A Song To Be Sung

“A Song To Be Sung”

Luke 1:46-56

December 12, 2010  Advent

She was thin, weak and dying.  She had a past and it was one which she could not let go.  The past was for her a heavy burden that weighted her down.  It filled her with bitterness.  I walked into her nursing home room and introduced myself as being the hospice chaplain.  With her typical harshness toward anyone who dared approach her, she snapped, “I guess they sent you to give me hope.”  “No,” I said.  “Hope is not something I can give to you.  I am here to help you find it within yourself.”  She insisted, “It’s not there!”  Calmly I responded, “Oh, it is there.  It may be buried deeply beneath other things, but I am here to help you find what I am sure lies waiting to be uncovered.”

Lately I have been wondering who was right.  I thought there was hope within her soul but that it was just buried too deeply to be felt.  She, on the other hand was sure there was not any hope at all in her heart.  At that moment could she have been right?  I still am not completely certain.  This much is clear:  Anxiety can dim the light of hope.  Regrets can mar any sense of peace.  Hurts can drown out the song of joy.  When we cling to past disappointments or when we seek to fill our hearts and lives with passing pleasures there remains no room for hope or peace or joy.

Today, we think about joy.  There is no better illustration for joy than that which we find in today’s text.  It is the song of Mary, the Magnificant.  It is a song dropped into the drama of Christ’s birth.  Some see it as an overture, foreshadowing what waits to be born in Mary’s child.  Others see the song simply as a stopping of the action of the birth narrative; a stopping of the drama to celebrate.  The song is a celebration of God’s plan and Mary’s place in it.  Mary stops and celebrates God’s active presence in her life and in her world.

From Mary we learn:

1.       Joy is not necessarily a first response.  For Mary the first response to the news of the angel was fear and doubt.  She first gave her voice not to singing but to questioning.  She first set her feet not to dancing but to running.  Joy was not her first response to God’s plan and purpose but it remained a possibility.

2.      Joy is not dependent upon external circumstances.  The external circumstances had not changed at all for Mary from the time the angel’s message was heard until she began to sing.  The joy of the song was not resting in the fact of her pregnancy.  Rather, her joy was discovered and unleashed in response to a changed perspective and awareness of the external situation, which itself had not changed.  That changed perspective and awareness was found within herself.

3.      We, too, must stop the drama and find perspective and awareness.  We must calm the fears that stir within our hearts.  We must seek and respond to comfort and reassurance that God sends through companions and guides who we meet along our way.  We must clear out our hearts of all that may be accumulated there to make room for the music of God to be heard.  We, like Mary, must connect with the divine within ourselves.  We must come to realize God’s presence with us; God’s purpose for the world; and our place in it.

4.      There will be certain result when we quiet ourselves and find an awareness of God’s presence.  We will know a serenity of soul—peace.  We will be filled with gratitude.  We, too, will burst with joy which cannot be contained—a  joy which must find expression.  Mary must have felt like the psalmist whose words are found in Psalm 45 of The Message, “My heart bursts its banks, spilling beauty and goodness.  I pour it out in a (song)…shaping the rivers into words.”  Barbra Brown Taylor has said, “Mary is no longer singing the song, the song is singing Mary.”

That takes us back to the mystery—had the joy been there all along, buried beneath the fears and doubts of Mary or had fear and doubt completely prevented any existence of joy?  It is hard to be sure.  From having had my own heart full of fear and anxiety I would say the result is the same.

But, again, this much is clear:  joy, like hope, like peace and love—is the active dynamic of God’s presence within us—which is the promise of Advent.

If joy can be found in the heart of a frightened young mother-to-be, if a bitter old lady can find courage enough to search her heart and die in peace, the potential and possibility of peace and joy is also real for us.  It is to be found in stepping aside from the drama and finding a moment of silence and stillness to become aware of God’s presence within us and realizing God’s purpose for the world and our place in that purpose.  The, we too, will have a song to sing.  Ours, too, will be lives sung by the song within us.

A Sufi poet by the name of Hafiz wrote, “I am a hole in the flute that the breath of Christ moves through.  Listen to the music.”  This is a season to quiet ourselves, find a stillness within our hearts that we can hear the music of God.  This is a season for our lives to become the music of God.  Let us listen to the music. Let our message to our world be “Listen to the music!”