Singing in the first person: on “I” and “we” in worship

Recently I went along with a friend to a Hillsong worship service. I was reminded again that one of the distinctive marks of Pentecostal worship isn’t just the style of music but also the prominence of the first person singular. In mainline Protestant worship, the prevailing trend has been to replace the worshipping “I” with the communal “we.” The “I believe” of the creed is changed to “we believe.” The newer hymns are all about “our” needs, “our” lives, “our” relationship to God and one another. When older choruses are sung, the pronouns are often updated to reflect the plural preference. I have been in a service where the deeply personal Geoff Bullock song, “The Power of Your Love,” was amended, from:

Lord, I come to You
Let my heart be changed, renewed
Flowing from the grace that I’ve found in You
And Lord I’ve come to know
The weaknesses I see in me
Will be stripped away
By the power of Your love.

To:

Lord, we come to You
Let our hearts be changed, renewed
Flowing from the grace that we found in You
And Lord we’ve come to know
The weaknesses we see in us
Will be stripped away
By the power of Your love.

Now in principle there’s nothing wrong with either “I” or “we” as far as singing to God is concerned. And the good Lord is probably long-suffering enough to figure out what we mean when we sing a line as daft as “the weaknesses we see in us.” Let’s face it, where hymnody is concerned, the Christian church will only be saved (if it is saved at all) as though through fire.

But I’m sceptical of the assumption that “we” is somehow the more Liturgically Correct word to use – as if the believers who turn up to church on Sunday morning cannot be trusted to remember that they are worshipping in a community. The whole thing smacks (if you’ll pardon the dirty language) of socialism. Are the clergy anxious to make us ever-mindful of our communal loyalties, as if they knew deep down that we would all rather be worshipping on our own at home?

Interestingly, St Augustine’s view of the worshipping “I” was exactly the opposite. In his exposition of Psalm 121, Augustine argued that the “I” is the proper symbol of corporate worship, while the “we” is too individualistic:

Let [the psalmist] sing from the heart of each one of you like a single person. Indeed, let each of you be this one person. Each one prays the psalm individually, but because you are all one in Christ, it is the voice of a single person that is heard in the psalm [Cum enim dicitis illud singuli, quia omnes unum estis in Christo, unus homo illud dicit]. That is why you do not say, ‘To you, Lord, have we lifted up our eyes,’ but ‘To you, Lord, I have lifted up my eyes.’ Certainly you must think of this as a prayer offered by each of you on his or her own account, but even more you should think of it as the prayer of the one person present throughout the whole world. (Expositions of the Psalms, 122.2).

Augustine’s point is that the language of “we” can easily give the impression that the congregation is a collection of atomistic individuals. But when believers sing to God in the first-person singular, it is as if the whole body of Christ were crying to God with one voice. The “I” is intensely personal: I sing as if the song applied to me alone. But it is also mystical and communal: beneath and above and around my own individual “I,” I hear the surge of a greater voice, a corporate “I” of which my own voice is a part. In Augustine’s view, this corporate voice is the voice of Christ. It is Christ himself who sings the psalms and who cries out to God in one voice from one body through the Spirit.

I implore you, my liberal Protestant comrades, don’t be too proud to admit that the Pentecostals might actually have got something right! And don’t be afraid to confront the question whether the experience of community in those ostensibly oh-so-individualistic Pentecostal churches is less intense and meaningful, or more, than what is found in our mainline churches with our theological propriety, our liturgical spit and polish, and all our earnest bluster and blather about we, us, and our.

The psalms and the blues: a little help from James Baldwin

In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin makes a characteristically perceptive and acerbic comment about the tradition of African American songs:

White Americans seem to feel that happy songs are happy and sad songs are sad, and that, God help us, is exactly the way most white Americans sing them – sounding, in both cases, so helplessly, defencelessly fatuous that one dare not speculate on the temperature of the deep freeze from which issue their brave and sexless little voices. Only people who have been “down the line”, as the song puts it, know what this music is about. I think it was Big Bill Broonzy who used to sing, "I Feel So Good." … White Americans do not understand the depths out of which such an ironic tenacity comes.

A similar misunderstanding lies beneath the current academic hypersensitivity to the morality of the psalms. If we think the happy psalms are merely happy and the sad psalms are merely sad, then we'll also assume that the psalms of vengeance are merely immoral and vindictive, or that psalms of conquest are mere glorifications of military violence – without seeing the whole tragic history that gives rise to such outrageously tenacious expressions of faith. Perhaps we'd have a better ear for the psalms if we remembered that they are the precursors not so much of Victorian hymnody as of the spirituals and the blues. One catches the true spirit of the psalter in the old African American song:

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
Nobody knows my sorrow
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
Glory hallelujah!

Tweeting the Psalms: Book II

Psalm 42: There came a day when deep called to deep, and all the world's sorrow was compressed into a parched cry: "I thirst!"

Psalm 43: O Joy of my joy, with hands lifted high I drag my heavy heart into Your presence

Psalm 44: You loved my parents and all my ancestors. When Your love for me seems doubtful, I will cling to Your love for them

Psalm 45: Faster than a typewriter, as fluent as a twitter timeline, my tongue pours out praises to Your Messiah

Psalm 46: O doom of the earth, I love You! You doom armies to dust. You break their weapons. You condemn the nations to peace

Psalm 47: Creation is a feast, and You recline at the head of the table

Psalm 48: If I travel far enough in any direction, starting from anywhere, I will arrive at the axis: Your presence, Your love

Psalm 49: I brought nothing into the world (except Your love); when I depart again I'll take nothing with me (except Your love)

Psalm 50: What can I give You that is not already Yours? Only my thanks, the gift of empty hands.

Psalm 51: If only You'd open my lips: then I would sing. If only You'd rebuild me: then my crushed bones would dance the salsa

Psalm 52: When You come to weed the garden, will You leave me planted here? Am I an olive tree? Or one of the weeds?

Psalm 53: We deny You with our deeds before we ever deny You with words. O make my life good so that my lips will not deny You!

Psalm 54: Even before You rescue me, I will give thanks. I see You rushing to my aid, and my song flies out to meet You

Psalm 55:
Que selah selah
Whatever will be will be
Your love will be there for me
Que selah selah

Psalm 56: You seek me in my wanderings. You have counted all my tears; You keep them in a bottle

Psalm 57: My praise is truer than time; you could set your watch by it. Even the sun doesn't get up until it hears me singing

Psalm 58: I'll have such revenges that all the world shall—I will do such things—What they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth.

Psalm 59: Wolves prowl the empty streets. Above their hungry whining, I raise my voice and sing of Your love

Psalm 60: Well. This is awkward. Just after I told everyone You were on my side...

Psalm 61: I want a thousand years with You. I'd bring You gifts each day; I'd sing till my heart was wide enough to contain You

Psalm 62: I will sing You one love song, two songs will I sing: a song of Your loving power, and a song of Your powerful love

Psalm 63: Parched, I thirst for You more than water. Famished, I feast on memories of You. Lost, I long for You more than home

Psalm 64: When they saw me, they shot arrows at my heart; when You saw me, You turned their arrows into boomerangs

Psalm 65: The fields reach longing leaves towards You; the seas sigh restlessly; the rivers sing psalms over stones

Psalm 66: The water lifted itself up in a heap and gave a bow, and all Your people marched across on dry land

Psalm 67: As the sun rules day and night, so Your shining face makes nations rise and fall

Psalm 68: Judah praises You, Zebulon sings, Naphtali too! Even the little tribe of Benjamin has struck up a tune!

Psalm 69: Crushed and humiliated, I sink down into the pit, with nothing in my mouth except vinegar, gall, and praise

Psalm 70: I'll sing the first line, You sing the second line: my poverty and Your mercy make a rhyme

Psalm 71: In youth You were my strength. In old age You are my comfort. In the grave You will be my brightness and eternal joy

Psalm 72: Your Messiah will be lifted up; the songs of the poor will pierce his heart, and his justice will fall like dew.

Tweeting the Psalms: Book I

I've been tweeting through the Psalms, with one tweet for each Psalm (using the hashtag #psalmtweets). I've just finished the first book of the Psalter and have pasted them below – in case you're one of those Normal people who don't sit around reading tweets.

Psalm 1: The bad life is a busy life, full of bluster and bustle; the good life is a reading life, full of the joy of Torah. 

Psalm 2: While the righteous sit reading (Psalm 1), the Messiah (who is their shade) sits too, observing history like an umpire.

Psalm 3: Surrounded by a thousand enemies, all armed to the teeth, I lie down for a nap while You disarm them, breaking their teeth.

Psalm 4: At night I lie down in the darkness, and Your face shines over me like a lamp.

Psalm 5: When I wake in the morning, Your love covers me like sunlight and receives my song.

Psalm 6: At night I lay in my bed and wept; but it was Your heart (softer than pillows) that I rested on and drenched with my tears.

Psalm 7: I'm surrounded, defeated, ruined! Oh my love, rise up! Arise in Your beautiful justice and doom!

Psalm 8: The stars are a minor achievement (Your finger-painting). Humanity is Your masterwork; the stars gaze down admiringly.

Psalm 9: At the doors of death I met You and we rose together, singing all the way.

Psalm 10: They prey upon the poor, turning misery into profit; they think You (who live among the poor) will not see.

Psalm 11: When I am hiding from the world, Your eyes find me; You keep me like a secret.

Psalm 12: Lies, lies, lies! The whole world lives by lying. But You are allergic to falsehood; Your words are purest truth.

Psalm 13: "Why have You forgotten me? Why are You hiding?" (sung to the tune of Pharrell Williams, "Happy".)

Psalm 14: The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." I feel that way sometimes myself. What do You think?

Psalm 15: As my mother always said, wash your hands before you come to the Table.

Psalm 16: Even in hell Your song won't leave my heart. I will follow Your path out of the darkness, and sing my way to You.

Psalm 17: Oh look at me forever! And like a holy Narcissus I will study my reflection in Your eyes, and sink into You.

Psalm 18: When You saw me in hell You were furious. You struck like a thunderbolt; hell quaked; You plucked me like a flower.

Psalm 19: What the Law says, the stars say too; nature and Torah rhyme. (O let my heart rhyme with them too!)

Psalm 20: Some put their hope in politics and some in the economy, but we remember You.

Psalm 21: The family of Your anointed one will stretch its branches through history; the family trees of Your enemies will be shrubs.

Psalm 22: O why (I will shout Your name) have You (and the graves will be emptied) forsaken me (and all nations will praise You).

Psalm 23: My life is a day in the desert, but You know where the wells are; my death is a night in the desert, but the things I fear fear You.

Psalm 24: Even the creaking hinges sound like music when the doors swing open to admit You.

Psalm 25: My life has been one false step after another, and at every step I've only met Your kindness; Your love is my path.

Psalm 26: You are my only path (so judge me!), my only truth (so test me!), my only vision (so burn my heart clean!).

Psalm 27: Each day I seek You as if I'd never found You, and find You as if I never had to seek.

Psalm 28: When You were silent, my heart lay down in the grave. But You answered! And my heart stood up singing.

Psalm 29: The wind and the rain and the lightning and the flood – even in bad weather, everything reminds me of You.

Psalm 30: O You magician of the heart! You turn mourning into dancing, death into Disneyland, the howling of hell into a choir!

Psalm 31: Like a bird that sings once before dying, I will die into You and my death will be my song.

Psalm 32: When I finally got the courage to confess my sins, I realised You weren't even listening. You were singing to me.

Psalm 33: I will sing to You, Maker and Lover and Keeper of all things; I will take up a part in the song the whole earth sings.

Psalm 34: I cry (and You are near); I am destitute (and You are the light in my face); I am crushed (and You treasure my bones).

Psalm 35: Remind my heart of Your goodness. Remind my weary body how to sing. And I will teach every aching bone to praise You.

Psalm 36: Your Love is my mind's home; Your Wisdom is my life's well; and by Your Light (my sun, my lamp) I live and drink.

Psalm 37: You are my home, my inheritance of unaffordable real estate, my utopia; You are a world good enough for my children.

Psalm 38: When I forgot You, I lost myself. O remind me! Tell me Your name! Tell me who I am, and that's what I will be: Yours.

Psalm 39: Like a series of still images projected on a screen, each human life is only a frame: but You see the moving picture.

Psalm 40: Your Torah is planted deep in my body. Therefore I will speak. I will act. I will trust. I will wait.

Psalm 41: Because I remembered the poor (Your friends), You will remember me when my friends forsake me.

Psalms for all seasons: a contemporary psalter

At the opening worship service of the Romans conference, it was a joy to use the wonderful new psalter, Psalms for All Seasons: A Complete Psalter for Worship (Brazos Press 2012). It has multiple versions of each of the 150 psalms (sometimes as many as ten versions of a single psalm), with musical styles ranging from chant and classical hymnody to African American spirituals and contemporary urban music. There are also spoken word and responsorial settings for each psalm. In our service, there was a psalm reading with part of a Wesleyan hymn for the response – it was very well done, and I've been singing it in my head all week. The book also includes brief theological-practical notes on how each psalm can be used in Christian worship.

I sometimes worry that our hymnbooks – where you have a more or less arbitrary selection of songs, arranged by various doctrinal and liturgical themes – create the impression that worship is a matter of human choice. You choose your Sunday hymns as you might choose a dessert from the menu at a restaurant; and you choose them on the basis of thematic relevance (this week, let's sing about love; this week, let's sing about forgiveness), so that entire dimensions of human experience might never once enter into the singing of a congregation.

But with psalmody as an overarching structure, the congregation is invited to share in experiences that might seem quite remote from their own everyday concerns. That is why we find some of the psalms so offensive: we simply cannot conceive of such experiences, even though they are – manifestly – genuine human possibilities. Instead of criticising such psalms, we need to learn how to sing them.

Our own private griefs are, often enough, quite paltry: but we are invited to join in the gigantic earth-shaking laments of the psalms. Our own criteria for happiness are selfish and small: but we are allowed to share in the magnificent heaven-rending joys of the psalmist. Our own love for God is so feeble that we might forget all about God for days at a time: but our hearts are torn wide open as we join our voices to the enormous lovesick longing of the psalmist's praise. We are safe, affluent, protected, untroubled by enemies or oppression: but we learn to join our voices to the psalmist's indignant cries for the catastrophic appearance of justice on the earth.

If your congregation sings only Hillsong choruses, then their emotional repertoire will be limited to about two different feelings (God-you-make-me-happy, and God-I'm-infatuated-with-you) – considerably less even than the emotional range of a normal adult person. It is why entire congregations sometimes seem strangely adolescent, or even infantile: they lack a proper emotional range, as well as a suitable adult vocabulary. But in the psalter one finds the entire range of human emotion and experience – a range that is vastly wider than the emotional capacity of any single human life.

Just to stick with Hillsong as an example: for a congregation to go from singing Hillsong to singing the psalter would be like seeing Shakespeare's plays after you've only ever watched sitcoms – it would be a shock to discover that human beings can be so large, and that they come in so many different varieties. Nobody has ever felt the way Hamlet feels, or felt so much: that's exactly what makes Hamlet important.

To enter into the singing of the psalms is to participate in a pattern of worship that transcends any private experience. As though worship were really worship, not just the expression of private thoughts and feelings. As though the voice that really sings in the psalms were a universal voice, the voice of fallen and redeemed humanity gathered together in one lump – which is to say, Christ's voice.

When the church's singing is structured around Israel's psalms, there is a constant reminder that worship is not primarily a matter of personal choice; that the experience of worship is not primarily my own private experience; that the voice in worship is not even primarily my voice, but the voice of Israel, the voice of Christ, the voice of Christ's people gathered across time and space, learning together how to transmute all the varied raw materials of human experience into the praise of God through the alchemy of Jesus Christ.

A Sydney psalm

Tonight's psalm from Sydney (loosely based on Psalms 148 and 150):

Praise the Lord!
Praise him, all you trees on my street;
Praise him you TV aerials bending in the wind;
Praise him, parked cars glistening with rain;
Praise him, screeching hissing trains;
Praise him, bright clouds reflecting Sydney's lights;
Praise him you possums fighting on the roof;
Praise him, noisy M2 traffic;
Praise him from the streets and from the station,
Praise him high and low.
Let everything that makes noise praise the Lord:
Praise the Lord!

Psalm 75: creation and consummation

“It is useless to ask here whether the Psalmist [in Psalm 75] thought of a ‘historical’ or ‘eschatological’ event. Here, as elsewhere in the Psalms, the perspectives are commingled. Every historical victory of Yahweh over the adversary is on the one hand a confirmation of his act of creation, and on the other hand a pledge of his coming, final blessing. History is the road by which the king strives ‘conquering and to conquer’ (Rev. 6:2) from creation to consummation.”

—Hendrikus Berkhof, Christ the Meaning of History (London: SCM, 1966), p. 43.