Learning to Praise

Psalm 148

Seventh Sunday of Easter

Children and Youth Sunday

20 May 2007

 

In the gorgeous psalm we read together a few moments ago, we are given a striking picture of how God is praised.  Everything that is, praises God.  Not just the angels in heaven, not just the humans on earth, but every created thing, animate or inanimate.  Sun, moon, stars, rain, earth, fire, hail, snow, frost, wind.  Mountains, hills, trees, mammals, ocean creatures, creeping things, flying birds.  Every cell of the universe, every atom of space, every single bit of it does one thing in unison – it all praises God.

 

It is an impressive picture not only of unity of purpose, but of the radical inclusivity of praise.  Every created thing praises the God who created it, simply by being what God made it to be.  Did you notice that includes us?

 

The psalmist here seems to have great faith that humans will respond to the innate urge to praise God.  “Kings of the earth and all peoples,” he declares, “Young men and women alike, old and young together!”

 

Of course the truth is, while cedar trees and dolphins and goldfinches and stardust all praise God by being beautifully and exactly as God created it all to be, we have somewhat deviated.  We are not what God meant us to be.  We are not what we meant to be.  And our lives too often fail to praise God.

 

We come here once a week to try again, to try to praise our God together, and that is good, and necessary.  But the psalmist is speaking of something far greater than a few moments a week.  He is speaking of a way of life, a way of living praise.  He is speaking of a life that is awake to the wonders of God, a life that seeks and finds and declares the goodness of God and the purposes of God everywhere.

 

There are many reasons we find ourselves blocked from such a life.  We are busy, and so don’t notice the pulse of God beating beneath the surface of everything.  We are disappointed or disillusioned or grief-stricken, and therefore unable to see how we might give praise without being false.  We are tired and drained and sucked-dry by the demands we face, and, finding no way to receive what we most need, we also have nothing more to give back, including praise.  How do we find our way back?  Back to what the psalmist not only envisions but proclaims as the reality – that the entire created order – including us – praises God?

 

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You may have seen it in the Washington Post article last month.  In January, world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell engaged in a little experiment at the behest of a Washington Post reporter.  Bell , dressed in street clothes, took his 300 year-old Stradivarius to the L’Enfant Plaza Subway Station.  For 43 minutes during the morning rush hour, he performed, playing some of the most beautiful, most powerful, most difficult pieces of music ever written.  The concert was videotaped by a hidden camera.  Guesses were made ahead of time, about how people would respond, about how many people would stop and listen, about how much money might be tossed into his violin case.  Plans were made to deal with crowd control. 

 

Those plans were not needed.  What happened was this.  In the 43 minutes that the internationally acclaimed virtuoso played his violin, 1097 people passed him by.  Most did not even look at him.  Only one person, at the very end, recognized him.  A few tossed in quarters or even pennies.  And only seven people stopped what they were doing, to stand and listen, at least for minute.

 

Gene Weingarten, the Washington Post staff writer who put Joshua Bell up to this experiment, and then reported on it, poses the question in his article: “If we can’t take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that – then what else are we missing?”

 

It is a haunting question.  What are we missing?  What great gorgeous joy and wonder are present in the life God has given us, that we cannot see, cannot open ourselves to?  What praise can we not give because we cannot see the millions of reasons to give it?

 

Every morning, the great God of the universe plays the best music ever made for us, and we march forward in our grim determination to get everything done, to get what we need, to get ahead, ignoring the music of life.  Feeling instead resentment, or apathy, or resignation.

 

During Bell ’s second piece, Schubert’s Ave Maria, “something revealing happened.”  Weingarten writes of a woman and her preschooler coming off the escalator.  The mother is walking quickly, needing to get her son dropped off at school so she can go on to work.  Her son, however, is intent on hearing the music and watching the musician.  On the video, you can see him twisting around to see Bell , even as he is being hurried towards the door.  Finally, his mother maneuvers her body to block the child’s view.  As mother and child leave the station, the boy can still be seen straining to get a look.

 

Weingarten writes:

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother’s heart is in iambic meter.  Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us.  It may be true with music, too.

 

There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell , or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding.  Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups.  But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent.  Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch.  And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.[i]

 

There are many high holy days during the Christian year that may move us towards something like joy, and faith, and praise.  It is this day, though – Children and Youth Sunday, not even an actual proclaimed day of the Christian Year – that, to my mind, has something particularly important to teach us.  For one thing, it reminds us of our responsibility – a responsibility to nurture children’s innate love of music and sense of wonder, a responsibility not to rush them along but instead to allow them to explore the most beautiful dimensions of life. 

 

But this morning we are reminded, too, of something more than just our responsibility towards these kids and all kids.  We are reminded of what they have to teach us.  These kids – with their “this little light of mine” and their “this I know” – these kids are showing us the way.  They are showing us the way back – back to praise, back to wonder, back to simplicity, back to a sense of the adventure and even magic that lurks in each new day.  When life has choked out your own poetry and music and praise, find a child.  That child might teach you how to see again.  And how to sing.

 

I certainly know that children are not all joy and praise.  I know that my own children can drive me to the heights of distraction and the depths of frustration the likes of which I had never knkown before.  But in the midst of the press and crush of life, sometimes I will hear them singing.  “Jesus loves me, this I know,” and  “Jesus loves the little children.”  Or, I will hear an excited exclamation over something I am far too busy to care about.  “Look!  Squirrels!” “Look!  A bird!”  “A tree!  Water!  People!  Look!  Look!”  Or I am forced to move more slowly because a child cannot keep up with my fast adult pace.  Or I am interrupted while doing my important work, begged to read a story or go on a walk or come play outside.  And I have a choice with how I respond.  I can sigh with impatience, answer in gruff tones, ignore the bird, the squirrel, the tree, and the child, respond in a distracted “Yes, I see,” when I definitely do not.  And I certainly have done all of those things.  Or I can slow down.  Wake up.  Pay attention.  Listen for God’s music.  And be drawn back to praise.

 

Children can give us these gifts.  We can give these gifts as well – to ourselves, to others.  Every day, we have the chance to choose: will I treat this day and its obligations as something to be gotten through? will I treat people as interruptions, or burdens?  will I ignore anything that has no utilitarian purpose for me?  Or, will I give myself to this day and its obligations?  will I treat people as holy, as God-given opportunities to love and to give?  will I be on the look-out for the tiny shimmering clues to God’s goodness?  will I be listening for the gorgeous notes of God’s great music?

 

The animals, the trees, the skies, the earth, they all give their witness to God’s goodness and truth, and in bearing their witness, they also give their praise.  This morning, and often, the children do, too.  What about you?