A few weeks ago, while picking up their belongings in the choir room, a couple of choir members were expressing satisfaction over the worship service. "It seemed like Angels were singing right along with us" was one comment. I remarked in a somewhat off-handed way that nowhere in the Bible do angels ever actually sing. I have made this surprising statement since Bible school more than 20 years ago - where I looked up every reference to cherubim, seraphim, satan, lucifer and angels in my giant Strongs Concordance (which I would often lug to the cafateria in a sort of Bible school homage to my future geekiness). I did it to prove a point to my circle of egg-headed aspiring theologian friends. We often argued about such silly things. Because it is a point of interest to people involved in worship music I decided to unpack the idea in a blog post.
Before I do that here is a disclaimer. I have no problem with people believing that angels sing, dance, play the piano, form bands and choirs and host their own angelic "heavenly idol" (although I'm not sure how that title would go over in heaven). My point is not to disuade you from your ideas about angels, nor am I trying to lecture anyone on how to read scripture. Instead, I think that music as we understand it is a gift from God to humanity for the express purpose of Glorifying God and helping us reach out to him. I believe that how we use music and respond to music is unique in a way that angels cannot ever understand. So if this post makes you queasy by destroying your favorite Christmas songs, please don't feel like I am disrespecting the idea of heavenly "choirs of angels". I suspect that angels probably do sing even though it is not mentioned in scripture, and they probably rock the house. But they will never be able to sing like you can sing - and here's why.