Learning to Praise

Learning to Praise
Psalm 148
Myers Park Baptist Church
24 August 2008

The psalm this morning may seem benign and ordinary. “Praise the Lord!” it begins. “Praise the Lord!” it ends. And we’ve grown accustomed to such an exhortation. It’s what we’re here at church for, after all – to praise. But this is no ordinary act. And this psalm offers no ordinary word.

What is praise, but the staking of one’s whole life on goodness, on the goodness of God? What is praise, but the pouring out of one’s daily living in joy and gratitude for what has been given? In the face of so many forces of darkness, of despair, of violence and evil, there could be no more radical act than that.

But this psalm takes the revolutionary act of praise a step beyond. The psalmist issues an invitation to the entire universe. Everything that is, praises God. Not just “everything that breathes” as Psalm 150 would have it. But everything that is. Not just the angels in heaven. Not just the humans on earth. Every created thing. Animate, inanimate. Sun, moon, stars, rain, earth, fire, hail, snow, frost, wind. Mountains, hills, trees, mammals, sea creatures, creeping things, flying birds. Every cell of the universe, every atom of space, every single bit of creation does one thing in unison – it all praises God.

It is a sweeping and impressive picture – not only of unity of purpose, but of the radical inclusivity of praise. This is what everything was made for. This is what it all does. Every created thing praises the God who created it, simply by being what God made it to be.

Well, maybe all but one.

The psalmist here seems to have great faith that humans will respond to the innate urge to praise God. “Kings of the earth and all peoples,” he declares, “Young men and women alike, old and young together!” His confidence is inspiring. It is endearing. Is it not also a bit unwarranted?

The truth is, while cedar trees and dolphins and goldfinches and stardust all praise God by being beautifully exactly as God created it all to be, we have somewhat deviated. We struggle to give ourselves to God. We have a hard time seeking and seeing the goodness of God all around us, and responding to it.


There are so many reasons we find ourselves blocked from such a life. We are busy, and so don’t notice the pulse of God beating beneath the surface of everything. We are disappointed or disillusioned or grief-stricken, and therefore unable to see how we might give praise without being false. We are tired and drained and sucked-dry by the demands we face, and, finding no way to receive what we most need, we also have nothing more to give back, including our praise.

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You may have seen the Washington Post story last year. That January, world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell engaged in a little experiment at the behest of a Washington Post reporter. Bell, dressed in street clothes, took his 300 year-old Stradivarius to the L’Enfant Plaza Subway Station. For 43 minutes during the morning rush hour, he performed, playing some of the most beautiful, most powerful, most difficult pieces of music ever written. The concert was videotaped with a hidden camera. Guesses were made ahead of time, about how people would respond, how many people would stop and listen, how much money might be tossed into his violin case. Plans were made to deal with crowd control.

Those plans were not needed. What happened was this. In the 43 minutes that the internationally acclaimed virtuoso played his violin, 1097 people passed him by. Most did not even look at him. Only one person, at the very end, recognized him. A few tossed in quarters or even pennies. And only seven people stopped what they were doing, to stand and listen, at least for a minute.

Gene Weingarten, the Washington Post staff writer who put Joshua Bell up to this experiment, and then reported on it, poses the question in his article: “If we can’t take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that – then what else are we missing?”

It is a haunting question. What are we missing? What great gorgeous joy and wonder are present in the life God has given us, that we cannot see, cannot open ourselves to? What praise can we not give because we cannot see the millions of reasons to give it?

During Bell’s second piece, Schubert’s Ave Maria, “something revealing happened.” Weingarten writes of a woman and her preschooler coming off the escalator. The mother is walking quickly, needing to get her son dropped off at school so she can go on to work. Her son, however, is intent on hearing the music and watching the musician. On the video, you can see him twisting around to see Bell, even as he is being hurried towards the door. Finally, his mother maneuvers her body to block the child’s view. As mother and child leave the station, the boy can still be seen straining to get a look.

Weingarten writes:
"The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother’s heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

(Weingarten goes on) "There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away."*

Can you imagine if you had been one of those people who walked past Joshua Bell without stopping? Or if you had been one of those parents, can you imagine how you’d feel when you were told who that was standing there in the subway station fiddling as you dragged your listening child away?

I think I’m that person on a regular basis. I think I’m that parent on a regular basis.

Every morning, the great God of the universe plays the best music ever made for us, and we march forward in our grim determination to get everything done. We scrabble on, trying to get what we think we need, trying to get ahead, ignoring the music of life. Instead of feeling joy, or hope, or gratitude we often feel resentment, or apathy, or resignation. Some of us even drag little ones along behind us, ignoring their innate sense of wonder instead of letting it teach us.

Those people in the subway station that morning thought Joshua Bell was just another street performer. How often do we look at a person and see something less than what is there? How often do we look at a tree, a rock, the sky, the ground, and see something less than what is really there? It is, all of it, glistening with God. How much of that are we missing?

In the midst of the press and crush of life, sometimes one of my children will interrupt me with something that seems very urgent to them – and so irrelevant to me. “Look! An ant!” “Look! The sky is grey!” “Look! Mimi is outside walking her cat! That man just ran by without a shirt on! That fat squirrel is sleeping on the picnic table! LOOK!” Or I will be trying to concentrate so hard on something so important and one of them will just burst out singing for no apparent reason, in words he insists are the right ones: “I hope! I hope! It’s off to work I go!” And it is so loud! And it is so joyful. And it is like they are responding to the music underneath everything, and picking up with a tune of their own in response. And I have a choice with how I respond. I can sigh with impatience, answer with gruff tones, ignore the ant, the squirrel, the tree, and the child, respond in a distracted, “Yes I see,” when I definitely do not. And I certainly have done all of those things. Or I can slow down. Wake up. Pay attention. Listen for God’s music. And be drawn back to wonder, and to praise.

When life has choked out your own poetry and music and praise, find a child. That child might teach you how to see again. And how to sing. Maybe the child you need to find is the one inside you. Jesus once said, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:15). I think by “receiving the kingdom of God as a little child,” this is part of what he meant – the opening of ourselves to the wonder and joy of the moment. Finding our way back to simplicity and a sense of the adventure and magic that lurks in each new day. Getting outside and letting ourselves be schooled in the ways of praise by the dragonfly and the maple leaf, the raindrop and the bullfrog. There is a revolutionary fellowship of praise, right outside our door – can we look up from our computers for a few minutes to really see it, and to participate with it in responding to the God behind it all?

Every day, we have the chance to choose: will I treat this day and its obligations as something to be gotten through? Will I treat people as interruptions, or burdens? Will I ignore anything that has no utilitarian purpose for me? Or, will I give myself to this day and its obligations? Will I treat people as holy, as God-given opportunities to love and to give? Will I treat creation as holy, as kindred spirit and kind tutor in the art of praise? Will I be on the look-out for the tiny shimmering clues to God’s goodness? Will I be listening for the gorgeous notes of God’s great music?

Can you see it? Can you hear it? Can you lift your voice in chorus with brother sun and sister moon? Can your life burn and glow like they do, in praise of the God who created and still creates? The animals, the trees, the skies, the earth, the children, they all give their witness to God’s goodness and truth, and in bearing their witness, they also give their praise. They are playing their music. God is playing, too. Now, what about you?


*Gene Weingarten. Pearls Before Breakfast.