How good it is to be together to celebrate this Holy and beautiful Night, to sing with joy and to open our hearts once again to this precious story of great love. Imagine that our God, creator of all living things, of each of us, chose at one point in time to come to be with us and to walk among us, to be a teacher and a healer, to be a consoler and challenger, and to remind us of the importance of love. We know he didn’t come amid great fanfare; he arrives one cold night in the most humble of settings, amidst the animals in a manger, as a newborn baby…most vulnerable, and tender. This tiny baby arrives like all of us arrived at one moment in history to bring love.
Many of us have heard the story of his birth countless times. Of all they things one could have described, Luke chose to speak about the very humble beginnings of this child Jesus, of the visit by the angels to the shepherds out in the fields watching their sheep to share the news of the birth of this newborn child. The Angels tell them not to be afraid and then proceed to share the joyous news of the arrival of child who has come to save his people.. and then they sing out with joy…Glory to God, and then these simple shepherds set out to visit this newborn baby.
The Rev. Howard Thurman once wrote, “There must always remain in every person’s life Some place for the singing of angels,
Some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful” Any of us who have gazed upon a newborn baby understand this well; with the arrival of each new child upon this earth, our hearts sing out with gratitude; the joy is beyond measure and we understand that a piece of the divine has come once again to live among us. If we listen carefully with our hearts, we can hear angels singing often in our days…when we are touched by kindness, when we receive compassion or mercy, when we greet one another with openness and we feel loved and share our love with others.
We all know that the gift of music can touch something deep within us. At the beginning of our lives, many new babies are sung to by their mothers, hearing lullabyes to soothe and comfort them. And at the end of one’s life, families will often sing or play favorite music to their loved one as they journey back to God. There must always remain some place for the singing of angels…
In the midst of all of our preparations for Christmas, in the midst of the excitement and joy, the sorrows and challenges of life, in the middle of it all, Christmas comes and Christ is born in our hearts again. A social worker in a high school north of Chicago once shared a lovely story about the power of music. At a special holiday assembly, “The High Five Choir” performed. It’s a group that brings together students from the special needs program and the regular choir. The choir performed popular holiday music and the student audience loved it. At the end, when the program was over, and the vocalists sat down, a young man from the special needs group, a young man from Liberia whose refugee family had been adopted and settled by a North Shore church, a young man with cerebral palsy, stood up with great difficulty and announced that he wanted to sing another song that was not on the program. And in a clear, strong voice, he sang, unaccompanied Joy to the world, the Lord is (will) come Let earth receive her king. Let every heart prepare him room, And heaven and nature sing. (From Rev. John Buchanan) …There must always remain some place in our lives for the singing of angels…
The writer Suleika Jaouad (pronounced su-LAKE-uh ja-WAD) shared her experience of the healing power of music in her own life during a difficult time when she was hospitalized as a young woman with a difficult form of leukemia. She had always loved music as she was growing up, loved learning to play the bass but as she became sick, she no longer had the energy, and once she entered the hospital to begin treatment, she stopped listening to music altogether. She found that music caused her too much sorrow. She remembered a particular time in her stay when she was in an especially somber mood because of how poorly she was feeling. She was feeling pretty low and could barely eat or talk. She wrote, “Then something magical happened. My friend Jon Batiste, an acclaimed jazz musician whom I’d first met at a music camp as a teenager, came to visit me in the hospital. To my surprise, he showed up with his entire band including the saxophonist and drummer. They call themselves the Stay Human Band.
She noted that Oncology wards, more than anywhere else are musicless places. Instead of melody, there is constant beeping. Instead of singing, there are the sounds of the medical professionals and patients. Other times, you hear nothing at all. But that day, Jon and his band had decided to bring their music. And right there in her hospital room, they began to play for her. As the sound filled the hallways, nurses and patients filtered out of their rooms. The patients who could walk, walked. Those who couldn’t were wheeled to their doorways by nurses or family members. Others listened from their beds. Every inch of the 25-room floor was filled with music. Timidly at first, and then with jubilation, patients, nurses and other hospital workers began to dance and clap. The oncology ward was breathing a sigh of relief, its inhabitants rejoicing in a temporary timeout, losing themselves to the beauty and healing power of the music. She was beaming and recalls, “The saints had marched in. And they played that song, too.”
(Life Interrupted, the Beat Goes On, NYT, May 24, 2012)
There must always remain some place in our lives for the singing of angels…
And so tonight, we celebrate this beautiful story once again, the miraculous idea that our God chose to come among us as a newborn baby, to walk amidst us and feel our pain and sorrows, to bring us hope and comfort and celebrate the joys of life. The angels sang that night and angels continue to sing in our lives if our hearts are open to hear them.
For this is a holy night, but not a silent one; the good news of great joy for all people will not be quieted. As Howard Thurman shared, “There must be always, remaining in every life, someplace for the singing of angels. Someplace for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful. Old burdens become lighter, deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old hurting. A crown is placed over us that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear…and despite all the hardness of life, despite all the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.”
Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Glory To the Newborn King…
-https://seedbed.com/singing-angels-song/