Memory and Experience

"Sometimes a light surprises the child of God who sings." This phrase, revised from William Cowper's 1779 original "Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings," not only demonstrates the usefulness of updated language (when it is done artfully), but also describes the unpredictable and indiscriminate nature of human vulnerability to God within congregational song. The 2014 Hymn Society conference in Columbus provided me with several surprising experiences of providential light. It came from unexpected sources and in unexpected ways.On Wednesday I joined a sizable group in late night conversation and laughter in one of the dorm lobbies. Many of us, we discovered, held a common musical heritage rooted in the gospel music tradition. For various reasons theological, musical, and cultural, most had abandoned that heritage. We shared stories related to various songs-both of pain and frustration, and of connection to particular friends and communities. And we sang. We SANG. We belted out "I'll fly away," "Victory in Jesus," and "Have a little talk with Jesus." Our singing was tinged with irony, good humor, affection, and some pain. These are not songs that many of us could still sing with theological integrity, but they still speak to a deep part of us. And they are often a delight to sing-especially the raucous bass parts.Those songs and stories were still swirling in my head during the next morning's hymn festival, led by Amanda Powell and Jorge Lockward. They included music which I associate with more charismatic and evangelical expressions of Christianity, but with tweaks that allowed for broad and inclusive singing. I found myself surprised by my emotional vulnerability to musical styles I largely left behind with the conservative churches of my youth. Despite my carefully trained musical, theological, and poetic tastes, the light of God still sometimes surprises me.In this series of columns, I have examined particular texts in context. I have asked how the texts are understood in terms of sound, language, and experience. Each time a hymn is sung, it finds new life. It is embodied-even incarnated-by a particular group of people once and only once. The context of its singing will never again be replicated by exactly the same people in exactly the same space under exactly the same circumstances. Context shapes the experience of the hymn. Church musicians carefully attend to the musical, theological, and textual aspects of hymn singing. But the single largest contributor to meaning in congregational song is human experience. Most church musicians can recall the uncomfortable feeling of seeing a singer reduced to tears by a seemingly innocuous hymn selection, only to learn later that the hymn was sung at a family member's funeral. Or a certain congregation may have an irrational attachment to a particular piece (regardless of quality) because of its association with a particular person or event now in the distant past. Our late night singing of gospel hymns brought many such stories to the fore. I shared that "Victory in Jesus" was a beloved part of the repertoire at the church of my youth-one that I steadfastly refused to sing because of its triumphalistic language. But when an old saint of the church died and the song was named at the funeral as one of his favorites, my theological defense broke down-I not only could, but needed to sing about Lloyd Hess's victory in Jesus. But almost inevitably, another person in the late-night circle shared an extremely painful association with the same hymn. …