Music stops time. But music also keeps time. ~ Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson

The one who sings prays twice. ~ Augustine of Hippo

Mealtime

When our family convenes at table for dinner, we often invite our kids to do the praying.

We’ve done this since they were little; we’d herd them into the dining room, enforce a ceasefire to any sibling violence, and ask for a volunteer to bless the meal. Our daughter Rae’s invocation became a family favorite for its simplicity: “Jesus. . . Food. . . Thank you. . . Amen.”

This is, more or less, what Christians do when we gather at our Table, too — and I’ve had this mealtime moment on my mind as the Church comes to World Communion Sunday this weekend. 

The Thank-You Song

Christianity, of course, grew out of Judaism, and our practice of the Lord’s Table is rooted in the Jewish Passover meal, in which all gathered would eat and drink God’s mighty Exodus acts. The Passover included food and wine, praying and singing — especially of the “Hallel” psalms. As Christian communities multiplied across the Roman world, they developed their own mealtime prayer, variously called the “communion prayer,” the “Great Thanksgiving,” or the “eucharistic prayer” — literally, the “thank-you prayer.”

Praying, and especially singing, that ancient blessing has shaped a deep groove in my soul over my last last decade and a half as a pastor. The church I planted in downtown Philadelphia prayed it weekly at the Table. While a student at Western Theological Seminary, I encountered a musical version of the Great Thanksgiving that Ron Rienstra arranged, and I was so struck by it that I had our musicians back in Philadelphia develop our own version of the song.

When I came to the church I serve now, one of the first significant changes I made was to begin weekly celebration of Holy Communion, and we included the Great Thanksgiving in our liturgy. For our services with classical music, we’ve sung a traditional choir-and-organ arrangement for several of its movements. And this Sunday, the band for our modern-music service will debut a sung version they’ve been working on for some time. 

Praying Twice

I am in no way a musician. My children like to tell me that when I sing, I sound to them like an old sea captain. And yet, singing the Great Thanksgiving, week by week over these years, has formed me in a deep way. Music has that power: the rare capacity to articulate what we can’t simply say. 

In his memoir Mo Meta Blues, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, co-founder of The Roots and an award-winning producer, filmmaker, and writer, muses on the power of music in his life: “Music has the power to stop time. When I listen to songs, I’m transported back to the moment of their birth, which is sometimes even before the moment of my birth. . . Music has the power to stop time. But music also keeps time.” Across time and culture, when human beings are sad or celebrating, angry or troubled or joyful, we sing. This, I think, is why Augustine of Hippo claims that “the one who sings prays twice.”

When I sing this prayer, I encounter the mystery of God. The communion prayer is more a framework than a fixed, rote piece. But generally, the prayer praises the Father and the Son, and invokes the work of the Spirit. When the church gathers at the Table and we sing our thanksgiving, we’re lifted up into the mystery of the Holy Trinity. 

As I join my own tone-deaf voice to the wider community, I experience what the Heidelberg Catechism names: that at the Table, we are

united more and more to [Christ’s] blessed body by the Holy Spirit dwelling both in Christ and in us that, although he is in heaven and we are on earth, we are nevertheless flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, always living and being governed by one Spirit, as the members of our bodies are governed by one soul. (Q/A 76).

The cadences of the Great Thanksgiving also join all gathered to the story of God. The rhythm of the communion prayer remembers God’s generating work in creation, thanks God for the dying and rising of Christ, and looks for God’s final rescue. As one of the earliest versions of this prayer puts it:

As this fragment of bread was scattered upon the mountains 
and was gathered to become one, 
So may your church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.

Until that great Day, I’ll sing with the rest of the sinners and saints, week by week, mostly off-key: Jesus. . .Food. . . Thank You. . . Amen.