Tonight and tomorrow night the TCC Choir will be presenting "He's Here," our 2015 Christmas program, and I could NOT be more excited! I am so proud of our singers and instrumentalists and, especially, director Marvin Jones for the work we have put in on this beautiful Christmas program. I encourage everyone who can to come hear us tonight or tomorrow evening at 6:00.
Every year at this time, my mind goes back to the first Christmas program I ever sang in. It was very different from any that I would ever sing or play in again.
Years ago, when I was about ten or eleven years old, our church
choir performed a Christmas program that had not been published. We worked from the
charts handwritten by the composer, Louise Sellers. I’ve Googled Ms. Sellers,
and to my knowledge she has never been published musically or otherwise.
But this Christmas musical had a profound influence on me
and my perception of the Christmas story. I still remember the songs and I
haven’t heard them for more than 40 years. They painted a very different
picture of the first Christmas than the peaceful, pretty picture we usually
imagine. And that works for me.
Oh, we had beautiful songs. I remember the lovely duet
between the angel Gabriel and Mary, weaving together the annunciation and the
Magnificat of Luke 1into a thing of beauty and celebration. And we would go on
later in the performance to sing of the visitation of the shepherds and the wise men in grand
style.
But baby Jesus was born into a dark time. Caesar Augustus
could order a census that uprooted everyone from their peaceful existence and
send them to their hometown, convenient or not, pregnant or not. They could
arrive in crowded towns with no inn reservations, no place to land, and wind up
giving birth to babies in a stable with no doctor, no midwife, no doula…just mother
and father and cows and whatever else spent the night in a barn and ate out of
a manger, the baby’s first crib.
It was a world in which a nervous Herod could send out a
decree to slaughter all the male children who had been born in Bethlehem the past two years just because the wise men
had thrown him off the track of the “infant king of the Jews” and he was afraid
of one of the babies growing up and usurping his power. A mass infanticide
declared by one nervous ruler.
We sang in our concert about this awful time, using the
words of Jude 1:12-13:
Clouds,
they are without water, carried about by the wind.
Trees whose
fruit hath withered, twice dead, plucked up by the roots.
Raging
waves of the ocean, pouring out their own shame.
Wandering
stars to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
Not your typical Christmastime fare.
And in response to this part of the story, our choir sang the
mournful verse of Matthew 2:18:
In Ramah,
there was a voice heard;
Rachel
weeping for her children…
And would
not be comforted.
You don’t often hear that deep sadness in a Christmas
concert.
I remember the power of this concert. Emotionally.
Musically. Spiritually. It rocked my young perceptions and thoughts.
But nothing moved my heart more than the last song, the ending.
Because it was so incredibly peaceful.
With nothing beneath the choir but sustained chords on the
organ, we sang the words of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, whose
prophecy is recorded in Luke 1:
God hath
given us salvation that we might serve Him without fear,
In holiness
and righteousness before Him all the days of our lives;
To be a
light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death;
To guide
our feet into the way of peace
To guide
our feet into the way of peace
To guide
our feet into the way
Into the
way of peace
To guide
our feet
Peace
To guide
our feet…
God hath
given us salvation
That we may
walk
With Him
In peace.
Yes, this works for me. I wish I could take the music that I
still hear in my head and simply deliver it into yours. It doesn’t exist on
recording or I would post it. Actually we have a terrible cassette tape
somewhere, but it is barely audible now.
Perhaps you get my point without hearing the songs. Jesus
came into a dark world to bring peace. We live in a dark world. It’s getting
darker by the minute. Waterless clouds. Raging oceans. Withered trees where
there should be fruit…just look around.
You know it’s true that you can see your Christmas tree
lights best when it becomes nighttime? You’ve seen how a candle is clearest
when all the other lights go out? Jesus’ light shines brightest in the
darkness. And his peace is the most healing and hopeful when the world is most
chaotic and hopeless around us. He doesn’t change, but we see his truth more
clearly.
This Christmas, may we allow the Spirit of the Living God to
guide our feet into the way of peace.
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