Dream Awakener

I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and share with you the greatest Christmas carol ever written.  It wasn’t Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, it was a song that a very ordinary, poor, young, uneducated teenage girl sang 2,000 years ago.   The greatest Christmas carol was also the first, and it was sung by the mother of Jesus when she discovered she was going to give birth to the Son of God.  It’s called the Magnificat.  Mary praises God because what God has done for her; is a sign of what God has done and will do for all people, especially the poor, the excluded, the marginalized and the voiceless people of all ages.

Mary’s words are so subversive that according to Scot McKnight the government of Guatemala banned this song or prayer because the authorities thought that it might incite the oppressed people to riot.  An Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman says, “No wonder Jesus was a radical.  His mother sang him protest songs for lullabies.”

Why So Much Singing?
If you look through Luke’s infancy narratives you discover they are filled with singing.  After Mary, Zechariah will take the stage to praise God for his faithfulness to Israel through the birth of John the Baptist, the angels will offer their songs of peace on earth and good will toward men and Simeon will sing a song as well.

Why so much singing?

Because as David Lose has said, “Luke understands, as did the Psalmist of Israel, that songs are powerful.  Laments express our grief and fear so as to honor these deep and difficult emotions and simultaneously strip them of their power to incapacitate us.”

In light of this, I want to make a call to sing some songs of justice this Christmas as well as make a call out to all artist to write poetry and songs of protest, hope and justice, so that we as a people might be moved to kingdom action.

Strange Fruit
African Americans, who lived through the excruciating days of slavery, understood how powerful songs can be their march to freedom.  Songwriter Abel Meeropol was a Bronx schoolteacher who wrote a poem in response to a gruesome photo from the Deep South.  Strange Fruit the haunting song about lynching in America was written about 70 years ago and was first recorded by the famed jazz singer Billie Holiday in 1939.  Strange Fruit is simple, but powerful poetry. As Spinner says,  ”At a time when political protest was not often expressed in musical form, the song depicts lynching in all of its brutality.  Invariably described as ‘chillin’ – the ‘strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees’ are the bodies of hanged black men.  The song is often noted as a critical catalyst for the civil rights movement.”  Watch and listen carefully.

Songs are powerful and have the ability to shape people in profound ways, which is why the philosopher Andrew Fletcher said, “Let me write the songs of a nation, I don’t care who writes its laws.”

Last month people around the world celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And while the eruption of that monument took most of the world by surprise, it is important to remember that it had been preceded for several months by the peaceful protests of the citizens of Leipzig. Gathering on Monday evenings by candlelight around St. Nikolai church – the church where Bach composed so many of his cantatas – they would sing. And in over two months their numbers grew from fewer than a thousand voices to more than three hundred thousand, over half the citizens of the city, singing songs of hope and protest and justice, until their song shook the powers of their nation and changed the world.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Songs are powerful, which is why I encourage you to sing some songs of justice this Christmas. And I also make a call out to artist to write songs of protest, songs of hope and songs of justice. Since it is Christmas Day, I thought I would leave you with one last song – one of my favorite Christmas Carol’s. It’s called, I heard the Bells on Christmas Day. It is as much an anti-war song as it is a pro-Christmas song. The poetry of this renowned carol was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the great American literary figure. When he penned the words to this song, America was still months away from Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9th, 1865.

His song flowed from the experience of the tragic death of his wife Fanny and the crippling injury of his son Charles from war wounds. One of the verses that he was appearently holding onto during this difficult time in his life was Luke 2:14 where the angels sang, “Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth, peace and good will toward all men.” Listen to this version by the Casting Crowns.

Lyrics
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

My Prayer
God, help us to trust in your ability to bring about new creation in ways that surprise us. In a day when it seems that hate is strong and mocks the song the angels sung of peace on earth and good will to men, may the bells of Christmas ring louder so that wrong would fail and right prevail, with peace on earth and good will to men. We pray in the name of the prince of Peace. Amen.