Today’s offertory anthem is often used as a banner piece for the return of a new choir season. It’s good to be back in full swing after a brief summer break, and I’m sure you’re happy to see the choir back in the stalls this morning. Martin Shaw was a prolific English composer with over 300 published works. He studied with a great generation of composers including Stanford, Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Ireland. He also had a career as a theatrical producer, composer and conductor, and was the uncle of the British actor Sebastian Shaw, who played the unmasked Darth Vader in the 1983 film Return of the Jedi.

We’ve sung this piece before. It’s a jaunty number, and it marches along with a triumphant stride. It’s a conquering-hero type of a piece, and rightly so. The words are instructive. When we learn something about God, we are to educate those who do not know. Today’s Psalm compels us to be instructive too. We are to tell the nations of God’s glorious works and might. We are to declare and utter it to the ends of the earth.

The title of the piece is “With a Voice of Singing,” but implicit in that message is something we miss. On the flipside, it should be called “With an Ear for Listening.” These “marching-to-Zion” types of pieces give us an empirical picture of God, one who triumphs over the enemy and brings nations under subjection. How well has this picture of God worked in our world? When we encapsulate the divine as the conquering hero, it’s not instructive. It’s bullying.

We are to be instructive when it comes to sharing what we know about God, but in our zeal to do so, many religious people become know-it-alls. You get so passionate about what you know, you forget that you still have so much more to learn. But even our church services are too full of instructions. Sometimes I feel like worship has too many words, too much music, and too many instructions to God. We lack silence to get instructions from God. We lack contemplation, mysticism, silence, reflection, stillness, and meditation. Contemplation has at its root the word “temple,” where we should have time for silence. Where has this gone?

Don’t get swept up by a rambunctious piece like this. It sits high on a horse, but that gives it lots of space to come down to earth. A good teacher isn’t a know-it-all. A good teacher is a wise sage who knows nothing and guides others to the mystical unknown within. Don’t get me wrong, I love these high and mighty pieces myself; but they don’t always give us a clear picture of the divine, which includes low and meek and everything in between. A know-it-all has a “clear picture” of God and tries to rub that image in everyone’s face. But that’s foolish. We all know that God doesn’t like to have His picture taken. Soli Deo Gloria!