Something Old in Something New

When I read the daily lectionary passages, I admit to sometimes hurrying past the morning psalms.  Some of the same psalms occur with great frequency, and I think to myself, "Just saw that one the other day," as I begin to skim.

This morning I read, "O sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth."  It is one of those frequent psalms, and I began to speed up.  But before I could accelerate to full skim mode, I caught enough of the next few lines that something grabbed me.  The psalmist had commanded something old and something new.  We are to remember and declare God's saving acts and marvelous works, but apparently it requires a "new song" to do so.

I don't know why this contrast never struck me before.  I've commented before on this command for a "new song" alongside congregational "worship wars" where people fight to hang on to the old songs.  But I'm not sure I've ever thought about this idea that declaring what God has done requires a "new song."

Being the Church requires a fair amount of remembering and retelling.  We are rooted in a salvation story, a long story of God's countless, gracious acts to pull humanity back and repair a broken relationship.  Along with songs, laws, and wise saying, the Bible is a book of stories, stories we need to know to know who we are.  But, at least according to this psalm, sharing this knowledge requires new songs, repackaging if you will.

An inherent problem for all faith communities, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. is a tendency to confuse our core purposes and our packaging.  We decide that our way of worshiping or singing, our style of liturgy or music, is somehow essential to the faith.  Worshiping God with music and song may well be essential to the exercise of biblical faith, but our particular music and song are not.  This is not an argument for or against any particular music style, but it is a reminder that getting confused about essential and packaging may make it difficult for us to tell of God's saving acts and marvelous works.

When we remember and tell, we do so in  order to be joined to a story that is moving toward a yet-to-come future.  Jesus calls us to proclaim the kingdom, the reign of God that is now only partially seen.  And our methods of telling can never be so rooted in the past that the past seems to be our desired destination.

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