Is there a Christmas Carol you just can’t stand? One that you hear and gets stuck in your head for the rest of day?
When we think of biblical characters, we don’t imagine them going around with MidEast’s Top 40 playing in their head. Which is not as far-fetched as it sounds since after all, Casey Kasem is Lebanese. We forget the people in the Bible were real human beings, they ate slept, loved and walked around with songs stuck in their heads.
So what songs might have been playing in the head of Mary, the typical Nazarene teenager? Most likely the songs of Mary’s youth were the songs of the Hebrew Bible. When we think Hebrew songs we probably think the Psalms. But songs are sung throughout the pages of the Old Testament. Miriam, Moses’ wife sings a victory song after the Red Sea closes on the Egyptian army. There is a whole book of song called the Song of Solomon, which is basically one long piece of ancient erotic poetry. There is also a song sung by a woman named Hannah in I Samuel.
Hannah, like Elizabeth, was a childless woman. She was one of two wives of a man named Elkanah. Peninnah, the other wife, used to mock Hannah because she was barren. So one day, Hannah goes to the Temple an says to god, “If you give me a son, I will dedicate him to you.” Sure enough, in due time Hannah did have a son. After he was weaned, she brought him back to the Temple and left him there to be raised by the priests.
After she gave him over to God, she sang a song. It was a song that began, “My heart exults in the Lord.” It had lines in it like, “The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low; he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust.” Hannah’s song was kind of music Mary heard growing up. “The Lord raises the poor up from the dust.” “God breaks the bow of the powerful.” Those are some strong lyrics.
If you grew up in the same time period I did, you probably have noticed snippets of the music of your own youth making it in to your kid’s music. Usually it’s a sample of a James Brown drumbeat or Aretha Franklin vocal run looping it’s way into hip hop song. Sometimes the results are dreadful, like the riff from Queen’s “Under Pressure” becoming the main track of a Vanilla Ice song.
There is nothing new about taking old songs and incorporating them into new ones. So like any good teenager with a copy of Garageband, Mary takes Hannah’s song and does a remix. Her remix is known in church tradition as the Magnificat. The name comes from the Latin version of its first words.
Mary’s song is not a soothing warm and fuzzy melody. It is a protest song. It is dangerous. The lyrics claim that through the baby Mary is carrying, the proud and arrogant will be scattered. The powerful will be brought down from their thrones. The hungry will be fed and the rich sent away empty. Mary is singing this song in a world where Caesar is emperor of the Roman and Herod is king of Judea. Herod is having family members murdered to retain the throne. He and Caesar are growing rich off of heavy taxes on peasants like Mary and Joseph and their families. And here this young girl is singing that her son will bring them down from power.
That is a very gutsy song for a woman to sing, in any era. That is the kind of song that shaped Mary’s life. It is very different from the songs religious women usually get to sing – songs like “listen to our husband,” “stay in you place,” “keep silent” – songs that are sadly still sung in many churches even today.
When I was growing up, parents didn’t like politically controversial lyrics. Remember hearing the Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” playing on the car radio and the line “Young people speaking their minds. Getting so much resistance from behind.” That was usually the point at which your father would switch off the radio and say, “Yeah, I’ll give you some resistance from behind.”
In Mary’s day, the adults didn’t have a problem with controversial lyrics. Sometimes they even sung them themselves. Let’s look at Zechariah, the old priest who when the angel Gabriel told him his aging wife would have a child, was struck speechless. He has been silent throughout his wife Elizabeth’s pregnancy. When the baby is born, they bring him to the Temple to be circumcised on the eighth day and name him. Knowing what the angel Gabriel had instructed them, Elizabeth wants to name him John. The religious authorities protest and say that you cannot name your son that since no one in your family has that name. That is not how we do things. That is not our tradition. At that point, for the first time in months, Zechariah speaks. Defiantly he states, “His name shall be John.” And then, not only does he speak… he sings. Like Mary, Zechariah does a remix. Although he was old guy so maybe instead of using Garageband he was splicing together reel-to-reel tapes.
Zechariah’s song, known to us as the Benedictus, again from the Latin version, is also a song of revolution. When he sings about God raising up a horn of salvation that is a reference to the Davidic Messianic king for whom Israel had long waited. That was God’s anointed who was going to overthrow the status quo and restore Israel to its former glory. That was who God was going to use to set the world right again.
Zechariah sings of God keeping God’s promises, of a new time of being able to serve God without fear. He sings that his child, who would grow up to be John he Baptist, would prepare the way for the Lord. In order to appreciate the full depth of what that means we have to clear our minds of Sunday School images. The coming of the Lord is not a sweet Jesus inviting kids to sit on his lap. Think back on the month we spent exploring the prophet Amos. The coming of the Lord means social and political upheaval, economic restructuring and a radical reprioritizing of the lives of God’s people.
Mary and Zechariah sang hard-hitting, disturbing protest songs – not Muzak. They were pierced and tattooed hard-rockers not Vegas lounge lizards. As 21st century Christians, we have forgotten that.
Recently, I got into a conversation with a man who manages assisted living facilities. He is also a guitarist and spends much time playing old songs to the residents of these homes. Many of these residents are suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. As the disease ravages their brains, they no longer remember what day or even what year it is. They forget their own children. Yet when this man sits down with them and begins playing an old song, it is as if something illuminates inside them and they remember the lyrics and the melody and sing along.
Sometimes I think the church, particularly American Christianity under the influence of personalized evangelical spirituality, is suffering from a terrible memory loss. We have domesticated the songs of Mary and Zechariah into lovely Christmastime lounge music. One of the reasons Pam and I began Vision was to be like that man who sits across from an aging and forgetful church and sings an old song. A loud rebellious rock song. What we have found surprisingly, is that the people we sing to already know the song. They know it better than we do. They just needed someone to jar their memory a little bit.
We have found that the song has been there all along. You can hear it in some of our Christmas carols. It resounds in the second verse of “O Holy Night” when we sing “Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease.” That was a controversial argument-starting thing to say when that carol was written in 1847.
Or “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in response to his grandson’s disfiguring injuries in a Civil War battle. It prompted Longfellow to words that are as much an anti-war song as a Christmas Carol:
“And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said, "For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men!"
These old carols take the Nativity story and intertwine it with the events of heir day. It would be as if current day Christmas carol contained a third verse about the economy, immigration, or same-sex unions. Indeed we may well ask why they do not.
We live in a culture that sees itself as progressive and forward-thinking. Yet many in this same culture claim to be offended by our Christmas songs. How ironic that they insist we reduce our songs to bland tunes about wintertime and light. And while we’re at it, co-opt them into selling tools so we can have a good retail season. However when we look deep into our past, at the songs of Mary and Zechariah, like them we must learn to sing them again.
Christmas is not the same thing as the Winter Solstice. It is more than just a time to be with our families and celebrate traditions. It is more just nostalgia and small town rural imagery. Those things are all lovely and may be important to us. But through the centuries, Mary and Zechariah’s sing their songs to us and remind us that Christmas is about the God who turns our worlds upside down.
In order for that to happen, in order for us to help God turn the world upside down, you and I must also be turned upside down. If we are to have any credibility in our culture, the songs of Mary and Zechariah must first be about what God has done in our own lives. We have to look deep inside ourselves and ask where we have been hungry and been filled with good things. We need to ask what darkness fills our own lives and where God’s light is shining. We must ask if our feet have been guided on the path of peace.
If God has not been part of our lives, if Christ is not at the center of our existence, how can we sing with any authenticity, “My soul magnifies the Lord?” How can we sing of a savior who brings down from their thrones those in power, if we have not experienced the salvation that comes from letting him dethrone our own egos? If we have not experienced the wholeness of life in Christ, how can we sing that God has looked favorably upon us and redeemed us?
You see friends, the revolution may very well be televised, but it must first be internalized.