Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we believe and in believing we obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Whenever I hear the music from the Holden Evening Prayer service, I’m transported back in time to the late 1980s. On Wednesday evenings during Advent or Lent, we would dress Mark and Rachel in their little footed pajamas and head over to church. There we would enjoy a wonderful worship service with those moving words and lyrical melodies.
This is how powerful an experience it was: we were so captivated by both the music and the meaning, that we could blissfully…ignore our children who were on the chapel floor, under the pews, sliding up and down, and back and forth…. But it didn’t matter because they were quiet, the musical message was hopeful, and we could worship in heavenly peace.
Music has that amazing, almost mystical ability to move us—emotionally, physically, spiritually. Everyone has those special heart moments that are anchored in our memories by a melody or tune. [Please share some song titles or types that have been important in your experience of life.]
| • Many couples have “our song” |
• Hymns that make our hearts sing or ache |
| • National Anthem (Olympics) | • TAPS at a military funeral |
| • Silent Night on Christmas Eve | • Lullabies (Children of the Heavenly Father) |
| • Songs to get us excited | • Songs to quiet us down |
| • Happy Birthday | • Pomp and Circumstance |
| • Auld Lang Syne | • Here Comes the Bride |
Gloria Dei member Sandy Fazio introduced us to the phenomenal story of Susan Boyle. She’s that Scottish singer who became famous after her appearance on a reality British television show. Certainly shy and frumpy looking, her “welcome” on stage was in no way welcoming. But then she opened her mouth and, like an angel, sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. When her performance ended, the audience erupted with a standing ovation—and overnight she became an international sensation. Truly, she was singing about her own life and how she has been able to live the dream for which she had hoped for so long.
Now picture in your mind’s eye another woman, the one who first sang that stirring song in our Gospel lesson for today. In just a few minutes you’ll hear Katie Jerue and Larry Kampen perform that beautiful song, “Mary, Did You Know?” In it, the mother of our Lord is asked if she had any idea what her baby boy would grow up and do.
The story of her “Yes” to the angel’s announcement that she is pregnant with heaven’s child is amazing in itself. Her words of acceptance of that life-changing, world-transforming, creation-saving plan are remarkable: Let it be with me, she says to God, according to your word.
Let us not forget—this new mother-to-be was most likely a teenager and was faced with some huge obstacles. She had to tell her fiancé, her parents, her faith community, her town that she was pregnant. It took another angelic visit to convince Joseph not to abandon Mary for cheating on him.
And then off Mary goes to visit her relative Elizabeth. Some scholars speculate that it was a family decision like so many of those that happen in communities throughout the world—the pregnant girl goes away to escape the prying eyes of nosy neighbors.
With all that turmoil turning Mary’s world inside out and upside down,
her heart filled with both faith and fear,
her mind a-swirl with the angel’s words and Joseph’s pain,
with whom can she share the good news of her visit by the angel,
of her pregnancy,
of her hope for the world that lies in her womb?
Then imagine what happens when she first arrives at the home of Elizabeth. The mere sound of Mary’s voice stirs her cousin’s baby to leap in her womb, and the older woman exclaims, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! Here is a word of good news, a time of acceptance, a moment of grace and, finally, Mary can relax. Here she is safe and welcomed and loved! Here she can celebrate the coming birth of her son and truly give thanks to God for this holy calling.
And what better way to do that than to sing—to share a song of joy at God’s mysterious ways of working in the world, often in spite of what we see, hear, and experience. Finally, she is able to exclaim,
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my sprit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant
(Luke 1:46-48).
Said Martin Luther about the power of music: Whether you wish to comfort the sad, to terrify the happy, to encourage the despairing, to humble the proud, to calm the passionate, or to appease those full of hate—what more effective means could you find than music? ( Martin Luther, “Preface to Georg Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae” in Vol. 53: Luther's works, vol. 53 : Liturgy and Hymns, J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed. [Fortress Press: Philadelphia, 1999, c.1965] 323.)
Mary goes on to do this very thing. She sings about how the heights will be made low; the downtrodden will be lifted up; those outside will be invited in; those who are hungry will be filled with good things; and that God’s love and grace is a gift for you, for me, and for all the people of the world.
And lest you think that this song was a private thing for Mary, or even a private thing for us inside the safety of these walls, I want to end with a story about how God’s hope can change the world through the power of songs.
Professor David Lohse of Luther Seminary recently shared a story in honor of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Millions of us throughout the world were captivated by those amazing pictures of hope for a changing world—of walls tumbling down and of East Germans being reunited with loved ones in the West.
Yet, even more dramatic and daring, says Lohse, is an incident that took place months before the wall came down. In defiance of the laws of East Germany, Christians in Leipzig began to gather outside the church of St. Nicolai where Johann Sebastian Bach wrote many of his hymns. The few who were gathered on that first night to sing hymns were joined on later nights by more, and more people, until finally a crowd of over 300,000 people stood outside and sang boldly about their faith in God who looks with favor on the lowliness of his servant(s).
Mary’s song is indeed our song of hope for ourselves and for the world. Amen.
Pastor Scott Fuller