The Feast of the Nativity, December 25th, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Katharine C. Black, preaching
Isaiah 62: 6-12
Psalm 97
Titus 3: 4-7
Luke 2: 1-20
" Go tell it on the mountains, over the hills and everywhere; go tell it on the mountains, that Jesus Christ is born." AMEN.
Merry Christmas to you and to yours. It's wonderful to see you here, Merry Christmas. We went to Black Nativity last week, and it was fun, interesting, and wonderful. Many of the songs that make up that pageant were familiar Christmas carols, with different accompaniment than Jeffrey provides for us. Although familiar in word and tune, the songs were presented at a different speed, a slower more deliberate beat. Particularly noticeable was the deliberate pace of the leader's, "Go tell it on the mountain, over the fields, and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born."
It occurred to me that we sing that, and other carols and songs, as music. We read the words off and sing the tunes. Suppose, though, we couldn't read the songs or read the Bible, how would we know the stories, how would we know the Gospel, how would we know the good news? Someone would read the stories to us, or sing them to us. We'd listen and learn, hear and believe, worship and come to adore. The gestures gave me a clue. The leader sang those lines this way every time,
Go tell it on the mountain
Over the hills and everywhere
Go tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born.
The news came from Heaven, was to be spread all around, and to each person the narrator/singer saw and encountered: you. The point was to teach people the bible stories, so the songs, when sung as gospel songs had to be done slowly enough to learn the stories and to be able to spread them. Like some kinds of narrative or pictorial art, sometimes seen in stained glass windows, almost like cartoon-simple, illustrations, stories were told visually for people who don't read, as some songs were sung for the same audience.
Willa Cather wrote about a simple experience in a column in the Nebraska State Journal where she worked early in her career:
"Up in the Black (Negro) church one Christmas the congregation were singing the "Peace on Earth." When the plaintive music stopped an old gray-haired preacher (Negro) in a frock coat and wearing two pairs of glasses arose and began reading the old, old story of the men who were watching their flocks by night and of the babe who was born in the city of David. He became very excited as he read, and his voice trembled and he unconsciously put the words to measure and chanted them slowly. When he finished he looked up at the ceiling with eager misty eyes as though he could see the light of the heavenly messenger shining in upon him. It is a beautiful story, this of the holiest and purest childhood on earth, beautiful even to those who cannot understand it, as dreams are sweet to men without hope. After all, if we cannot hear the carol and see the heavenly messenger, it is because our ears are deaf and our eyes are blind, not that we turn willfully away from love or beauty. No one is antagonistic by preference. Almost any of us who doubt would give the little we know or hope to know to go down upon our knees among the lowly and experience a great faith or a great conviction."
As we sing these great Christmas songs, hear their images and see the narrative they tell. It is important for us to do more than to "hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest," these carols; we are to tell them out to all we know and all we meet. The mystery of the birth of the Saviour is best apprehended though poetry, music, art and other creative forms. One person described this moment of God's coming to earth and man's reaching for heaven this way, "When peaceful silence lay over all, and the night had run half of her swift course, your all-powerful word, O Lord, leapt down from heaven, from the royal throne." Go tell this on the mountain.
Hear this 15th century poem by someone whose name is lost:
O my child, child of sweetness,
How is it that I hold thee, Almighty?
And how that I feed thee,
Who givest bread to all?
How is it that I swaddle thee,
Who with the clouds encompasseth the whole earth?
You shall know him when he comes.
Not by the din of drums
Not by the vantage of his airs
Not by anything he wears.
For his presence known shall be
By the holy harmony
That his coming makes in thee.
Go tell this on the mountain. Over the hills, and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain: that Jesus Christ is born: Good News.
~ Katharine C. Black 25 December 2009
