Sermon for Choral Evensong, 4 May 2010
“Sing ye praises with understanding”
O sing praises, sing praises unto our God; / O sing praises, sing praises unto our King. /For God is the King of all the earth:/Sing ye praises with understanding (Psalm 47.6,7). So the psalmist teaches us. We have had a splendid illustration of what it means to sing with the understanding with the King’s College Chapel Choir tonight under the direction of Paul Halley. Welcome to Christ Church and please, please come again!
“Though we but stammer with the lips of men, yet chant we the high things of God,” one of the early Fathers of the Church says. We sing the high praises of God. It is our freedom, perhaps our highest freedom. But as the Psalmist suggests, our praises are not praises except they be through the understanding. Indeed, it cannot be our freedom unless it be through the understanding – the understanding of the revealed nature of God. For our praises are not projections but proclamations – an acknowledging of what has been given to us to know. We can only proclaim what has been made known to us and, in so doing, we enter more fully into the understanding of what we proclaim. But how is it our freedom?
God alone is praiseworthy precisely because in the freedom of his eternal being he does not need our praises. The proclamation of the Trinity – the highest of the high things of God, the mystery that is shown, what is revealed, not concealed – is the acknowledgement of the perfect self-sufficiency of God upon which everything else depends. Yet in singing God’s praises, the Church is also most free. The God who does not need our praises is freely praised. However much humanity needs to praise God, our praises are not praises if they are forced.