You really should try it sometime. Oh ‘Let the organ thunder’ and ‘Oh for a thousand tongues’. Get yourself into a worship space where there are a thousand tongues and get lost in wonder love and praise. I’ve worshipped in Jerusalem, St James’ Cathedral, where the clerical choir sang in armenian and I hadn’t a clue, but it was beautiful, if, for me quite passive. And I’ve tried to sing in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre when I got mistaken for an italian and found myself swept off into their service. And I’ve sung in hebrew because the alongside the projected hebrew script they put a transliterated version, as well as a translation. And we have worshipped in Scotland, Iona, where the Lord’s Prayer was a wonderful cacophany of each praying the prayer that Jesus had taught them in their mother tongue. All gorgeous and to be highly recommended but this is different, worshipping with the thousands.
I’ve come to New Wine. Its a gathering of about 13,000 people, this week (next week perhaps the same again) who are mostly camping on Kent’s County Showground. That’s a lot of showers and toilets to organise and now I have more sympathy for Moses leading 600,000 across the desert. We’re camping so of course I’m awake about 5.30am and ready for the first bible teaching session at 7.15am, and then worship in the big top at 9.15am. It must seat something close to 3000 people surely. Its huge. Others have gone to the Youth venue, the Children’s marquees, and other arenas.
The band strike up a familiar song, everyone joins in, before moving to an unfamiliar song before coming back to another familiar song. Its a winning formula because you know that the unknown song will get song more and more through the week. Anyway, the band are playing so loudly you can’t really tell that no one else knows it and in no time at all you’ve got the hang of it and the band have come back to another familiar song with a familiar tune. I smile when they start up a loud drum beat to ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow‘. The crowd contain plenty of old people like me who smile and are glad to see golden-oldies remembered, repurposed and given new life. ‘Praise Him all creatures here below‘. Given that we’re all camping it is remarkable that we dont smell worse. A thousand are clapping, and another thousand have their hands raised. ‘Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts‘. And a thousand and more are lost in worship, in praise, and dancing as if no one is watching. ‘Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost‘.
And then into a new song. But. The Sound gives out. They did this yesterday deliberately so that we as a crowd/congregation sang the worship song home. Gorgeous. You see on the one hand it is fabulous to sing in a setting where no matter how loud your neighbour sings you really can’t hear her. It liberates you to open your lungs and the sheer process of that sort of worship lifts the spirit, freed from concern over tempo or tune this is getting lost in wonder love and praise. You can’t help but smile, and draw close to God, and remember again His presence close to you.
Only this time when the sound gives out its not deliberate, but accidental, a blip. We see the tech saints hurrying back and forth, the band play on and the subtitles appear on the screen but this is a new song to me so I’m having to lip read from a distance. At last the band stop, there’s a moment of quiet as they whisper to each other about what to do and then ‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound’ builds up from the thousands, the tech saints leap on to this and bring up the words before we get to the second verse and now this is worship, another form of worship, where the forgiving congregation dont wait for it all to be nice and tidy, they get on with doing what we have come to do – to glorify God with our hearts and lungs. The tech saints are glorifying God with their set of skills, and the thousands are leading the band in worship. Its humbling. Each of our voices are suddenly necessary, even if we are just a small pipe in this Congregational organ. And the sound rises like a wave, and lifts the heart, and with each breath we are filled with joy and hope and love.
The final book of the bible, Revelation, gives us a picture of heavenly worship, thousands upon thousands, so perhaps our worship is actually something that is a bit like that. For we know that the angels are caught up in worship in heaven (7.11), so perhaps we might look at our worship today through that lens, of knowing that no matter what noise our collective human lungs are making, that the angels are adding their songs to our glorifying of God.
(Photo is of some of the thousands and in the distance the stage (dais) where the band is).