Jeremy Duncan: And so Paul suggests instead of getting drunk and hoping for the best, crossing your fingers against the worst, why don't you instead trust God? Ask God. Look for opportunities where connection and friendship can be born, can be strengthened for real in your life, and music might be one of the ways that can happen. We do still have one final series in season eleven, and it is called sacred practice. And in some ways, this series is intended to go hand in hand with another series of conversations we had in the spring.
We called that series strange new world, and there we talked about the rhythms and practices of the church in a sacramental sense. Things like Eucharist and baptism, spaces where Christians have traditionally believed that the grace of God is tangible in a real and a unique way. We talked in that series about this language called a means of grace. And it's the idea that the sacraments don't create grace or bestow grace in and of themselves, but they are given to us as avenues to encounter God in tangible ways. So we sense God's grace all over our bodies in baptism, and we taste God's grace in our mouths when we eat the Eucharist together as we did.
These practices connect us not just in thought, but in rhythm, in practice, even ritual to the God that we trust ourselves to. So there's something quite profound about participating in rituals that go all the way back to the very words of Jesus, sacraments that his earliest followers participated in. But there are also all kinds of practices that have been invented and innovated, offered to us by the church over the last two millennia of Christian practice. They may not be sacraments. And so in that sense, maybe they're optional add ons.
Perhaps we could think of them as bonus content for the aspiring Christian. But there is, of course, still a deep well of wisdom to draw on across our shared history. And so we are gonna take the last few weeks of summer to talk about some of our favorite bonus content in the form of some sacred practices that have been handed down to us. And today, we'll start with a practice that I know we are all here familiar with. It's this question, why do we sing when we come to church?
First, let's pray. God of all that is good and worthy of our song, we open our hearts to you today. We recognize that our words carry meaning, and meaning brings us closer to you. We also know that our thoughts and our words, our ability to articulate and communicate, falls always short of your beauty. And so in these moments, we turn our attention to song.
We embrace the limits of our language and instead lean on the arts to capture something of where our cognition fails us. We bring our hurts, anxieties, fears, our doubts, even our joys, all of the things that we carry with us throughout the week and can't quite articulate fully. We offer them to you in song. And in this, we make ourselves vulnerable with emotion, with rhythm, trusting that you would never shame us for that. If we find ourselves perhaps distant and cold today, then maybe we echo the poetry of your church back.
And if we find ourselves full of emotion, ready to sing this morning, then we trust that our melodies are always welcome before you. In all of these prayers, offered in word and song, we know that you are with us, that your grace carries us, and that your goodness surrounds and sustains us always. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Alright.
Today, it's why do we sing? And we will cover a bit of song psychology, some social bonding, neural pathways, and uncovered healing. But before we even get into the question of why we sing at church, there's another question that's worth exploring. Why do we sing at all? Steven Pinker, who is a famous psychologist slash author once called singing auditory cheesecake.
And what he meant by that is that this is a pleasurable byproduct of more important evolutionary factors. Essentially, we learned how to talk and communicate, and then after the fact, we learned we could stretch those sounds out into song. In other words, all of our vocal dexterity wasn't meant for singing, but it's a nice bonus. That hypothesis, however, is hotly debated. Charles Darwin even once argued that it's exactly the other way around, that speech may have evolved from earlier forms of mating calls.
Think birds that sing to attract potential suitors. In fact, today, in the field of evolutionary psychology, they tend to assume that things were probably not as simple as Darwin imagined, but there are certainly adaptive functions in singing that suggest song may have actually been a primary form of social cohesion and collective memory in humans. We know now that dopamine and endorphins are released when the brain hears familiar rhythms. Oxytocin, which is the neurochemical that produces social phenomenon like love, that's released when people sing together. Cultural stories and narratives are often embedded in song long before writing.
So song may have actually come before monologue. I mean, just think of how deeply an earworm can sink itself into your brain. Honestly, I thought we were gonna avoid this one in our house. My daughter is only five, and so she missed the height of the frozen phenomenon. Let me tell you, though.
If you have little girls at home, let it go. We'll come for you. There is no avoiding it. All I hear every day, all summer, even the hottest day you can imagine is, do you wanna build a snowman? By the way, I have tried to get her to watch frozen two, not because I'm particularly interested in watching that one, but at least at least it would be something different.
Not a chance. It is frozen one on repeat every maybe next year. We'll see. Think about how you remember things, though. Right?
When you have to put something in alphabetical order, you still sing the song. Right? I'm not the only 47 year old man who regularly sings a b c d e f. Am I? Even that illustrates just how deeply song is embedded in human memory.
We know infants respond more readily to song than they do to speech. We know the temporal lobe of the brain lights up when it hears songs because it instinctively grabs hold of rhythm. We know patients with neurological disorders often respond to song in ways that suggest very deep permanent neural pathways. And that's not all because when we sing, cortisol levels are reduced, feelings of loneliness can subside, even self esteem levels are measurably increased when you sing. You can feel better about yourself just by singing at home alone in the shower with no audience to speak of.
That's a real thing. So why do humans sing? Well, we might not be sure of its origins, but we do know there's actually a mountain of evidence to suggest we should probably do more of it. It's good for your mental health. It bonds you socially to the people near you.
It lodges core ideas more deeply in your memory. And for all these reasons, I think it might actually be a problem that collectively, we probably do less communal singing today than at any point in human history. Now I know a lot of you do sing and wonderfully. This community is blessed and incredibly grateful for the wealth of musicians and singers that guide us every week. I know a number of you sing throughout the week in chorus and choirs and communities across the city.
Some of you might even partake in the odd karaoke session from time to time. No judgment here. But I would wager that for a lot of us, maybe even most of us here, church is perhaps the only space where we regularly sing communally. And I'm not suggesting you need to go join a choir. Honestly, I cannot sing at all.
Like, honestly, I am terrible. The worst part is that I'm a bit of a musician. I play guitar. Like, I don't have a terrible ear, so I know I'm bad. I can hear the sounds that are coming out of my mouth.
I just I really can't do anything about it. So while I'm not suggesting you need to join a choir, I am suggesting that even if singing isn't your thing, it should probably still be something that you participate in. And if you too want me to put my pride on the line for this argument, I will put my cards on the table here. Because while I am not much of a singer, music was very much part of my formative years. In fact, music was probably the most important factor in how I got involved with Christianity way back in the last years of high school.
Here's a photo of me. And by the way, that's me in the center, in case you didn't know. Yeah. I told you. I've had the same haircut since I was 16.
We're not changing it now, guys. But the bottom line is music is very important to the human experience. And what's interesting is that even though our modern format of church, like all of this, stages and sound systems, electric instruments and microphones, four songs, then a sermon, all of that is a decidedly cultural artifact. But singing together, well, that has always been part of the Christian experience in some form from the very beginning. For example, there is something called the Oxyrhynchus hymn.
In 1918, a trove of papyri were discovered in the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus. But in there was a single papyri that has been dated all the way back to the late third century. And notably, it was a song that included not just lyrics, but actually a very primitive musical notation. That means we can actually sing that song the way that it was seventeen hundred years ago today. Now to be fair, sounds more like a chant than what we're probably familiar with, but it's actually been recreated a number of times.
I'm not gonna play it for you for copyright reasons, but you can find renditions on YouTube. By the way, I know It's very weird that a seventeen year old 100 song can be copyrighted, who am I to argue with the lawyers? Still, some of the lyrics say things like this. Let the stars not be silent nor the shining moon. Let all the rivers and waters praise the Father, Son, and Spirit.
Amen. Amen. Strength and praise. Glory forever to God. The sole giver of all good things.
Amen. Amen. It's got these beautiful themes of cosmic worship and creation's goodness. There's even Trinitarian language blended in there, demonstrating that Trinitarian ideas were being shaped very early in the Christian story. It's profoundly beautiful.
You should definitely go check it out even though we're probably not gonna try this one on a Sunday morning. But the point is Christians were passing around not just poetry, but also songs. They were writing songs. They were recording their notation. They were sharing that between communities and singing the same melodies together across the early story.
There was melody being sung across the early church before there was even an official bible. And to be honest, that probably shouldn't surprise us. Even in our bible, we've got a whole book called the Psalms, which is literally just a bunch of songs. For example, Psalm 95 is a song about singing. Oh, come.
Let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation. You've also got Psalm 100. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before God's presence with a song. But even more importantly, there are also teachings about singing that are embedded throughout our Bible. And so I wanna look at a few passages today where some of what we might intuit or understand today about the experience of song is actually reflected back to us in scripture. For the first passage, I'm gonna go to the writings of Paul, in particular, a passage in Ephesians. Now this is an interesting one.
It's Ephesians five, verse 18 to 20. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the spirit. Now kind of a weird parallel, so we'll come back to that one. See where he goes with it.
Instead, be filled with the spirit speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the father for everything. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So couple things I notice here. First, Paul makes funny parallel here between getting drunk and being filled with the spirit.
We'll talk about that one. Second, he talks about singing not just to God, but with or even to each other. That's interesting. And then finally, he ends with a reminder to be thankful. I mean, that's just sort of a good Pauline reminder tagged onto the end.
Good job, Paul. But let's start at the start. Don't get drunk. Instead, be filled with the spirit. I think there are a lot of people who often have taken exactly the wrong lessons from this verse.
They have either assumed that Paul's point is, a, you should never drink, or, b, you should act like you drink and attribute it to God. Unsurprisingly, I don't think either of those are what he's getting at here. First of all, in first Timothy, Paul tells his young friend to have some wine to calm his stomach. And Paul would have certainly been aware of the book of Ecclesiastes, which encourages us to drink our wine with a joyful heart for God has already approved whatever you do. Now at the same time, there are a lot of verses like this one that warn of the dangers of alcohol.
I've talked to myself about why I made the decision to largely stop drinking a couple of years ago. My advice is look after yourself. But second, I also don't think for a second that Paul is saying act drunk and call it God. That's not his point either. I do think, though, that Paul is making a parallel here.
Think about it this way. Alcohol can seem like a lot of fun. Why? Well, because it lowers our social inhibitions. It can make you feel artificially, though quite powerfully, very connected to the people around you.
Now you might not feel that way the next day, but in that moment, sure, that feels a lot like friendship. And what Paul is offering here as an alternative to that is to be filled with the spirit, speaking to one another with song. In other words, for Paul, there is some kind of parallel between the counterfeit experience of drunkenness and what that seems to offer and what can actually be found when we invite God to draw us into meaningful relationships with the people near us. Now I think that's just plainly true in my experience. But what I find surprising is that one of the ways we get there, at least for Paul, is to sing to each other through song.
Here's a question. You've ever been to a concert, 15,000 people in a stadium, everyone belting out every single syllable of yellow lead better along with Eddie better. Not a single person in the arena understands a single word of what they're saying, and you all know the song by heart. That's how every Pearl Jam song goes. And, yes, I've been to a lot of Pearl Jam concerts.
But when we sing together, when we sing to each other, what Paul realizes is that experience itself is what unites us. It legitimately bonds us. Now he might not understand that what we are doing together is releasing oxytocin, which means that singing actually helps create an indelible chemical connection between you and the person beside you at the karaoke mic. But he does know that this time, that experience is not externally manufactured or artificially motivated. It won't be embarrassing in the morning because this time, it actually comes from within you by participating alongside those near you.
And so Paul suggests instead of getting drunk and hoping for the best, crossing your fingers against the worst, why don't you instead trust God? Ask God. Look for opportunities where connection and friendship can be born, can be strengthened for real in your life, and music might be one of the ways that can happen. Now at the same time, if you're not a singer, you're not a musician, I think we can still do everything Paul is asking us here. Now, ultimately, I think the real heart of this line is about speaking each other in song.
And what he's talking there is about opening ourselves up. Right? Sharing something that's important to us. And so even if, like me, you can't hold a harmony for a second, there's still a lot that we can reach together toward here. But song binds us, and that's important.
Still, it's not the only thing Paul has to say about song. So this time, let's jump over to Colossians, a book we actually looked at recently this spring. This time, this is chapter three verse 15. Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart since as members of one body, you were called to peace, and be thankful for that. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, wisdom offered through psalms and hymns, through songs from the spirit, singing to God with gratitude.
Now, again, so it's easy to gloss past, but pretty fascinating if you slow down long enough to engage with what he's saying. Because I think this is advice that Paul took very much to heart. It's hard to say for sure, but there are at least a couple passages in the New Testament where we think Paul is doing exactly what he's writing about here. And that is quoting a preexisting song that was being shared within the early church community to teach each other. So there's the Colossian hymn that we spoke about earlier this spring.
That's in chapter one. There's a poem in Philippians two. That's another famous one we think Paul is quoting. In fact, in our series on Colossians, I actually made the argument. I think those two poems, those songs are the core of Paul's theology.
Christ is in all things and reconciling all things. That's the Colossian hymn. Christ is doing all of that through self giving love. That's the Philippian hymn. Here, Paul seems to be saying, look, sermons are good, letters are great, but songs, I mean, songs are where wisdom really begins to take root in us.
So let the word of Christ dwell in you as you teach all of that wisdom with a song. When I hear that, I think a b c d e f g. Jesus loves me. This I mean, some of the most important things in my life need a rhythm to set themselves more deeply in my heart. Because, again, before we had proper language and modern vocabulary to describe any of this, humans, we had song and story to locate ourselves within the world.
We had rhythms that reminded us of our most important truths before we even imagined the possibility of writing those truths down. And if you wanna remember just how deeply you are loved even when your conscious memory fails you, one of the ways that you can do that is to make sure you've got a song to draw on. And in those moments when I forget, it's often melody that brings me back to myself. If humans really did sing before we spoke, we should probably actively keep on doing it, Which leads me to one last intriguing passage, this time from the book of James. It's in chapter five.
It's verse 13. He writes this. Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy?
Let them sing. Now I find this verse interesting because you could, and people often do, read this as two separate prescriptions. In trouble, then you pray. Happy, then you sing. Sort of if this, then that.
But if that, then this. Except the way this is structured has a very clear parallel, particularly by James who seems deeply influenced by Hebrew thought and who pulls on wisdom from across extended Jewish literature throughout his letter. I think this verse is probably calling back to Hebrew poetic structures, structures that always came in couplets. You can see this in the Psalms, but Hebrew poetry always begins with a line and then a parallel restatement of that line that builds on the first. And if that's what's happening here, the implication of this is really that these are two sides of the same experience.
And at one level, I mean, that's intuitively true. Right? Of course, you can pray when you're glad. No one's going to deny that. But the implication then is that you can also sing when you are sad.
And I find that interesting because a lot of our references to singing in the Bible are about singing with grateful hearts or shouting with joy to the Lord. If we pay attention, there are certainly many songs of lament embedded throughout scripture, but rarely are we told to sing when we are sad or lost or confused when we're anxious or despairing. And yet we know today that singing lowers our cortisol levels. It can decrease feelings of loneliness. It can literally contribute to the rebalancing of your brain chemistry.
All of which James is tapping into here with without any of the modern language. Are you in trouble? Sing. And once again, before we had any language to explain any of the reasons why singing affects us so deeply, I think we've actually understood surprisingly clearly that it was important we kept doing it. Singing bonds us.
It teaches us. It heals us. And perhaps surprisingly, everything that modern evolutionary psychology has proposed as a reason for why humans sing has already been there waiting, expressed in scripture, inviting us to, I mean, at least try. And perhaps you hear all that, and you say this, okay. Fine.
I get what you're saying. I still don't like the songs on Sunday morning. And, honestly, fair enough. I think the whole reason that music has so much power is precisely because it's so personal to all of us. Therefore, it's not unreasonable to hold your personal tastes as uniquely important to you.
In fact, I think that's super important. Don't let anyone ever try to talk you out of listening to frozen on repeat. You go, baby girl. The point is, across a Sunday morning with a thousand people coming from a thousand stories, the idea that we could choose songs to resonate equally with all of us, that's probably fantasy. And yet that also is part of the beauty of singing together.
Because even though your personal experience of music is very subjective and absolutely should stay that way, the experience of gathering, coming together, singing songs we didn't choose, offering words that aren't ours, singing melodies that might not even be for you, but instead for the person beside you. Perhaps even standing in a room and singing with others about things that you want to believe but honestly can't quite get there yet. All of that, learning to lean on a melody that surrounds you rather than the one that is in you in that moment, all of that is part of how singing becomes far more than just auditory cheesecake because it bonds us to the stories and the people around us. It teaches us ideas that we struggle to hold on to intellectually. It can actually heal us from moons we have trouble articulating even in our prayers.
Because it's not just the song. It's the practice of singing together that matters. And that can impact us sometimes more deeply than our sermons and our creeds could even begin to dream of. Singing is primitive in the best sense of the word, which means it reaches into places our intellect can't get to remind us of truths that sometimes, honestly, we forget. Let's pray.
Gracious God, who has offered us so many gifts to us to express ourselves, to be impacted and changed, to be invited to experience the grace and peace that sits at the founding of the universe. Might we recognize that these practices like song, this creative act of singing, this communal experience of being together and offering song as a body, But all of this is meant for us to bond us, to teach us, to unite us, but ultimately, to shape us into the kind of people that leave these spaces with melody somewhere deep in our hearts that bleeds through in all of our encounters, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, at our schools, with the people that we encounter so that we might love with more grace and peace that we might find ourselves slowly moving along your path back to you. May the gift of song help us in that journey. Might we embrace it in all of its mysterious complexity In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.