As I went about the process of selecting a biblical text for this service, I was struck by the fact that, for all the emphasis in our Congregational tradition on preaching and the spoken Word, week in and week out it is music that gets the last word. Each worship service ends with a sung response to the words of the benediction; each service comes to a close with a postlude on either the pipe organ or the piano.

The Book of Psalms is composed of 150 different psalms, all of which in ancient times would have been sung in worship. Indeed, that is how the early Puritans heard the psalms – they were the original hymn book of our spiritual ancestors. And so it is perhaps not surprising that the Book of Psalms comes to a close with this one, Psalm 150, which lifts up music and its instruments as a means of praising God.

I suspect most of you have an inkling at least of the importance of music in your own lives. Many of you can remember your joy when you came to own your first record player – the one that played Benny Goodman on vinyl at 78 rpm, or the Monkeys on those 45s with the fat hole for the big spindle, or that stereo with really big speakers that you took to college with you, or, for the younger generation, that first IPod.

Maybe you fell in love as you danced to what you later called “our song”: “As Time Goes By”, or “Are the Stars Out Tonight?”, or “Moon River,” or even, the prom favorite of my generation, “Stairway to Heaven.”

Few among us fail to listen to music in our cars, jumping from one preprogrammed station to another to dodge the incessant commercials.

At our house, with four young ones, the dinner hour, at the end of a long day, can tend to be difficult, and so once we are done eating we often put on a CD, maybe some dance tunes from Shakira or some rollicking rock ‘n roll from Billy Idol, and everyone dances together as we clear the table and do the dishes. The music lifts us out of ourselves and whatever funk we’ve fallen into, and we find that the music binds us together.

In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare tells us

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is mov’d with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; Let no such man be trusted.

Beware, Shakespeare warns us, of the man or woman who has no place in their soul for music.

Music is at the core of worship for most of us in a similar manner. The significance of music in the life of the church has been described in many ways.

It is an instrument of community – weaving together and binding together the fellowship of the church.

It is the thread which pulls together an integrated service of worship. It is a pathway to the presence of God, opening us up in ways that words alone cannot, bypassing our cognitive functions and connecting with the feeling aspect of our soul.

And it is a vehicle which helps us experience transcendence in our worship, which moves us to a different plane.

Rabbi Wolfe Kelman wrote about this power of music: “I participated in the Alabama Civil Rights march …. Martin Luther King walked in front of me. As we crossed the bridge to Selma, we burst into song. At that moment, we felt the power of all the exoduses in human experience over the past 4000 years. We felt connected in song to the transcendental. We felt triumph and celebration. We felt that things change for the good and nothing is concealed forever. Meaning and purpose and mission were beyond exact words: meaning was the song, the moment of overwhelming spiritual fulfillment.”

You likely have experienced this power of music in worship. Perhaps it was when tears unexpectedly flowed as we gathered around a beloved church member for a blessing as they prepared to leave us to move to be closer to their children, and we sang that last verse of “Blest Be The Tie That Binds”. Perhaps it was an anthem that roused and invigorated you, an organ postlude which offered consolation and strength for the day ahead, or a jazzy piano piece that set your toes a-tapping and spirits soaring.

Four years ago – it was April 24, 2005, and hard to believe it has been so long -- we dedicated a pipe organ which is an amazing feat of musical engineering and craftsmanship, and which has everything one might need to produce wonderful music both for our worship together and for community events here in this ancient and storied Meetinghouse. And today, we dedicated a new sanctuary piano, a “studio grand”, one that will produce wonderful music in its own right for worship and community events for decades to come.

So let the music continue! Let us, in our worship here on Sundays, in our mission work throughout the world, and in the daily living of our lives, praise the Lord. Praise God with trumpet sound; praise God with lute and harp! Praise God with tambourine and dance; praise God with keys of ebony and ivory! Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Amen.