Thank God for iPod
Text: Psalm 150
Get on a bus, or subway and I can almost guarantee that someone, somewhere in that car is wearing a pair of white headphones. (They look something like this)…They’re usually attached to an iPod... For those of you don’t know what an iPod is, it is a small piece of technology that can fits in your pocket that one can play music on. While that’s not particularly revolutionary, it’s the simple volume of stuff these tiny little things can hold. The latest version of the iPod can hold 15,000 songs, 25,000 photographs or 150 hours worth of video. If you think of it this way, it can hold as many songs as normally would be found on more than one-thousand compact discs, or roughly 800 pounds of vinyl records! It weighs just a couple of ounces, and can have one’s entire music library on it. Theoretically you could hit “play” have it run twenty four hours a day, and not have it repeat a single song for more than forty days!
Music has become very easy to share and to play these days, but it’s nothing new. Humanity has always used different techniques to share music throughout history. The iPod is just the latest means by which we do that… but sharing and playing music goes back thousands of years… only the technology has changed…
But what does the iPod have to do with God anyway? Plenty, but bear with me…
It has only been in the past one-hundred fifty years that audio recording actually became possible. The means of doing that has changed dramatically in that time, but it goes back to the phonograph, where audio waves were recorded on cylinders… Prior to any of this technology, the only way for people to actually share music was to play it. One learned an instrument or used their voice, got together with friends or family, and shared their music with each other by playing it. Of course, things were greatly aided when people began to write down their musical ideas, and with the development of musical notation, it became possible to actually have the same piece performed more than once by different people… but before that the best that people could do was write down the words of the songs… if they could actually write at all… and then try to remember the music that was taught them… or make up their own.
The book of Psalms is a collection of song lyrics from ancient Hebrew culture. They were written down as a way to share people’s experience of and response to God. They were the collection of music that people shared with each other… using the latest technology of the day, which at the time was prepared sheep skin and ink… the original iPod.
Tradition tells us that the Psalms were written by King David, some 1,000 years before the birth of Christ. More realistically, all 150 Psalms come from a variety of sources, written in light of dozens of circumstances… all of which are a response to God in the experience of human life. If we are to consider much of the Bible as the means by which God speaks to us, the Psalms have that added dimension of giving our voice back to God.
In giving our voice back to God, the Psalms allow us to do all kinds of things in our faith. Through the Psalms we can express our thanks and gratitude. Through the Psalms we can express our feelings of anxiety, of loneliness, of feeling abandoned. Through the Psalms we can express sorrow, and even get angry with God. It’s all there… the full range of human emotion. When we can’t find the words of what to say, the Psalms can do it for us.
In the midst of the Easter Season comes Psalm 150… Psalm 150 is all about music itself… the joy and expression of music as a response to God. What I find absolutely fascinating about it is how short it really is… six lines… that’s it!
It tells me that there was far more than simply these lyrics, but that Psalm 150 was intended as a primarily instrumental piece of music. These words were written as anchor points for a much larger musical piece, the actual notes of which were never written down. For the writers and the musicians, the very tones of the music itself offer praise to God in a way beyond words.
The trouble is, we’re left only to our imagination on how this might have unfolded. The music that was originally composed for the Psalms would sound very foreign to our ears: Very Middle Eastern or North African… but the words of the Psalm would have heralded the different sections of the music. Praise him with trumpet sound! Would be followed by trumpet players doing their thing, while the rest of the band quieted down into the background. Praise him with the lute and harp… The stringed instruments would go nuts. Praise him with tambourine… and cymbal… Drum Solo!! A Biblical warrant to have drums in church! Who’d have thought! To be honest, we really don’t know how this would have sounded… for all we know this piece of music could have easily gone on for half an hour… in spite of having such short words. We don’t really know, because we don’t have a recording as to what actually happened when this Psalm came together.
In that sense, perhaps we can thank God for the technology today that allows us to hear and experience music in this way… Thank God for iPod… But at the same time, even if we don’t have the original music, we can be thankful that these words continue to inspire us to make our own music. To learn, play and share… Praise God in whatever way you can. Music itself is a way of connecting to the universe around us in a way that is far more profound than mere words… Thank God.
Amen.
Get on a bus, or subway and I can almost guarantee that someone, somewhere in that car is wearing a pair of white headphones. (They look something like this)…They’re usually attached to an iPod... For those of you don’t know what an iPod is, it is a small piece of technology that can fits in your pocket that one can play music on. While that’s not particularly revolutionary, it’s the simple volume of stuff these tiny little things can hold. The latest version of the iPod can hold 15,000 songs, 25,000 photographs or 150 hours worth of video. If you think of it this way, it can hold as many songs as normally would be found on more than one-thousand compact discs, or roughly 800 pounds of vinyl records! It weighs just a couple of ounces, and can have one’s entire music library on it. Theoretically you could hit “play” have it run twenty four hours a day, and not have it repeat a single song for more than forty days!
Music has become very easy to share and to play these days, but it’s nothing new. Humanity has always used different techniques to share music throughout history. The iPod is just the latest means by which we do that… but sharing and playing music goes back thousands of years… only the technology has changed…
But what does the iPod have to do with God anyway? Plenty, but bear with me…
It has only been in the past one-hundred fifty years that audio recording actually became possible. The means of doing that has changed dramatically in that time, but it goes back to the phonograph, where audio waves were recorded on cylinders… Prior to any of this technology, the only way for people to actually share music was to play it. One learned an instrument or used their voice, got together with friends or family, and shared their music with each other by playing it. Of course, things were greatly aided when people began to write down their musical ideas, and with the development of musical notation, it became possible to actually have the same piece performed more than once by different people… but before that the best that people could do was write down the words of the songs… if they could actually write at all… and then try to remember the music that was taught them… or make up their own.
The book of Psalms is a collection of song lyrics from ancient Hebrew culture. They were written down as a way to share people’s experience of and response to God. They were the collection of music that people shared with each other… using the latest technology of the day, which at the time was prepared sheep skin and ink… the original iPod.
Tradition tells us that the Psalms were written by King David, some 1,000 years before the birth of Christ. More realistically, all 150 Psalms come from a variety of sources, written in light of dozens of circumstances… all of which are a response to God in the experience of human life. If we are to consider much of the Bible as the means by which God speaks to us, the Psalms have that added dimension of giving our voice back to God.
In giving our voice back to God, the Psalms allow us to do all kinds of things in our faith. Through the Psalms we can express our thanks and gratitude. Through the Psalms we can express our feelings of anxiety, of loneliness, of feeling abandoned. Through the Psalms we can express sorrow, and even get angry with God. It’s all there… the full range of human emotion. When we can’t find the words of what to say, the Psalms can do it for us.
In the midst of the Easter Season comes Psalm 150… Psalm 150 is all about music itself… the joy and expression of music as a response to God. What I find absolutely fascinating about it is how short it really is… six lines… that’s it!
Praise the Lord!We read this responsively earlier in the service, and as joyful as it these words are, I must admit that I wonder to myself “that’s it??” Even as joyful as these words are, let’s be honest, by themselves, it’s pretty dry. Nobody writes songs that are that short! I tried to find a few examples today of really short songs today, and I have to admit that I wasn’t all that successful. Well… almost… songs with very few lyrics aren’t actually all that short… If anything they tend to be a little longer, because in the recordings, the instruments themselves become far more important. It’s like the lyrics themselves are window dressing for musicians and their instruments to do their thing.
Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty
firmament!
Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
It tells me that there was far more than simply these lyrics, but that Psalm 150 was intended as a primarily instrumental piece of music. These words were written as anchor points for a much larger musical piece, the actual notes of which were never written down. For the writers and the musicians, the very tones of the music itself offer praise to God in a way beyond words.
The trouble is, we’re left only to our imagination on how this might have unfolded. The music that was originally composed for the Psalms would sound very foreign to our ears: Very Middle Eastern or North African… but the words of the Psalm would have heralded the different sections of the music. Praise him with trumpet sound! Would be followed by trumpet players doing their thing, while the rest of the band quieted down into the background. Praise him with the lute and harp… The stringed instruments would go nuts. Praise him with tambourine… and cymbal… Drum Solo!! A Biblical warrant to have drums in church! Who’d have thought! To be honest, we really don’t know how this would have sounded… for all we know this piece of music could have easily gone on for half an hour… in spite of having such short words. We don’t really know, because we don’t have a recording as to what actually happened when this Psalm came together.
In that sense, perhaps we can thank God for the technology today that allows us to hear and experience music in this way… Thank God for iPod… But at the same time, even if we don’t have the original music, we can be thankful that these words continue to inspire us to make our own music. To learn, play and share… Praise God in whatever way you can. Music itself is a way of connecting to the universe around us in a way that is far more profound than mere words… Thank God.
Amen.
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