"Music Magnifies the Lord"

One of my favorite movies opens with an aerial view of a young woman dancing and singing in the Austrian Alps. She sings, "The hills are alive with the sound of music..." The movie was based on the real life story of Maria Von Trapp, and is retold through some of the most beatuiful music every written.

Long ago, some other hills came alive with the sound of music - the hills of Judea. The young woman singing with all her heart was a poor peasant girl named Mary. The way Luke tells her story is also like a musical. Each character comes onto the stage and breaks out in a song.

Zechariah, who would be the father of John the Baptist, learns that's he become a daddy and he sings. Of course, his first reaction was to lose his voice, a reaction that most first time fathers can relate to.

Mary is told she's to be the mother of the Son of God and what does she do? She sings.

The angels sing, Elizabeth sings, Simeon- the old man- in the temple sings, everybody is singing...

And it seems that everybody is still singing, especially at this time of year...

Christmas has inspired more music than any other season or event in human history. And not just any old music, but the most beautiful, inspiring music the world has ever heard. From these beautiful songs in Luke's Gospel to Handel's glorious MESSIAH to the joyous carols and hymns most everyone knows, even if they have never been inside a church. Christmas has always been a time for music, for singing.

It is difficult to explain this power that music has. It can express things in a way that mere words cannot. Someone once said that music is the door to the heart. There is truth in that. Music can touch a part of us deep inside when nothing else seems to be able to even get close. It can inspire, challenge, thrill, comfort, and even sadden us. Martin Luther was surely right when he said, "Music is one of the fairest and most glorious gifts of God."

So it's little wonder that singing, that music has had a long and important place among God's people. It is no accident that the longest book in the whole Bible is a collection of songs - what we call, "The Book of Psalms." Whenever and wherever God's people have gathered over the centuries, there has been the sound of music.

We United Methodists are certainly no exception. Since the beginning, we have been known as a singing people. John and Charles Wesley loved music. Charles wrote over 6000 hymns. And John even confessed once that he was convinced that more people had been converted under their ministry through the music of Charles than through his own preaching.

This is certainly been true for me. I was invited, as a young lad of about 8, to join a youth choir at a local church. I was reluctant and more than a little afraid. But the music sung was so marvelous, so much fun to sing, that I was captured by it. To this day I remember those songs we sang. That music was what lead me to church and on toward Christ.

I can imagine that if we had time for each of you to share you, too, would confess that music played an important role in you becoming a Christian or at least in nurturing you in the faith.

Can you imagine worship without music? Or Christmas without singing? How impoverished our lives would be without this fair and glorious gift of God.

This past Monday night a group of persons from several churches went caroling. I wish you could have seen the faces of the persons to whom we sang. Smiles, radiant glows. Not the kind of smiles just to be polite, just to thank us, but smiles that came from a deep joy inside. Smiles and a few tears as they tried to sing along with us, the words and music bringing back memories and experiences only they and God could understand. There, for a few moments, God used us through this wonderful gift of music to touch a few lives with the joy and love of Christmas.

Music is a natural, spontaneous expression of joy. That's why it's so much a part of our Christian lives. No better way to praise God or to make us want to praise God than some rousing hymn of thanksgiving.

Mary was singing because she couldn't help herself. She was overwhelmed by God's goodness to her. She just had to sing.

Surely this has happened to you. In the midst of your daily routine you get some unexpected good news and before you know it your singing outloud or at least humming something or your toe starts tapping to some joyous tune. Sometimes I feel such an overwhelming joy that I wished I had a whole orchestra to accompany me!

I remember a minister coming up to a lady after they sang the closing hymn which was "Joy to the World." The minister said to her, "Ruth, I couldn't help but notice the expression on your face when you were singing this morning. There was a radiance there." She smiled and said, "Yes, sometimes I feel so much joy that I want to sing all four parts of every hymn all at once!"

I remember one day after church when Michael was about four. He came ruinning to me, singing something. He had been in children's church and the topic that Sunday was how the people danced and sang after crossing the Red Sea, after being delivered from Egypt. Apparently, the teacher that day had had them dancing and singing, acting out that story. He threw his arms around my neck and said, "Daddy, I'm happy with joy!" And he was too.

This is why we Christians sing at Christmas and throughout the year. We are happy with joy! For God has sent us all a Savior, Christ the Lord, to redeem us, to bring healing and wholeness and forgiveness into our lives. If anybody ever had reason to sing, we do!

I know what you're thinking. And you're right. You don't always feel like singing, do you? Even if it is Christmas and maybe because it's Christmas.

You are not the first to feel like this.

By the rivers of Babylon-
there we sat down and there
we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for
mirth, saying,
"Sing us one of the songs of
Zion!"
How could we sing the Lord's
song
in a strange land?" (Psalm 137:1-4).

Who hasn't felt like that? Who hasn't been tempted to hang up the harps, to wonder if you'd ever feel like singing again? Even if it is Christmas or maybe because it's Christmas.

But the people of God in captivity sang anyway! These words themselves are made into a song! Bible scholars believe that it was during this time of suffering in Babylonian exile that musch of the Old Testament was preserved, written down. They keep on singing, even though their hearts were not in it, until the music roused them, filled them once again with the joy of the Lord, with hope, trust, faith. They kept on singing and they made it through.

Even, Mary, though she sings with so much joy, must not have felt like singing at first. She must have been filled with a great deal of fear and confusion when told that she would bear the Son of God. What would her family think? The community? Joseph? This was surely a great blessing but it carried some heavy burdens as well. Even as the child is being circumcized, eight days after his birth, Simeon tells her that a sword will pierce her heart because of this child. She would see him suffer the most agonizing death a person could experience - crucifixion, not to mention the pain of being rejected by so many of his own people. But she sings anyway. We have her song here. Part of its message to us is to keep singing, no matter what.

Did you ever catch that little phrase that ends the scene in the Upper Room? It's Matthew 26:30. It reads, "When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives." What a strange time for singing. Surely Jesus must not have felt like it. I mean, it was his last meal with them. One had already left to betray him. He was on his way to being arrested, judged and executed, but he sings a hymn - probably Psalm 113 or 118 - the songs sing at Passover, psalms of joyous praise.

Beaten and cast into prison in Philippi, the whole jail block was rocking at midnight as Paul and Silas sang hymns of praise to God (Acts 16:25). What a strange time and place to be singing! Surely they must have been tempted to do the very opposite. Instead, they sing! And the earth moved. The prison bars opened. God worked a miracle in the life of a prison guard.

Many of the great spiritual songs of the church were created and sung by slaves working in fields. A strange time for singing, we might think. But not at all. It was singing that helped see them through, that lifted their spirits.

Did you know that there's an order of worship in the new hymnal for funerals? Did you know that it has places for us to sing? It calls upon us all to sing through our tears, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" or "Rock of Ages" or "How Great Thou Art." We are coaxed into singing even though we don't feel like it. Andd in so doing we stand with hearts and fists raised in the face of that tyrant death, refusing to give it the last word, for it does not have the final victory. Sometimes we have to sing to remind of this.

My father had a man who worked with him who was always singing or whistling, usually some hymn. Sometimes he could get a little on your nerves! I asked him one day, "Why are you always singing?"

"Well, I'll tell you," he said. "The Lord has put a song in my heart and my mouth can't help but sing! I tend to forget what the Lord has done for me. But singing helps me remember."

Singing takes our minds off ourselves and turns us to God...

it magnifies the Lord...

it reminds us that we are not alone, never...

it makes us remember all God has done and will do for us...



Conclusion



I was cold Monday morning. The grass was thick and slippery with frost. I sat shivering in my office. I turned on the radio and the announcer said, "The coldest spot in the state is Hot Springs at 14 degress and a wind chill factor of -2." I looked out the window and noticed the shleter over the picnic tables just beyond the parking lot. It has a tin roof. The sun was coming up over the mountain in the distance. You know what? The backside of that tin roof was smoking. Steam was rising from it into the chilly air. The frost that had covered that side had been transformed into a smoky mist. And at the edges of the shelter on that that side I noticed that the frost was dripping away in large drops of water. At that very moment, "Joy to the World" came on the radio. I found myself humming along with it and then singing right out loud. I forgot about the coldness around me, the dreariness of the day. I felt like that tin roof. That joyous song had brought back into my life the warmth and love of the Son of God born at Christmas.

But then I looked back out the window to the otherside of the shelter. It was still covered with frost. It would be much of the day until the sun got around to that side.

I could not help but think of those among us for whom this is a bitterly cold time. There are parts of your lives that feel frozen, that have so numbed your fingers that you feel you should hang up your harps, that have so chilled your voice that you wonder if you can sing at all.

My prayer for you is that God will use the joyous sound of music this Christmas to bring the thawing power of the Son into those frozen parts of your life...the parts filled with pain, fear, loss. And may they be replaced with a song, a joyous song that will keep you warm through the dark and cold days of January and beyond.



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