When being bold is hard to be, and being scared is ok

You know how now and again, at church, you find yourself invited to sing something you don't want to sing.

It isn't just to be awkward. And it isn't because you don't want to sing something you don't much care for, or it's a duff tune or one that is unsingable. It's more fundamental than that.

You are being asked to sing what isn't true in your experience. The last place to pretend is in a service of worship. And amongst the most corrosive forms of pretence is emotional insincerity, which isn't far from spiritual self-deceit.

You see, the Catch-22 of congregational singing is that while you want to share the faith of the community, sometimes you can't without being untrue to yourself. Because how that faith is expressed, and what it is declaring to be everyone's experience right now, may not be at all congruent with where your own heart is, what is so in your life, and may wrongly presuppose that it is well with every soul gathered in this place, with these people, for worship, now.

Some time ago ( and it is a while ago) I was standing alongside someone in her own church, who was going through the most horrendous experience of their life. The details don't matter - what matters is that this person was inwardly broken, clinging to whatever faith might have enough buoyancy to stop her from drowning. And she was afraid, scared of the future, her inward defences dismantled by what had happened. And we stood to sing

Be bold, be strong, for the Lord your God is with you!

Be bold, be strong for the Lord your God is with you!

I am not afraid. I am not dismayed

For I'm walking in faith and victory

Come on and walk in faith and victory

For the Lord, your God is with you.

Now I know it's biblical, it's the spirituality of Joshua, its the confidence of the conqueror and a declaration of assurance. But there is also the spirituality of the Psalmist in lament mode, and of Isaiah who understood broken hearts and bewildered spirits and people's deep fears for the future. And allowing for that, I wonder if we could just occasionally take time to sing, to each other, same tune, much less strident:

Though scared, though weak,  Still the Lord your God is with you;

Though scared, though weak,  Still the Lord your God is with you;

Yes you are afraid, Yes you are dismayed,

Because you're walking in deep uncertainty,

We know you're walking in deep uncertainty,

But the Lord your God is with you.

This is a plea for emotional honesty, and emotional inclusion, so that we recognise in each gathered community, the experiences of joy and sorrow, laughter and lament, of confident faith and struggling faith, healed hearts and breaking hearts. I too like a good sing when my spirit is singing - but I need different words when I'm inwardly crying. Worship is honest when the declarative mood is sometimes muted by the interrogative mood, and worship that arises from the real experience of the life I live is more likely to have integrity. And whether I am going forth weeping or rejoicing in the homecoming, it is one of the great gifts of the worshipping community that the content of our services enables us to laugh with those who laugh - and weep with those who weep.

I offer this not as a rant, or a hobby horse - I think these are trivial forms of complaint. I'm more interested in making an observation of pastoral consequence, and spiritual sensitivity, and human solidarity, all of which are inherent in the practices of Christian fellowship.

The etching above comes from my personal canon of artistic exegesis - I guess at some time in our lives we are the one clinging to the mast, or holding on to Jesus for dear life!

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Catriona]

Great re-write, emendation, whatever it is. Welcome to the noble society of hymn re-writers.

At various times I have emended and reworked many worship songs and bits of hymns.

Always tricky trying to get the songs/hymns that say what we want and need.

[Ken Roxburgh]

Thanks Jim!! Ken R.

[Perpetua]

Great post, Jim - so perceptive and true. Thank you. I think this is why I so value the hymns of John Bell and the Iona Community's Wild Goose Worship Group. they are so much more likely to question than declare and are profoundly aware of the broken and sad and poor as well as the confident and comfortable.

[chris]

Sometimes all I want to sing is something like a Taize song - "O Lord, hear my prayer" or "Bless the Lord, my soul". There can be over-specificity in hymns that probably makes them unsuitable for someone in just about every congregation.

[a very grateful person, who is very good at putting up the brave front and sometimes doesn't even realise that he's breathing in water.]

A friend shared this with me this week and it has blessed me so much. Sometimes we don't even know we're scared, weak, afraid and dismayed until someone tells us it's OK to be so and that God is still with us.

You have blessed me and touched me.

Thank you.