The Spirit says sing, but what shall we sing?

As the spiritual invites us:

“I’m gonna sing when the Spirit says sing…”

This Sunday the church celebrates Pentecost, that Spirit-filled day when worship spaces are decked out in red, when we find the red clothes in our closets, when we display red flowers. It is a day of celebration, a day when we proclaim that we can be church only by the gift of Holy Spirit.

This is certainly worth singing about. But what do we sing? This decision required some extra attention and altering of our worship plans. Many of the hymns associated with Pentecost are grand testimonies to the purging, cleansing fire of the Holy Spirit. Take, for example, this stanza from “God of Tempest, God of Whirlwind” by Herman Stuempfle:

God of blazing, God of burning,

All that blocks your purpose, purge!

Through your church, Christ’s living Body,

Let your flaming spirit surge!

Here’s the thing: Our community has had three funerals in just the last two weeks, seven over the past months. We are praising the breath of the Spirit all the while mourning those whose breath has left them. Moreover, a faithful family’s home was devastated by fire last week. Fire cleanses, yes, but fire destroys.  Singing hymn after hymn with fiery words and melodies may have hit too close to home.

When we gathered this Pentecost morning, we sang hymns laden with diverse images for the Spirit, a little wind and fire, yes, but more, the images we needed on this day, images of the Spirit anointing  wounds, wearing our pain like a garment, reviving our souls.  We sang “There is a Balm in Gilead” and wrapped the fire-stricken family in a prayer shawl. We sang “Lead me, Guide me” trusting that the Spirit is indeed what gives us strength when our own fails us, as it certainly will. We sang of the promised peace of Jesus, the peace breathed on those disciples locked up in their fear and the peace for us in our fear.

Psalm 104 declares:

How manifold are your works; in wisdom you have made them all

When you hide your face, they are dismayed; 

when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.

When you send forth your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the ground.

Pentecost is that day to say yes, God is renewing and recreating, taking the ashes of our lives and the dust of our bones, taking them and renewing them in ways we cannot fathom. And so we sing. In our singing, we are one in the Spirit, one breath joined to another. This Spirit wears our pain with us, enveloping us like one of those prayer shawls, reminding us that in Christ’s Spirit, we are restored, we are whole.