The Montreal Boys’
Choir Course – The Miller Chapel at Princeton Theological Seminary
Sunday, August 4,
2013
Acts 2: 1- 11; Ps.
104; Romans 8:14 – 16; John 14:8-27
Preacher: The Rev. Canon William (Chip) Stokes,
Bishop-Elect of New Jersey
The Spirit’s Language of Love
Send forth your
Spirit, Lord, and renew the face of the earth….
What a great privilege it is for me to
be with you this morning and to have the honor of being your celebrant and
guest preacher. I am grateful to Canon
Rob Picken, to Larry Tremskey and the other organizers of this week’s events
for the invitation to be with you.
I have a lifelong association with the
Diocese of Long Island. Canon Picken was
a fifth grader at Grace Church and Day School in Massapequa, Long Island, when
I served as Curate and School Chaplain more than 20 years ago. He was an excellent, well-behaved student and
very engaged in religion class. Given
his propensity to argue theology and politics with me in grades five through
eight, I felt confident that God would likely call him to the priesthood one
day and voila! It is a great joy to
be serving at the altar with him.
Today’s service is, quite literally, my
first official act as the Bishop-elect of the Diocese of New Jersey, so, on
behalf of the people of the Diocese of New Jersey, welcome. I can’t think of a more special or personally
meaningful way for me to begin my work in this part of God’s dominion than
joining with outstanding musicians, young and old, to praise God in joyful
song, celebrating the work and gifts of the Holy Spirit. God is good. How blessed we are.
I am a trained choral musician. That’s what makes this so personally
meaningful for me. From 1967 to 1970, I
had the great good fortune and privilege of attending St. Thomas Choir School
in New York City. It’s the only Church-related
boarding Choir School left in the country.
I can’t adequately express to you how influential attending St. Thomas
and singing in that remarkable choir was.
That experience still influences me, continues to be a vital part of my
faith. Whenever I am asked to say
something about my prayer life, I always state, quite truthfully, that the
music of the church, the hymns in particular, are the principle means by which
I pray.
By the grace of God and the power of the
Holy Spirit, there is music in my soul.
This music, these songs, hymns, psalms and anthems play a continuous stream
of prayer and praise in my mind and heart, appropriate to my spiritual state at
any given moment – songs of joy, songs of fear, songs of sadness, songs of
happiness. The music of the Church is my
spiritual treasure trove, a phenomenal resource that goes with me wherever I
am…It is an almost uncanny and unfathomable thing.
I feel confident that music is a primary
language of the Holy Spirit. When people
make music together, it is difficult for enmity to take place. Music is the language of love. It crosses every ethnic, national and social
boundary. It is the universal language
of God’s love for us and of our love for God.
I have been blessed in singing God’s
love all my life and through the music of the Church, not only hearing, but
also feeling within the depths of my soul, God’s love for me. So, my heart overflows. This is why I am so glad to be with you
today, singing, listening to God’s love songs and feeling God’s love and grace
pour abundantly over us all. I couldn’t
imagine a more perfect way to begin my ministry in New Jersey!
St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the
greatest of the so-called Church Father’s and certainly a bedrock figure of
Western Theological thought once wrote, “Singing is for lovers”[1]
and it is, and especially for lovers of God.
St. Augustine is also reported to have said, “He who sings prays twice.” It is an insightful observation, although at
least one source I know of has pointed out that the Latin form of the saying is
actually “"Qui bene cantat bis orat," that is, “He who sings well prays twice.”[2]
It’s an interesting qualification. Personally, I believe God hears the sounds that proceed
out of the mouths of any of the faithful, skilled or not, as the music of love
and delights in these sounds. Still, there
is much to be said for singing well.
I thoroughly enjoyed stopping by The
Lawrenceville School this past Thursday and observing some of the rehearsals of
both the trebles and the adults. I
thoroughly appreciated the painstaking attention and care shown by two
brilliant musicians, Simon Lole with the trebles and Patrick Wedd with the
adults. It transported me back to rigorous choir rehearsals of my youth and my
adulthood.
When I began my experience at St. Thomas
Choir School in 1967 as a 10 year-old fifth grader, I had no idea that this
love of God would claim me so deeply.
In fact, when I started at St. Thomas Choir School, I was incredibly
homesick and wondered why I had told my mother I wanted to attend. Remember it was a boarding school. There were only fifty students in the whole
school and we were all required to live at the school. At that time, it was located on 55th
Street between 6th and 7th Avenue in New York City. The student body was made up of boys from all
over. I had schoolmates from as far away
as Hong Kong, California and Texas. My
home was less 30 blocks away, on 83rd street. Still, it might as well have been 3000 miles.
My dad’s birthday fell on September 17th. I was usually part of the family
celebration. But there I was that first
year, at St. Thomas Choir School. The school
had a rule that there was to be no contact with family during the first month. This was to get us used to living apart from
home. Still, it was my dad’s
birthday. If I couldn’t be with him, at least
I wanted to call him on the phone and wish him a happy birthday. I asked the
headmaster if I could do that. He said
yes, and that evening, I went to his apartment and he let me call my dad.
“Hhhhiii dad…I called to wiii…sh you
a…a….happy birthday” I mumbled though my sobs.
It was awful. And it didn’t go away quickly. Pretty soon, November came and all of the
hustle and bustle that goes with that holiday season in New York…Then Advent
and Christmas…Wow! I wasn’t going to be
home on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning.
We had to stay at the school in
order to sing the full schedule of Christmas services, including spending
Christmas Eve at school after the 11:00 PM service ended. I would wake up on Christmas Day not in my
home with my family, ready to tear into packages and presents. I would be at St. Thomas Choir School getting
ready for church!
Anticipating
how dreadful all that would be, I was pretty miserable in the days leading up
to Christmas. I felt incredibly sad and
terribly homesick. The school had wonderful
rituals and traditions to make the time festive for us, still not being home
that first Christmas was awfully difficult….But then Christmas Eve came. At
4:00 PM, we sang Benjamin Britten’s masterful Ceremony of Carols. It made me feel a little better.
At precisely 11:00 PM, I processed into the
astonishingly beautiful sanctuary of St. Thomas Fifth Avenue. The church was decked out in stunning
evergreens. I was one of 70 choristers, the
Choir of Men and Boys, singing “O Come all ye faithful” in a church packed to
the rafters with worshippers….It captured me.
In that moment, in the singing of that
hymn, Adeste Fidelis, with the
magnificent organ filling that building with glorious sound, I didn’t want to
be anywhere else in the world…At that moment, on that Christmas Eve, God’s Spirit
took hold of me and my life and has never let go….I cried “Abba, Father” in
song, and received in a way I had never known before the Spirit of adoption as
Christ’s own (cf. Rom. 8:14). It was a
conversion experience, one of several in my life…
I believe our growth in faith is a
life-long process involving many conversion experiences…In that moment in St.
Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, I was profoundly aware of God’s love for me, of
God’s love for the world, and of the significance of the birth of the Christ
child who was born for me, born for us all, calling us, beckoning us, into
God’s marvelous light. And so I sang, I
soared with the descant. The Holy Spirit
took hold of me, as it took hold of those first apostles at Pentecost, and I
worshipped and sang of God’s deeds of power (cf. Acts 2:1-11). And I have loved Christ and loved Christ’s
Church ever since. My heart was ready.[3]
In a wonderful little book titled The Spirit of the Liturgy, former Pope
Benedict XVI observed, “Yes, singing, the surpassing of ordinary speech is a
‘pnuematic” event. Church music comes
into being as a “charism,” a gift of the
Spirit. It is the true glossolalia, the tongue that comes from
the Holy Spirit. It is above all in
church music that the “sober inebriation” of faith takes place – an inebriation
surpassing all the possibilities of mere rationality.”[4]
So I give thanks this day, my first
official day as the Bishop-elect of the Diocese of New Jersey. I give thanks for the “pneumatic” experience
of this day…for the gift of your voices and the talents of the choral directors
and musicians who have allowed you to sing well and thereby contribute to our
“sober inebriation”….I give thanks for the charisms abundantly on display
providing glorious evidence that the true glossolalia,
the tongues of the Spirit have come again, like wind and fire, into this
place, making it alive, full of the breath, the pnuema of God. …It is a new Pentecost, thanks be to God.
O
for a thousand tongues to sing
my
dear redeemer’s praise
The
glories of my God and King,
the
triumphs of his grace
Glory
to God and praise and love
be
now and ever given
By
saints below and saints above
The
Church in earth and heaven.[5]
May
God’s Spirit take hold of each and every one of you, fill you anew with the
light and love of Christ…May you always be inebriated with God’s Spirit and lift your
voices in glorious love songs to the one who gave himself for us, Christ Jesus,
the lover of us all.
[1] See Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal (Pope
Benedict XVI) The Spirit of the Liturgy translated by John Saward Part Three, Chapter 2 “Music and Liturgy”
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000)
Kindle E-Book locations 1604 - 7
[2] See “St. Augustine – He who sings prays
twice” - Fr. Z’s Blog (Fr. John
Zuhlsdorf), Entry of February 20, 2006 found at http://wdtprs.com/blog/2006/02/st-augustine-he-who-sings-prays-twice/
[3]
The current motto of St. Thomas Choir School is “O God, ny heart is
ready”. In 1967 it was Cantate Domino - “Sing to the Lord a New Song” from the Latin
opening verses of Psalms 96 and 98.
[4] Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal (Pope Benedict XVI)
The Spirit of the Liturgy translated by John Saward Part Three, Chapter 2 “Music and Liturgy”
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000)
Kindle E-Book locations 1578 - 81
[5]
Wesley Charles “Of for a thousand tongues to sing” - Hymnal 1982 (New
York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1982),
Hymn #493.
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