Sung Prayer

A ministry that raises questions  For many, the task of ministry should be about proclaiming clarity. In other words, people of faith often ache for reassurance about who God is and what our response should be along the journey. While service to God’s people should certainly reveal the presence of God’s activity in our lives, we also need to ask questions and to probe the events that enter into our existence. When we plow deeply through the Gospels, we discover that Jesus’ teaching and ministry were constantly challenging, baffling, and, at times, somewhat aggravating to the disciples and others who encountered him. He was constantly forcing people to face the truth, leading them to honest faith and an authentic sense of hope. Jesus’ unique way of revealing the mystery of God was to present his message with stories and parables and challenges that were filled with questions and moments of puzzlement. Time after time, the disciples and others pose direct questions to Jesus, and he almost never responds with a similar sense of directness. Jesus usually answers his questioners with something like “Let me ask you a question” or, more frequently, “Let me tell you a story.”  Questions are at the center of following Jesus, and they abound for those who encounter him, his behavior, and his actions:  “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” (Mk 4:41b).  “Why do you seek the living one among the dead?” (Lk 24:5).  Even today, people of faith who come to pray Sunday after Sunday have these very same questions and more: “Why would God allow this to happen?” “Where is Jesus in the midst of our struggles?” “Why am I so blest?” “Why does God never give up on me?”  Ministers of music should not be afraid of such questions, and our music, especially our texts, should not avoid such ambiguities. Our music and our worship should engage and even celebrate these questions and doubts. These are the questions and doubts of all who believe. Belief is not the absence of doubt but, more profoundly, a path in which our doubts can be honored, reverenced, and even named as holy. Our sung prayer should serve as a language for believers to express this important aspect of our faith. If we believe that our call is to help people sing the absolute and knowable, then why should we bother to sing at all? We sing because we need to. We sing because there are piles of questions that fill our heart and soul. We sing because there is a power greater than ourselves who we hope and believe is truly listening. We sing because we want to. The amazing and puzzling love of God, which we sometimes hang on to by the end of our fingernails, gives us the courage to seek out answers that may never come. There is nothing wrong with “singing” our wonderment about who God is. It is the responsibility of music in our prayer to echo what we have heard in the questions and stories of the Scriptures. It challenges us to ask new questions:  How shall I sing to God, when life is filled with gladness, loving and birth, wonder and worth? I’ll sing from the heart, thankfully receiving, joyful in believing. This is my song, I’ll sing it with love.  How shall I sing to God when life is filled with bleakness, empty and chill, breaking my will? I’ll sing through my pain, angrily or aching, crying or complaining. This is my song, I’ll sing it with love.  How shall I sing to God and tell my Savior’s story: Passover bread, life from the dead? I’ll sing with my life, witnessing and giving, risking and forgiving. This is my song, I’ll sing it with love. (Brian Wren, “How Shall I Sing to God?” © 1986 Hope Publishing Company. All rights reserved.)  We do more than provide a musical comfort zone for people to give lip-service to a faith they often do not understand. We are given the responsibility to help God’s people sing our wonderments, our spiritual cravings, and the basic questions that haunt us regardless of how “strong” we may be in our faith. How shall we sing to God? By being truthful we must ask the hard questions, the questions that matter even if we do not always like the answers or receive no answer at all.  ML David Haas is director of The Emmaus Center for Music, Prayer and Ministry and campus minister and artist in residence at Benilde-St. Margaret's High School in St. Louis Park, Minn. As a composer, he has published and recorded more than 35 collections of liturgical music. He is an active author, workshop and retreat leader, pastoral musician and recording artist. SUBSCRIBE NOW! What do YOU Think? Send an e-mail to ML Editor or post an entry on the ML Current Issue Discussion Board. (All submissions become the property of RPI and may be edited for length.)