Isaiah 40
Mark 1
Patricia de Jong

Advent is a time of gathering darkness, of waiting with only the dimmest of hope. Premodern peoples gathered their slim harvest, not knowing whether it would be sufficient to preserve their lives through the long winter. As the days crept toward the shortest and darkest day of the year, a primal anxiety emerged at the depth of their spirits. Would the light, would the warmth, and would the fecundity of the earth return? We think of spring as a natural and inevitable occurrence, a sure thing. They did not. Perhaps this time after the death of the sun there would be no resurrection. Perhaps the human destiny is death without rebirth.

The darkness invades our spirits at different times, in different ways. In truth, it's always advent for someone, somewhere. This year we face a common darkness, a coming trial in which there is no assurance of victory or even knowledge of what victory could be. Will we Americans for the first time in our history wage a preemptive war–and whether we win or whether we loose, how far will we have descended into the kingdom of darkness?

This is a Sunday in which we celebrate the music of Christmas. How can we sing in a time like this? How can we keep from singing?!

The whole weight of scripture from beginning to end, from the Hebrew Testament, through the strange visions of Revelation bears witness to the acts of God in the midst of human history and to the various ways that human beings respond to the encounter with the living God. And throughout the poetry and prose of the Bible we hear praise and lament, cries and shouts of pain and exaltation. The human predicament, in its depths and heights is always accompanied by a soundtrack. From ancient Israel to the present day church, people have kept singing, in good times and bad. Whether it be Beethoven or the blues, rock n' roll or rap, human beings have always sung their hearts out.

As a people of faith, we come from a tradition of songs. Most of the Psalms are songs of either lamentation or praise;

"I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart. O my Lord, all my longing is known to you; my sighing is not hidden from you."

"By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion."

"O my God, I cry by day and you do not answer, I cry by night, but find no rest."

"Sing to the Lord a new song, Sing to the Lord, O wide earth."

"Make a joyful noise to the Lord all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness, Come into God's presence with singing."

"Praise the Lord, ye nations, clap your hands! Shout aloud to God!"

Singing is central to the Christian tradition. It's part of our faith, just like prayer, study, worship and caring for others. As a matter of fact, it is one of our major spiritual disciplines. The discipline of confession is necessary, and painful, but music is a joyful discipline, claiming us in body and soul like no other discipline. The philosopher Nietzsche said music was the most ecstatic, the most Dionysian of all the arts. It led him to say, "without music, life would be a mistake."

Singing is woven into the stories of our faith. Remember the story of Mariam chanting a victory song in the midst of the Red Sea, or Paul and Silas singing in prison waiting for the midnight hour? I remember growing up days with my mother singing her rich alto at the piano as she played from the Psalter Hymnal. "Great is thy Faithfulness", "Blest be the Tie," "The Church's One Foundation," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," "Abide With Me". Over the years, it has been music and songs that have marked the great comings and goings of my life. "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee", sung at my ordination. "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah" sung at both my parent's memorial services. "Amazing Grace" sung by my sister at my cousin's wedding and her funeral.

Why is music so central to the human spirit?

When words fail us, music lifts us up and leads us into the heart of the sacred. In music, we come to know and embrace the truth beyond the intellectual realm. We are taken, beyond doubt and skepticism, into the truth which lies wordlessly at the heart of all things. I have a friend who is still in rebellion against Christian dogma in reaction to a fundamentalist upbringing. She says "I just can't believe most of that stuff, but when I hear the Messiah, somehow I know that my Redeemer liveth and I am comforted in spite of my skepticism."

One of the great benefits of sitting where I sit every Sunday is that I get to watch as you sing or listen to the choir. I see on so many of your faces, a look of being transported beyond yourself, your body, your mind, even your musical limitations, into the very center of the sacred. And I know you see the very same thing in me, I am quite transparent when it comes to my love of music!

In Advent, this time of waiting in darkness, the church witnesses in word and deed, but the church also sings. (In the Bleak Midwinter)…and we sing our wonder and our hope. (Lo, how a Rose ere blooming) We sing our longing (Come Thou Long Expected Jesus) and our joy tumbles down from heaven to earth. (Joy to the World) We sing our prayers and our affirmation. (Gloria in Excelis Deo) We sing our faith, as we began today. (O Come, All Ye Faithful)

We are fortunate to have the most wonderful acoustics in our worship space, a gifted and talented Music Program Director in Larry Marietta and an accomplished and devoted chancel choir. (Our Children's Choirs, too!) More than these, I believe, that this is a congregation who believes in the power of music to lift us up and hold us when we are low. We have known, and we experience every Sunday, the great gift and mysterious power of music in the life of the believer.

Theologian Sally Brown has written that singing to the power and glory of God, "is an indispensable practice of this community we call church." It is full-bodied prayer, an act of worship in and of itself. We share together as a community. In the act of singing, we come together as we do in no other way in community life. We share in praise and lament, with our voices and our bodies; in melody and harmony, through difference and dissonance. It is at these moments in our worship, that we as one body, fulfill Augustine's notion of the glory of God as human beings fully alive.

Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of South Africa, suggests that music and art fulfills the transcendent nature of human beings:

"We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose bedecked with dew…Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, the sublime, the beautiful and the truthful… and all of us are given the task of making this world a little more hospitable to these things."

As I prepared this sermon, I listened to the first part of Handel's Messiah, the Christmas Oratorio. A voice sings,

"Comfort ye, Comfort ye my people, saith your God. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert, a highway for our God! Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight and the rough places plain."

When the tenor breaks forth into "Comfort ye, Comfort ye," I am comforted, I am borne into hope. I believe in the presence of the living God, under the words, between the notes and in the silence. I go to my God, where hope is found and comfort is given, beyond any singing of it.

The voice of the faithful always cries out of the darkness, with a strange mixture of lamentation and celebration, of despair and longing, terror, and urgency; it is the voice of divine hope that comes from deep within. The song of Advent, is the song of human longing, resounding with praise of the power of God to restore the people and all the earth. God is making a way, a highway through the wilderness, on which one day, John the Baptist and the rest of us will travel to the heart of the Holy City of God.

In the wilderness of our time, in the darkness of a failing economy, in a time of lost confidence, amid the threat of war, the word of God still sounds forth in the music of the spheres and in the hymns of faith. May we know that even in this dark mist, God is at work, making a way for the Word made flesh to come dwell among us. Prepare ye the way of the Lord!

On this day Earth shall ring!