Keyla Spahr's chapel sermon

This sermon was preached in chapel services at Grand View University on October 18, 2011, by senior Theatre and Music major Keyla Spahr.
Hi there, if you hadn’t looked down at your bulletin because you were so transfixed by the beautiful song you just heard, I am Keyla Spahr, a senior here at Grand View, double majoring in Theatre Arts and Music. When Dr. Jones asked me this summer to give a sermon in the fall, I was terrified. I was terrified when I read the bulletin last week saying I was preaching today. I was terrified yesterday. In theatre, I am someone else, I can perform the most extreme things, while in here, I’m just Keyla. You see me, not the role I have been taught to play. So I stand before you vulnerable, hoping God speaks to you through my words here today. So here it goes.

The scripture you just heard from Psalm 96 is one I relate to on a very deep level. In May of my sophomore year here, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to travel to Italy and Greece for a May term study abroad trip. While in Greece, our group traveled to many places, like the Acropolis, Naufpleon, the original capitol of Greece, and my favorite of the entire trip, and one of my favorite things I have seen in my lifetime so far, Theatre Epidaurus. This is the most intact theatre in the entire ancient world. I had the exciting chance to be able to perform a monologue and a song in this theatre. The second I stood on the stone piece center stage, I sang my first note, the entire place quieted, and I felt the note hit me. Like punch me right in the face. The acoustics were the best I have ever experienced. I kept singing, as tears rolled down my face, teachers and peers on the trip watching me on my right all the way up at the top of the stone seats, not knowing what was happening to me. On my left were people from a different tour group who barely spoke English. I felt each person breathing with me, seeing what I was seeing, feeling the warm Grecian wind on my back as I sang stronger and stronger. As I reached my final note I held onto it, trying so hard to not forget the moment that I had just had with God. Luckily, when I let go, the memory was still there.

Have you ever had one of those moments, where in everything, God breaks down any wall you could have possibly put up between yourself and Him? He brought me from a world I had always known into a world I had never experienced outside of a textbook. God was in the ancient world of Greece and of the Scriptures just as he is in our present and our future.

Music and Christ has always been that thing I can turn to when the world turns it’s back on me. Truthfully, it’s Christ alone that can heal me in my most awful times when even the songs seem to have no words. Christ has never abandoned. Just as Joseph and Moses were carried in their times of need, God has carried me, given me this wonderful gift to make music and to share music with others. God has brought us into a world that is much different than music and theatre in Ancient Greece performing four hour long tragedies, but a world where we Sing Unto the Lord a New Song.

Sure, I have a lot of decisions ahead of me, grad school, jobs… I have no idea what my new song will be, but I do know that Christ will find a way to let me know I am doing the right thing. Whether it be tears streaming down my face as I sing in front of 25 people from Grand View that didn’t even know my name before the trip and 50 people who don’t even have a clue what words I’m even saying, or some small little sign that will keep me guided, Music and Christ will never fail to keep me going.

I am going to read you the translation of the piece Kantorei sang, Cantate Domino.

O Sing to the Lord a new song,
sing and give praise to his name,
for he has done marvelous deeds.
Sing and exult and praise Him
with harp and the sound of psalms,
for he has done marvelous deeds.

Sound familiar?

So I ask you, what are your old songs, your times that you have experienced God so powerfully that it felt as if He hit you like a ton of bricks? Perhaps, for you guys, it was Junction City, Oregon. I know I felt something more with us that night. Where are the places that Christ sings when you have no words? What are your new songs God is leading you to? The times that haven’t happened yet? Where can you seek God so in turn he may seek you and teach you your new song? I pray that you may hear the songs of the past and hear your own song that Christ is teaching you. Amen.