Soul Music

I see that a new version of “Name That Tune” will be broadcast in the new year. You know that game, that show. Someone guesses the name of tune from notes played. Actually, in the versions I have seen before, the guess is more based on the questions that are asked than it is on the notes that are played. “I can name that tune in one note” says the contestant. Because he or she knows the answer from the clues that were given. Not because they can figure out the song from a single note. How many songs start with the same note? Lots, I suspect.  

I suppose it might be possible if the song was your song. Recognizing your song by one note, I mean. Your song. Which might mean a song you wrote. Or it might be a song that resonates in your soul. A song that somehow sheds light on life itself; that speaks of deep meanings and truth, the truth by which you live your life. Your song. Your soul music.

Christmas time is a time of music. Especially this year, in this separated, distant season. We need music to speak to us, to speak for us. We’ve gone through our entire Christmas music collection and are still craving more. We replay, but also seek out new music. Or music that isn’t just Christmas music and yet has somehow come to speak of the season. I dug out our cd of the Messiah today. We think of the Messiah as Christmas music, but it is more. I played the Nutcracker Suite from the Tchaikovsky collection yesterday. It was combined with excerpts from the Sleeping Beauty Ballet, but that was ok. I needed to hear it. 

But there are other songs that speak to our soul these days. I found one last year that came back to me again this Advent. It is an unusual choice, I’ll admit. Better Days by the Goo Goo Dolls. Never been a big Goo Goo fan, to be honest. But someone directed my attention to this adventish song. And I was captured by it.

And you asked me what I want this year / And I try to make this kind and clear / Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days / 'Cause I don't need boxes wrapped in strings / And designer love and empty things / Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-kHleNYIDc

Songwriter and lead singer for the Dolls, John Rzeznik sang an acoustic version of this song from his front porch during the first lockdown and it was streamed on Facebook, and he encouraged his fans to stay safe and do what was needed during this time. Even as he and all of us hoped for better days. I don’t know what the numbers were for that stream, but I’m sure it tapped into something deep in all of us. 

So take these words and sing out loud / 'Cause everyone is forgiven now / 'Cause tonight's the night the world begins again

Luke 1:46-55   And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord,  47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,  48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;  49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.  50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.  51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;  53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.  54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,  55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever." 

Mary didn’t write this song, but it was still soul music for her. It came from the depths of her new experience. Mary was be all accounts very young, a teenager or even preteen. And yet there is a depth here. A surprising prophetic depth that can barely be understood, let alone explained.

A few verses earlier in Luke’s account she is standing with a puzzled look on her face in front of an angel. “How can this be?” she squeaks. It is beyond her, this whole event, this Annunciation, and you can hear the capital A in the description. Certainly Mary could. She knew, somehow, that this was big, bigger than her and for some unexplainable reason including her. “How can this be?”

And now, in the presence of another, a woman too old to be a mother, more suited for the geriatric ward than obstetrics, Mary - too young to be a mother - sings with a wisdom beyond her scant years. Sounding like a prophet of old, she should have slipped in a “thus saith the Lord” somewhere along there, then we wouldn’t have had reason to doubt where she stood. She stands in a line of proclaimers who want us to know that God is about to turn the world upside down. And she does it with a song. A song of praise and hope, a song of confidence and glory, a song of blessing and presence. A song of completion though all is just barely begun.

It is because she now sees differently. The life within her has affected her vision, and she sees the better days that are just beyond our reach, or already here but hidden. And she sees it so clearly will be becomes an is. Notice all the past tense verbs in Mary’s song. “He has shown strength... He has scattered … He has brought down and lifted up … He has filled the hungry, He has send away the full. He has. Not He will, or He might, or maybe someday something like this just might occur. He has, Mary sings. From her soul. The soul now giving life to God, the soul now housing the savior, about to birth the hope of the world. No wonder she sings soul music.

Soul music, according to one definition is gospel music that has gone to town. The styles, the forms, the passion of gospel music burst out of the church and began to address the world, secular themes and issues and became known as soul music. The gospel at loose in the world. What better description for Mary’s song can we find than that? This isn’t simply a song about spiritual themes and churchy attitudes. This isn’t a song about faith development divorced from interaction in a messy and broken world. This is soul music, echoing the cry of a heart longing for redemption and the hope of a faith resting in the promises of God while working through the body of Christ to bring this hope to reality in the world in which we live.

No doubt there are some music aficionados out there who are thinking to themselves, “I’ve heard some of what is called soul music and it sounds about as far from the gospel as you can get.” And you’d be right. That’s always the danger when you take your faith to work outside of the church, it can get messy, it can get confusing, it can lose its way. It happens at times, that’s part of the risk of living your faith. But it can also get deeper, get stronger, get more real. Listen closely, those themes, that hope is still out there, being sung by those who wouldn’t call themselves churchy types, in fact go out of their way to distance themselves from us. And yet the passions, the hopes still bubble away out there. And maybe our job is to see with new eyes this world in which we live. 

I need some place simple where we could live / And something only you can give / And that's faith and trust and peace while we're alive / And the one poor child who saved this world / And there's ten million more who probably could / If we all just stopped and said a prayer for them

Said a prayer with our hands and our pockets as well as our words. Sang our songs, our soul music with motions, actions; not just emphasizing but enacting the better days we know are right here, right around the corner. Soul Music. Christmas is the perfect time for soul music. No, better than that, Christmas demands soul music. Demands that we be in touch with our souls, the deepest part of ourselves, the connective tissue of all our relationships, and most of all, the hope. No, the Hope, that we can begin to see better days.

From our house to all of yours, from our corner of the social isolation to yours, from our souls to yours, La Donna and I wish you the merriest of Christmases, and the better days of the New Year.

Shalom, Derek

Finding Christmas

 “Where are you Christmas / Why can't I find you / Why have you gone away / Where is the laughter / You used to bring me / Why can't I hear music play / My world is changing / I'm rearranging / Does that mean Christmas changes too”

Where Are You Christmas

by James Horner, Mariah Carey, Wilbur Jennings

Cindy-Lou Who, with her big sad eyes and her elfin face, looks up at the Grinch packing up Christmas in her house and says “Santy Claus, why? Why are you taking our Christmas tree? Why?” 

It feels as though someone has come into our homes and stolen away Christmas. We heard from our daughter and her boy friend in Boston that the month-long trip to parents in North Carolina and Nashville was off. They didn’t want to take the risk of traveling and gathering with people with the surge of cases and infections. Our son in Indianapolis told us that if he came to visit us for Christmas he would then be required to quarantine himself from his workplace and would miss out on over two more weeks of pay. We said it made sense not to come. So, just like Thanksgiving, La Donna and I will be here with an aging dog and grumpy and attention deficit cats for Christmas. All we want is for them to come home for Christmas. Or to go home, or open the home. To be at home. We seem lost without a place to gather and to celebrate and to be. To just be. 

Blame the virus, blame the government, blame the fears or the unwillingness of people obsessed with “rights” and unwilling to take precautions, blame a fantasy green furred intruder and his dog with a deer antler tied to his head. Blame whoever you want, but Christmas is lost and it just won’t be the same. 

Luke 1:26-38 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." 34 Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" 35 The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God." 38 Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.

Luke reminds us that God has different ideas about home than the rest of us do. Solomon’s temple was quite a structure, and God apparently liked it well enough. Well enough to visit, but it was never really God’s home, or so it seems. For one thing it was always called Solomon’s temple. God says to David “Your son will build my home” when he said in the Hebrew scripture text for the fourth Sunday of Advent,. We all assumed God meant Solomon, the son who built the temple.

But, God had a different son in mind. God was thinking of the one that Gabriel would call, “the Son of the Most High,” the one that would “reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there would be no end.” That’s the son who would build God’s home. No one quite got that. David didn’t really understand what God meant. Solomon didn’t really understand either, but he got the construction crew out anyway. No one knew what God really meant— no one, but Mary.

But then the indications are that Mary didn’t really understand either. How could she? Just imagine, this young, unmarried, soon-to-be married girl, gets a message from God. And the message is, God’s coming home. Taking up residence. In her. Excuse me?

This nothing special, backwoods, teenager was going be God’s home for a few months. And talk about your troubling house guests! Feet on the furniture are nothing compared to this. Those who are mothers, who have experienced the joy of pregnancy and birth know better than the rest of us the hard realities of this little event. Here we are a few days before Christmas talking about Mary finding out she’s going to be pregnant, and then Wednesday night, she gives birth. Pretty amazing, really. But not real. She carried this load just like everyone else; she hurt and she sweated and she paced and she groaned and she struggled and she wondered and she worried and she bled and she gave birth in a barn because no one was willing to give her a bed. “Greetings favored one, the Lord is with you.” The Lord has a different idea of favoritism than we do. The Lord has a different idea of blessing than we do. The Lord has a different idea of home than we do.

“Come home,” says the Lord to us at Christmas time. “Come home.” David wanted to build a house for God on the tallest hill in Jerusalem, where God could be removed and distant and overlook all the people who would have to go out of their way to give obedience to God. But God wanted to build his home a little closer to the deep realities of living in this world so that we would be surprised by God where we live. God wanted to build his home where we sweat and labor, where we work and play, where we laugh and cry, where our hearts are lifted up and often broken and sometimes healed.

David wanted God’s home on a mountain, but God wanted his home in the womb of a virgin, in the feed box behind an inn in the little town of Bethlehem. God wanted his home in the backwoods region of Galilee, on the roads of the countryside, in the grassy place where five thousand sat and ate their fill. God wanted his home in the birthing units and wedding celebrations and the dinner parties. God wanted his home in the tear-filled bedrooms and sick beds and the graveyards of his children. God wanted his home in the court rooms and prison cells and then on the streets of sorrow of Jerusalem and the dark hill called Calvary.

The point is you can’t lose Christmas. It comes to you. Wherever you are. Christmas isn’t found in the traditions and the practices, in the customs and the patterns of our celebrations. But neither is it found in the sharing and the connections of family and friends who gather, who come home for the season or the celebration. It is something deeper, something inside. It is a part of you. Born in you and from you. And yes, it does find a more joyful expression when we connect with others, with loved ones and strangers alike. But that joy transcends distance, transcends disappointment, overcomes fear and hesitation. You can’t lose Christmas.

God wants his home in your home, in the living rooms and kitchens and playrooms and bedrooms of your life. God calls to us at Christmas and says, “Greetings, favored ones! I’m coming home, coming home for Christmas. And like any baby born in our midst, he says, “I won’t take up much room, just all that you have. Is there room for me? I’m coming home.” And off to the side, almost out of our vision, an angel waits for our answer.

Shalom, Derek