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Singing. I believe that singing
is an essential part of life. It is an essential part of
being alive. Singing can capture emotions and feelings that
lay deep within us, giving them voice and encouraging them
to spring forth into an existence all their own. Hearing or
singing certain songs can instantly transport us back to
certain places and moments. Hearing or singing certain songs
immediately conjures up memories of long-lost friends or
faraway family.
Any time I hear…
I keep a close watch on this
heart of mine.
I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds.
Because you’re mine,
I walk the line.
…I am immediately transported to
the back seat of my father’s 1974 Buick Century on the
three-hour car ride to Grandma’s house. While the 8-track
crooned Johnny Cash, my brother and I bartered for the hump.
The hump was considered no man’s land in our cars. It was
the little elevation on the floor of the back seat
that separated the driver’s side from the passenger’s side.
And in the 1974 Buick Century, it separated my brother and
me, keeping us from killing each other. We were not allowed
to cross the hump. If either of us was touching the other,
then we had crossed the line.
However, on one hot summer road
trip—it must have been pushing 90 degrees, and this was well
before the days of air conditioning—I bought the hump.
That’s right. With good old Johnny Cash playing in the
background, I purchased the hump from my brother for a
single drink from my Boy Scout canteen. To this day, any
Johnny Cash song takes me right back to those road trips and
the sneakiest real estate purchase since the Dutch bought
Manhattan for $24 worth of beads. Songs have a way of
transporting us.
All I have to hear is…
Shot through the heart and
you’re to blame.
Darling, you give love…a bad name.
…and I am no longer the
educated, sophisticated, well-dressed pastor you see
standing before you. I hear that song from the 80’s glam
rockers, Bon Jovi, and I am a 15-year-old rock-and-roll
wannabe with his torn up, bleached, skintight jeans and Air
Jordan high tops – untied, of course.
Certain songs can ease our pain.
I know that when the love of my life broke up with me in
high school, it was the great philosophers of the 1980’s who
helped me through it. I believe it was Poison who said the
words I so needed to hear:
Every rose has its thorn.
Just like every night has its dawn,
Just like every cowboy sings a sad, sad song,
Every rose has its thorn.
And just the opening couple of
notes of Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” and
my mind’s eye has me wearing a tuxedo and dancing with a
beautiful young woman dressed in white, surrounded by family
and friends, trying to figure out how I got so lucky. There
is just something about the right song for the right
occasion.
Singing not only has powerful
effects on us individually, but singing can help bring about
great changes in our communities or throughout the world.
Try this one out with me:
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome someday.
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome someday.
This was a song that played a
major role in the civil rights movement. Marchers faced
insults, threats, police dogs and fire hoses while singing
and living the truth of this song.
Or how
about this one:
We are marching in the light of
God,
We are marching in the light of God.
We are marching in the light of God,
We are marching in the light of,
The light of God.
We are marching, marching,
We are marching, marching,
We are marching in the light of,
The light of God.
We are marching, marching,
We are marching, marching,
We are marching in the light of God.
This was one of the songs that
literally helped to bring down the walls of apartheid in
South Africa. So “dangerous” were the freedom songs to
forces of segregation that public singing was actually
banned.
And once
again from the decade that formed me, there is the classic:
We are the world, we are the
children,
We are the ones who make a brighter day.
So let’s start giving,
There’s a choice we’re making,
We’re saving our own lives.
It’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me.
That’s right: “We Are the
World.” The collaborative effort of Michael Jackson, Dionne
Warwick, Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Rogers, Bruce Springsteen, Bob
Dylan and many, many others became known as USA for Africa
and raised millions of dollars and awareness about the
plight of the hungry half a world away. Songs can change
lives; they can change the world.
Tonight the Praise Band sang
“Hard Times Come Again No More,” an American folk song whose
words and spirit are powerful and transcend time and place.
It was written by America’s first popular songwriter,
Stephen Foster. Foster is the songwriter who also gave us
such timeless American tunes as “Oh, Susanna,” “Camptown
Races” and “My Old Kentucky Home.” But of all his songs, it
is “Hard Times” that touches the place of longing in the
weariest of souls. Remember the words of its chorus:
Tis the song, the sigh of the
weary,
Hard times, hard times,
Come again no more.
Many days you have lingered
Around my cabin door;
Oh hard times, come again no more.
Like the best of songs, this
ageless song has a story. Foster composed this heartfelt
ballad in 1854, a year in which Pittsburgh was dogged by
economic difficulties, terrible unemployment and a
devastating summer cholera epidemic. Foster penned “Hard
Times” during a time of political and racial strife, with
the realities of the Civil War darkening the mood of the
nation. This song was copyrighted on January 17, 1855, the
day before Foster’s mother died. His father, already an
invalid, lived just six months and ten days longer. When
Foster sang the lead line of the refrain, “Hard times, hard
times, come again no more…” it came from a place of deep
longing within him. It was like a prayer, linking together
the suffering of personal grief with the uncertainty of the
community and nation in which he lived. It is a song that
taps into the heart of all those who have suffered loss,
illness, depression, or who live in a time of political or
economic uncertainty. When Foster looked at the world around
him, and when he looked at himself in the mirror, all he
could see was hard times, and what else could he say but
“Hard times come again no more.”
If there ever seemed to be a
song that spoke to the day and age we are living in, perhaps
this is it. We look at the world around us and see nothing
but hard times. Hard times in Iraq. Hard times in Palestine.
Hard times in Africa. Hard times in New Orleans. Hard times
for GM. Perhaps as you look back on this year, there have
been hard times for you. Hard times at work or hard times at
home. Maybe tonight you find yourself singing the refrain of
this song: “Hard times, hard times, come again no more.”
But there is another song that
we need to consider. It is the song that sits right in the
middle of the stories of this season. If you have been
following with us, two weeks ago the angel came and visited
Mary, telling her to “Fear not.” Last week Mary visited
Elizabeth to share her good news. And this week we have a
song. Mary’s song. And it is a song of great joy. Mary sings
her song loud and proud. She sings:
My soul glorifies the Lord
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
For he has been mindful
Of the humble state of his servant.
Make no mistake. Mary just as
easily could have sung a lament about hard times. She knew
hard times. She was a teenaged, pregnant, peasant girl. If
she hadn’t had hard enough times before this baby, the
circumstances around his birth were sure to bring them. Hard
times? You bet. Mary’s people were people who knew all about
hard times. God’s chosen people had suffered exile and
occupation. They knew hard times. They wondered if God had
turned his back on their suffering. They wondered if all
their waiting for the Messiah, the great deliverer, would be
in vain. They worried if they would be able to survive on
less and less. Mary’s song could have easily been “Hard
Times Come Again No More.” But it wasn’t. It was her song of
joy.
My soul glorifies the Lord
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
For he has been mindful
Of the humble state of his servant.
Mary’s song praises God in the
midst of hardship. Mary’s song sings of God’s mercy in the
midst of her people’s visible suffering. Mary’s song sings
of the day when the playing field will be leveled and all
God’s children will be joined together in human family—a day
that must have seemed as far off for her as it now does for
us. And yet Mary sings. How is she able to sing this song in
the light of what can only be described as hard times? She
can sing it because she knows something about joy.
Joy. Before we go much further
here, before we get caught up in the mushy, touchy-feely
stuff so easily thought of when we talk about joy, a bit of
a disclaimer is in order. Joy is another one of those themes
whose deepest meanings can so easily get lost. The deepest
meanings of the joy that Mary is singing about can easily
get lost, confused or forgotten.
First and foremost, joy is not
to be confused with happiness. We don’t sing, “Happiness
to the world, the Lord is come!” Make no mistake. Mary’s
song isn’t a happy song. Her situation won’t always be
happy. Giving birth to this child who will one day die upon
the cross will not always be about happiness, but it will
always be about joy. Joy is not to be confused with
happiness. Oh, they are related, I suppose. Maybe they’re
cousins. But joy and happiness are not identical twins.
There is a danger, especially at
this time of year, to confuse joy with happiness. It is
Christmas, after all. If there is ever a season to be happy,
this is it, isn’t it? The lights. The trees. The songs with
their jingle bell rock, holly jolly, and red-nosed reindeer
can’t help but put a smile on our faces. This is a season of
parties and presents. The atmosphere rings with happiness
all around. If we didn’t know better, we might think that
Jesus came into the world to make us happy rather than to
give us joy.
Again, this is so important.
Christ came to bring us joy, not to make us happy. Because
let’s face it, Christmas isn’t always happy. For many,
Christmas is lonely. It is the season when many are reminded
that their family situations are less than ideal. It is the
season when the losses and setbacks of the past year can be
most painfully felt. It is the season, with all of its
commercial promise, that can just set us up to be
disappointed. Christmas isn’t always happy, but it can
always be joyous.
So what is the difference
between happiness and joy? The root of the word happiness is
hap, meaning chance (as in happenstance or
haphazard). Happiness depends on what is happening. Certain
things need to be happening in order that there might be
happiness. Joy is something different. For Christians, joy
is deeper than happiness, because while happiness is
dependent on what is happening, joy springs forth from
knowledge of what has already happened. Happened to us.
Happened around us. Happened among us. Happened within us.
And what is it that has happened?
Mary’s joy comes from the
knowledge of the presence of God-with-her. Her song makes it
plain. She glorifies God in the midst of her hardship and
in the midst of her people’s hardship because she knows that
God has been mindful of her humbled state. God has not
forgotten, and in the baby about to born, we receive the
joyous song that God has not forgotten us.
Joy is the way of life that
comes from trusting that in Christ, God has joined us on
this journey, will not abandon us on this journey, and will
bring us through whatever happens in the midst of this
journey. Joy is something we have even when what is
happening brings sadness or grief. Barbara Brown Taylor
describes it like this: “The only condition for joy is the
presence of God. Joy happens when God is present and people
know it, which means it can erupt in a depressed economy, in
the middle of a war, in an intensive care waiting room.”
While happiness is dependent on
things going well in our lives, joy is not dependent on
outside forces. Happiness requires positive conditions: good
health, right relationships, a good job, shelter, food and
clothing. Joy, on the other hand, can be found even when
these other conditions do not exist. As Frederick Buechner
writes:
God created us in joy and
created us for joy, and in the long run, not all the
darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate
us finally from that joy. Whatever else it means to say that
[we are created in God’s image], I think it means that even
when we cannot believe in [God], even when we feel most
spiritually bankrupt and deserted, God’s mark is deep within
us. We have God’s joy in our blood.
Mary’s song reminds us that even
in the midst of our darkest hour, God has not forgotten us.
And Mary proclaims what true joy is—that somehow out of the
depths of our pain, out of the depths of our suffering, out
of the depths of our brokenness and hardships, God can
actually transform them into a blessing, not only for
ourselves but for others. That is what joy is.
This past week I sat across the
table from a woman and got a glimpse of this kind of joy.
She had gone through a difficult and bitter divorce. This
breakup of her marriage led to a debilitating depression, a
depression that made life just plain hard to live. She even
wondered sometimes if life was worth living at all. But now,
a couple of years later, she is sitting on the other side of
it and she was saying to me, “I want to be a Stephen
Minister. I want to listen and help others going through the
pain and brokenness I have gone through. I want my pain to
be a blessing to others.” Friends, that is joy, trusting
that God can take the worst of experiences, can take the
times and places we would just as soon forget and erase, can
take the places where we were pretty sure God had forgotten
us altogether, and transform them into ministry that will
touch others.
In the fifth chapter of the book
of Romans, the Apostle Paul describes the kind of joy that
comes from a relationship with a God who promises to never
leave us and never forsake us, the same God who promises to
take the hard times of our lives and transform them into
blessings and healings for the world. This is what Paul has
to say about this kind of joy:
Therefore, since we have been
justified through faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained
access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And
we take great joy in the hope of the glory of God. Not only
so, but we also have joy in our sufferings,
because we know that suffering produces perseverance;
perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does
not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into
our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
So let me ask you, friends:
“What kind of song are we going to sing this Christmas?”
Will it be a song of sorrow and sadness, lamenting all the
hard times and the hard luck that has befallen us this
season? Or will it be a song of joy—a song that says to the
world that despite the evidence around us that, in Christ,
our God is here and among us, a song that says to the world
that through our hard times, God’s light still shines?
It is Christmas. It is the
season of joy. It is the time we remember that our God is
here. So I leave you with the words of another song, this
one an old Shaker hymn:
My life flows on in endless
song;
Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation:
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?
What though my joys and comforts
die?
The Lord my Savior liveth;
What though the darkness gather round!
Songs in the night He giveth:
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that refuge clinging;
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,
How can I…How can you…How can anybody…keep from singing?
Note: I am always grateful to the works of
Barbara Brown Taylor and Frederick Buechner. They both offer
great insight, creativity and clarity to otherwise confusing
theological matters. The Taylor quote came from a sermon she
preached entitled “Surprised by Joy” that I read in a back
issue of The Living Pulpit. The Buechner quote came
from his classic, The Longing for Home.
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