Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, April 26, 2026
The first band I was in was in third grade. We were called the Backyard Angels, and we sang lyrics like: “Is it official? Can we really do it? The Backyard Angels—we will be, ’cause we can get through it.”
My second band was in fourth grade, and we were called Pitch Black. So clearly, I was really going through something. Something must have happened from fourth to fifth grade. I wrote a song called Leave Me Alone: “I don’t care what you say. Leave me alone. Don’t want to see you anyway.”
Music has been threaded into my life since I can remember, and that is true for most of you. We live in Music City. I don’t need to tell you the importance of music, the importance of song. I don’t need to tell you how something happens to us when we hear a chord, and then another chord, and our hearts break open and we feel tears streaming down our eyes.
But I do want to tell you about the psalmist David, our songwriter in scripture. He wrote 150 songs—or at least that’s how many were canonized. That’s how many we’ve got in the Good Book. Some of the psalms, like the ones that Jack and Daniel read, are songs of praise. They are songs about singing to the Lord, all the earth, blessing God’s name.
I love that. I love that this psalm doesn’t say “sing about God.” It says, “Sing to God.” And it says, “Sing, all the earth,” as if David intrinsically understands the crickets chirping at night, and birdsong, and even the whales—with their, is it tenor or bass? Probably bass—singing in the ocean.
And even the songs of praise include songs of suffering. Psalm 22 is the only one of the 150 psalms that actually doesn’t resolve. There’s no part at the end where David wraps it up in a nice bow and says, “But praise to you.” It just ends with suffering, as if David understood that it’s important to express and experience the full range of human emotion.
As many of you who are writers know, we don’t sing hymns on accident here. We don’t sing a bunch of hymns in our service just to sing them. The liturgy of the service—which basically means the order of worship—literally means “the work of the people.” The work of the people.
So when we come here together, we are practicing for an hour the work of the people that we will go out and try to do: breaking bread with all kinds of people, praying prayers for the church and the world and each other, holding hands at the end to remember that we are not alone as we try to live out the gospel in our lives.
And that’s also singing. That’s also singing—not just once or twice, but throughout the whole service—because it’s a language that transcends anything we could say, anything we could read. Music is perhaps the greatest response of gratitude and praise to God that we have.
And not just with our voices. Y’all heard Kyle on the trumpet. Y’all have heard Erica on the flute. Y’all have heard Quentyn on the bass and Abby on the ukulele. Y’all have heard Micah and Chris on the keys. Y’all have heard Julia on the organ. I could keep going on and on. This church is filled with people who use their instruments to praise and worship God.
And yeah, it’s filled with those of us who tentatively reach for the high notes and tentatively reach for the low notes. It’s filled with those who get really excited about hymns that we love and know, and those of us who groan when we look at the hymn we’re about to sing. And it is all okay here. Whether you are tone-deaf or right in key, you are welcome here.
What fills this room is, I believe, what fills our world—and that is song, and that is praise, and that is music.
Friends, sometimes I read and reread scripture and something new catches me every time. Maybe that happens to you, too. And so, when I reread the Gospels in seminary, I hadn’t caught before that in two of the Gospels, when we’re looking at Jesus’s Last Supper, after the disciples ate and after everybody kicked their feet up, they sang a hymn.
I’ve got to know—what hymn did they sing? Do you have a guess? Was it a Gregorian chant, or was it a Southern spiritual? Was one of them tone-deaf, or were they all in key? Were some of them crying, knowing it was probably the last time they would sing with their Savior? What was that hymn? Did they harmonize, or were they not quite that good?
The Apostle Paul writes to the Ephesians, as we heard, and he doesn’t just suggest, and he doesn’t just invite—he actually commands them to be filled with the Spirit as they sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs among themselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in their hearts, giving thanks to God at all times and for everything in the name of Jesus.
It’s not a suggestion. It’s a commandment. Music permeates our faith. The psalmist David knew that. Paul knew that. Jesus knew that. There are so many people in scripture who knew that—who showed us the way to respond in these moments in our lives with songs.
Y’all remember Moses? Right after the Israelites cross the Red Sea into safety—right after they are freed from their oppressors—guess what he does? He sings, y’all. And that song, if you go back and read it in Exodus, it almost reads like a folk song you would sing in the back of a church camp bus on your way to Bethany Hills.
He says: “At the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up; the floods stood in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. You blew with your wind, and the sea covered them; they sank like lead in mighty waters.”
And then, right after Moses sings, we learn that the prophet Miriam sings. And not just that—she sings with her voice, she picks up a tambourine, and she invites the other women to sing and dance with her, song after song, as a response of gratitude and praise for what the Lord has just done for them.
Or what about Mary’s song, which might just be the backbone of our entire theology? In the Gospel of Luke, she sings: “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones. He has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” That’s what she sings when she finds out that she is with the Christ child.
Music is how we memorize. Music is how I flip through and find every book in scripture. Because when I was in third grade, someone taught me: “Genesis, Exodus…” And that’s how I know the whole story of Noah’s Ark:
“The animals, the animals, they came on by two-zies, two-zies—chimpanzees and kangaroosies, roosies—they were on that boat.”
Or Jonah, who was swallowed by a fish: “He made quite a tasty dish. Freedom was his only wish from that watery grave.” And then: “Who did swallow? Jo-jo Jonah…”
Music is how we memorize. It’s how we memorize Psalm 23. It’s how we memorize the Lord’s Prayer. Even people with cognitive decline—one of the last things that they remember is song and music. And if that doesn’t preach, I don’t know what will.
We know lullabies. We know nursery rhymes. You remember the song that you walked down the aisle to, and you remember the song from the funeral of your loved one. You know the one by heart in worship that you love, and you know the one in worship that you groan when you see.
During Don Schlitz’s funeral yesterday—who was a prolific songwriter and a beloved member of our community—I quoted something that he said a lot. He said, “You write a song to get to the next song. You show up, and you just keep writing songs until you get to one that really sticks or sings out.”
And I love that—you show up to write every day knowing that some of these songs are just the ones getting you to something special, like The Gambler, which he wrote, and When You Say Nothing at All, which he wrote.
And so we do. We show up to life. We plant seeds, or we practice instruments. We work jobs. We take gigs. We sing songs just to get to the next song, and that carries us all the way home.
We sing in order to grieve. We sing “Happy Birthday.” We sing to calm our nervous systems. We sing our kids to sleep. We sing in order to join with others and become part of this melody, this chorus that then takes us out to praise with the chorus of this community.
I have a tattoo on my left arm, and it’s the last two words of a Mary Oliver poem called I Worried. And I would like to close with that poem:
“I worried a lot. Will the garden grow? Will the rivers flow in the right direction? Will the earth turn as it was taught? And if not, how am I going to correct it? Was I right? Was I wrong? Will I be forgiven? Can I do better? Will I ever be able to sing?
Well, even the sparrows can do it, and I am, well, hopeless. Is my eyesight fading, or am I just imagining it? Am I going to get rheumatism or lockjaw or dementia?
And finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And I gave it up, and I took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang and sang and sang.”
Amen.