"Songs In The Night"
The power of the song of word and wonder.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Text: Psalm 77:1-20
I am a sucker for a good story, especially a story of triumph and hope. It is not so much that stories speak of triumph, but it is wonderful to hear stories of people whose faith in God has made a profound difference in their lives. Just this week, there was an article in The Toronto Star in the entertainment section about Jennifer Hudson, a young woman of whom I hadn't heard for a number of years. She was one of the contestants on American Idol, and at the time, I thought she was by far and away the best singer probably who had ever been on the show. Unfortunately, after only two or three rounds, she was voted off.
I thought she had the best voice I had ever heard on the show. I thought she was going a very long way, and so did many others. When she was voted off, Simon Cowell, whom many of you know from watching American Idol, said she would never amount to anything. Now, I think she was voted off because let me say this delicately, she was “plus-size” physically. She was built a little like me, actually. (God bless her!) But, boy, could she sing! Did she have some pipes! She sang magnificently! Anyway, it seemed that we would never hear from her again, that her career was in jeopardy, and that she would just disappear into the ether, as most losers do.
However, in the paper this week, she reappeared. Here was a young woman born on the south side of Chicago. She had attended church all her life, and was a very devout Christian, so much so that she says to this day that she likes to go to church and sing there more than anywhere else. Her favourite piece, the first one that she ever recorded, was titled I Do Not Think That Christ Should Be on the Cross Alone - that is the depth of her faith. Through those dark days, after she was voted off American Idol and she disappeared into the never lands, it appeared that she had no hope of having a career.
Well, this week, it was announced that she is in a film called Dreamgirls, and that her singing in this film is probably of Oscar-winning calibre. She is singing alongside a not-so-plus sized Beyoncé Knowles, who calls her, “one of the finest singers I have ever met in my whole life.” The irony is, to play the part Jennifer Hudson had to put on 20 lbs. She got up there and she sang her heart out - and she is on her way to stardom!
The reporter asked, “How did you manage to get to where you are?”
She replied, “By remembering where I came from, and for whom I first sang.”
Now, when I read that story I couldn't believe it, because this week I am preaching from Psalm 77, one of the most telling in the whole of the Bible. It begins with worry and ends with wonder. It begins with sorrow and it ends with awe. Like many great biblical themes that run the same trajectory, Psalm 77 is about someone who starts in a lowly and doubting and struggling place and finds God and God's glory.
Now, it is hard to know precisely when this Psalm was written. Some think it was written in the Northern Kingdom around 7 BC; others think that it was written during the Babylonian captivity, when the people of Israel were living under Babylonian power and influence. Certainly, my reading of it suggests that it is the latter. Clearly, in the beginning of this psalm, the writer is under the thumb of oppression. We do not know what problem the psalmist is facing, but he or she is worried and anxious, and life is hard.
Then, the second part of the psalm takes on a different tone, a different mood. Rather than worrying, it concentrates on God's word. It concentrates on God's works, and the wonderful things that the Lord has done. So, something has happened in the life of the psalmist to cause movement from this sense of worry to a sense of wonder. The way that this movement is described and the way that this movement takes place is as if it is a song - a song in the night.
As I read this psalm, I thought that we, in this great season of Advent, have much to be inspired by what the psalmist says. The psalmist starts off with a song of worry. He writes, “I remembered my songs in the night. My heart mused and my spirit inquired.” Now, it is obvious from the text that he cannot close his eyes at night, which implies that he cannot sleep, and so not only is he anxious, not only is he inquiring, but he is also having a sleepless night.
I don't know about you, but whenever I have a sleepless night, there is a reason for it. Something is on my mind, something that is worrying me, some problem. And what is more, when I have a sleepless night, I invent all kinds of other worries to add to it. By the end of that night, I have worried about 20 more things, then the thing that kept me up in the first place. Aren't you like that? If you have a sleepless night, do you not think, “Gee, I just haven't ordered the turkey yet!” and “Gee, I wonder if I remembered to invite Granny for Christmas?” and “Oh no, I didn't send my boss a Christmas card” and “How will I get all the work I have done by December 24th so I can have a bit of a break?” or “Have I remembered all the things I need to get ready for a wedding?” When you can't sleep, your mind churns, and you think of one anxious thing after another, and the whole world is going to Hell by the time the dawn arrives.
The psalmist is going through this. The psalm starts out probably with one issue, and it turns into many others, so much so that the psalmist gets to the point where he wonders about God, and about whether God is being kind to him. Then, he thinks that maybe it is not that God is not being kind to him, but that he has done something wrong and that is why he can't sleep: Perhaps he is guilty of something? Anyway, whatever happens, this song in the night becomes a song of worry and a song of anxiety and a song of despair. He cries out to God, and he says, “Where are you when I am so miserable? What support are you giving me?”
When you look at many of the hymns and carols that we sing before Christmas, you will notice something: The word “night” appears frequently. In fact, there is hardly a carol where the night is not mentioned in some way. I sang it this morning at the 9.15 service when I sang Mary's Boy Child, with the lines:
“Joseph and his wife, Mary, went to Bethlehem that night.
They find no place to born the child, not a single room was in sight.”
This night-time sense is powerful. If you look at the Christmas story in the Bible, night isn't actually mentioned a lot, except when the shepherds are in the fields, and later on, after Christmas, when the Magi see the star, and yet there is a sense of night, and Jesus being born under the cover of darkness, and the darkness very real and very powerful.
As Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher says [I paraphrase]: “This is one of the great paradoxes: that into the night shone the light, the light of Christ; that in the midst of the worry and the darkness of the world, came the light of Christ; but we see the light brighter because it comes in the night.” The great mystic, John of the Cross, talked in eloquent terms about what he called “the dark night of the soul,” and he said that every Christian, every true believer, has to go through this “dark night of the soul,” this time of worry, this time of questioning, this time of anxiousness, in order to depend fully on God and fully on the light of God's grace.
Well, my friends, sometimes we experience the “Song of Worry.” You know, you can pick on the commercialism of Christmas all you want, you can make fun of it all you want, and people do so - in fact, I was sent this week an example of the Lord's Prayer for our day and age. It is just terrific! It is The Lord's Prayer for those who are trying to find solace in materialism. It is titled The Bloor Street Lord's Prayer:
“Armani, who art in Holts, hallowed be thy shoes.
Thy Prada come, thy shopping done
On Bloor Street, as it is in Paris.
Give us this day our VISA gold, and forgive us our balance,
As we forgive those who charge us interest.
Let us not into Wal-Mart and deliver us from Sears,
For thine is the Chanel, the Gaulthier and the Versace
For Dolce and Gabana, our Amex and our Amex.”
We can laugh at it, but the sad, sad part of it is that many people turn to the outward signs of Christmas to deal with the inner problem of worry, and they find it wanting.
Nine years ago, this very week, was my first Advent at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church and it was when my mother had a devastating stroke that eventually took her life. I had to fly to Nova Scotia the week before Christmas, and I got back on Christmas Eve morning to sing in the pageant - some of you will remember it. I remember, on the plane and in the airport and in the stores, all the Christmas carols playing. After a while, it all becomes Muzak, background music to life: songs that have no meaning; words that people don't know, as a poll suggested this week. On and on and on, drivel, drivel, drivel! Miserable!
Then, one evening, when my mother was at her lowest, I sat in the waiting room on my own, and they were piping these carols through again. Here we go: Frosty the Snowman! Then, all of a sudden, Silent Night came on:
Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and Child
Holy infant so tender and mild…
And then, those words: “sleep in heavenly peace.” That is Christmas! That is what I needed to hear! That is the power of the song in the night! That was the song that spoke to my worry.
The psalmist goes beyond that. There is also a sense of the “Song of the Word.” There is a moment in Locksley Hall by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, where a man has lost his loved one or has found that his loved one has moved on, and is looking at Orion and the other stars in the sky, and says, “A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.” Sometimes, just calling to mind happier things in fact makes sorrows worse - but not for the psalmist! For the psalmist, in his doubting and in his despair and in his sleepless nights, he turns to what God has done.
He looks at the story of Jacob and how Jacob wrestled with God and how he found support in that fight, and he looks at the story of Joseph and how Joseph had been abandoned and sent into Egypt by his brothers, but then was able to come back and to rise to power in Egypt and save his brothers' lives. He talks about Jacob and he talks about Joseph, and he says, “I remember these things well now. I remember the deeds that you have done.” In other words, he recalls God's word.
Most of all, he remembers the Exodus, which I talked a lot about in the fall. He remembers how the waters parted and the people were able to move through. Then he says, “I changed from having my arms raised up in agony, to having my arms recognizing they were lifted up by God: that God opened my arms and the waters parted. Even though I could not see the footprints of God at work, still I believed that God's words had power.” The psalmist is transformed.
There are many such stories of transformation. There are many stories of people who have been touched by God, and know and understand what God can do. Someone, this week, sent me the story of a young man who has just been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, here in Toronto. This young man has been working particularly with black youth in the city during a time of violence, and he created an organization called BLING. What a name! BLING: Bring, Love, In, Not Guns, is what it stands for. This man was hired by the United Church of Canada to work with youth, and to work with those who were on the periphery of society, and now, here he is, receiving a Rhodes Scholarship! Ironically, his name is Hope! Fine name!
Ultimately, however, it is not just the stories of lives lived that speak to God's power: it is the story of God's word to us that really is the power; the story of God's gracious activity on our behalf. My friends, it is that word that really is the true power of Christmas. I fear that sometimes, in our society as a whole, that when we lose the story, we lose the meaning, and when you lose the meaning, anything else can come and fill it.
I say to believers, and I say even to seekers and searchers, it is up to us to retell the story of God's word: the story of the light breaking into the darkness. Oh, I know, we could go on and on about the Christmas story, and we could tell it a thousand times, but it still needs to be told to every successive generation that comes along, not just so that the story itself may be lifted up for its own sake (because sometimes, that is what the church is accused of), but because the story makes the difference. It is the story of God's gracious activity on our behalf. That is why we sing the wonderful hymn, “It came upon a midnight clear,” with that wonderful message that needs to be retold to every generation that comes along. The Song of the Word!
The psalmist ends with an amazing song: it is the “Song of Wonder.” Clearly, the psalmist is sitting in the middle of a thunderstorm. There is lightning all around him, there is wind, there is rain, there is the churning sea, there is power in creation and in nature, there is a tremendous sense of upheaval, and it is hard to understand the wonder of God. St. Augustine once observed a young boy who was going down to the ocean with his little bucket. He was getting water in the bucket and pouring it to a hole he had dug in the beach. St. Augustine said to the little lad, “What are you doing?”
He replied, “I am trying to put the ocean into the hole to keep it.”
St. Augustine says that is what it is like trying to grasp the wonder of God for a Christian. To understand the doctrine of the Trinity, to understand the power and grace of God, we try and put the ocean into a little hole in order that we might keep it. St. Augustine said to the little boy, “But wouldn't it be better just to stop and look at the ocean in awe and wonder?”
It is wonder that we need! A man came up to Mark Twain one day, and he said to him, “I'm sorry that I read Huckleberry Finn.” Twain looked at him, a degree of skepticism and a little anger, and said, “Why? Why are you sorry you read Huckleberry Finn?”
The man replied, “Because I can never read it again for the first time, and be surprised by it.” The story of Christmas gets a little bit like Huck Finn. To many people it becomes “old hat,” told over and over again. How many more times can you see sheep on the hillside and shepherds and angels? How many more times mangers and baby Jesus? How many more times can we have three wise men and frankincense and myrrh - and on and on each Christmas? It just seems like we have heard it all before, but we have to do it all over again: right? It almost loses its shine and loses its wonder and loses its power.
But oh no, it doesn't! This is because it is the story of God's song in the night! It is the story of God's light shining in the darkness. When you feel the song of worry, only then do you really appreciate the song of wonder. It is only when you understand and have recaptured the song of wonder do you realize that the song of worry is calmed down. That is the power of God's song in the night. May you feel it! May it capture your soul! May it inspire your heart and your mind! And this Christmas, may the Song of Wonder be the song in your heart! Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.