Songs and Stories

Israel’s history was preserved with song and story. Preliterate peoples depended on their musicians and storytellers to transmit important historic accounts. A song served as a textbook, and stories were the original encyclopedias of valued facts.

Songs serve as a barometer of the culture’s ethos and ethic. Cultural "high pressure centers," and "lows," are documented in a nation’s music. In my lifetime, music has changed more than in previous millennia. For instance, Pat and I recently watched part of a Public Broadcasting Network special featuring "Doo-Wop" music of the Fifties. A full range of voices from lilting falsettos to resonate basses "Do Oped" in complementary a capella harmony. The lyrics affirmed the then American culture’s values of beauty, masculinity, natural attraction between genders, and virtuous relationships. (I remember being told that the song, "Standing on the corner, watching all the girls go by," was inappropriate for Christian boys.) At a concert in our small town park recently, Pat and I smiled because we could understand the lyrics, and applaud the innocense of music just 25 years old.

In contrast, when I searched for the most popular Hip Hop songs, I learned that I would be ashamed to repeat them in any company, and never in print. In fact, my prayers for the safety of my granddaughters have been intensified. Vulgarity, violence and values from the netherworld sell in today’s marketplace. After reading the first few lines of three current chart toppers, I feel dirty.

The songs of Biblical antiquity documented the nature of God and celebrated the triumphs. The transcendent wisdom and power of God, His miraculous interventions and unapproachable holiness are set to music and were repeated as the people of God assembled. For example, one generation after another learned to celebrate the power of God while singing Miriam’s song. Exodus 15 records the Red Sea triumph –
Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD:
"I will sing to the LORD, for he is highly exalted.
The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea.
The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.
He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.
Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea.
The best of Pharaoh’s officers are drowned in the Red Sea.
At about the time a pubescent son or daughter was poised to sow wild oats, to renounce the confinements of home and parental faith, the reluctant synagogue attendee heard Miriam’s song in sacred assembly. The Holy Spirit has used the lyrics to keep the truth alive.

Our nephew and his family recently spent an evening in our home. He, his wife and twins sat and talked for more than three hours. As the evening was winding down, Max, the 6'-5" tall twelve-year-old said, "Uncle, tell us more stories about growing up!" Max’s grandfather and I are brothers and I suspect Max was trying to gather material for some playful blackmail. My nephew’s family wanted to reach back into their history, their story. Our stories are records of God’s grace, transcendent power and wisdom, and compassionate interventions. We have a worthy story to tell and, in the process of telling, an opportunity to redeem the culture’s vocabulary and values from vulgarity to virtue, from base crassness to beautiful celebration. Great Christian story tellers seek to stretch their vocabulary, search for new images, prowl about hunting for worthy idioms and pray that words are converted to redemptive experiences and memories.

Last Sunday I dedicated Ivy, a newborn baby girl, the daughter of pastor friends of ours. As I held the little life, I was humbled and deeply stirred that her parents, and I, and everyone forming her with presence and example, were influencing her history, her story. If Jesus doesn’t return, and someday Ivy is an adult, she will be able to tell her story of her encounters with God and those who shaped her life.