Finding God's Song in Christmas Songs

You may have heard that the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers released, this week, its list of most popular Christmas songs. Who wants to guess the number one song? It’s the secular, “The Christmas Song: Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” The only so-called sacred song on the list, coming in at #8, is “The Little Drummer Boy.”

When I heard that, I started to go on one of my clergy rants, but I held back. What first gave me pause was my remembering that the composer was Mel Torme. He’s from Chicago and we share the same birthday. They call him the “velvet fog.” The song was originally recorded by another favorite of mine, Nat King Cole. Having a rational minute to think, it dawned on me that even though “Drummer Boy,” isn’t biblically based, it’s not fair to say it’s a so-called sacred song.

That song’s lyrics, about a young child, a kind of marginalized non-person, who recognizes the meaning of the newborn he sees, and searches inside himself to respond to the baby’s advent with a gift, represents an important reworking of the biblical tradition. Now by reworking the tradition I don’t mean altering it. Rather, reworking tradition means, “mining” it again; exploring “veins” that looked to be fully exhausted, but may still contain rich ore, or lead to new, unexplored riches. In this case, the songwriter reworks the traditional story as a way to take on the story’s meaning for himself, as well as his listeners.

Of course, readers of the traditional story, found only in Matthew and Luke, are aware that those authors use the shepherds as stand-ins for marginalized non-persons. And in their own way they, too, offer a gift, as they leave praising God for what they’d seen. Still, the drummer-boy does seem to allow present-day children - in any era - a place for themselves inside the story, which a more literal biblical telling does not.

This reworking is a task people of faith do all the time. We do it every time we hear the lawyer ask Jesus, “Who is my neighbor.” It’s happening as we then listen to Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. It goes on at the end with Jesus asking the lawyer the same question, “which one was neighbor.” It continues as we realize that both those questions demand answers from us, for us, today. More often than we realize, we’re reworking the biblical tradition to enlarge our access to its God and God’s promises.

Now this reworking is more than simply applying a piece of ancient wisdom from the past into a present day situation. It’s more than taking a proverb from The Old Farmer’s Almanac, or quoting something your grandmother always said. Reworking is our faith’s way of trusting that God is still speaking. It’s or way of standing in, with, and under God’s living voice, speaking, again, a new word for God’s people.
See, the Bible, especially when it speaks of God’s promises to God’s people, is always doing two things. First, it’s telling us more about what God’s doing and why God is doing it. (The Bible seldom discloses exactly how God will get that done.) Secondly, the Bible is usually telling us about God’s fulfilling God’s promises in the future. That promised future has an impact in the present. That promised future stirs up a response from us now, even before that future fulfillment.

This season we call Advent, a four-week time frame before we celebrate Christmas, is all about reworking. It’s not a time during which we muddle ourselves into thinking that Jesus is born, again, as a baby. Neither is it merely a religious reminder to avoid our culture’s commercial Christmas rush.

Advent is a time of waiting, but not simply hanging loose in some sort of otherworldly holding pattern. Advent is a time of expectant waiting. It’s a way of preparing our minds and hearts to receive God’s coming again.

In much the same way as pregnancy’s waiting and getting ready transforms a couple and the home they shape to receive their newborn, Advent’s waiting intends to transform our church, our world, and us. Advent is a time to enlarge our access to God’s promises. Within a faith community that remembers, no matter the status of our souls, and as part of a world that exists, no matter the mess we’ve made of it, we live in, with, and under a God who became human, took on life like ours, and lived in flesh like ours.

God’s word, spoken so long ago by the prophet Jeremiah is a fine gateway into Advent. It’s a small piece of a four-chapter section from his 52-chapter volume that scholars call, The Book of Consolation. We’ll consider just a few verses here, 33:14-16:
14The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: "The LORD is our righteousness."

Jeremiah is speaking from inside a prison cell to a remnant of God’s Chosen People, the kingdom of Judah. They’re all that’s left of once proud nation, divided a century earlier from the northern kingdom of Israel. Now, this kingdom, home to the Jerusalem Temple, is about to be conquered. They are in desperate need of a word they can trust, a word to carry them from desolation into hope. They’re waiting for a word from the living voice of their God, whose promises had brought them this far along the way.

So God reworks a long-ago promise made to David, grafts a new word, for a new future onto a present day disaster. It begins, “In those days,” a special phrase meaning, “When I (God) make full and complete all that I purpose.” Then, God says, you will see a mere shoot emerging from what for all appearances looks to be a hulking dead stump. It signals, from what looks to be the dead end, a new beginning. This is how you’ll recognize its new rule, its new reign.

The one who I send will not only rule in my name, he’ll rule by my will. You will see in his leading my mis-pawt, my justice, that is, my way of judging, my way of deciding in favor of a social, political and economic order in which all those made in my image can flourish. You will see in his guiding my tsed-aw-kaw, my righteousness, that is, my way of fashioning world, which both redresses the disadvantages inflicted on the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed, and cancels forever those systems which corrupt and deal death.

Are you beginning to see why there’s no way to keep politics out of the pulpit. We can keep putting band-aids on problems through our charitable works. Or, we can join the prophetic cry and engage the polis and its culture in a way that works toward God’s otherwise.

Now, no one in Jeremiah’s day would have imagined that God’s living word foretold the coming of Jesus. No good believer in Jeremiah’s prophesy, and there weren’t too many of them, would be on the alert for a baby born in a manger, but they did carry that promise into and through a second exile. And they did greet their return to Jerusalem, generations later, as, truly, the day of the Lord.

It was the inspired evangelists and the inspired church that first reworked and extended Jeremiah’s prophesy onto the new grafted word God speaks, still, in Jesus. His coming, his way of declaring justice, his way of proclaiming righteousness is God’s living voice for our promised future.

That promised future has an impact in the present. That promised future stirs up a response from us now, even before that future fulfillment, in this, our time of expectant waiting.

That’s why this congregation’s vision: Sharin’ Plenty Good News, as well as our core values: Inviting; Welcoming; Discipling; Nurturing; Healing; and Rejoicing, are all “ing” words. These reflect our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors in the past which impact the present and take us on a trajectory toward God’s promised future.
That’s what Jesus means when he says, in Luke 21:28, “Now when you see these things (signs) begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Because we rely on the promises made in the past and have no worry about our future - we who are free in the present can wait with expectancy - and join God in doing the work of God’s justice and righteousness. We don’t have to ask, “What would Jesus do.” We are disciples. We’ve learned what Jesus did. We are apostles. We’ve been sent to do what Jesus did and keeps on doing – saving world, not condemning it, by breaking self open and pouring self out.

If we don’t exercise the power of the promises, other powers will fill the gap. We’ve elected a good, well-meaning mayor. He intends to serve and protect. So he’s installed video cameras on the corner of 38th and Emerson. Now you can shop at CVS without fear. But if I were you I’d stay away from the Walgreen’s at 38th and Sherman, cuz there’s no cameras there!

See, people want to live in a better village. But if we who live in God’s promising power don’t use that power to act more like villagers, then the mayor is gonna do what the mayor’s gonna do, and noble as he is, that’s not God’s justice and righteousness.

George Bush, same thing. Wants to preserve and protect. Well, when you go so deeply into Afghanistan and Iraq, you leave Lebanon, North Korea and Iran without “crime cameras.” Surprise! If we want a more peaceable world, a beloved community, we who are free in the present, waiting in expectancy, need to take up the work of beloved citizens.

Same thing in our households, if we want more humane settings, we’ll live more humanely. If we want stronger families, we’ll orient our own lives with the strength of God’s justice and righteousness. If we want richer marriages, we’ll become more engaged, holier spouses.

All the deeply spiritual people of our own day, especially those who’ve found the depth of spirituality within their traditional religious communities, say it similarly. Howard Thurman reminds us that deep in the ordinary experiences of our everyday contexts, God breaks through. Sister Thea Bowman asks, “Do you know anybody who’s got enough Good News?” Eugene Peterson writes, “If you want more God you have to have more world.”

As we move through Advent the Scriptures keep inviting us to march to the beat of a different drum. When we do, we’ll be surrounded by a sacred song the world has yet to dream about!