Man-up and Sing to Your Children

Nathan Fittje • May 06, 2022

Where in the American story did we decide that singing together is not a manly pursuit? Through much of history, where men gathered together, they sang songs together. I’ll give you a few examples.

Consider seafaring men of all types: fishermen, pirates, sailors, etc. If you’ve ever caught an episode of Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch”, it becomes clear pretty quickly that commercial fishing is not job for the weak or the weak hearted. Statistically, it’s one of the deadliest jobs out there with a fatality rate far higher than most occupations.

Likewise, I’ll wager that when you conjure an image of a pirate and sailor, you’ll picture someone that could hardly be described as effete, unless you’re thinking of more contemporary examples like Jack Sparrow or the Village People. Think Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, Popeye, or any depiction of a tattooed WWII sailor. If you’re having trouble imagining it, here’s a depiction of Blackbeard.

And yet all of these occupations have such a strong tradition of singing together, their style of singing was given its own name – the sea chanty (shan-tee). In the sea chanty, men are generally encouraging each other to keep up a steady pace of work, reminding each other what they’re working for, or generally just lifting each other’s spirits with a story, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, sometimes of bravery and boldness. Take a moment to listen to this relatively contemporary chanty below titled “Keep Hauling” by Port Isaac Fisherman’s Friends. Though there are clips from the movie (currently on Netflix if you’re inclined) telling the group’s story, you’ll spot more than a few hard-bitten, sea-faring faces singing in the video, and no, those aren’t just stand ins that look the part. They’re the ones actually singing.

Though there are quite a number of groups that sing chanties, some more traditional than these, here’s one more from the same group, a favorite of mine, showing the group’s ability to sing harmony.

It’s not just men of the sea that have sung during their endeavors. Consider the men of WW I who sang “Over hill, over dale” from the song “U.S. Field Artillery March” as they went to war and surely many more. If you like, there are examples from fiction such as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings singing the oath of his great-grandfather as he is crowned king if Gondor, or the dwarves from The Hobbit singing of their long lost home that they hope to reclaim.

The hymns of the church serve much the same function as these examples above. They are the songs passed down to us from our forebears that tell the story of our faith. Sometimes they inspire sorrow (LSB 450 “O Sacred Head Now Wounded”). Other times, they encourage us to keep up our steady pace of labor (LSB 668 “Rise! To Arms! With Prayer Employ You” or LSB 656 “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”). Still others speak of great and bold deeds of the past both by our Lord and others of the faith (LSB 454 “Sing, My Tongue, the Glorious Battle” and LSB 517 and 518 “By All Your Saints in Warfare”). Yet more are exuberant shouts of joy and praise (LSB 457 “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” and LSB 941 “We Praise You and Acknowledge You, O God”). A vast majority of them in our hymnal are written in a robust four-part harmony just like the examples above.

So, my first exhortation is this. Men, the hymns are not just nice songs to sing in the midst of the service just because. They’re our battle anthems through this vale of tears. Use them to encourage each other against the assault of our foes. Lift each other’s spirits and to preach the word to one another with them.

Now before moving onto my next point, I’ll address a few practical matters. First, the melodies of most hymns were written with Sopranos (high women’s voices) in mind. If you have trouble hitting some of those high notes, or even some of the low notes, it’s just because the melody wasn’t written for you. If you need to drop out for a moment or suddenly sing a lot lower (to hit the high notes) or higher (to hit the low notes) than you have been, there’s no shame in it. You could also learn to sing harmony (those notes below the words) which were written with you in mind. In all fairness, I know that’s pretty next level for most folks these days.

Second, if you’ve ever uttered the words “I don’t sing” or “You don’t want me to sing” and you made that decision in high school, you frankly don’t know whether or not you can actually sing. Give it another shot. Don’t worry if it doesn’t come out perfect the first time. Music and singing take practice like anything. You wouldn’t tell your son to give up football if his first throw wasn’t a perfect 40-yard spiral or give up on basketball if he didn’t sink his first shot on the goal with nothing but net from the three-point line. If nothing else, scripture tells us to make a joyful sound. It doesn’t specify that it has to be good. Get over yourself and do it.

My second exhortation is a refinement of the first. Man up and sing to your family, especially your children. My point here is best demonstrated in two personal anecdotes from earlier this year. If you haven’t already, go back up and listen to “Keep Hauling” up above. I played this song for my students in music class this year when we were discussing various kinds of folk music. In the course of playing it, one of the boys came up to me and let me know that another boy was crying. I went and checked on the boy who was now weeping. He told me that the song was a favorite of his recently deceased grandpa. There’s nothing wrong with having a favorite secular song, but imagine now the profound effect on the faith of your sons and grandsons if they knew what your favorite hymn was. Would they not exclaim all the louder “Thy strong word doth cleave the darkness” or “Built on the Rock the Church shall stand” to their own sons and grandsons?

The next anecdote took place at 2021 Good Shepherd Institute Conference at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne. At this annual conference, pastors and church musicians get together and discuss how to lead, preach to, and teach congregations. One of the events that takes place during the course of this conference is a hymn festival at the seminary chapel. Now as an entire group of pastors and church musicians is wont to do, this crew of mostly men nearly shakes the rafters with their bold confessions in song. At the end of this festival, one of the two women sitting in front of me turned around and exclaimed to me, “All these male voices! Is this a church I can join?” Although I had to disappoint her in explaining that the chapel does not host its own congregation, her reaction is telling. This woman was ready to leave her current congregation just so she could hear men boldly singing their confession of faith. I doubt she is alone in her sentiment.

Where Christians gather together, where Christian men gather together, they sing. As Psalm 22 encourages (paraphrased), tell of His praise in the midst of the congregation. We shall serve him and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn. When the psalmist wrote those words, he was writing of you and your children, Christian. Now do it.

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A Hymnal? In my Home?

By Cantor Fittje • 22 Sep, 2021

It’s a Better Idea Than You Might Think

Pastor Fittje's Sermon - All Saints Day 11•6•16

By Amanda Schnelle • 22 Jan, 2017

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from the Lord Christ as we observe All Saints Day. This last Monday and Tuesday, Pastor Griffin and I were at the annual conference for all the Lutheran Pastors of the Missouri District of the LCMS. This year the conference topic was marriage, and golly Ned was it depressing! We spent the whole first day talking about the reality of homosexual marriage and how it will impact the Church if we keep preaching that it’s sinful. In the words of our presenters ours schools will close, we’ll lose tax exempt status, and our pastors will get thrown in jail. Talk about uplifting! The second day wasn’t much better. We talked about the sin of cohabitation. And while we reaffirmed the need to confront people who are sexually active and living together without being married, we also acknowledged will probably lose members over it leading to confrontation and conflict in the ministry. Boy! I tell you, as I left there I was in mourning! Perhaps, you grieve in the same way. You look out in the world and it pains you that so many stand opposed to God’s will. And it doesn’t just have to be the 6th commandment. It’s the lack of mercy toward the defenseless like Syrian refugees or unborn babies. It’s the destruction people invite into their lives through substance abuse. It’s wanton devastation of an individual’s reputation through gossip. It’s the anger and lack of forgiveness that vomits out of a disciple’s heart. It’s the worship of false deities like entertainment or money. It’s the apathy over worshipping the true God. You know. It doesn’t even have to be sin. It could just be the sight of those with broken bodies or minds. Whatever it may be, it just makes your heart heavy. And then you gaze inwardly, and you realize you’re no better off. No matter how hard you work at it, you just can’t seem to get it together. We seem to be forever fraught with weakness, limitation, and sin. We are not what we are supposed to be as Jesus’ disciples, as parents, as children, as whatever, and it seems out of reach. What is wrong with me? So not only does the world make us grieve, but so also we mourn over what’s going on in here, in our hearts. So, life pains us, but life ends. And that makes us mourn, too! As we observe All Saints day, we read the names of those who passed away this year. As we did that our sadness renews that death has stolen our future with our loved one. Now, it may even be that you didn’t personally know those people, but I guarantee the bell toll reminds you of a name that you once saw on the All Saints list in years past, and you feel that hitch in your throat and the wetness on the corner of your eyes. Yes, life at times grieves us, but even though life has its share of sadness, the end of life, death, grieves us even more. We mourn. We mourn, because there’s this tug in the back of our minds and in the innermost recesses of our souls that remembers what once was and no longer is. We know that the world isn’t supposed to be like this. We know that life shouldn’t cause us such grief, and we know that it should not end in death, and so we mourn. In the tear streaked face of our grief Jesus gives one of the most glorious promises in all of scripture. It’s one of the beatitudes. And it is pure good news. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” At first glance, this seems about as obscene as high fiving people at a funeral, because they’re sad. Still, we are Jesus’ disciples, and so first and foremost we should believe these words, for the sole reason that He said them. We allow these words to shape our reality and not our own experiences. And according to Jesus, it’s actually a good thing you mourn. But this is not so because you mourn. No, it’s a good thing, because you will be comforted. And God is the one who will do it. In fact, he has and he will. He has brought us comfort in his Son. Jesus has taken all of our grief, our mourning into himself. As Isaiah prophesied, “Surely he has borne our grief and carried our sorrows.” He has taken all of that “it shouldn’t be like this” stuff and conquered it in the cross. He defeated it with his death. There at the cross, he completed what he had been doing throughout his ministry. As he forgave sins, healed the diseased, blind, and lame, as he cast out demons, as he preached the Gospel, as he died, he was making the world the way it should be. So, you see you are not wrong to mourn, life isn’t supposed to be this way. But Jesus has taken care of it. So, although you mourn over life, it won’t always be like this. It will be okay. That’s the comfort that the Gospel gives us in this life, this very day. The Gospel is the absolution, and the comfort that you don’t have to be a perfect person, because Christ was. The Gospel is the bread and wine as a foretaste of the feast to come, and the assurance that a better world is on its way. The Gospel is the peace that allows us to grieve in hope that those who died with faith in Christ are resting with him in heaven. No, this Gospel doesn’t take away the hurt, but it makes it so that you can endure it. Now, please don’t think that good Christians should walk around mopey and depressed all day. No, truly we should find joy in this life. God has blessed us with many excellent things in this life that we should take pleasure in. We should have fun. So, following Luther’s advice in his sermon on this text, we should especially do so, when we mourn over the state of the world, lest we become overwhelmed with sorrow and despair. At the same time, this is only temporary. Our true comfort in this life comes from the Gospel. But even that would be meaningless, if it were to always stay this way. It actually comforts us to hear that it will be okay, only because it actually will be one day. And that is our ultimate comfort. This is more than just kind sentiments, but God the Father will do something about the source of our grief. This is to say, He will make what Jesus accomplished on the cross reality. It’s like the Psalm says weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning. And when that Morning dawns, the King of glory will come to us, and he will comfort us. On that Day, the world will no longer resist him, but confess Jesus to be Lord to the glory of the Father. On that Day, He will cure our warring madness, so that heart and mind fully seeks His will. On that Day, he bid the people that we named earlier, Harold Ray, Mutt, Marvin, and all the others to rise to eternal life. Whatever it is that makes you mourn and think, “It should not be this way,” on that day Jesus will give your comfort. That’s our focus for All Saints day. It’s why we wear the white of the Easter season. We remind ourselves that all those whom the Holy Spirit has made holy through the Gospel, all saints, will rise from the dead just as Christ did to live in the new creation set free from its bondage to sin and destruction. And when that’s our future, blessed are you who mourn. Blessed are you who realize that this isn’t the way the world is supposed to be, but that it’s broken. Blessed are you who look to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to do something about it in the cross and empty tomb. Blessed are you, for you will be comforted. Amen.