us.
 
So then we come to verses 7-8,
            which present an alternative to the sacrifice,
            namely, the psalmist’s own written testimony in gratitude for deliverance:
 
            “in the scroll of the book it is written of me.
            I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is in my heart.”
 
The “scroll of the book” reference here is somewhat obscure,
            but it may refer to the psalmist’s testimony in written form,
            presented in the temple.
 
The psalmist essentially presents himself as a “living sacrifice”,
            and of course this is precisely the language that Paul uses in Romans 12:1-2,
where those who follow Christ
            are encouraged to offer their own bodies as living sacrifices to God
            as an offering of true spiritual worship.
 
Worship, it seems, is not something we do,
            it is rather who we are.
And the Psalmist knows this,
            having experienced the grace of God in his own life,
            which becomes in its totality an offering of worship back to God.
 
But then we get a shift in verse 11,
            where the Psalmist starts to petition God,
            to not withhold God’s mercy from him.
 
And we should note that this kind of rhetorical development
            appears in numerous other psalms as well (see Psalms 9-10; 27; 44; 74; 89).
 
But this move from thanksgiving to petition
            is a reminder of the context of suffering that shaped the Psalter.
 
Clinton McCann says it well:
            “whether individually or corporately, we always pray out of need,
            at least in the sense that no deliverance is final in this mortal life.”
 
The journey from orientation, through disorientation, to new orientation
            is not a journey we make only once in our lives.
The first time we face disorientation may be the most devastating,
            as the certainties that had previously sustained us come crumbling down,
and the path through to new orientation may be hardest
            the first time we make our weary way
                        through the valley of the shadow of death
                        to the soul-restoring pastures that await us on the other side.
 
But we will go there again, and again;
            and we will need to keep discovering what the psalmist of old discovered,
which is that is always a new song to be learned,
            a new world to be sung into being.
 
Those of us who learn to sing the psalms and songs of new orientation
            discover as we do so that these songs of praise take their deepest meaning
            when sung by those who have walked the darkest valleys,
                        stood in the midst of the shaking mountains,
                        and experienced life when the bottom drops out.
 
Life will never be the same.
            But God meets all who suffer in the depths of their sufferings.
 
So as we gather in worship today,
            to offer our own songs of praise to God,
            what new song will we learn to sing in our lives?
 
What note of grace can we hear today,
            in spoken word, or enacted sacrament,
            that will continue to sound in our lives as we leave this place?
 
Will we see in the bread and wine the broken body and shed blood of Christ,
            who suffers as we suffer, who dies as we all must die,
but who nonetheless continues to speak to us
            words of hope and new life
            that death and evil can never defeat?
 
If we as God’s people can discover our own songs of new orientation,
            as we patiently journey through the complexities of life,
then we will find that we are learning to sing into being the gospel of Christ,
            sharing with others the good news
            that God is love, and that God is good.
 
            I waited patiently for the Lord
            He inclined and heard my cry
            He lift me up out of the pits
            Out of the miry clay
 
            I will sing, sing a new song
            How long to sing this song?
 
            He set my feet upon a rock
            And made my footsteps firm
            Many will see
            Many will see and hear
 
            I will sing, sing a new song
            How long to sing this song?
            I will sing, sing a new song