The message this morning will begin the next decade of psalms—in the weeks to come we will be working through Psalm 51 through 60. As we do this, the choir will be teaching us to chant them, which we will begin doing as a congregation when this series of messages from the psalms is completed. Because this is a little different, a word of explanation and exhortation is in order.
This morning, instead of me reading the sermon text before the message, the choir will be singing it in a chant. Now the point of learning to chant is not so that we can all start sounding spooky and ethereal, like monks in the cloister. The point is more straightforward than that. The apostle Paul tells us that we are to let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly. We want to internalize as much of the Word of God as we can, and chant is a wonderful (and relatively simple) way to do this.
We have been singing psalms for many years. We have done some chanting, but most of what we have learned is made up of metrical psalms. This is all to the good, and it is part of the glory of Trinitarian worship. Hymns and metrical psalms are here to stay. But we want this to be balanced. With a metrical psalm, the text submits to the authority of the tune. The tune stays put, and the text gives way. With a chant, it is the other way. The tune submits to the authority of the text.
Because there are fewer than ten basic chant tones, when you come to learn a new text, you can just take one of those chant tones, and apply it to that new text. That is the kind of thing we will be learning in the weeks to come, with about three chant tones. And as you learn it rightly, practicing at home, you will not sound like a monk in the cloister, but more like a Presbyterian in the shower.
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