Marvelous! Sing a New Song

Have you ever been so joyful you just had to sing out? Or maybe you are a whistler: when you are really happy, you just have to whistle a tune. Some of the psalms foster such praise when they call on all creation to extol joyously the wonders of God’s actions. We can look now at just three verses of the psalm assigned for the Sixth Sunday of Easter:

Psalm 98

1 Sing to the Lord a new song, *
for he has done marvelous things.

5 Shout with joy to the Lord, all you lands; *
lift up your voice, rejoice, and sing.

6 Sing to the Lord with the harp, *
with the harp and the voice of song.

The psalmist is a music leader, recruiting members of a band. Like Professor Harold Hill in “The Music Man,” minus the part about hustling cash from the good townsfolk, the psalmist is hoping many people and other creatures will join in. In just the above verses, the call is out to the populations of all the lands, using their voices and their harps. In other verses of the psalm, the appeal is for people to shout, trumpets to sound out, the sea to make a noise, and the sea creatures too. The rivers are to clap and the hills to ring out. This conductor is exuberantly pulling together a global, maybe even a cosmic orchestra. The Creator is to be honored to the fullest measure for marvelous things.

One of the most fun hymns in our hymnal is a favorite in some Episcopal Schools. It plays off this and psalms like it. It goes further to images of modern society so even instruments of science and the building of urban centers are invited to join in the new song of praise to God. The text by Herbert F Brokering, the tune by David N. Johnson, look over the many marvelous stanzas of our Hymn 412:

Earth and all stars, loud rushing planets, sing to the Lord a new song!
O victory, loud shouting army, sing to the Lord a new song!