I read an article recently about a woman who was born unable to feel
pain. For 39 years she was unable
to feel any type of physical pain.
Here is the scientific explanation of the condition – The disorder is caused by a rare genetic
mutation that results in a lack of ion channels that transport sodium across
sensory nerves. Without these channels, known as Nav1.7 channels, nerve cells
are unable to communicate pain. Researchers quickly sought to make compounds
that blocked Nav1.7 channels, thinking they might be able to block pain in
people without the disorder.
As I was reading I couldn’t help but think, those pesky Nav1.7 channels; that’s exactly what I would diagnose!
Doctors found a way to reverse her condition so that she was able to
feel pain, and upon receiving the treatment there is only one way to test its
success – inflict pain. I’m not
sure why the doctors settled on this type of test, but they burned her with a
laser, and upon receiving the burn she remarked that it felt good to experience
pain.
There are a couple of fascinating matters elements related to that
story. First, the next story
listed for reading on the journal’s web site was titled 7 Ways to Reduce the Pain You’re Feeling. I think there’s some irony there somewhere. Secondly, it did not address the other
types of pain people experience, such as spiritual and emotional pain and how
prevalent those kinds of pains are and what can be done about preventing
them. Third, that someone immune
to physical pain is viewed as having a medical deficiency and, upon, being
cured of that deficiency, would remark that she was glad to experience the
sensation of pain. How is it that,
while most people seek to avoid pain, here is someone who found it a blessing
to be able to feel pain?
Which begs the question, I think, does pain make us more open to, or
more prepared for, blessing? In a
moment we’ll read the Scripture text for today’s message. It comes from the first chapter of
Luke’s gospel, and it is a song of celebration, known as Zechariah’s song. God had been mostly silent for 400-plus
years. People had many questions
about that silence. The people
were suffering under the rule of Rome.
Times were difficult. There
were many reasons for people to feel pain, but because they had experienced so
much pain, perhaps it made their time of rejoicing even sweeter.
Zechariah was the father of John the Baptist, and here is his song,
offered after the birth of his son –
67 His father Zechariah was filled with the
Holy Spirit and prophesied:
68 “Praise be to the Lord, the God of
Israel, because
he has come to his people and redeemed them.
69 He has raised up a horn of salvation for
us in the house of his servant David
70 (as he said through his holy prophets of
long ago),
71 salvation from our enemies and from the
hand of all who hate us—
72 to show mercy to our ancestors and
to remember his holy covenant,
73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
74 to rescue us from the hand of our
enemies, and to enable us to serve him without
fear
75 in holiness and righteousness before him
all our days.
76 And you, my child, will be called a
prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way
for him,
77 to give his people the knowledge of
salvation through the forgiveness of their sins,
78 because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
79 to shine on those living in darkness and
in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
When we think about all that is associated with
Christmas, music would certainly be near the top of everyone’s list. Who doesn’t love Christmas music? We all love the songs of the season – Silent Night, Joy to the World, Angels We
Have Heard On High, The First Noel, and so many more that are beloved by
millions. This morning, I want to
use the idea of a song to frame this message.
1. Sometimes we sing a sad song.
There are few things as powerful as music. Music expresses our
emotions, it alters our emotions, it lifts us up, it challenges us, and it can
literally change the world. Sometimes we want a sad or melancholy song – a song
like How Can You Mend a Broken Heart
by the Bee Gees, because it reflects our downcast state of being. I can look at my recently played songs
on my iPod and know what I was feeling on those days by what songs I chose to
listen to. The song choices
sometimes reveal that my day was one of a sad song.
I love to read interviews with musicians, guitar players in particular,
and one that is often asked of blues musicians is this – can you write a blues
song when life is going well?
Maybe not. Blues come from
a unique time and place and history and blues was the musical language of
suffering.
The people of Israel, suffering under the occupying Roman army, had
experienced a four-century drought in hearing from God. Had he gone silent forever, some
probably wondered, and, if not, when would they hear from God again?
There are many passages in Scripture that we might call the Bible’s
blues. We find many of those
passages in the psalms, such at the 22nd, which Jesus quoted while
on the cross –
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me? Why
are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not
answer, by
night, but I find no rest.
4 In you our ancestors put their
trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried out and were saved;
in
you they trusted and were not put to shame.
6 But I am a worm and not a man, scorned
by everyone, despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me; they
hurl insults, shaking their heads.
8 “He trusts in the Lord,” they say, “let
the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him, since
he delights in him.”
11 Do not be far from me, for
trouble is near and there is no one to help.
There
are many, many such passages throughout the Bible; sad songs, blues songs,
songs of despair, mining the entire range of the difficulty of the human
condition.
And
that’s not at all a bad thing.
Music – sad music, blues music – purges our souls of the bitterness that
builds up within us from the struggles of life. Sometimes we sing a sad song, and in singing the sad song we
release some of the sadness and the struggle.
By
the time of the events in this morning’s Scripture passage, God’s people had
been singing a lot of sad songs, a lot of blues. They had been through centuries of struggles, and had not
given up. They had experienced
much pain, but persevered.
2. Sometimes we sing a song of joy!
I’m going to date myself here, but I still remember the first time I
heard the song Joy To the World. Not the Christmas carol, but the song
by Three Dog Night. Who remembers
that song? I was getting ready for
school one morning and as I came into our kitchen those first lines came
blasting out of the radio on the table – Jeremiah
was a bullfrog! Was a good friend
of mine! Never understood a single
word he said… Of course you
wouldn’t understand a word he said – he’s a bullfrog! I thought those were some of the strangest lyrics ever but
it’s a really cool, fun, joyful song when the chorus kicks in and I still love
to listen to it.
Zechariah’s song was one of joy! There was joy in the world! God was again moving, and in a very big way, and in Luke’s
gospel, in the Christmas story passages, there are four different songs that
burst forth from the blessing and joy of God’s moving.
Were you aware of the four songs in Luke’s telling of the Christmas
story? There are actually many other songs in the Scriptures, although we might
not always realize we are reading a song.
Many of the psalms, for instance, were probably sung in worship
services. The early church probably
sang portions of Scripture such as Philippians 2:1-12.
As the Christmas story begins, music enters as
a response to the good news that God was indeed moving. The first song in the Christmas story is
Mary’s Song, in 1:46-55. Also
referred to as the Magnificat (so
titled because the first word in the Latin translation of this passage is magnificat) it has become one of the
most well-known passages of the Christmas story. Mary’s magnificat,
her response to God’s choosing her as the mother of the Messiah, is a song of
hope and joy at what God was about to do.
The second song is the song of Zechariah, from the
passage we study this morning. Zechariah’s
song (Zechariah was the father of John the Baptist) came after he had regained
his voice (Zechariah was unable to speak from the time the angel told him that
he and his wife would have a child until the eighth day after John’s
birth). It is known as the benedictus, a name taken from the first
Latin words of this passage, which means blessed
be the Lord God of Israel.
The
third is the song of the angels, in 2:13-14. The angels sang after announcing the good news of the birth
of Christ to the shepherds.
The fourth is the song of Simeon, in 2:29-32.
Simeon sings when Jesus is brought to the Temple eight days after his
birth. Simeon had long waited and
hoped for the good news of the coming of the Messiah, and he had been promised
he would not die until after he had seen that promise fulfilled. His song is also known as the Nunc Dimittis, which also comes from the
first Latin words of the passage, and mean now
you dismiss. Simeon felt that,
upon seeing the Messiah, God could dismiss him not only from his priestly
duties but from life itself, as he had lived to see the fulfillment of his
hopes and dreams – the coming of the Messiah.
All four of these songs are songs of joy,
bursting forth in a time of great difficulty, as if to say, it is time for a song of joy! We have sung the blues for centuries,
but now it is a time of celebration!
God is on the move!
In today’s Scripture passage there are words
and phrases that would hold particularly joyful meaning at the time of the
birth of Jesus – a horn of salvation
(verse 69), and the oath he swore to our
father Abraham (verse 73). These refer to Jesus and his standing as the
Messiah. In the next part of the
passage there are words and phrases that refer to John the Baptist – a prophet of the Most High and you will go on before the Lord to prepare
the way for him (verse 76). There are also words rich with theological
meaning – salvation (verse 71), mercy and covenant, (both found in verse 72), forgiveness (verse 77), and peace (verse 79). The words and phrases in this passage
are testimony that God was on the move, that something great was about to take
place, and that the course of history would be forever changed.
3. Let God help you Sing for Joy!
I have always
wished I could sing. Music is such
a powerful gift, and the gift of a great singing voice is a great gift, I
believe. One of my favorite and
most enduring memories of Christmas is hearing my father, who had a beautiful
tenor voice, singing O Holy Night.
The story behind that great song is really fascinating. In 1847, Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure
was the commissionaire of wines in a small French town. He was a poet and was not a person who
was interested in church, so he was most likely surprised when the local priest
asked him to write a poem for Christmas mass.
He used Luke’s gospel as a guide and imagined what the events of
that night in Bethlehem must have been like. Soon, he had completed the Cantique de Noel. He
decided that it must be more than a poem, that it needed music, so he asked one
of his friends, Adolphe Charles Adams to compose music for the piece. He was a well-known musician at the
time and received many requests to write music. His work was well received by his friend and the priest, so
only three weeks later it was performed at a midnight mass on Christmas Eve.
The song quickly became popular, but then things changed. When Cappeau left the church to become
part of the socialist movement and when church leaders realized that Adams did
not share the Christian faith, the song was denounced by the church and they
declared it was not fit to be used in worship.
Around a decade later an American
writer named John
Sullivan Dwight brought the song to the attention of an American audience by
publishing it is his own magazine.
Dwight was an abolitionist and was especially moved by the third verse
of the song – truly he taught us to love
one another; his law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break, for
the slave is our brother; and in his name all oppression shall cease.
In France, thought the song had been banned
from the church for close to twenty years, many people still sang it in their
homes. Legend tells us that on Christmas
Eve of 1871, in the midst of fighting between the armies of Germany and France,
a French soldier suddenly climbed out of the trench where he was stationed and
began to sing Minuit, Chretiens, c'est
l'heure solennelle ou L'Homme Dieu descendit jusqu'a nous, the opening words
to Cantique de Noel.
When
he finished singing, a German soldier climbed from his trench to sing in return
Vom Himmel noch, da komm' ich her.
Ich bring' euch gute neue Mar, Der guten Mar bring' ich so viel, Davon ich
sing'n und sagen will, the beginning of Martin Luther's hymn From Heaven Above to Earth I Come. The story continues by telling that for
the next twenty-four hours there was no fighting, in honor of Christmas day.
On Christmas Eve of 1906, Reginald Fessenden, who had worked with
Thomas Edison, picked up a microphone and, for the first time in history,
broadcast the human voice over the airways. He read the Christmas story from the second chapter of Luke,
and upon completion, picked up a violin and played O Holy Night, making it the first song ever broadcast across the
airwaves.
I love that story, because it reflects the many twists and turns of
the history of O Holy Night, a
twisting and turning journey that is much like our own lives.
Some of us need a new song.
Some of us have been singing a sad song for far too long. Some of us need to sing a song of
joy. Allow this Advent to be the
time when God gives to you a song of joy!
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