To receive these posts by email each Monday, sign up.
For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.
There’s nothing better than receiving an invitation to join the choir.
The director sees you singing in the congregation or hears you humming in the hallway and encourages you to come and sit in for rehearsal. It is in rehearsal that you find you have a place among the gathered voices. There are high voices and low voices. There are booming voices and quieter voices.
The conductor stands out front, arms in position, and draws out a sound that is rounded, layered, textured, and beautiful. The sound may not be perfect, but it is a perfect cacophony of diverse sounds drawn together for one purpose: to bring glory and honor to the God of all creation.
The psalmist is putting out a clarion call for creation’s choir to join in one joyful sound. The members of the choir include heavenly hosts and the heavenly realm—planets, moons, sun, and stars. These choir members include water, vegetation, creatures of the air and sea, animals both great and small. And all of humanity has been enlisted to join, not just those with excellent voices. Humans from all walks of life, from every tribe and nation, from every background, race, creed, color, and orientation have been enlisted in this choir.
There are no star performers in this choir, and there are no soloists. In order to join, you simply give God praise. Praising God gives you a seat in creation’s choir.
This critical-mass choir is important. Creation's choir points to the truth that God created all of us and every living thing out of love. God created each member of the choir with an intention and a purpose. When I step out on my back porch, I feel like a member of creation’s choir. The trees give praise with branches lifted high. The birds who take flight and land on the bird feeder—adorned in red, brown, blue, gray, and yellow hues—give praise to God by their existence and by chirping their praise. My mother and I watch our foster dog praise God for a home found among strangers who are now friends. And I join them all, each morning, giving praise to our God who has called me, claimed me, created me, and named me.
Being a member of this choir reminds me that I belong to God and I belong to all members of the created order. As a living being, you are a member of creation’s chorus too.
And as choir members, we are called to care very deeply about the other choir members within our human family who don’t look like us, act like us, or think like us. We have been invited to care about our choir members who are part of the created order, for we have been called to watch over those choir members with love, stewardship, and justice. Each voice in this choir is vital. When we care for each other as we care for the world, our voices blend together in one glorious sound praising the God who made us.
God needs all the voices in the choir to proclaim what is true and right and good. By living and existing side by side, we proclaim that God is good, that there is none like our God, and that our lives are forever shaped by the intimate communion we share with our creator.
