The awesome impact of glory!

The relationship between a ministerial team and a music team in a church is an exceedingly close one.  In fact, the relationship is symbiotic because so much of what is said and prayed and preached about is also captured in hymn, in anthem and in song.  This close relationship is one of the things that make worship vital. When you know that it is present, it does glorious things for the worship of God.  But sometimes ministers and the music team like to conspire in another way.  I read a story of a minister who had been asked by his board to raise some money, so he decided that he would do something on a Sunday morning to get people to give. He informed the organist that he thought it would be nice if he would play some soft music as the minister ascended to the pulpit to declare the news that money was needed.  The minister got up, having decided that he would ask people to give $100 to the Church Fund, and that he would invite anyone who would like to make a contribution to signify their support by standing.  The minister came to the appropriate moment and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, members of the congregation, I would invite as many of you who would like to give $100 to stand.”  Immediately, the organist began to play O Canada!  Never in the history of a church has more money been made in one event than with that one!  It is a powerful thing when the music team and the ministry work together, but it is an exceedingly powerful thing when music and faith come together.

In fact, the whole of the Bible is woven with stories and passages of the relationship between song and the good news of God’s glory.  Nowhere do we see that more fittingly than in our passage today.  It is all about God’s glory.  But it arises out of something that is much deeper and longer lasting.  Indeed, the whole of the Jewish history is one of the relationship between song and faith.  Most scholars agree that the person who really put singing and faith on the map was King David, who played the lyre and the harp, who danced before the Lord, who decided that he would go to the tribe of Levi and he would give them this command, “You now are to be the custodians of music for the honour of the Divine.” That great rabbinical tradition was part of the singing in the Temple.  It was also David who authored so many of the Psalms. The Psalms that captured the heart of God and the heart of humanity in relationship to God.
 
The Psalms would go on to become the foundation of one our great traditions in the United Church, the Presbyterian tradition, where the Psalter was sung. The Psalter was in fact the hymn of the people of God.  Who of us have not at some point in our life turned to the Psalms to say to God what we cannot say?  Who of us have not at moments said, “Even though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death I shall fear no evil”?  How many of us have said, “Even though I make my bed in Sheol, in hell, you are there”?  How many of us have felt the joy and the adulation of being in the house of the Lord and singing glories to the heavens?  How many of us have been so disappointed by other human beings that we hope and pray that our enemies do not prevail?  How many of us when we are hurting lift our eyes unto the hills asking where does our help come from?  Who of us has not turned to a Psalm at some moment in our life?  These are the songs of faith.  These are the traditions of the Word of God, and the Word of God in song.  It is therefore no surprise that Solomon in building his greatest Temple decided to have twenty-four different choirs.  Twenty-four!  Elaine knows it is hard enough to keep one going in the right direction – never mind twenty-four! It is an amazing thing that Solomon did.  He was building on this great hymnal tradition, and with instruments discovered in archaeology, such as framed drums and chordophones, the people of Israel praised God.
 
So did the earliest Christians.  In fact, the very chance that we have known throughout two thousand years of Christian music on which so much of the harmony of the church is based, came in the early Church from the Greek tradition. Those chants eventually became Roman in form, and many of the great Gregorian chants came because of this fusion of song and faith.  But also, the Christians introduced new instruments that were played, different kinds of drums and cymbals were used from various parts of the world.  When brought together with the great Jewish tradition, song and faith went hand-in-hand.  In fact one of the great writers on Christian history, Dr. Pelikan, says that what we say reflects what we believe, and what we believe arises from what we say.  After all, ask yourself, how many of you really, honestly, turn to hymns that you remember to capture the sentiment of a moment?  O God Our Help in Ages Past, Our Hope for Years to Come, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation, Away in a Manger, The First Nowell, Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!  These are the traditions that have expressed our faith for us.  They have become the manifestation, the embodiment of what we believe, and they form us when we sing.
 
In the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, when the shepherds are in the hills, what do they hear?  They hear a song!  And, what was the song that this great choir sang?  “Glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace.”  This was a theophany, this was an appearance of God, like for Isaiah in the Temple when the cherubim and the seraphim came, and he felt the presence of the Lord on his tongue. Those shepherds in that field had the same experience.  It couldn’t be explained or articulated but it would change them.  These moments of revelation, though rare in history, even in the Scriptures, are nonetheless defining moments of how the power of a song can say something profound about God.  When you look at this, you realize that this is a profound song about God, but it is also a profound song about humanity, and God’s will for us. It is a profound song about God, because it shows the uniqueness of the kingship of Jesus of Nazareth.
 
Jesus was the King, and this announcement of a new king being born in Bethlehem was at the cornerstone of the angelic pronouncement to the shepherds.  It was an announcement that God was doing something powerful, that this Jesus who had come was not like anybody else.  Choirs of angels do not sing at the birth of everybody; they come for special moments, unique moments; the birth of what is called in the text the Messiah – Yahweh, the Lord, the Redeemer.  This is God coming to us. This is no trivial moment.  Commentators have mentioned that it is interesting how in Luke’s Gospel we have a sign in what they call in Latin an inclusio, bookends to reinforce the importance of an occasion.  It is an important occasion because we have the announcement “Glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace” at his birth. The people sang something similar, “Hosanna in the highest” when Jesus rode into Jerusalem.  Similarly, when the angels appeared to Mary at the tomb and declared that “He is not here.  He has risen.” we have an inclusio – a beginning and an end that show the importance and the uniqueness of an event.
 
Someone who captured this was the wonderful writer Mark Twain, who I love!  Twain made a comment that in the year that he was born, 1835, there was the appearance of Haley’s Comet.  He said, “Isn’t this great, the year I was born Haley’s Comet appeared.  You watch, the next time Haley’s Comet appears, I’ll die – sixty-six years hence.”  Sure enough in 1910, the day after Haley’s Comet was seen Twain died.  If anything showed the importance of Mark Twain, it was the inclusio of Haley’s Comet!  For Jesus, it was the announcement of the angels.  It is hard for any rational, modern person to get their mind around these appearances.  Sometimes, I think we do not understand the power and the mystery of faith in all its dimensions.  But, you know, it must have taken enormous courage for those shepherds to go back into town from their hill and say, “Guess what?  A host from heaven appeared to us and sang ‘Glory to God in the highest!’”  How strange that must have sounded?  If you went to Swiss Chalet right now and said, “We heard ‘Glory to God in the Highest!’”  They would be looking at you in a very strange way!  There was faith here beyond just faith.
 
A couple of years ago, at the Indianopolis 500 Motor Race, I was talking to a very famous race car driver who had won the 500 and the World Championship for Formula 1 – one of my idols!  I asked him, in my capacity as the Chaplain for the day, “What is the most significant thing that makes a great racing car driver and what is it that those of us who don’t drive like you should know?”

He just simply said one word, “Faith.”

Well, my eyes lit up!  I started to talk then about the Bible and Jesus and prayer and things like that.  His eyes glazed over.  
He said, “That is not what I had in mind actually, Reverend.  But, yes, okay, fair enough, I do believe.  I meant that when you get on a race track with thirty-five other people and you are doing 225 mph you better have faith in the people that are wheel-to-wheel with you, because if you don’t, you die.”

It struck me, because in life we do things that require faith not only in the divine, but in one another.  I don’t think we grasp the power and the glory of gathering with other people in a church and singing about what those shepherds experienced that night.  For us to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, pew-to-pew, and to sing “Hark! The herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King,” we are singing with those beside us in an incredible moment of faith. And we do it because of the uniqueness of the One to whom we give our praise.  How Jesus, two thousand years later, brings us together to sing songs and to make glorious music and to lift him up is one of the great miracles of our age.  It is also one of the reasons why I still believe in the presence of the church in society.  I still believe in the power of music to transform and articulate faith in people’s lives.  I still believe that faith is not just an individual exercise; it is one you live side-by-side with those who share your common faith and values and love for God.  I still believe that the Church is a powerful presence, because it echoes what those shepherds heard on a mountain two thousand years ago.  And God bless them for having the courage to let us know about it!

It also speaks to the most profound of human experiences.  How does this end?  What is the goal but peace:  “Glory to God in the highest and on Earth, peace.”  Peace is the goal, but the coming of the Son of God would bring peace between us and God.  He was the great reconciler, the great mediator between a broken humanity and a loving God.  It was Jesus who had come to reveal fully the nature and the extent of that peaceful and forgiving love.  It is rooted in him, it endures because of him, and it is ultimately to him that we all return.  It is also about peace on earth.  The language is not just about peace in Rome, for indeed in the first century that was the greatest problem, the tyranny of the Roman Empire and its violence – and it was violent!  It was not just about the tyranny of Herod, who called for the execution of children.  When our hearts break today, which they should, when we see what is happening in Aleppo, you realize that peace is not something that was just needed then; it is something that is needed for all time.  It required sacrifice, as we talked about on Remembrance Day.  It required dedication and commitment.  But it also required a recognition that this God to whom we pray is ultimately the God of peace.

As we say farewell today to Dr. McMaster, I am reminded that although he doesn’t talk about it a great deal, his upbringing in Northern Ireland before he came to Canada as a teenager, profoundly influenced his life.  Anyone who spends any time with David knows that in his heart he loves Canada, but he is Irish.  Ireland is one of those places that is so beautiful, but unfortunately was so torn by sectarian division and violence.  I read from the Belfast Telegraph an interview with one of its famous reporters, who was asked:  “Of all the people that you have interviewed, who has had the most profound impact on you?”

He said, “Well, the first one for sure was Desmond Tutu and the South African experience.”  

That one I get.  The second one though, was a man I had never heard of.  His name is Gordon Wilson, from Northern Ireland. The writer said in his interview that he is the man nearest to a saint that he has ever met.   You see, Wilson’s daughter, Mary was a nurse celebrating Remembrance Day in 1987 when the Provisional IRA set off a bomb killing eleven people, and one of them was Mary.  Her father found her in the rubble and she said to him her last words, “I will always love you.”  The representative of the British Broadcasting Corporation was there very quickly and asked him at this incredible time to say some words.  Wilson said, “Dirty words will not bring her back to life, but I will pray for those who have done this every single day of my life, and that they will find forgiveness.”  He said this because of his deep Methodist roots, also part of David McMaster’s heritage.  It was those deep Methodist roots and his love of Jesus of Nazareth that enabled him to say those words.  For the next few years, Gordon Wilson worked for peace.  He gave his heart and his soul for the peace of the land.  In 1993, the Senate in Dublin appointed him an Honorary Member for Northern Ireland.  All of this because of the One!  All of this expressed in one song:  “Glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace!”  Peace! Amen.