6. Sing in Time:
whatever time is sung, be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay
behind it; but attend closely to the leading voices, and move therewith as
exactly as you can. And take care you sing not too slow. This drawling
way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out
from among us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.
This is
perhaps the most practical of all of Wesley’s directions. The goal here is
twofold. 1) Again we see, as in Direction #5, he’s teaching his people to
strive for unity. It should be remembered that this is his overarching purpose,
but since we covered that in Part 5, I’ll not touch upon it here. 2) Wesley is
trying to correct something that has obviously become normalized to the point
that it has become quite useless or intolerable to many.
His last
sentence is awesome. “This drawling way
naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from
among us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.” You can hear it in his voice can’t
you? His disdain for lazy singing. I imagine my experience as a youth in the
First Baptist Church of Dreary Song was not unlike what was driving Wesley nuts
here. I can see him squirm and fidget with deep breaths waiting for the agony
of the eternal song to end. God love ‘em, but is there anything fast, quick, or
snappy about an elderly lady playing piano in church? Minor annoyances aside,
what I think Wesley is ultimately getting at here is that songs need to be sung
appropriately. The clue here is when he says “just as quick as we did at first”.
This indicates that they were initially sung in the appropriate manner. I think
that is the crux. I don’t think Wesley wants to sing every single tune like an
auctioneer; I think he wants to sing every single tune the way it is supposed
to be sung. Tunes and texts which lend themselves to be sung at a quicker tempo
should not be sung as a dirge. Solemn tunes should be solemn, not dead. These
songs initially, were sung correctly, but they have since grown slow and dull. I
want to use this as a springboard to think for a moment about how songs are
supposed to be sung.
For the
most part I would guess that generally the songs we sing on a weekly basis are
neither boisterous nor somber. They are probably somewhere in between. There is
nothing wrong with that unless they are
always somewhere in between. There needs to be a healthy diet of Gladness
and Gravity, of both deep sorrow and abundant rejoicing. I’m not speaking here
of the healthy textual content needed within the songs (which is hugely
important), but a healthy understanding of occasion
and purpose; when and how songs need
to be sung. To translate this to the dinner table, we need both party food and
food to be served after a funeral, not to mention all the meals in between. The
food meets the occasion. We eat turkey and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, not
on the Fourth of July. Beer and Hot Wings for the football game, not for
Timmy’s first birthday party.
Let me get
closer to (but not quite to) the point. I fear that we view our song intake
much the same way the modern world views their food intake. They are always
conscious of content to the exclusion
and detriment of the context. In the
modern mind you have Health Food or Junk Food. And often (and usually in the
minds of the more health oriented) these become moral issues. Health food is
good, Junk food is bad. And this leads some people to believe that because Junk
Food is bad, there is now no good occasion for Junk Food. Health food all the
time, for every occasion, or nothing at all. Content to the detriment of
Context.
And because
Health=Good and Junk=Bad, that means that we now have to have our Healthy Food
look like Junk Food for the occasions that normally require Junk Food. Our
football games still have chips and dips but they are now fatless and
tasteless, or just plain gross. Or as St. Paul said, “Having the appearance of godliness
but denying its power.” This sacrifice of taste is justified because it was
deemed necessary for our health. Now I bring this up not to cause a food fight,
but to point out the parallel I see in the songs we sing at church. We (like
our health conscious friends) are looking for the healthy songs. The ones chock
full of vitamins and nutrients. And this is great. There are a lot of songs
that can rot the teeth out there. Some even cause cancer. But in our endeavor
to feed congregations healthy songs, sometimes we force feed certain songs into
occasions that don’t work.
The
easiest example of this is always singing happy songs all the time. Here’s
where our food analogy comes into play. The tendency is to think that Happy
songs = Healthy songs so therefore they are Good songs; and Sad songs = Unhealthy
songs so therefore they are Bad songs. I recall hearing a story about how
Christian Radio stations were at a loss about what to play on 9/11. A huge tragedy
had befallen the nation and when they reached into their archives to find
appropriate songs they came up short. Tragedy upon tragedy! Because Christ is
King over all things and Sovereign over all circumstances, we must have a song
to sing for every situation. The great theologian Treebeard said, “Songs like
trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way” and I believe him.
Songs must be sung according to their appropriate occasion and purpose,
especially when we gather to sing to and about the Most High God and His
glorious Son.
To be
sure, the textual content of the song greatly aids in determining occasion and
purpose, but not necessarily to the expense of the tune and tempo; the way in
which we sing it. There is a reason we stretch and emphasize certain words of a
song. Songs need an occasion and occasions need songs, and the wise will do
right by figuring out the best way to join them when the church gathers each
week.
That’s
likely a little bit more than Wesley was aiming at, but I think it shoehorned
in nicely enough.
============
Previous installments of the Direction's for Singing series
Joshua Harris
