Rev. Kelly Ryan
Luke 1:46-55
December 18, 2016
“A Song That is Stuck in Your Heart”
The other day, Jason and I were going to his office Christmas party for Heart of Hospice. As we were getting ready to go, I noticed I had “Dead Man’s Party” by OingoBoingo stuck in my head. I was bopping around the house singing the chorus. I looked it up on Spotify and listened to it on repeat, and loud, for a few rounds. This did not help my husband get in the holiday festive party mood.
And it’s not ANYTHING I have thought of for a year or more. It was a song my dad listened to sometimes when I was little, and it has been written in the core of my musical bones in the way songs do when they were part of the sonic landscape of your youth.
Songs are like a sense for me, in a way. At least once a day, some song gets stuck in my head as a not-too-conscious reflection of what I am experiencing or noticing. The songs that get stuck in my head more often appear there not by any conscious conjuring, but by something more unconscious. Some pathways I never blazed intentionally but are there nevertheless. And this looks like getting ready for a party for an hospice organization and the unconscious pathways are like, “hospice. death and dying. dead. office party. dead and party? Dead Man’s Party?”
I bring this up because I think Mary had a song stuck in her head too. One that may not have arisen completely consciously, but came to her lips nonetheless.
Women in Mary’s time would have known the songs and stories of their ancestors in faith. Mary’s song is so much like Hannah’s song—another woman who sang a song rejoicing in a miraculous baby she was to deliver—perhaps because the way she felt in that moment with Elizabeth reminded her of it. It was like a song stuck in her head, with words that were written on her heart and that leapt to her lips without her ever quite thinking about it.
And she was so excited, so overjoyed, because when she went to Elizabeth, she realized that all these stories she had heard since she was a child, all of these promises of God remaining in covenant with the people of Israel, all these mighty tales of ancestors drawing near and far from God and God calling them home in love, all of these promises were going to be fulfilled in her. How could she keep from singing?
Mary had this remarkable annunciation, but then she held onto that in her heart until she got to Elizabeth.
Notice: this song is sung isn’t sung right after the angel Gabriel appears to her. It’s much less typically glorious but very real for women across centuries—the simple joy of taking comfort in one another. And after Mary tells Elizabeth of her pregnancy, Elizabeth and the child in her womb respond. Recognize. Reflect. It’s like they make this wondrous situation real to Mary. Sometimes there are certain people who, when we tell good news to them, makes it all seem more real and tangible and possible.
And interestingly, Mary sings of things to come in the past tense. Like these unlikely and amazing things have been done already. It’s not future tense. She sings of hope like birds who sing their morning songs before any hints of first light. She sings because she knows something new is dawning, with such certainty she sings as though it’s already happened.
This song carries her along to a new role, a new vision. It’s not like she was known in her town as a revolutionary before this—her ordinariness was what made God’s choice so marvelous. And this song carries her into a new role as an articulate and visionary prophet.
And the other thing so marvelous about this radical vision is that it doesn’t come through conquering armies or bloodshed or even some bullying arm-twisting. It comes through the vulnerability of a child, who grows into a man who does all these things she sings about with his powerful sense of love.
A man who, perhaps, remembered and was inspired by the song his mother used to sing him so often—that song, that soothing but stirring lullaby, about hungry ones eating rich food and the victims being lifted out of the mud. About waves of mercy and promises from long ago. And so with Mary’s song, in Jesus’ heart, the song continued on in its work of inspiring and forming a vision of God’s realm.
The Magnificat is a common song sung in Catholic nightly prayers, and is so revolutionary that singing it has been outlawed in places like Argentina and Guatemala at certain times in their history. Because dictatorships and violent regimes know the power of this song. And are threatened when poor people start questioning whether their poverty and victimhood is the only thing for them. When they realize, with a thrill of hope, that God wants something different than for their sons to be disappeared and their daughters to starve.
Perhaps government officials knew then that songs that capture the heart of the Gospel, songs that tell the powerful that there are better things for them than that which money can buy, and the lowly are told that they deserve life abundant as much as anyone else, songs like the Magnificat, might put all sort of “dangerous” ideas in people’s heads. Like Mary, people might be startled from a meek and ordinary existence into powerful and prophetic joy.
They might start questioning the hierarchies they find themselves at the bottom of, and rallying not just bodies, but spirits as they sing of a better world, to do all they can to work and organize to bring it about.
Christmas is full of these sort of songs.
During Advent and Christmas, we also sing songs that resonate in our hearts and our bones and our memories. This is the time of year where I notice we don’t get as uncomfortable with some of the language that may be patriarchal or overly hierarchical because the songs are deeper than their lyrics—they strike a tune in our heartstrings that carries us forward and back and connects us to different times and places and people.
And these songs are comforting to many of us. But they also sing of radical moves for God’s realm—
“Join the triumph of the skies” as opposed to the triumphal parade of Caesar the conquering general.
“Veiled in flesh the godhead see/hail the incarnate deity/pleased with us on earth to dwell” as opposed to a God far-off and removed from us.
“He rules the world with truth and grace / and makes the nations prove / the glories of his righteousness / and wonders of his love” as opposed to ruling by brute force and violence.
And something beautiful like “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight”
So as you sing these out this season, I want to call your attention to the powerful vision they sing of.
Rulers who rule not with force but with grace.
Triumphant processions not of conquering war machines, but the songs of transcendent love.
A long-hoped for God who comes not in might but in tenderness and vulnerability.
Like Mary, we sing some earth-shaking songs at Christmas. May we too let these songs get stuck in our hearts. May we too sing them in joy.
May we sing to loneliness of Emmanuel, God with us.
May we sing to power that the first Noel was to poor shepherds.
May we sing to despair of joy to the world.
May we sing to war songs of heavenly peace.[1]
May we be stirred in our singing to do all we can to create on earth justice, peace, and loving community.
And may we sing, as Mary sang, like their promise has already happened because we’re that confident that grace and peace and love are the ultimate force in our world, and will win.
[1]This paragraph is inspired by page 73 of All I Really Want: Readings for a Modern Christmas by Quinn Caldwell. Abington Press, Nashville. 2014.