SERMON OF DECEMBER 13, 2009
M. Bruce McKay
Pilgrim - St. Luke’s United Church of Christ
"Revolutionary Joy"
Micah 5:2-5a; Luke 1:26-56
Christmas carols, both for those inside and outside the church, define the Christmas season as much as anything. The word carol is both a noun and a verb. Random House defines the noun as “a song – especially a song of joy” and it defines the verb “to carol” as “singing joyously.”
The word in Greek for joy is cara. Even though I haven’t been able to find a dictionary that says this is the case, and I’m by no means an etymologist, I suspect that the Greek word cara in some way is the root word for carol – for joy is at the root of what it means to both sing and celebrate this season.
When we made the switch over 10 years ago from the Pilgrim Hymnal to the New Century Hymnal most people were mostly enthusiastic about the change. While there was some real concern about changing the words of familiar hymns to avoid male imagery for God and to include language that didn’t exclude half the human race when talking about people, the change to a new hymnal was generally well received – until we came to this time of year.
When people realized that the New Century Hymnal had changed the words to many, if not most, of their favorite Christmas carols, many were anything but joyful about the change. There were signs of open revolt, if not outright revolution, when it came to singing the words in the New Century Hymnal.
Rather than go back to the old hymnal we simply suggested that people use the words that sang in their souls even if they weren’t the words printed on the page.
This solution was and is less than ideal since it allows for singing different words for the same song and creating the impression that we are a congregation that supports “singing in tongues” if not “speaking in tongues.”
Nevertheless, this solution has remained in place down through the years and we’ve worked to let joy rather than crankiness shape our singing of carols - especially on this Third Sunday of Advent when we light the candle of joy!
One of the new carols introduced in the New Century Hymnal is “Carol Our Christmas,” which we’ll sing in a moment.
This carol was written by a woman who lives in New Zealand. Living in the southern hemisphere meant that she experienced Christmas in the midst of summer, rather than winter. So her song begins, “Carol our Christmas, an up-side-down Christmas. Snow is not falling and trees are not bare. Carol the summer and welcome the Christ Child, warm in our sunshine and sweetness of air.”
You won’t find “In the Bleak Midwinter” all that popular below the equator. In the same way you won’t find Mary’s Song – the one we call the Magnificat after the first word in its Latin version – all that popular either above or below the equator – at least among those who like to celebrate the Christmas season with a minimum amount of disruption and disorder – at least among those, like most of us, who want our Christmas to be right-side-up rather than up-side-down.
We come to Christmas thinking of it as the time that sets everything right. Christmas is the time to come home, to return to that time in our memories when all was warm, comfortable, and cozy – that time when everything that has turned up-side-down in our lives and in our world is set, at least for a day or two in December, right–side-up.
And yet, if we celebrate Christmas as the story is told in Scripture – if we carol our Christmas according to the Bible – we’ll experience the season as one when everything – everything - is turned up-side-down.
In the Bible Christmas wasn't about a loving, traditional mother giving birth to a child in a conventional family. It was about Mary – a poor, unwed teenage mother, expecting the birth of her first child in a most unconventional, up-side-down sort of way.
"Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you," said the angel Gabriel to the young teenager from Nazareth, a small backwater town north of Jerusalem.
The angel didn't come to a princess in a palace but to a pauper in an improper place. Someone who was poor and seemingly powerless was told, when she asked the angel how this would happen, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you..."
A previously powerless woman was blessed with the power of the Most High.
Mary isn't the only one in the Christmas story who signals how Christmas turns everything up-side-down.
The Good News came not to the learned and powerful in Jerusalem - but to shepherds, working the night shift out in their fields.
The Good News came not to biblical scholars pouring over texts in the temple - but to magi – pagan, Gentile astrologers. The star appeared first to outsiders rather than insiders.
Soon after Mary got the news that she was going to have a baby whose birth would bless the world she hurried to tell her kinswoman Elizabeth - who herself knew something about God's inclination to turn things up-side-down. She'd become pregnant with John the Baptist at a time in her life when she was more likely to be thinking about nursing homes than nurseries.
In their encounter with one another, Elizabeth proclaims a threefold blessing on Mary – “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb...And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
In response to knowing herself as blessed by God Mary sings what we might call the first Christmas carol. This first song sung with joy in response to the anticipated birth of Christ could be called "An Up-Side-Down Christmas."
Listen again to a portion of the first Christmas carol...
"My soul magnifies You, O my God, and my spirit rejoices in You my Savior.
For You have regarded the low estate of your handmaiden.
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed;
For You who are mighty have done great things for me, and holy is Your name.”
"Your mercy is on those who fear You from generation to generation.”
"You have shown strength with Your arm,
You have scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
You have put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree;
You have filled the hungry with good things, and the rich You have sent empty away."
Growing out of her deep awareness of her own blessedness, Mary sings with joy of a world turned upside down - a world where those who are high and exulted are brought low. She sings of the lowly being lifted up and those who are poor and hungry being filled – all this happens with the advent of her baby’s birth.
Mary got her life turned upside down by the angel Gabriel. And she then sang of a child in her womb who was going to dislodge, disrupt and disturb the usual order of life in the world he entered.
The word that best describes the deepest emotion that erupted in Mary’s soul is joy.
The word that best describes her joy is revolutionary.
These words may seem out of place together. We associate revolution with pain and struggle, upheaval and uncertainty. We connect revolutions with dates like 1776 and 1917. Revolutions today are what happen in other parts of the world – not here - not in Buffalo – and certainly not within us.
Mary experienced the revolutionary joy of a God who had blessed her - even her – a handmaiden of low estate.
For us to sing Mary’s song means remembering how God has also blessed us.
Years ago I was cross country skiing along through the woods in Maine. The trail was covered with a few inches of fresh snow that continued to fall quietly on a cold but nearly windless day. The deep silence of the woods was broken only by the sound of the skis sliding through the snow.
At one point, when I stopped to rest, I noticed mounds of snow on either side of me. I then saw the top of a headstone pushing up through the snow. I was in the middle of an old, abandoned cemetery.
With the snow falling softly, blanketing me along with the graves around me, I felt a sense of connectedness with the quiet stillness of the falling snow, with the woods and the snow beneath my skis and with the people buried beneath their headstones.
The word that best describes what I felt was joy.
As someone once said, “happiness is what we feel when we think we’ve got what we want, (then) joy is what we feel when we discover we already have what we most need.” (Brett Younger, Lectionary Homiletics, December 2009-2010, p.32, emphasis added)
What we most need is the awareness of God’s presence in our lives and of God’s power to bring hope out of any despair and life out of any death.
That day in the Maine woods I experienced God’s presence and power in a way that I never had before – turning an otherwise ordinary day up-side-down with joy.
What we most need is the awareness of God’s presence and power in our lives, along with the awareness of God’s purpose for us and for our world.
A friend in Buffalo once told me about a trip he’d taken to Amsterdam. He visited the home where Anne Frank and her family were offered sanctuary form the Nazis during World War II. This house is now a museum, with everything in it just as it was when the Frank family was hiding in the attic.
The house was sparsely furnished with no pictures on the walls or rugs on the floor. The only sound was the occasional creaking of the old wood underfoot. As my friend made his way through the house he increasingly sensed a sinister, haunting spirit.
Going up into the attic he was amazed at how little space was available for the Frank family to quietly move about, unable to speak above a whisper for months. There was only one small window opened in the attic. It was opened to let in the warm breeze of a dark, dreary day that matched the feeling in the attic.
As he turned to leave the carillon of a nearby church that you could see through the window, began to play. The music that filled the air was Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”
My friend told me that he heard this music in a way that he’d never heard it before. He heard is as a powerful reminder that there is a spirit of joy loose in the word that no sadness can diminish and no death destroy. He heard it in a way that told him then and continues to tell him now that God’s purpose for God’s people is joy – a joy that often seems out of place and always comes unexpectedly.
C.S. Lewis titled his autobiography Surprised by Joy. That’s what joy does. It surprises us with what we most need – a sense of God’s presence, God’s power and God’s purpose for our lives and for our world.
But God isn’t in our lives or in our world simply to bring surprises.
God isn’t in our lives or in our world simply to remind us to expect the unexpected.
God isn’t in our lives or in our world simply to bless us with the hope and peace that overtake us when we’re surprised by joy.
God’s spirit of surprising, revolutionary joy enters our lives and our world so we too, like the first Christians, can become those of whom it is said, they are “turning the world up-side-down.” (Acts 17:6)
The dictionary defines revolution as “that which produces or furthers radical change.” When someone is surprised by joy that is powerful enough to turn their lives upside down, they may begin to suspect that the words revolutionary and joy are no more out of place than God choosing a poor, unwed, teenage mother to birth the Messiah - the One through whom those of low degree (like Mary) would be exalted, the hungry would be filled with good things and the rich sent empty away.
I was at a meeting this week in New York City of community organizers from across the state working with groups like VOICE-Buffalo and NOAH. With the help of the Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation these groups are working as partners to help guarantee that federal stimulus money coming into NYS is spent in a transparent, accountable and equitable way.
There were over 20 organizers in the room and I was the oldest by over 20 years. I was in the minority not only based on my age but also based on my race and gender. The people in the room were African-American, Hispanic American, Asian American as well as European American.
They represented the New York Immigration Coalition and the NYC Aids Housing Network, along with groups with names like Make the Road by Walking It, Common Cause and Community Voices Heard. There was an energy and enthusiasm in the room rooted in the passion to turn the world as we know it up-side-down.
The world where more and more wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands – the world where adequate, affordable health care continues to be a privilege for some rather than a right for all – the world where violence is increasingly becoming a way of life and hope is increasingly hard to find.
We were gathered in a third floor meeting room of the Church of the Good Neighbor on East 106th St. in East Harlem, two blocks from the church I served for 10 years before coming to Buffalo.
For the first time in a very long time I actually experienced joy at a meeting. Sitting there in my old neighborhood with people who were passionate about turning the world upside down I discovered that I already had what I most need – a sense of God’s presence, God’s power and God’s purpose in my life and in my world!
As the oldest person in the room and the only pastor I also felt a deep sense of sadness. While I don’t know for sure, I wouldn’t be surprised if few or any of those around the table were active in congregations.
Too often the church has sanctioned the status quo and settled for complacency and comfort rather than working with those blessed by the First Christmas Carol – the most vulnerable and least powerful in our midst.
Too often the church has been an institution that keeps people in their place rather lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things.
Too often the church has settled for promising people prosperity and happiness rather than being passionate about pursuing revolutionary joy – the joy that comes with discovering the presence, power and purpose of God in our lives –the joy of discovering that which we most need!
So when you’re working to create a cozy, comfortable Christmas don’t forget the song we’re about to sing.
Don’t forget to carol your Christmas an up-side-down Christmas. Doing this will mean caroling your Christmas with Mary’s Song – with the First Christmas Carol.
Don’t forget that the first followers of the One born of Mary – the One whose birth we now await – were those of who it was said, “They are turning the world up-side-down.”
May the same be said of us!
Amen!
Note: This sermon draws on material in Pulpit Resource by William Willimon, October-December 1997
