" Sing a new song to the Lord, who has done marvelous things,
whose right hand and holy arm have won the victory.
O Lord, you have made known your victory,
you have revealed your righteousness in the sight of the nations.
You remember your steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God." (Psalm 98:1-3)
If you hang around a church for very long, at some point, you will hear someone grousing about the music--especially if involves change. "Why are they printing new hymnals? What was wrong with the old ones?" "Do they really expect us to shell out the money for buying more song books for our pews?" "What if they get rid of my favorite hymn?" "Why should we have to learn new songs if God is still the same as always?" And that's before we even get to the knock-down drag-out fights that erupt over style and instrumentation: guitars or organs, screens or the printed page, "contemporary" or "traditional," praise-chorus or four-verse hymns in four-part harmony? We church folk can be an ornery bunch when it comes to having to learn a new song.
So, let's dare to ask it: why should we have to learn new songs--especially if God is the same as always? Can't we just stick with the songs we already know? Can't we just listen to the psalms that are already in our Bibles?
Well, that's just it. Sometimes the psalms that are already in the Bible are the very voices telling us, quite literally, to "sing a new song." These words from Psalm 98, which many would have heard or sung in worship this past Sunday, are a case in point. Here we have a song from the Bible telling us, "Don't let these be the last words to be sung! Keep coming up with new songs! Keep bringing new praises! Keep writing lyrics--sing a new song to the Lord!"
Why would we need a new song? Or beyond that, why will we keep needing new songs for the rest of our lives and into eternity? To hear the words of Psalm 98 tell it, there's a two-fold reason: for one, God keeps doing marvelous things, which are just begging to be sung about for their sheer awesomeness... and for a second, so that more and more people will come to know both the greatness and the goodness of God. We sing new songs, in other words, because God keeps doing things that need to sung about, and because the world keeps needing to hear about who God is. So it's not that God changes and we have to keep reworking our lyrics to keep up with the latest version of the divine, like installing software updates for your phone or laptop. It's that God's constant, faithful, steadfast love keeps acting through history, and we want the world to know, hear, and see it. The whole idea, the psalmist says, is that God's righteousness--God's fundamental goodness--will be revealed among "the nations." That is to say, the Gentiles. Yeah--THOSE people.
I can't help but hear that as a boundary-pushing sort of welcome and invitation to outsiders. That's a big deal. The psalmist doesn't say, "We have to keep our God a secret because God is our private personal possession and nobody else can find out about God's steadfast love or those foreigners will want some, too, and there won't be enough to go around!" Rather, the poet says, "We had better keep writing and singing new songs about God's faithfulness, so that everyone will want to hear about it--especially all the nations beyond our borders!" The Scriptures themselves--here in the words of this psalm--are directing our attention beyond the bounds of these set words keep looking outward at the new things God keeps doing in the world and the people we haven't met yet who are waiting to hear about the goodness of God! The Bible itself keeps pointing us beyond its own pages to see the God to whom it witnesses and offers psalms of praise, acting and moving in marvelous and new ways. That's why we are called to "sing a new song"--the Bible itself is calling us to do just that.
But, just to be clear here, if we do keep writing and singing new songs to God, it will change us. Our perspective will shift, such that we will start to keep our eyes open to recognize how God is moving in the world. We will no longer picture God as a relic of the past--the hero of past legends who has since retired and hung up the ol' divine spurs--but rather we will see God still doing marvelous things and wonders we had not expected. And when that happens to our vision, we might just find that we are spurred to be a part of what God is up to as well, rather than just sitting on our hands telling stories wistfully about the "good old days." That might change our lives in ways we cannot even fathom yet.
So, I suppose, take this as a word of warning: if we dare to follow the Scriptures' lead and "sing a new song" of God's wondrous love and marvelous goodness, we will not only be pointed outward to reach out to people we had never thought about before, but we will likely be pulled to join in the work God is doing in the world around us.
Where will the next new song lead us?
Lord God, we praise you for your new movements in the world and your marvelous love--strengthen our voices to join in the new song of your goodness.
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