Mary Sings “Joyful, Joyful!” Preached for Wollaston Congregational Church On December 13th, 2020 Scripture: Luke 1:26-38, 46-55 This morning we read from the origin story of the gospel of Luke. We heard of the angel who visits Mary and tells her she will become the mother of Jesus, who will be called the Son of God. And then we heard the song of joy, sung by Mary, at this astonishing news. The visitation of the angel to Mary takes place in Nazareth in Galilee, far from the religious and political hub of Jerusalem. Mary lives in a Jewish and Roman outpost, an insignificant place. Once Mary has recovered from her shock, she accepts the responsibility that Gabriel has brought to her. She agrees to carry, birth and raise the infant Jesus. Despite her initial fear, Mary acts with courage. She gets up and travels to her cousin, Elizabeth’s house in a village in the hills. She needs to confirm the angel’s story and perhaps she needs a place to hide while the child grows in her womb. She will spend the next couple of months of her pregnancy with Elizabeth. Presumably she is helping out her relative who is also pregnant and of an especially advanced age. When the two women meet and greet one another, Elizabeth’s child, the infant John the Baptist, leaps with joy inside her womb. He has recognized Mary as the mother of his Lord, Jesus. This prompts Mary to pour forth a song of praise to God, anticipating the great transformation that the birth of Jesus will mean for the world. This is a song of joy and a song of freedom. We remember that song today, by the name the Magnificat. The Magnificat is the gospel in a nutshell. Mary sings of the mighty being brought down, the proud being scattered, the poor and powerless being lifted up, and the hungry filled with good things. These themes continue through the gospel of Luke. One detail about the Magnificat that sometimes goes without mention, is that it uses the Greek aorist tense for its verbs. This is the tense of “Already and Not Yet” and it is the tense of the gospel. I wish English had this tense, but it does not. The verbs of the Magnificat are translated as past perfect: “God has brought down the mighty with his hand.” This might be better translated as “God has brought down the mighty, God is bringing down the mighty, and God will bring down the mighty with his hand.” Many of you know that I have a special attachment to the Magnificat. In my very first class in seminary I chose this passage as my New Testament text for in-depth study. It was also my chosen gospel passage for my ordination. And my ordination gift from you all, Wollaston Congregational Church, was the gorgeous Magnificat stole I wore to light the Advent candles this week. The Magificat inspires me when I lose heart, and it chastises me when I chicken out and back down from the call of justice. The Magnificat reminds me of the courage and resilience of Mary. The Magnificat is pure joy: the joy of the already and the not yet. When we sing with pure joy, we sing of freedom. The Magnificat has resonated with many Christians through the ages. It has been arranged to music, of course, and has served as a hymn from the very beginnings of the church. Usually it is presented as a medieval chant. It is sung with a haunting melody, often by a single female voice, or a choir of unaccompanied monastic tones. But what if, the Magnificat was performed in a different way? What if it was heard as a rallying cry, or a protest song, like “We Shall Overcome”? What if the Magnificat was sung to the tune of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, with the power of a full orchestra, and thousands of voices? The music of the Ode to Joy comes from the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Beethoven composed this movement to include voices, soloists and full chorus, which was quite unusual for his time. He took a poem “Ode to Joy” written by a German poet, Frederich Schiller, for the words of this movement. It is amazing to think that Beethoven was almost completely deaf when he composed the Ninth, which is considered to be his greatest work. “Following the Ninth” is a documentary movie that demonstrates the power of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony and the anthem to joy, for people who are deeply immersed in places of struggle and suffering. [1] In Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in 1989, the symphony was played over loudspeakers, during the student uprising and protests. The loudspeakers had been erected to convey the Chinese government’s propaganda. But the students blocked out the voice of the government by playing the symphony for the thousands of protesters who were assembled. The protests reached a climax when 3,000 students went on hunger strike. Many of them wrote farewell letters to their families and loved ones, and they fainted due to the lack of food. But as the Ode to Joy played they raised their voices in harmony. They called out for the freedom to express themselves through art and music. They called out for the freedom to speak the truth and to be in dialogue with their government. The student leader, Feng Congde, describes this as a moment of hope and solidarity, when, to quote the Ode to Joy, “all people become brothers.” He says the music restored their dignity. Moments later the military tanks rolled in and soldiers fired at demonstrators, killing many of the students and their hopes and dreams. In 1973, Augusto Pinochet took power in Chile, following a Coup d'état. Socialists and political critics, like Renato Alvarado Vidal, were imprisoned and tortured. Pinochet’s dictatorship interned tens of thousands, and executed more than 1,000 members of his opposition. Vidal describes the prison as the “deepest, darkest hole … music was banished, happiness was banished.” He was imprisoned 14 times. Many young men had been “disappeared” by the regime, but the young women of the resistance movement did not give up. When all the young men were gone, the women began to protest outside the prison walls. As the military patrolled around them tossing tear gas canisters into their gathering, they sang the Ode to Joy, bringing hope to the prisoners inside the walls. Lene Ford grew up in East Berlin during the Soviet era. She was a well-behaved young girl, dutiful to her country the party. And yet she also wondered what was beyond the great wall that divided her city. When she began High School she could see that the wall was patrolled by armed soldiers, who looked down from high towers. She was terrified by the idea that she might be shot if she got too close to the wall. And she weeps as she tells the story of friend’s brother who was shot and killed as he attempted to cross “no man’s land” between the East and West sides of the wall. As a teenager, Lene enjoyed writing to pen pals all over the world and developing her language skills: English, Russian, and Spanish. But her curiosity about the outside world aroused suspicion and the Stasi started to observe her as though she was a spy. In 1989 Checkpoint Charlie was opened. After decades of oppression, Lene and her friends were allowed to walk openly through to West Berlin. They were welcomed with hugs and kisses by the people: she remembers this moment and pure joy. On December 25th 1989 Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Berlin. The “Berlin Celebration Concerts [took place] on both sides of the Berlin Wall, as it was being dismantled. [They] were unprecedented gestures of cooperation, the musicians representing the former East Germany, West Germany, and the four powers that had partitioned Berlin after World War II.”[2] Bernstein changed the words of the Ode to Joy, substituting the word “freedom” for “joy.” As the story of the Ninth is told, viewers may well begin to think that the words freedom and joy are interchangeable. Indeed there is some speculation that the poet Schiller intended this. In Japan, thousands of choirs and orchestras gather during the month of December, to rehearse the Ninth Symphony and the Ode to Joy. The New Years tradition of performing the Ninth – Daiku in Japanese - originated during the First World War, when prisoners of war from Germany brought Beethoven’s music with them. The Japanese chorus members practice and practice until they can articulate the German words and music. Christmas is not a major holiday for them, but the Japanese love to sing Daiku as they look forward to the New Year with hope. Daiku is the holiday music in Japan. In March 2011 a massive earthquake struck the coast of Japan and caused an enormously destructive tsunami. This tsunami sent the Fukishima nuclear power plant into meltdown. This was a major catastrophe for Japan, as many as 20,000 lives were lost. And so, as Japan looked for ways to heal, a massive Daiku concert was put on in Tokyo. The performance included a chorus of 5,000 people in a huge stadium. The idea was to raise funds for the victims of the disaster, and also to bring Japan together following the earthquake and tsunami. As Iwanaga Yuji, a Daiku performer, says, the Japanese culture embraces harmony. Daiku allows them to sing together as one. The message that “we are all brothers” was a powerful message of solidarity for those in the disaster area. Yuji says the Daiku performance proclaimed “Let’s rebuild Japan.” When we end our service today, we will sing our carol of resistance for this week: “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” This hymn is set to the tune of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy theme. Singing this hymn is a tradition for the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Joy. My hope is that when we sing the hymn, and each time we sing it in the future, we will remember these stories of the Ninth. And we will remember Mary, brave, resilient and strong. In these days of Advent waiting, and in this most unusual year, we may well struggle to find joy. We may feel that our freedom has been lost, amidst pandemic fears and restrictions. Even as the light at the end of the tunnel comes into view, with the newly approved vaccine, we may have concerns. There will be doubts about who will receive the vaccine and whether it will be distributed equitably. We may wonder how we will emerge from the pandemic. Which businesses will be entirely lost? How will a generation of children will overcome missed schooling and other missed opportunities? And how will we begin to grieve the ones who are gone? How will we heal? This is why we need to sing. Like Mary and all those who sing around the world, we need to raise our resilience to defy the odds. We sing the call to rebuild a just and equitable world: better than before. Because in Jesus, God brought freedom and joy, God brings freedom and joy, and God will bring freedom and joy. May all God’s people say, Amen [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPWpV3BWLJs&t=5s [2] https://www.leonardbernstein.com/about
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