Sing a Song of Promise Leah Grundset Davis Ravensworth Baptist Church December 3, 2017 1st Sunday of Advent Luke 1:55 77 Happy New Year! That s right, it s the first day of Advent, which marks the beginning of a new church year. Each year, the church calendar re-sets today as we take down the green, ordinary time decorations, replacing them with purple and actual greenery. We leave ordinary time in the dust and look to these new seasons of marked time, shorter church seasons, beginning with these four weeks of Advent, followed by 12 days of Christmas, which lead us to Epiphany. Advent is the season where we prepare for the coming of Jesus. The four Sundays carry themes you ll see them on the banners above me and all throughout our worship. We light a candle each week as the brightness of the candles, point us to the nearness of Christ. During Advent, we acknowledge the long wait of faith, the long nights of grief, the waiting, the worrying, the anxiety. All of this wrapped up in the season of waiting for Jesus to come again. About 2000 years ago, some others were waiting for Jesus in very different ways. This Advent at RBC, we re going to sing along with them. Specifically, we re going to look at songs from the Gospel of Luke. Today and next Sunday, we ll look for promise and hope in Zechariah s song. Then on the Sunday of joy, we ll see what Mary s song might have to say to a world that needs some turning upside down. On the fourth Sunday of Advent, which happens to be Christmas Eve that s right we ll meet in the morning for worship and Christmas Eve service in the afternoon in the morning we ll hear the shepherds and angels song and the song from the stable that evening. Then, Simeon s song will help us celebrate Christmas. All this is the first two chapters of the Gospel of Luke! It s no coincidence that during Advent and Christmas we sing some of the most beloved hymns. The Advent songs of longing and Christmas carols of joy proclaim that God-with-us has come and will come again. We sing these hymns and songs and remember when we sang them as children, when we sat at a piano with grandparents, learning those notes of Silent Night, singing with a choir, of caroling and of singing in this space on Sunday mornings. Singing together does this to us it rests/lingers in a place in our brain. Group singing, for those who have done it all of us in this room, is the most exhilarating and transformative of all. It takes something incredibly intimate, a sound that begins inside you, shares it with a roomful of people and it comes back as something even more thrilling: harmony. So it s not surprising that group singing is on the rise. According to Chorus America, 32.5 million adults sing in choirs, up by almost 10
million over the past six years. Many people think of church music when you bring up group singing, but there are over 270,000 choruses across the country and they include gospel groups to show choirs. As the popularity of group singing grows, science has been hard at work trying to explain why it has such a calming yet energizing effect on people. What researchers are beginning to discover is that singing is like an infusion of the perfect tranquilizer, the kind that both soothes your nerves and elevates your spirits. The elation may come from endorphins, a hormone released by singing, which is associated with feelings of pleasure. Or it might be from oxytocin, another hormone released during singing, which has been found to alleviate anxiety and stress. Oxytocin also enhances feelings of trust and bonding, which may explain why still more studies have found that singing lessens feelings of depression and loneliness. A very recent study even attempts to make the case that music evolved as a tool of social living, and that the pleasure that comes from singing together is our evolutionary reward for coming together cooperatively, instead of hiding alone, every cave-dweller for him or herself. It turns out you don t even have to be a good singer to reap the rewards. According to one 2005 study, group singing can produce satisfying and therapeutic sensations even when the sound produced by the vocal instrument is of mediocre quality. 1 Do you want your endorphins up? To be energized? To be calm? Satisfying and therapeutic sensations even with a mediocre voice? We sing together! (Here ends my public service announcement for joining the RBC choir). But really: we sing together to proclaim what we believe. It s quite remarkable to me that Zechariah broke into song in this passage from Luke. Here s some important background information to know about Zechariah. He was a priest and one of his days at the temple, he went into the holy of holies to make an offering. While inside, the angel Gabriel, yes THAT Gabriel showed up. In a type-scene that you Bible scholars will recognize, Zechariah was told that he and his wife, who were both around age 80 would be having a baby and this baby was to be named John. A laugh heard across the centuries, starting with Sarah and finishing with Zechariah was only stifled by his utter disbelief. I guess Gabriel and God expected more from this priest, 1 Stacy Horn, Singing Changes Your Brain, Time Magazine, August 16, 2013. 2
Zechariah that to doubt so God struck him unable to speak for what turns out to be the entirety of Elizabeth s pregnancy and the first week of his son s life. Elizabeth was more on board with this advanced maternal age, also welcoming her miraculously pregnant cousin Mary into her home. The point is that Zechariah, the priest, the preacher, the one with all the privilege in the land was silenced for nine months while Elizabeth and Mary, two without standing, waddling around pregnant with no privilege or rights were the ones to proclaim the good news of God during that time. So here we go. Elizabeth and Zechariah welcomed their son to the world as Gabriel said, and named him John. The town was abuzz with the birth of this baby to gasp Zechariah and sweet-spirited Elizabeth. The family and friends came around on the 8th day for John s circumcision and the naming ceremony. Remember: Zechariah still can t speak. The family gathers and after opening presents and eating some cake, the family says we re going to name him Zechariah, after his father. As Elizabeth held her baby, she looked at the gathered group and confidently said, Nope. He will be named John. The group of priests and relatives looked confused and said, No one in your family has that name. You can t name him that! Because the group could still not believe the account of Elizabeth, the group turned to Zechariah, the man who couldn t SPEAK to try and get some answers. I wonder why it was so difficult to believe what Elizabeth was saying? Why was it not true until Zechariah confirmed it that what she said was true? Wisely, I think Zechariah learned a few things during his full-term of silence and delivered his words on a tablet. He wrote, His name is to be john. And immediately upon the proclamation of his son s name, Zechariah s mouth was opened and his silence was no more. Of course, his family didn t know what to think a reverent awe washed over them. With that backstory, you see why it was remarkable that Zechariah would start to sing. His song came in two verses and we ll look at the first verse today and the second next week. Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and he started his song of promise! He sang: Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. 3
He has raised up a mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. How could he keep from singing? This song was all about God s faithfulness. God gave Zechariah a voice to proclaim the faithfulness of God through the centuries and that God was coming again and his son, John would be the one to announce him. This new savior had been raised up and salvation and forgiveness belonged to the people. This song is not just a song, but a spirit-event, a moment of God s Holy Spirit breaking into the ordinary, mundane world. And bringing with it God s preferred and promised future. Zechariah s song is spirit-empowered. It recalls God s promises. The words of promise to David that he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old and the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham. The promises of salvation from enemies, of redemption from danger, of freedom to love and serve God in holiness and righteousness. And the song announces that these promises are kept in the nearly-twin arrivals of John and Jesus. 2 These promises, this longing are the paradox of Advent. We are sitting in the midst of the already---that Jesus has come and the not yet that we believe Jesus will come again, that he is always breaking into our lives. This weekend is the National Weekend of Prayer for LGBTQ justice as you heard Cathy talk about earlier in the service. Cathy Baskin attended a People of Faith for Equality in Virginia lunch this week in preparation for the weekend and the Supreme Court case on Tuesday. While there she heard Claire Markham speak from the Center for American 2 Rolf Jacoboson, Commentary on Luke 1:68-79, Working Preacher. 4
Progress. She said, it s so appropriate for us to have this weekend of prayer on the first Sunday of Advent. The LGBTQ community has been living in a constant state of Advent. Meaning, our LGBTQ siblings know a lot about waiting waiting to be welcomed in church, waiting to be valued as human beings, waiting for the civil and human rights to be honored in a country where all are supposedly equal, waiting to eat a cake that celebrates the love couples share, waiting for a government that does not discriminate. This weekend, we pray. And we hope and rest in God s promises with the song of Zechariah and the songs of longing alongside our LGBTQ siblings. Part of Zechariah s song was quoted from a song of the people this was song the people sang, not a song a priest or religious leaders sang. This was a song that the people rose up that mercy and forgiveness were theirs, not the song of the ruling elite who looked to fill their wallets with greed and power. This newness, these promises of God flip the power structures on their head. Zechariah went silent in the gospel of Luke and two women, Elizabeth and Mary s voices were heard instead. When he does sing, he quotes those two women AND amplified the song of the people who live under occupation. That s part of God s promise in this life of faith! The voices of the marginalized will rise up! They will be amplified for the world to hear the good news! Zechariah didn t sing his own words when he speech returned. He sang the good news according to the people. We sing together in this space this morning we sang, pleading O, Come Thou Longexpected Jesus, born to set thy people free! We sang Blessed Be the God of Israel, the words of Zechariah s song! In a minute, we will sing O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear. We sing to express our hopes, our protest and the promises of God. Let s keep singing together and proclaiming that God s promises are realized among us and that this world we be turned upside down once again. Let s sing together and raise our energy and endorphins for the Advent in front of us because God knows we need some extra energy right about now. We sing for the freedom of all people. This story of Jesus coming to live among us is incarnation, it s liberation for all of us. This is God s promise to us. 5