Sermon Notes — April 13, 2025
Luke 19:28-40
Soul Music
Rev. Terry Carty
April 13, 2025
“Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
ROCK MUSIC! Right? Yes, it’s right there in the Bible!
Today I continue with our series Soul Food – things that nourish our soul. Music is a primary expression of the soul, but it can also feed our soul.
One of the most enduring genres of music today is Soul Music. It began during the 1950’s and 60’s and has profoundly influenced rock music. Soul has its roots in African-American gospel music, rhythm & blues, and jazz. Soul Music was popularized by Motown Records in Detroit.
My truck radio has one of the buttons set to SiriusXM: Smokey Robinson’s Soul Town. I often enjoy the Soul Music part of my soundtrack of life. Wilson Picket, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips. They are all there as part of the soundtrack of my life. They take me back to times in my life, usually good times, but moments I have sometimes forgotten until a particular tune comes along. Johnny Mathis’ romantic soul was the ‘make out’ music of my high school years. Jerry Butler and James Brown were favorites at my college frat house parties. All good memories for me, and the music makes me happy.
Soul Music is only one cornerstone of the soundtrack of my life.
I have 4,400 songs in my iTunes collection and many boxes of CD’s that I have never added. My soundtrack includes genres everywhere from classical to Caribbean Dub. Many of these songs run through my life like a movie soundtrack, helping me to retain memories.
I am going to guess that each of you has a soundtrack of your life too, whether you are aware of it or not. Your soundtrack probably includes songs that have been playing at meaningful times during your life.
Your soundtrack of life may include categories that you have never realized you have:
Lullabies – where we start out in life
Children’s songs – Disney has certainly influenced that
Songs to Dance to
Songs of your rebellious years
Love songs
Sad songs
Workout songs
Songs that describe how you feel
And maybe your soundtrack includes some Songs of worship.
I would say that your soundtrack of life is your personal Soul Music. The songs sometimes go deep for you.
The Soul Music I want to lift up today is what I call Songs of Worship. This is music that can provide Soul Food that helps nourish your soul.
One of the first things I was taught to do when I got my Third Grade Bible was to open the Bible to the middle where I would find the Book of Psalms – the songbook of the Hebrew Temple. We learned that the psalms were written over a period of 500 years and incorporated into a song book of sorts after the Temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt. The Psalms are ‘Soul Music’ of the Jewish people.
When we read the Psalms, we are reading the deepest prayers sung in the Temple and synagogues. We find their praise music, their thanksgiving, their sorrows, their confessions, and affirmations of their faith. It’s all there in the middle of our Bibles.
Early Christian worship also included singing the Psalms and other songs about their theology. Most could not read, but they sang their souls and passed along the faith to new generations in lyric.
Worship music took a hard hit in favor of a lot of spoken liturgy and serious talk during worship throughout the dark ages. That really was the time “the music died.”
It began to return in European Protestant worship during the Reformation. The evangelical revival of the mid-18th century under John and Charles Wesley, (founders of Methodism) finally established worship hymns in England and America. Charles Wesley wrote 6,500 hymns songs of grace and salvation. John Wesley’s translations introduced many of the finest German hymns. The Methodists had been singing hymns over 80 years before The Church of England accepted hymn singing officially only in 1820
(Show Ebenezer’s Methodist Hymn Book closed.)
This is the Methodist Hymn Book that Ebenezer Methodist Church sings from in Nassau Bahamas. Their first minister was from England and appointed there by Thomas Coke in 1801. Their current hymn book was originally printed in 1933. To their recollection, the last time they got a new printing of this hymnal was in the 1960’s after which the printing plates were destroyed. Since that time, Ebenezer has been having the edges trimmed and new covers put on.
(Show Ebenezer’s Methodist Hymn Book opened)
This book contains the Soul Music of that congregation. There are only the words. They know all the tunes. For many of the members there, it represents the majority of their soundtrack of life. They live the theology contained in these 984 hymns. When I asked one night during Bible study about what one book they would want to have if stranded on an island, two said the Bible and the other 48 agreed that it was their beloved hymnal. It is their Soul Music.
Ask yourself, what is playing in your soundtrack of life these days? Are you choosing what plays? Or just responding to your past?
What do you listen to when you choose? How does it make you feel? Does it bless your soul? Which songs or hymns do we sing in worship that really help you worship? I highly recommend nourishing your soul by choosing to listen to some music of worship during other days besides Sunday.
On every Sunday as I prepare for and drive to worship, I listen to a playlist that includes Hymns of our theology and Songs of Praise and Worship – it is the part of my life’s soundtrack that really feeds me. It has some hymns set to the British tunes that I learned to love in the Bahamas. It has choirs singing other favorite hymns. It has a lot of Contemporary Christian songs and plenty of music we sang with youth groups and in youth camps over the years. It energizes my soul and puts me in a frame of mind to truly worship.
You probably don’t have a collection of this kind of songs, but I would recommend Christian radio or streaming Christian and worship music. It is inspirational and nourishes your soul. You would probably not make it your constant musical diet, but it may become a Soul Food part of your soundtrack of life.
How to sing along with your Soul Music soundtrack?
Here’s advice from John Wesley himself. It is in the front of your hymnal page Roman numeral vii. Any time you forget how to sing in church along with your favorite Contemporary Christian song, just take a look and remind yourself. Briefly it says, don’t let slight weariness hinder you,
Beware of singing as if you were half dead or asleep,
Do not bawl so as to destroy the harmony, and
Finally, have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing God more than yourself or any other creature.)
One last thing as we come to the end of our Palm Sunday worship. Many Christians are in church worship for Palm Sunday and then they come back again to celebrate the resurrection on the next Sunday which is Easter. Today is Palm Sunday … but it is also Passion Sunday. After Jesus’ “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem, he experienced most horrific torture and death. Holy Week studies and special worship services take us through the passion of Christ.
As Craig reminded us in his newsletter article this week, it has long been said in the church, there is no way to the empty tomb, except by way of the cross.
As for me, I participate in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday worships. But also, my soundtrack for Holy Week is the music from “Jesus Christ Superstar. “ It helps me walk through that last week with those who followed Jesus. And it leads me emotionally to experience Maundy Thursday and the horror of Good Friday.
I encourage you to be fed by observing this week of Jesus’ life – walk the story walk that April has set up – by attending worship, but also by listening to, and maybe singing with, your own Soul Music of the faith.
Prayer
Lord, give us this day our daily bread that lets our hearts sing. Help us find the means to express our loves, our likes, our hates, our fears, and explore the depths of our joys, our sorrows, our hopes, our dreams. Lord, feed our souls as we continue our journey with Jesus. Amen.
Your former pastor Vin Walkup’s Benediction
Christ was born into the world with a song of love. He lived, He taught, He preached, He healed – always with a song of love. He died an agonizing death on a horrible and ugly cross. But when He died, He died with a song of love. On the first day of the week He arose, but He arose in silence. If His song of love is to go on, we must do its singing. As you go … may you go with Christ’s song of love. Amen.