Homily: What Do We Hear?

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

August 30, 2026

Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:15-20

 

What Do We Hear?

 

The fifth Sunday of a month is often observed here as a "hymn sing Sunday." It doesn't always work out - the next fifth Sunday will be in November but we'll be busy with the first Sunday of Advent that day - but frequently such a Sunday gets loaded up with several extra hymns, a little differently each time depending on the pastor or musical leadership trying to put it together.

In this case that format is being modified slightly; change an 's' to an 'r' and you've got a "hymn ring Sunday," which seems about as good a description of the day as we're going to come up with. Indeed, while such parts of the service as the prelude and introit are not necessarily hymn-based, you will notice that there are three distinct portions of the service given over to hymns arranged for and played by bell choir (with a couple for us to sing as well).

I invite you, as we go through this service, to pay attention to what these arrangements of generally well-known hymns have to say to you in this particular presentation. Do you find the words matching themselves to the tune in your head? Is there some deep past association with the hymn coming into your memory?

The psalm verses heading each set nudge us toward what the hymns in each set have in common; songs of comfort and reassurance in the first set (including in that second setting the hymn with probably the most gutting origin story of any hymn I know); the forthcoming set reminding us of what might be called "the basics" of faith; and the final set offering up praise and glory to God. Of course, there are many other ways that hymns can function in the life of the church; there are hymns that teach, hymns that grieve outright without words of reassurance, hymns that relay scripture to us, hymns that mark occasions or events in the Christian faith and life, hymns that keep us on the right path (which might be the point of that reading from Ephesians), and many more.

While I do want to mark the hymn settings on this particular day, I cannot let the moment pass without also commending those pieces we have heard that do not have familiar hymns or words attached to them. Hymn arrangements can be comfortable and easy to listen to, but the music with no words attached can play a unique function in worship; if we are willing to open up and listen to those "songs without words," we may just be able to hear nothing less than the Holy Spirit speaking, or maybe singing, to us in those musical moments. Can we allow ourselves to tune in to such a moving of the Spirit?

As for the rest of this service - and it is a service of worship indeed, perhaps delivered through an unusual medium - let each setting to come speak each its own message, to its own text, to the things that the music conveys itself, maybe even those "sighs too deep for words" that came up in Romans a few weeks ago. Hear, and be led by the Spirit.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (actually sung, from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #839, Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine; #641, When In Our Music God Is Glorified