Singing with The Saints

Even at the grave we make our song.

 

Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

William Croft (1678-1727

Robert Lowry (1826-1899)

Svein Ellingsen (b. 1929)

Harald Herresthal (b. 1944)

Mark Mummert (b. 1965)

Suzanne Toolan (b. 1927)

Carolina Sandell Berg (1832-1903)

William Irons (1812-1883)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

On All Saints Sunday, the church remembers. The church remembers that we are all saints; we remember those saints who have gone down to the dust. We sing with all the saints in glory of the God who will raise us up on the last day. We’ll gather at the river, trusting that deep in our night and death, we are promised an eternal home.

If those words sound like a hymn mash-up, you caught me. But what a glorious mash-up! This day I am reminded that when the church’s song gets locked into one era or one style, we miss the sense of the song that was before us and will echo after us. From our lips we proclaim words penned centuries before next to those crafted just a few years ago; we sing a melody composed by Beethoven, a melody he could not even hear in his growing deafness. We sing it boldly next to tunes written in our lifetime. Each one of those composers and writers lived on today in our assembly's song.

Today four-year olds learned to count the four Alleluias from “All of Us Go Down to the Dust,” elementary choristers sang “Shall We Gather at the River” and adults sang hymns by men and women across time and space. Here we were, saints worshiping in Snyder County, Pennsylvania, joining our hearts and voices to those before not only by thinking about them, but by singing with them. The very act of singing the music of the ages connects us with the saints. We do not live to ourselves alone.

Then there are the saints whose names we will never know. We continue to sing those tunes or words with no names attached, the spirituals and folk tunes passed down through the generations. Here we are reminded of those whose names are a mystery but whose spirit lives on in our song.

As we remember, as we sing, no song will be enough. Thankfully we have a multitude of songs to awaken faith in a God who is more than enough, who gives us songs to sing through our tears, who sings through us when we cannot find our voice.

“Even at the grave we make our song. Alleluia!”