This Friday folks from All Saints Honolulu and folks from Saint Benedict Hall (and folks whose families span both worlds) will gather to spend a little over an hour together in song and fellowship. It’s also the eve of the day that we remember King David Kalākaua, the “Merrie Monarch” who brought back to Hawaii much in the way of song and dance. In an age such as ours we are justified in asking why we might spend a Friday night this way. With all the digital technology to render private listening “as good or better” than in-person singing we are often tempted to think that the goal of music is to be heard. But that is a cheating lie, it only tells a half truth. The goal of music is not only to be heard, the goal of music is also to be made. Just as there is a joy in baking as much as there is in eating cake, so also there is a joy in singing as much as there is in hearing song.
In a much deeper sense, this is the primary way music ought to be experienced, I think: live. So easily have we forgotten the fact that until about a century ago one had to listen to people making music in order to hear music. There is something in this hour for the church to recover in making music.
What something like a hymn-sing does is take all of the rush of a live performance and all of the didacticism of music lessons and all the joy of Christian worship and bundle it together into a single event. We not only gather to learn about music and to make it we gather to hear one another making it. These three parts together create an event of shared edification and mutual glory. We get a picture of the way that biblical glory works: I pour forth my song, my brothers and sisters in Christ pour-forth their songs, and our songs rush together in the cascade of the present moment as it passes from verses-memorized to verses-sung to verses-about-to-be-sung and our voices dance with others in something like a braiding weave of difference collected into a unified majesty.
When Christians sing we model, we put on display, what the Trintiy looks like. When we sing in parts together in worship of God we do something that touches the divine mystery of God in a way unmatched by any experience I can have alone with my Beats-by-Dre and Spotify. My song fills the person singing next to me, their music counterposes with mine, comes to live in me. Together our two lines of song becomes an altogether new and yet the same sound. We, though many and different, become one —not a oneness born of an abnegation of the self, mind you, but a oneness resultant from a unity of difference, just like the unity of the Triune God.
If you’re able we’d love to have you join us