I Will Sing
A Meditation on Resistance
Early in my ministry, when I was much smarter, I was fortunate to enter the lives of 4 year old Johnny and his parents, Cindy and Bill. Johnny was diagnosed with a inoperable brain tumor. For nearly a year I visited with Cindy and Bill and got to know them as parents, parishioners, and ultimately for me, teachers. They taught me an important lesson about life and saying “no” to the powers of death.
The call came in the evening. Johnny died. I went to the house and Johnny was lying lifeless on the sofa. The physician came to officially pronounce Johnny dead. It was the same doctor who just a week earlier delivered my own child. He gently took Johnny’s hand, and then entered a few words in a notebook. He gave a hug to Cindy and Bill and then walked with me to the door. “Brent, we have experienced the beginning and end.”
The next day I went to see Cindy and Bill to plan the service for Johnny. I had thought about this day for some time and had some ideas about the appropriate texts and how a service might proceed for a young life shortened by illness. We discussed music for the service, and I, wishing to spare Cindy and Bill the difficulty of picking hymns and having the congregation stand quietly in grief, unable to sing, suggested a soloist. It was at that moment that Cindy stopped me and said, “No. We want to stand and sing.”
I was inwardly shaken by those words. They had experienced the death of their child. To this day, I cannot imagine the pain they must have felt. They wanted to sing. They weren’t choir members, and I had no reason to believe they were a particularly musical family, but I believe that Cindy, in her wisdom, knew about the power of singing and wanted to claim that power in the moment of sorrow and pain.
Standing and singing was an act of resistance. It was saying “No” to the powers of death. It was affirming the resurrection that the end is not death but life. We sang.
Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth is ruling still—
His kingdom is forever! (1)
From that moment on, the act of singing forever changed in my life. Singing was an act of resistance. It was saying “No!” not only to the powers of death but to all the principalities and powers that hurt and destroy. It was saying “No!” to the masters of war and their heated rhetoric of hate and division. It was saying”No!” to illness, to pain, and to sorrow. It was saying “No!” to injustice, to racism, and to idolatrous nationalism. But more, it said “Yes!” to life itself, to goodness, to beauty, to the miracle of language, to the gift of hearing, to the ordering of tones and rhythms that echo and affirm the divine intention, to the divine order, the divine justice; indeed the love of God.
During this Advent and Christmas season, I will sing. I will sing as an act of resistance.
In a world, indeed a nation, where we close our doors to refugees, aliens, and those who are different, I will sing. I will sing the words “O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel” (2) knowing that we are held captive to our own bigotry and hate.
I will sing “Bid envy, strife, and discord cease; fill the whole world with heaven’s peace…” in a world where we worship discord and stir the pots of envy and strife; where grievance is transformed into hate.
I will sing “He rules the world with truth and grace…” in a world where gas lighting from the highest echelons of political power has obscured and devalued truth. I will sing about the grace of God, revealed to us in the child. Grace that is the opposite of deals and transactions, no matter how artful; grace that affirms the love of God and the “glories of his righteousness.”
I will sing the words of the prophet, “Comfort, comfort you my people, Tell of peace, thus says our God; Comfort those who sit in darkness, Bowed beneath oppression’s load.” (3) Those words of comfort are words of defiance to those who rob the comfort and dignity from women, children and men; those who see the wreckage of humanity in terms of collateral damage.
I will sing the vision of the prophet, the vision of Shalom:
O day of peace that dimly shines
Through all our hopes and prayers and dreams,
Guide us to justice, truth and love,
Delivered from our selfish schemes.
May swords of hate fall from our hands,
Our hearts from envy find release,
Till by God’s grace our warring world
Shall see Christ’s promised reign of peace. (4)
The Advent and Christmas season are filled with music and song. It seems like every musical artist has produced at least one Christmas album. The stores, the airwaves, and our homes are filled with the music of this season. But at the core of the nostalgic tunes is a radical message of defiance and resistance. Singing, I believe is an act of resistance. It is claiming that which makes us most human in the face of our inhumanity. Singing is a bodily act, requiring us to breath, to speak, to intone, to echo the rhythms of God’s creation.
There is a defiant longing in our Christmas carols. Often our Christmas Eve services end with candlelight and singing “Silent Night”. The song echoes the declaration of the psalmist, “Be still, and know that I am God.” (5) It proclaims that message to politicians and preachers, to pundits and paupers, to all the Heroes and haters, to those who would sacrifice our children to their own fears. “Be still!” We might translate that to the vernacular of our day, “Shut up and allow yourself to experience a sense of awe!” Sleep in heavenly peace.
This Advent and Christmas season, I will sing the songs of defiance and resistance that proclaim the rule and peace of God.
A Post-Pandemic Postscript:
Two years after writing this, we find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic that is spread via droplets from our breath. Singing amplifies this phenomenon and in most situations it is prohibited. I support this as a public health measure that will save lives. I also stand behind what I wrote two years ago. Though we may not be able to sing with the blended voices of others, we can still sing.
The songs that emanate from the soul are prayers and Jesus encouraged us to pray in private. I find myself singing alone in the quiet of my study. I still sing and will continue to sing, believing that my lone voice is joined by a celestial choir of voices through the ages.
I am weary of this plague and what it has visited upon us, but not too weary to silence my voice. I will still sing.
Notes
1- from A Mighty Fortress is our Lord: Martin Luther
2- from O Come, O Come, Emmanuel: 12th Century, translated by John Mason Neale
3- from Comfort, Comfort You My People: Johannes Olearius
4- from O Day of Peace: Carl P. Daw, Jr.
5- Psalm 46
