Scripture: John 1: 1 – 5 II Corinthians 4: 6 – 9
CD – "My Song in the Night"
The song you just heard is one of the selections our adult choir will sing tonight at the Service of Lessons and Carols. We rehearsed it for the first time on October 25 – and I couldn’t sing it, because every time I tried to open my mouth to sing, I started crying. Now it is not a surprise for me to have a connection between certain songs and tears. Music is, and has always been, an uncluttered path to my heart and soul. My religious heritage is Lutheran – and where those roots are very deep and very alive are in songs. I always try to begin my time of prayer or meditation with a few moments of music to still my chattering mind and to focus my intention. So the surprise was not that the tears came the first time I sang this song, because it is a very beautiful and moving song; the surprise was that the tears continued to happen every time I sang this song. I clearly needed to pay attention to the connections between this song and my life.

As a college student, I sang in the Gettysburg College Choir. It was an amazing wonderful choir – and we sang several songs composed by Paul Christiansen, the arranger of the song we just heard. It was difficult to get into our college choir, especially as an alto. I auditioned as a freshman and was rejected. I auditioned as a sophomore and was rejected. In the fall of my junior year, I auditioned and was selected as an alternate, which meant that I rehearsed with the choir and sang with the choir, except for out-of-town performances. I was 20 years old, and it was a bleak time for me. My roommate from the year before had chosen someone else to room with, so I had scrambled to find a new roommate and wound up with someone I didn’t know very well. My boyfriend, Phil, whose fraternity pin I had worn, had just broken up with me and returned to his high school girlfriend. He was a psychology major – and his parting gift to me was an assessment of my personality complete with labels like "overly-dependent and possessive." I felt isolated; I was very depressed; it was a time when I needed good friends but I was afraid to show that need for fear of being seen as too needy. What got me through that fall was choir. We would rehearse every weekday from 4 to 6, and we would sing beautiful music, learning it by heart. It was music of faith. I could sing those words about salvation and alleluia and grace – words I couldn’t even say to myself – and, when I sang, it was like praying, it was like meditating. I would leave th ose choir rehearsals as one who had experienced balm on my wounds. I would leave there able to go on. I literally sang out my pain – and eventually, my depression. Beyond words, beyond explanation, beyond logic, at the depths of sadness, I found God – and I found myself - in that twilight singing.

And so this Advent, I sing this new song with old words: "Unto thee, O Lord, in affliction I call, my comfort by day and my song in the night." And the tears come from that place where I ask myself, what is my song in the night? What is it that gets me through the dark times in my life? I believe that is the crucial question of faith: what are my words, what is my song, what do I hang on to, when all is not well.

It’s a good question for each of us to ask ourselves as we come to Advent. Our first tendency this season is to think of the world that is pictured by Hallmark: a world of happy smiling relatives and friends, perfect parties and food, beautiful decorations and presents, and total satisfaction for everyone. As soon as we envision this picture though, we wonder how we can possibly fit into it, because we know that on the inside we are often bone-tired, or lonely, or wounded, or ill, or scared, or depressed.

The first thing to remember during Advent is that the world of Hallmark is not the world of the Christmas story in the Bible. Israel believed that it was a nation chosen by God to be a beacon of justice and faith in a darkened world. Then the entire country was overtaken by Rome. So the world of our Biblical Christmas story is a country occupied by foreign troops. The Roman government rule was authoritarian and oppressive. The Romans had overpowering military superiority, and they imposed overwhelming economic exploitation and social discrimination. Most Jewish people lived somewhere on the continuum between poverty and absolute destitution. There was consistent unrest among the people as well as outright social and political rebellion in many regions of the country at that time.

In that world, in those circumstances, a young woman, 9 months pregnant, and her husband are sent on a forced march to a strange town. When she goes into labor, they have no shelter; they have no help. It is not a magical happy Hallmark scene.

The gift of good scripture, like the Christmas story, is that it has so many levels of meaning. It offers us metaphors to use in reflecting on our own lives. There is room for each one of us in this Christmas story, because it speaks to us precisely when we feel, like those Biblical folk, weary, overwhelmed, far from home, out of control, desolate, or spiritually barren. All those places in our lives are acknowledged and incorporated in the context of this story. One of the strengths of the Christian faith is its recognition that struggle and sorrow are very real parts of life.

The second thing we need to remember is that Advent is about hope. In the deepest night, in the midst of everything that goes wrong, there is the possibility of new birth, of new beginnings. For those who can see, there is radiant starlight. For those who can hear, there is an angel’s song.

Hope is not just a song. It is not just night. Hope is about a song in the night. It is about faith in the midst of darkness. The message of Advent is that the Holy comes to life in the very midst of our shattered dreams; the Holy is born into the world within our human fragile bodies.

I hear a lot of people talk about their seasonal depression that sets in during Advent and Christmas. I hear a lot of people say that they struggle to find a festive spirit within themselves. I don’t think these feelings are a block to Christmas. I think instead that they may be a necessary part of the spiritual journey during Advent. Frederic Buechner says that, in Advent, we are all somewhere between the darkness and the light, somewhere between the fact of darkness and the hope of light.

I read an article in Christian Century by Barbara Brown Taylor in which she reviews a book called "The Managed Heart." She notes that one-third of Americans have jobs that demand some form of emotional labor. These are people whose livelihood depends on the careful management of their feelings: flight attendants, sales people, customer relations personnel, social workers, counselors, teachers, nurses, clergy. I suspect that this portion of people in our congregation would be closer to 80%. Taylor suggests that the hidden cost of managing our hearts is the impoverishment of our own emotional lives. Does that resonate for you? It does for me – I am coming to Christmas with a certain weariness in my heart, in the midst of seemingly endless transitions in my own life. And where I am is somewhere between darkness and light.

Buechner says, what is coming into this realm between darkness and light is an invasion of holiness. It was, of course, out of my despair in college, that my life was invaded by the holiness of song and second chances. After all, the alto, who sat one chair in front of me, flunked her freshman Bible course, of all things, and was not academically eligible to go on the mid-year choir tour. As the alto alternate, I went in her place at the last minute on a magically wonderful choir trip to Florida, and the whole direction of my life ultimately changed.

There are probably no two scripture passages more dear to my heart than those we heard this morning. They are my songs in the night. In the worst and scariest times in my life, they are my mantras, my hope, my faith. From II Corinthians: "The God who said `Out of the darkness, the light shall shine’ is the same God whose light shines in our hearts. We are often troubled, but not crushed; sometimes in doubt, but never in despair; there are many enemies but we are never without a friend; and though badly hurt at times, we are not destroyed." And from John: "The light of God shines in the darkness – and the darkness has never put it out."

What is your song in the night? What is the tune, what is the vision, what is the candle of hope that shines in the darkest moments for you?

In her book Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris writes: "Even in terrible circumstances and calamities, even in matters of life and death, if I sense that I am in the shadow of God, I find light, so much light that my vision improves dramatically. I know that holiness is near. And it is not robed in majesty. ….. It comes from Galilee, as it were, from a place of seemingly little hope – and it reveals the ordinary circumstances of my life to be full of mystery and gospel, a word which means "good news."

Blessed be to you the good news of your song in the night - Amen.

Prayer: Sandy Reimer and Diana Tonnesssen

"Beyond creeds, beyond logic, beyond explanation,

We open ourselves to You, O Creator of Light,

And we breathe deeply, breathing in a sense of your balm.

We ask for your strength and your love

To touch our lost and lonely moments

To renew our weary hearts

To sustain our courage for the week ahead and

To bring hope to our searching souls.

Send your healing and your grace to

our dear ones, whom we name in silence to You.

Unto You, O God, in affliction I call

My comfort by day and my song in the night.

Amen."