| ||||
|
When the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she is going to bear a son whose name will be Jesus, and that her son will be Son of the Most High God who will sit on the throne of his father David and be king over Israel forever, when Mary hears this she sings. "My soul tells out the greatness of the Lord," she sings. "My spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day forward all generations will call me blessed," she sings. "For the Mighty God has done great things for me. Holy is his name." And Elizabeth sings, too. And Zechariah and Simeon sing. And the angels sing. Everybody breaks out in song when the angel breaks his news. And everyone here this morning is probably eager for me to finish this sermon so that we, too, can get on with the wonderful music of this holy season. But why would you sing if you were Mary? Before she sang, Mary was deeply troubled by the angel's message, St. Luke tells us. After all, under the circumstances, Mary's being "great with child" was not going to be easily explained. It was not something Mary had chosen or planned. Under the circumstances, it would put her in a bad way with Joseph, and with his family and the neighbors. And old Simeon later spoke the truth of what it meant for her to be "blessed among women" when he told Mary that her child was destined to be rejected, and that "a sword would pierce her heart, too." Being the mother of Jesus was not going to be easy for Mary. And yet Mary sang, "My soul tells out the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior." Why did Mary sing? Mary sang, I think—and Elizabeth sang, and Zechariah and Simeon and the angels sang—because it was the response that made the most sense under the circumstances. Perhaps it was the only response that made sense under the circumstances. The circumstances, you'll remember, were dismal. Hopeless, some would have said. The world into which the child would be born was absurd, a world deaf to the Word and presence of God. "Absurd," from the Latin and French, ab-surdus, intense deafness. And just so, no word from God had been heard in Israel for over three hundred years. Caesar's troops were in the Lord's land now, and they ruled by brutal force, and on that dark and silent night of the angel's visit the people were shut up in their houses in fear, in fear of the soldiers, in fear of the darkness, in fear of the silence, in fear of absurdity. The future looked bleak for Joseph and his friends, and even for the priests and the high priests, and it certainly looked bleak for Mary, too, who was nothing more than a poor young girl in an absurd, oppressive world, a world of darkness and death. What happens to people when death walks in the door? Speechlessness. Silence. Numbness. "I didn't know what to say," friends will whisper. What is there to say in the face of the absurd, in the face of the silence, in the face of the terrible presence of death? "He's better off now," some will say. Or, "I want you to know we're thinking about you." Or, "In time you will get over this." Such inadequate words. Might as well keep quiet. And that's what most of us do. Keep quiet, resign oneself, adjust, quietly adapt. But then the grieving family gathers at the church to confront their loss, and what does the Church have them do? The Church asks them to sing. And you can see them singing through their tears: "A Mighty Fortress is Our God." Or, "O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come; our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home." Or, "For all the saints, who from their labors rest, there breaks a yet more glorious day." The Church coaxes the grieving and the despairing to sing even when we don't feel like it, even in the face of death, even in the face of absurdity, because it's the response that makes the most sense under the circumstances. Perhaps it's the only response that makes sense under the circumstances. It is pure defiance. Like Mary's defiance. In the face of a dark and despairing world, Mary would not let the angel's message of hope go unheard. In the face of a world unhinged, a world in which the legions of Caesar clanked their armor through the streets and the rich and powerful proudly lorded it over the poor and the weak, Mary dared to sing God's promise to turn the world upside down. She dared to believe the promise of God to take the lowly of the earth and make them heavenly, dared to believe the promise of God to return his world to the harmony of his original creation. Mary's singing was pure defiance in the face of the dark and despairing world around her. Pure revolution. Several years ago, in a darker time in it's history and during this very season, the then apartheid government of South Africa banned the lighting of candles and the singing of Christmas carols in Soweto. When a reporter asked why the government did this, one government Scrooge said, "You know how emotional black women are. Christmas carols have an emotional effect on them. It's best to ban the singing." Music, you know, is one of the most important subjects in school. Oh, I know we don't believe that any more. In a time of grim, "back-to-the-basics" educational mentality, whenever a budget crunch comes, music is seen as one of the dispensable "frills." But the poets know better. "Music hath power to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak," says William Congreve. And the ancients knew better, too. For the ancients, for Plato for example, music was at the very center of all that was important in education. Music, after all, came from the muse, from the gods. Music was a word from the gods to the human soul. Music taught what was true and right and harmonious and good about the world and life. Music formed character. It was a source of virtue itself, a source of strength and justice and goodness and courage. Music was a reflection of heaven on earth, an incarnation of the divine in human life. Which is maybe the reason someone once said that if you don't like music, you're going to hate heaven. So for the ancients music was never to be taken lightly. Much of the unharmonious noise that assaults our ears today, either in word or tone, the ancients would not have recognized as music. The ancients knew that music was harmony from the heavens that reflects the right order of the universe itself, a gift from God. Music was what moved people to live as they ought to live, and to worship that which is worthy of worship. Music was the enemy of mere noise as harmony is the enemy of cacophony, the enemy of all that was out of harmony with the purpose for which the world was created. Music, in other words, was the enemy of the absurd. Sometime during World War II, a man was arrested for resisting the Nazis—it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer or one of his friends, I believe—and he was taken in the middle of the night and thrown into a dark prison cell. The man was shaken and frightened, utterly alone, despairing. The guard who had brought him to the prison slammed the door and locked it, and then left the cellblock. For a time there was silence, utter silence, silence like that silent night long ago. And then, softly, from a cell somewhere down the dark hallway came the greeting of a fellow prisoner which dismissed absurdity and despair with the song of comfort and hope: "O for a thousand tongues to sing my dear Redeemer's praise.... Jesus! the Name that charms our fears and bids our sorrows cease," he sang, " 'tis music in the sinner's ears, 'tis life and health and peace." And courage was restored as the new prisoner realized, once again, that he was not alone. Nor were he and his companion alone. God was there. Absurdity, intense deafness. A deafness so deep that the muse cannot be heard. A deafness so deep that the harmony of the universe cannot be claimed. A deafness so deep that down seems to be up and death is mistaken for life, a deafness so deep that the cacophony and noise of a world in which the powerful and proud lord it over the poor and lowly seem to be reality instead of an insufferable parody of reality. Absurdity, the deafness of death. And poetry, from the Greek, poiein— to create, to share in the creative work of God. Absurdity and poetry. That's why Mary sang. It's why black women in Soweto sing. It's why we sing. To defy deafness. To defy absurdity. To defy death. To defy the the absurd parody which passes for life in a darkened world by confronting it with the creative promise of God to turn the parody inside out, bringing light to the darkness and a lift to the voice. With light and music you never know what might happen. You let a group of people in the South in the Sixties sing, and they might sing "We Shall Overcome." You let a poor Jewish girl like Mary sing, you let a black mother in Soweto sing, you let a group of people who know that God can bring light into a darkened world, you let any of them sing the music of Advent and Christmas, and you don't know where it might lead! Karl Barth, one of the great theologians of the past century, observed that "the Incarnation is inconceivable, but it is not absurd." The Incarnation, in other words, is not so much a enigma for the mind to wrestle with as it is a mystery for the ear to hear. The angel came to Mary and proclaimed the ancient promise of God, and Mary heard. And then she sang. Pure defiance, defiance of absurdity. The Incarnation is inconceivable, perhaps, if by the Incarnation we are asked to imagine the divine's descending as Almighty God from some distant world above, inconceivable if we are asked to imagine Almighty God's coming from someplace outside the world to invade planet earth with the resources of earth, with chariots and powerful armies of his own to confront the legions of Caesar on Caesar's terms. But incarnation is neither inconceivable nor absurd the way it actually happens. It is neither inconceivable nor absurd that the divine should come among us from below, from within God's own creation, not with legions but with a whispered word of hope to a girl. It is neither inconceivable nor absurd that a young woman should conceive, and that she should bear her child in poverty, among the meek and lowly. Nor is it inconceivable or absurd that her child should grow to be a man who lives a life of love, even a life of such devotion and commitment that he offers his very body and soul for those he loves, even for those who do not understand him and who mock him and abuse him. That is not inconceivable, nor is it absurd. It is neither inconceivable nor absurd that Love should live such a life among Love's own creation, redeeming the creation for the life of love for which Love created it in the beginning. And such a life is, literally, divine. Of the muses, of God. And just so did it happen. For the Incarnation is not just the babe in the manger; the Incarnation is also the man on the Cross. And it is in just such a life as his—not just in the life of the child in the manger, with the cattle standing by, but in the life of the promise, in the promise of Mary's child, in the promise of the One who did not spend his life in a creche but who became the man who lived and loved and learned obedience through his passion, the man lived and loved and died on the Cross, and who lives even now—it is in just such a man that we see One who lives and loves and dies as God himself lives and loves and dies when God lives and loves and dies among us in the flesh. Such a life lived among men is honored by all men, not only by Christians, but also by the Hindu Gandhi, and by Muslims, and by all who recognize love when love lives among us. So Mary sang to defy the absurdity of a world without God. And she sang because of God's promise. She sang because God promised to put the world right again. She sang because she trusted that God's promise would be kept, the promise that God's mercy is sure from generation to generation for those who fear him, God's promise to scatter the powerful and the proud, to bring down rulers from their thrones and to raise up the lowly, to fill the hungry with good things and to send the rich away empty, to come to the aid of his lowly people and to show mercy, just as he had shown mercy to Abraham and Abraham's children before her, and was even then showing his mercy through his lowly servant Mary. Mary sang because she wanted to tell the world what she had heard from the angel about who is in charge. Mary sang because of what God had done for her. She was lowly, the lowest of the low, and yet God had treated her as special. And he promised to treat the world as special, too. He promised to take that which is of the earth, and turn it upside down and inside out and recreate it, and make of earth that which is of heaven. Mary sang to defy the absurdity of death, because God promised to take the deafness of death, and from it create the music of life. That's why Mary sang 2003 years ago. It was the only response that made sense under the circumstances. And that, too, is why we sing today, echoing Mary's ancient defiance of the absurd. It's the only response that makes sense under the circumstances. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. |