This Sunday will bring our fourth and final installment of “SummerSong.” As we have each previous week, we’ll explore another musical setting to shape our worship and the boundaries of our music will be as broad as the world itself. We offer this because, in addition to the joy that can be experienced with uncommon melodies and rhythms, it’s a claim of solidarity with the global expression of the Body of Christ. To sing songs originating in another culture draws our stories together.
Mark Sedio, Principle Cantor for Minneapolis’ Central Lutheran Church, offers this reflection on what’s important about incorporating global music into our worship practice, especially for white, North American Lutherans like us:
“When learning another culture’s music, we are not attempting to replicate a hymn’s original context. In each local context any hymn takes on its own life through its contextual representation. That is as it should be. In order for any new hymn to become meaningful, it must become an expression of the community which sings it. By learning what we can about another cultural context … we can find entry points into a culture. In sharing one another’s music, it is more than music that we share. Music of various cultures brings us a glimpse of each other’s experience of God. As any culture connects its experience of the holy to its music, a unique context for God’s presence is created—we experience together the way God weaves a varied and diverse tapestry of revelation among us.”
The International Language of Music, Mark Sedio, Living Lutheran, January 9, 2019
Today I invite you to consider how the music of other cultures, this “diverse revelation,” reaches into your own life. Then wonder how God might be helping to make something holy in your practice or enjoyment of this music. Lastly, give thought to how your celebration of this might draw you even more deeply into the fullness of the Body of Christ.
May God’s peace come to you this day. -Pastor Peter
Let us pray…
“God, may our hearts be grateful,
And may our words be true.
May all our songs be noble
And draw us deep in you,
That singing holy stories,
More holy we become,
Transposed into like spirits
To be your loving home.“
Amen.
—Susan Palo Cherwien, “What Joyous Song Unfolding”