Singing by Heart
As the bright, familiar guitar intro to Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” came across the speakers at Einstein Bros Bagels, I looked up from my sandwich to see two men bobbing their heads. One was sitting at a table with his teenage daughter, and the other was waiting for a to-go order. As Morrison began to sing, so did they: “Hey where did we go, days when the rains came . . .”
I was asking myself that same question – “hey where did we go?” – the previous night at a football game when the halftime announcer said the marching band would be playing Billboard Top 40 hits of the past decade. I didn’t know the songs at all, and when one was introduced as a “smash hit,” I grumbled aloud that I’d never heard of the song or the artist. LeAnn explained: “That’s because we’re old.”
No wonder that I felt redeemed at Einstein’s the next day. I felt I belonged because I knew the song.
Popular culture and politics divide us by age, gender, race, size, education, geography – every imaginable division. Sometimes it can turn groups against each other, and at the least it can leave us asking ourselves, “Hey where did we go?”
Our faith, on the other hand, can erase the lines that divide us. It can draw us together to a common God and a shared future in Christ. I experienced a piece of that on a Sunday morning as I sat on the floor with three year olds to listen to a teacher read a picture book with snippets from the Biblical stories of Adam, Noah, Moses, Samson, Joseph, Ruth, John and Jesus. Already, the children were raising their hands as they recognized pieces of stories that I’ve known for years. It’s like we knew the same song, just at different levels of understanding.
In a larger way, our churches sing in unison with churches around the world. While my church is Baptist and has the freedom to shape its own worship experience, we often follow the lectionary of the church universal. That puts us in tune with millions of Christians around the world. Imagine that: On any given Sunday, more of us are tuned into the same scripture than the number of people watching the all-time highest rated television programs: Super Bowls, Oscars, royal weddings, World Cup championships. In other words, we are never more united – and we never belong together more – than we do when we worship the same Lord.
Sadly, we’re never more divided than when we fight over the same Lord, creating divisions that are more dangerous than any created by popular or secular culture. Christians, Jews and Muslims should be singing the praises of the one true God instead of bludgeoning each other with intolerance fueled by pride, greed, ignorance and fear. We Christians might lead the way, but even we are on different pages of the hymnal sometimes.
I’d settle for a head-bobbing rendition of another Van Morrison tune:
“These are the days by the sparkling river
His timely grace and our treasured find
This is the love of the one great magician
Turned the water into wine.”