In preparation for this message, I reflected on things I would miss as the Christmas season nears its close. One thing I will not miss, of course, is the crass materialism the desperate urge to buy just the right gift. It’s hard on both the soul and the wallet.
I heard about a man who received his Visa bill from last Christmas. There was a note attached: “This bill is now 1 year old!”
He sent it back with a note: “Happy Birthday, Bill!” Some families will spend the greater part of this year paying off last Christmas’ bills. I won’t miss that.
But there is much more about Christmas I will miss. I don’t know what part of the Christmas season is your favorite. For some, it is the gathering of family around the table. For others, it is the colorful displays of lights. For still others, particularly children, it is the giving and receiving of gifts.
Pastor John Piper tells about a cartoon from the series called “Marvin.” In the first frame a young mother has just finished reading the Christmas story to her young son. The lad has a puzzled look on his face as he sorts it all out. Then he thinks to himself, “Let me see if I’ve got this straight . . . Christmas is baby Jesus’ birthday, but I get the presents?” The final frame shows him with a satisfied grin as he says to himself, “Is this a great religion or what?!” (1) Who doesn’t like to receive gifts at Christmas time? Of course, we’ve already received the greatest gift of all the babe of Bethlehem, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
We all have our favorite traditions at Christmas the lights, the gathering of family, the giving and receiving of gifts, the smell of fresh Christmas cookies wafting through the air. I suspect that for many of us, high on our Christmas favorites would be the music of Christmas. Some of you started searching your radio dial immediately after Thanksgiving to discover which station had started playing carols and other songs of the season. Or maybe you looked forward to a concert of Messiah, or a choir cantata. Maybe you’re satisfied with hearing Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, or if you’re really low brow, perhaps Elvis singing “I’ll have a blue, blue, blue, Christmas without you.”
The Psalmist would have looked forward to the music of Christmas. In fact many of the sacred poems which we know as psalms were intended to be sung. No wonder, then, that our lesson for Christmas day from the Psalms reads like this:
“Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn shout for joy before the Lord, the King. Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy; let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.”
Psalm 98 was one of Isaac Watts’ favorite Psalms. In fact, he paraphrased the Psalm and put it to music. “Joy to the world, the Lord is come, Let earth receive her King.” We particularly see the influence of the Psalm in the last verse: “He rules the world with truth and grace/ And makes the nations prove/ The glories of His righteousness/ And wonders of His love/ And wonders of His love/ . . .”
There is something about Christmas and music. Even the secular culture recognizes that. Some of you undoubtedly watched the classic animated feature, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Remember how it ends? The Grinch is transformed by the singing and music of the townspeople. Even without presents or possessions the townspeople of Whoville are happy and singing.
Amazed at this, the Grinch “puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. Maybe Christmas, he thought . . . doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps . . . means a little bit more! . . .” And what happened, then? “Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day. And then the true meaning of Christmas came through, and the Grinch found the strength of ten Grinches, plus two!” (2) No wonder the Grinch was transformed. Who can resist it? The joy and the music and the singing of Christmas.
Music speaks to our hearts as nothing else can do. That’s why so many of us invest in earphones and sound systems. We must have our music.
When Bishop Will Willimon was a pastor, he decided to visit a member of his congregation. This man was a lawyer. Willimon dropped by this man’s office. Everyone had gone home but this lawyer who was working late. Starting off the conversation Willimon asked, “What sort of day have you had?”
The lawyer replied: “A typical day . . . full of misery. In the morning I assisted a couple to evict their aging father from his house so they could take everything while he was in a nursing home. All legal, not particularly moral, but legal. By lunchtime I was helping a client evade his worker’s comp insurance payment. It’s legal. This afternoon I have been enabling a woman to ruin her husband’s life forever with the sweetest divorce you ever saw. That’s my day.”
Willimon thought, “What could I say?”
The lawyer continued, “Which helps explain why I’m in your church on a Sunday morning.”
Willimon replied, “I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed thinking what on earth I have to say in a sermon which might help you for a Sunday.”
Then the lawyer said, “It’s not the sermon I come for, preacher. It’s the music. I go a whole week with nothing beautiful, little good, until Sunday. Sometimes when the choir sings, it is for me the difference between death and life.” (3)
That may be true for some of you. Music speaks to our hearts as nothing else can. No wonder angels sang in the heavens when Christ was born. No wonder that when Mary discovered she was pregnant with the Messiah she broke out in song.
Music can change the world. We sometimes forget the power of music. “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,” wrote the poet William Congreve. And it’s true.
If any of you are country music fans, you may recognize the name Travis Tritt. Like many country music stars Tritt spent many years playing in out-of-the-way beer joints before he made it big in the music industry. He reports that many of those bars were dangerous places, with drunk fans starting fights over the smallest matters. But Tritt found a unique way to keep the peace in such situations. Anytime things would get too rowdy, he would begin singing “Silent Night.” Here is how he put it, “‘Silent Night’ proved to be my all-time lifesaver. Just when [bar fights] started getting out of hand, when bikers were reaching for their pool cues and rednecks were heading for the gun rack, I’d start playing ‘Silent Night.’ It could be the middle of July I didn’t care. Sometimes, I swear, they’d even start crying, standing there watching me sweat and play Christmas carols.” (4)
Music can do that. It can calm a crowd or it can voice the aspirations of people on the verge of desperation.
This year was the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On August 13, 1961 the Berlin Wall was erected in the dead of night by the communists of East Germany. Its purpose? To keep East Germans from fleeing to the West. It fulfilled its mission for 28 years. It stood as the symbolic boundary between democracy and Communism. Its destruction, November 9, 1989, which was nearly as instantaneous as its creation, was celebrated around the world.
Months before the fall of the Wall, citizens of Leipzig, in East Germany, decided to peacefully protest their imprisonment behind that wall. Their movement was called the Velvet Revolution. It was a most unusual protest movement.
On Monday nights the citizens of Leipzig would gather at a local church to sing. That’s all, just sing . . . and pray. But an amazing thing happened. In just two months, their numbers grew from about 1,000 people to over 300,000 people.
Someone asked a military officer why they hadn’t silenced that protest like they had so many others. “We had no contingency plan,” the officer said, “for prayer and song.” (5) Think about it. All of these people singing songs of hope, and protest, and justice, until their songs shook the powers of their nation and changed the world.
Prayer and song will batter down the walls to hell. Music can do things nothing else can. Indeed, music can change the world.
More than anything else, music gives us hope. That’s why people will always sing. Music gives us hope.
The motion picture The Bridge Over the River Kwai was selected as one of the 100 great films of the 20th century. It is the story of some British prisoners of war during World War II who were held by the Japanese in northern Burma under very difficult circumstances. The movie won an Academy Award.
Ernest Gordon, later to become chaplain at Yale, was among those prisoners. He wrote a book called Through the River of the Kwai, which told how these P.O.W.s dealt with the degradation and desolation of this camp.
When these young soldiers realized that they were going to be imprisoned for a while, they began to have Bible studies and they prayed. At first they prayed that they would be delivered and they railed against God for their misfortune. But after a while something happened to them and they began to move toward a more mature faith. They no longer railed against God. They asked God to help them be strong.
Gordon said the most spiritual moment of his life was Christmas 1944. They were not given work detail that day and were given a bit more food. As they moved around the prison yard, they sensed that things were different. In one of the barracks, one soldier began to sing a Christmas carol. It was echoed over the infirmary where men were dying. Then all around the camp, the men began to sing, and those who could, came to the parade field and sat there in a great circle. Gordon said, “God touched us that day.” Gordon said it was the most sacred event that he had ever been involved with. No preaching, just men united by their common misery, singing of God being with them. Gordon said, “We were touched by God.” (6)
All they did was sing. Music can do that, can’t it? It can remind us that God is with us. Most of us won’t miss the crowds and the hustle and bustle of Christmas. We can put away the lights and the tree and the candles and the holly and all the ornaments. But it is harder to put away, “Silent Night, Holy Night,” and “O Come, O Come Immanuel,” and “Away in a Manger.” Music is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. To me, it is one of the surest signs of God’s existence. Does anybody here truly believe that blind evolution would have given us voices that blend together as soprano, alto, tenor and bass to make the most pleasing sounds on earth? Music is from God. The music of Christmas is undoubtedly from God. Music can do things that nothing else can do. Music can change the world. Music gives us hope. I hope you will leave today with the song of Christmas ringing in your heart giving you hope, peace and joy.
1. http://www.keepbelieving.com/sermon/1989-12-24-The-ABCs-Of-Christmas/.
2. Dr Theodore Seuss, Random House Publishing Group.
3. http://signonthewindow.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/why-we-sing-a-sermon-on-psalm-96/.
4. Twang! The Ultimate Book of Country Music Quotations, compiled by Raymond Obstfeld and Sheila Burgener (New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1997), p. 47.
5. http://jdshankles.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/sunday-december-2nd-2012-gods-new-song-a-sermon-on-psalm-96/.
6. The Rev. Dr. Bill Self, http://day1.org/969-have_i_got_news_for_you.