The Songs that Stir
Advent 3: Psalm 130:1–6, Luke 1:46–55
Music has a way of filling our lives on various occasions. In love, in hard times, in hopes and dreams, music has a way of stirring the soul toward faithful activity.
Not long after September 11, I was listening to NPR, when I heard the sound of a flute playing Simple Gifts.
As the flute played on against the backdrop of one of the most challenging times in our nation’s history, I recalled the words to the hymn, I Danced in the Morning, set to the same tune. Some of the words of the hymn are as follows:
I danced in the morning when the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth:
At Bethlehem I had my birth.
I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black;
It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back.
They buried my body and they thought I’d gone;
But I am the dance, and I still go on:
They cut me down and I leapt up high;
I am the life that’ll never, never die.
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me:
I am the Lord of the dance, said he.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.
As I pondered those words, I wept. The lone flute playing Simple Gifts was not only an acknowledgement of the harsh cruelty that can exist in the world, but a celebration of the defiant acts of love that emerge in the face of it.
Mary’s song is a clarion call toward faith in realities beyond ourselves. Such realities emerge as the faces of justice, equality, removing the arrogant from their towering thrones and lifting up “the voices of those long-silenced.” In her song, “the hungry are filled and the rich go away empty…,” this time.
One may ask how Mary could have possibly have known these things, but by the time this child enters the scene the proof is in the practice. Jesus was everything his mother sang him to be. Even as the Advent spotlight now turns to us, I am reminded of a thought from the Lutheran pastor Richard Lischer:
“When we do any kind of useful work, we join the act of creation in progress and help God keep the universe humming.”
-Richard Lischer, Open Secrets.
Reflection:
- What songs stir us to faithful action?
- What is prayer?
- Who is my neighbor?
- What is love?
