Sing to me a lullaby The Magnificat from Luke 1 ADVENT II 2014 When I was eleven years old my family moved from Philadelphia to Port Clyde, Maine, at the end of the summer just before sixth grade began. My parents wanted me to have all the time I needed to say goodbye to my friends in Philadelphia, and so we made the move north to Maine two days before school started again for the fall. We arrived at our new home in the evening and after unpacking some of our belongings, darkness crept into our new house. We didn t even know where the light switches were. Both of my parents are INFJ s and they raised an INFJ, as well. For those of you familiar with Meyers-Briggs, you can already appreciate that I was an overly sensitive child. I was even more awkward than I am now (if you can believe it) and an easy target for bullies. This sensitivity manifested in a variety of ways, but on this first night in Port Clyde it was the sadness of losing my elementary school buddies and the fear of finding new ones that produced a particularly heightened level of anxiety. My parents and I camped that night on the enclosed porch overlooking the port where fifty or a hundred lobster boats were moored. While this protected inlet between the end of the St. George peninsula and Hupper s Island would one day be the site where my best friend Jeremy Davis and I would fish for mackerel, and drop lobster traps, and track blue fish, and chase seagulls, and create the stuff of narrative sermons, the dark waters seemed to me foreign and foreboding. Everything was new; the world was strange. The lights of the city were miles away. I found the whole transition disorienting and overwhelming. Lying there in the darkness I felt a tear roll down my face, which turned into another tear, which eventually turned into many more. My parents must have heard me because my mom sat next to me 1
and rubbed my back, while my dad sat down at the upright piano the previous occupants of the parsonage had left. Slowly, gingerly, he began to tap the keys and sing. Puff the Magic Dragon lived by the sea, and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honnah Lee At first this only added to my disorientation. I had been on this planet for eleven years and never heard my dad play the piano once! (It was almost as crazy as the first time I saw him fry an egg. My dad can cook? [Poof. Mind blown.]) Despite the initial jarring shock of this new reality, the softness of his voice, and the sound of his fingers gently touching the keys helped me find rest. As my mom rubbed my back and I listened to the familiar song, I drifted off. It was, I believe, the last time someone ever sang me to sleep. It was not, however, the last time I was scared when night descended. This Advent, as we consider Songs of the Season here at Seattle First Baptist, and the soon-to-be mother Mary s Magnificat, I wonder: Why don t we continue to sing each other sweet lullabies on into old age? Maybe it s presumptuous to ask the question in that way, because perhaps some of you do sing to each other. My guess is the majority of us don t. And yet so many of us can recall the peace a lullaby brought; so many of us remember the words to songs we haven t heard for decades; so many of us remember the sounds of loved ones voices singly softly in our ears. Was this the reality for everyone? Sadly not. But it would be something if it was, wouldn t it? This morning we are offered The Magnificat Mary s song. Because her words are included in our canon and have become an important part of our tradition, I can only 2
assume this wasn t the last time she sang about or to her child that she, like so many other mothers, like so many other parents sang Jesus and his siblings to sleep. We have written verses of lullabies that date back four thousand years there s one carved on a cuneiform tablet from the Babylonians. It is a long and rich history of mothers, of parents, lulling their children to fitful slumber. However, Mary also experienced another similarity with far too many parents. She experienced the death of her own child. She outlived one to whom she d given birth. The babe she sang to would be killed at the hands of authorities a parallel we can draw up through the first century into our own time, to this very day. In fact so many lullabies (especially early ones) contain mournful verses set starkly against lighter words. At times in our history infant mortality rates were high, and youth could easily lose their lives to disease and dysentery. Dark verses were included in these songs in recognition of that reality. And yet we must ask ourselves how far we ve progressed when so many children still die daily. I don t know if Michael Brown or Eric Garner s parents sang lullabies to them. I have no window into the workings of their families. Although, I do believe it is telling that Michael Brown s mother called for peace after the indictment was denied. She said in part, We respectfully ask that you please keep your protests peaceful. Answering violence with violence is not the appropriate reaction. Let's not just make noise, let's make a difference. She offered words of peace, even as she entered her own dark night. For these families and others like them, Twinkle twinkle little star is no longer a cute light-hearted bedtime lullaby, but a soulful haunting question about peace, resilience, 3
and afterlife Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder where you are. Up above the world so bright, like a diamond in the night. There are stories of border patrol agents experiencing a softening of their hearts when they heard light voices singing tender hymns through the fence. Maybe they had been inspired by a sermon from Seattle First Baptist and knew when they heard those voices not to harden their hearts. Hospice choirs stand by the bedside of those near death and comfort them with hymns at the end of their lives, mirroring the soft music perhaps offered to them by loved ones in their infancy. Life s synchronicity of song. Gonna lay down my sword and shield. Down by the riverside. Down by the riverside. Down by the riverside Perhaps it s my own naiveté, yet I can t help but wonder what our lives would be like if we finished each day and went to sleep each night under the peaceful caress of a loved one s voice. I think it would be difficult to go to bed angry if you were singing or being sung to. The intimacy of a nightly lullaby could be a balm to sooth our troubled souls. As we consider Mary s song this Advent, I wonder if you d be willing to do a little imaginative inquiry with me what our Jewish friends call the process of midrash. Our Christmas stories tell us the shepherds will be drawn to the stable where Jesus slept. A star will guide them a light on the horizon that was completely out of place out of the ordinary and, therefore, extraordinary. 4
Instead, what if it wasn t a star in the sky at all, but the sound of a mother s voice singing a lullaby to her cooing child, wrapped in those swaddling clothes and lying in that manger. If, in our time of Advent waiting, we reflected on our own traditional tales and imagined Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus together in a stable, how might our understanding and perception of the story change if we suggest that perhaps the shepherds were present because it was their own animals being kept in the rustic enclosure that it was not a star in the sky, but the sound Mary softly singing of stars from the cramped chaos of an animal pen? What if that was the thing so completely out of the ordinary that it drew their attention? The psalms, though we Christians tend to read them as poetry, are still sung by our Jewish brothers and sisters. Pilgrim psalms are still sung as travellers ascend toward the gates of Jerusalem. The psalms have been sung in various contexts for millennia. Could we imagine Mary singing from the 136 th Psalm: God made the heavens with skillful hands; that divine love is an eternal love. God made the great lights of the sky; that divine love is an eternal love. God made the moon and the stars to watch over you by night; that divine love is an eternal love. God gives food to every creature, and so we give thanks to the Holy One. Sweet child, that divine love for you is an eternal love. How beautiful the scene. Mary singing to her child a lullaby of love. There is a Catholic nun in Massachusetts; many know her simply by her first name: Miriam. She has said that even if Jesus wasn t born a divine being, it was his parents treating him as divine that provided him the strength and inspiration to stand up against injustice, to call out the authorities, and to change the world. 5
Could it have all begun this out of the ordinary story that would become our Christmas story could it have all begun with a lullaby? My soul magnifies my God. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for the Holy One has looked on my humble estate. And behold, from now on from this point forward all generations will call me blessed Is this enterprise of ours, this midrash, a stretch? Perhaps. And yet we arrive here every Sunday morning to stretch ourselves to stretch out our hands to one another as Jesus stretched out his hand to Peter, who found himself overwhelmed by the swirling chaos of the storm. We stretch ourselves in Advent, within the waiting, we stretch ourselves to imagine peace in the flickering flames of our candles. We stretch ourselves to sing songs of hope, even as the swirling chaos of this world threatens to overwhelm us. We come here to stretch ourselves to love and be loved. So, Come all you faithful. Let Mary, the mother of wonder inspire us. Let our music, our hymns and our lullabies guide us and bring us home on love s renewing tide. We have already taken the first step. Here we are, Sunday after Sunday, learning the songs we could sing to each other as lullabies sweet songs of justice and gratitude and hope to pass on to our children and to our children s children as we click on their nightlights each evening. We ve already taken the first step, because here we are. May it continue to be so. 6