Do you ever stand in church on a Sunday morning and feel like you’re singing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall (or This is the Song that Never Ends…) because each chorus is being repeated 99 times before the worship team goes on to the next one? It occurred to me recently that this is one of the reasons why I get tired out by worship services these days. After about 3 times, I stop singing. I try not to attract attention to myself by being obvious about it, but I don’t see the point of going through the motions just for the crowd’s sake. God heard me the first 3 times I sang it, and so did I. We both got the point. So I stand there, wondering when we’ll transition to the next song and feeling self-conscious.
I miss the days of being able to actually look at the notes, in case I don’t know the song, not to mention a clear view of the lyrics, being 4′ 10″ and usually standing behind a mammoth man. I miss having different words to think about as we repeat the same melody. I miss using big words, like “Ebenezer” and “immortal, invisible, God only-wise”. I even miss the feel of paper under my hands, to hold the song. I miss the tie to past generations. Sometimes when singing an old hymn, I picture an Irish woman singing to her baby the hymn “Be Thou My Vision” like I sing to my son, “The Old Rugged Cross”, or I picture the one-time slaver penning “Amazing Grace”. I see in my mind rough darkened rooms at the turn-of-the-century from some of our hymns that borrowed their tunes from popular bar-room melodies of the day. Martin Luther’s songs remind me of the age when people were struggling for the right to read the Bible in their own language. Others bring to mind the hills of Virginia and the world of “O Brother Where Art Thou”. I think “There’s power in the blood” should always be accompanied by a banjo. You see the roots of country in “I’ll Fly Away”, while other hymns bring to mind the pain of enslaved black men and women longing for freedom and for heaven. The images of people from all different walks of life and time still live in these hymns.
When I hear these songs, when I join in singing them, I feel I link hands with all these people, I enter into their stories, I learn a little more of their struggles, and I feel a part of a body, a “cloud of witnesses” as the Bible calls it. I must quote the Bible here. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us….Strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ‘Make level paths for your feet’, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.” (Hebrews)
I feel stronger, I feel better equipped to strengthen my feeble arms and weak knees when I sing these songs and remember those that have gone before, that have struggled through some trials I can’t imagine living through and still found hope to trust in God. We are a body, we are a church, and we should not shed the living history that has gone before for the sake of soaring choruses that pique our emotions but fall lackluster at our feet on the second time around. 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, 99 Bottles of Beer, take one down, pass it around… it’s mind-numbing.
Note: Today’s choruses are not bad (only a few make me sigh), but the way they are generally used, and the lack of hymns and hymnals in churches today is a great loss to our current generation of American Christians. It reminds me of Protestants that, in their enthusiasm to pare down the incorrect appendages of the Catholic church, stripped their buildings of beauty (no more stained glass windows or icons or statues or tapestries or anything) and subjected their worshippers to bare walls and plain surroundings to spark their imaginative visual worship. We are only just now recovering from that, centuries later. Are we swinging the pendulum the same way with our music?
