So if worship is the peculiar, special thing we do, I wonder if the same holds for music. When outside of church do you sing? Driving, or in the shower? A fraternity party?

In Church, our singing is live, with our own voices, and for God. We wouldn’t switch on the stereo, look up and say “Hey God, listen to this.” We sing or play a guitar or piano, feebly or skillfully. With our mouths, lungs and hands we make a bodily, audible offering to God.

Solos can be lovely. I don’t sound all that fabulous singing “O Holy Night” alone. Yet for the most part, we sing with others. And we may well be grateful for the others singing with us. If you wander off key, or if you take a breath, somebody will cover for you, as you’ll cover for them. I’m part of something far larger than myself – which isn’t the case out in the world all that often.

I’m never sure how many, during our hymns, sing harmony lines – like I do. I love that: you sing one line, maybe the melody, but the basses and altos sing something different, but not different at all, in harmony, resulting in a beauty no single person can muster. That’s a lovely image of what the Body of Christ is all about. Not sameness, but what we do together joining in a higher unity and beauty.

Of course, there are old familiar hymns, tunes, lyrics, so many of which we know “by heart” – a phrase I love. You’ve memorized it, but the words and tune are mystically resident forever in your heart. Residents of nursing homes can’t recognize their most beloved ones, and can’t speak – but they rise in joy to an old familiar hymn. Amazing grace… indeed.

Something I dig in church music is the silence. There are rests, of course. “Amazing grace” – and you pause and take a breath before “How sweet the sound.” And those magical moments when the choral conductor raises his hands, but the choir hasn’t sung just yet. And then they finish on a soaring chord – and we are stunned into silence. It’s just me, but I find it more beautiful when we’re just quiet after a great hymn or choral anthem, instead of bursting into applause. I’m relishing the joy we just shared. I’m reminded God is listening, and that what a musician just did wasn’t a performance for our cheering, but was for God, and from all of us for God.

In worship, we also find ourselves standing in line – to receive Communion, or to have ashes crossed onto our foreheads. Lines out in the world are irritating. But in Church? So lovely. I laughed out loud recently reading Kathleen Norris’s comment on the time she visited a monastery and was asked to carry the Gospels into worship ahead of dozens of monks. “I was walking down the aisle, trying to keep to the deliberate pace the liturgy director had established… An incongruous thought danced through my mind: even Mae West never entered a room followed by this many men. I seemed incongruous too, someone with a checkered past…” That’s how we come: Just as I am.

And then Martin Sheen’s moving thought: “How can we understand these great mysteries of the church? I don’t have a cue. I just stand in line and say Here I am. I’m with them, the community of faith. This explains the mystery, all the love. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed, just watching people in line. It’s the most profound thing. You just surrender yourself to it.” I can’t think of any place besides Church where the goal is surrender instead of winning or surviving.