Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline is not the most intuitive choice for a hockey arena anthem. It goes over so well for one reason: audience
participation.
NEIL: “Sweet Caroline ...”
18,000 FANS: Bah bah bah
NEIL: “Good times never seem so good.”
18,000 FANS: So good, so good, so good!
You get the idea. It’s call and response, and people love to join in. The “response” part was not
built into Diamond’s original lyric; it seems to have evolved over the years as
fans got increasingly comfortable with the nightly routine of familiar tunes
and started improvising on them.
Primordial Expressions
Evolutionary psychologists would probably tell you the song is tapping into a primordial expression
of corporate identity, or some such blather. The Christian simply says, “Oh,
wait, I’m familiar with that kind of thing,” and promptly turns to
Psalm 136, where we find the phrase, “for his
steadfast love endures forever” repeated 26 times, once after every unique
line the psalmist has penned.
That’s call and response. The psalm was a public expression of praise that gave the listeners something with which to
engage and some part to play in acknowledging the truth of the psalmist’s assertions
about God:
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever.”
And so it goes. The psalm is about the
various ways in which God’s love is expressed, some of which have historically
not been all that wonderful for Israel’s enemies:
“To him who struck down great kings,
for his steadfast love endures forever …”
There was probably a moment or two when Og, king of Bashan took issue with the whole “love” angle in the process of being smitten to the last
man by Moses and his troops. To be fair, the subject of Psalm 136 is God’s
enduring love to Israel, not God’s enduring
love to the Amorites. Jehovah had already put up with several hundred years of
Canaanite child-sacrifices, giving these wicked nations ample opportunity to
repent. Only love does that, so perhaps the “response” part of the psalm is not
quite so odd after all.
More Than Verbal Punctuation
Responsive readings were common when I was growing up. They were printed in the backs of many older hymnbooks to allow
congregations to share in the experience of enjoying scripture aloud together
in a single English translation. It’s been many years since I was involved
in one — the last was at a high church funeral — and I think we
may have lost something in abandoning them.
Similarly, the word “amen” serves as more
than verbal punctuation when the people of God gather today.
Amen is one of those weird words that is exactly the same whether you’re looking through a Greek or Hebrew concordance. It’s of
Hebrew origin, and the Greeks picked it up and used it to mean the same thing. In
the King James it is often translated as “verily”. It is an affirmation of
agreement. It simply means “indeed”, “so be it” or “absolutely”. Sometimes it means Yeah,
me too. I feel that exact feeling, I think that exact thing and
I want exactly that to happen. “Amen” is convenient shorthand for all that.
Modern translations omit the amen from the last
verses of all four Gospels, where it resided for years. The earliest available
manuscripts do not have them. Still, one can easily imagine an enthusiastic
young scribe (or KJV translator) feeling the urge to add his own (rather unnecessary)
approval of the Holy Spirit’s various accounts of the life, death and
resurrection of the Son of God. If not quite a kosher practice, it is at least
understandable.
Amen with a Purpose
We probably don’t say it as much as we might these days, but we should: a resounding amen serves a multitude of purposes,
and sends its message in all sorts of directions.
It tells the speaker, “You’re getting this right. We got your back, bro. Keep going!” It tells Heaven, “We confirm with
our personal experience that the word of God is the eternal truth.” It tells
the passive Christian audience around us, “Get motivated about this! Why are
you just sitting there like nothing significant has been said?” It tells the
unsaved in the room that what has just been said is not merely some lame notion
cooked up by the guy on the platform; it is the word of God affirmed by the
people of God down through the centuries. And saying an amen reminds us that
when we express verbal agreement, there is a corresponding obligation to go home and live that truth out, otherwise we are hypocrites and culpable
for our false expression of consent.
Most of all, it reminds us that we are not
just a roomful of blessed individuals, but a redeemed, incorporated unity. We are one body
in Christ. When one of us speaks the truth, the rest of us affirm it.
Facts Worth Affirming
Saying an amen is not commanded of Christians, though we find the word plenty of times in the New Testament. What
sorts of circumstances warrant it? Well, Paul uses it to mark statements of
particular importance or universality. The Creator is blessed forever? Amen to that. The Christ is God over all, blessed forever? Amen to that. Such things are always worth affirming, though there are no hard rules
about this sort of thing. If it’s true, and important, and you’re feeling it
(or know you should be), I don’t think it hurts to let that fact be known.
On the other hand, we do find this caution to tongues-speakers in 1 Corinthians:
“How can anyone in the position of an outsider say ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying?”
What works about Sweet Caroline is that it says something relatable in a form with which everyone present is familiar. Try getting the same enthusiastic response at
a hockey game with sitar music and set of lyrics in Urdu. Never
going to happen.
Self-Expression or a Common Voice
The principle applies not just to tongues-speakers, but to others incapable of making themselves generally understood when they address the people of God. The church of God is not a place where my desire for self-expression ever trumps the purpose for which God has placed his people
together in one body: to build each other up in Christ. If we take the opportunities given to us to speak up publicly, we have an
obligation to do so with sufficient clarity to enable our fellow congregants to
either agree or disagree with us (obviously agreement is preferable, at least
when we’re speaking accurately). If we cannot at very least do that, we should take
the remedy Paul prescribes for tongues-speakers with no interpreter: “keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God.”
When we speak to one another and to God in church, we ought to do so with a common voice. Yet some of us are inarticulate. Some are still early in the learning process. Others have trouble distinguishing important ideas from less important ones, though they sure know the truth when they hear it. Still
others are forbidden from participating audibly in church. But we can all join together to express our agreement and unity in a single two-syllable sound: “Amen”.
A fairly important word, no?
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