Same Song, Different Tune

I am one of those strange pastors that likes to wait until LATE Advent and/or Christmas Eve to begin singing traditional Christmas carols, even though we're hearing them everywhere else. I do this because, when we wait until the very night of Christ's birth to raise our candles as we sing "Silent Night" in the darkenss, I think we feel the amazing gift of the promise's fulfillment more powerfully. If we wait to sing "Joy to the World" until the celebration of the Incarnation (or Jesus' birthday, however you like to think of it), then I believe we can feel the lament of the world, and thus our desperate need for the Savior to come, more fully. I can't tell you how fully I felt the Holy Spirit in our Christmas Eve services because of our faithful waiting. It was amazing. I don't tend to get emotional while I'm leading worship, but I can count on emotion each Christmas Eve at that point.

But this past Sunday, Christmas Eve Eve, I began to worship with traditional carols sung by a traditional congregation with its small choir. The songs we sang all told the story of Christmas: the longing for a savior that is met by the promise of God and fulfilled in the coming of Christ. Matthew's gospel told us how Jesus was born. Then I moved to the next service, where a traditional (and all women's) choir (directed by my husband, the music director of that church) made the beautiful offering of a Christmas Cantata that again told the story of Christ's coming for our salvation through music. All very traditional...powerful, but traditional.

After lunch with my sister and her fiancee and then dropping off our son with my husband's sister and brother-in-law (and their three children), my husband and I then went to experience the same Gospel in a much less traditional way. We went to hear the same song sung to a MUCH different tune.

It is something of a tradition, a tradition we share with my music director (and her husband) in the first church I worship with each Sunday. We all like a band known as the "Trans-Siberian Orchestra," and each year they come to Columbia. We missed last year, but this past Sunday was our third concert. The first part of the concert is the same (except for the lights, staging and pyrotechnics) each year. It's loud, and hard, and definitely a far cry from Bing Crosby. They call it a "Rock Opera," and it tells the story of an angel flying over earth on Christmas Eve to collect an offering for God. The story involves a bar and some clearly not-church folk. The presentation of the story involves some dancing girls in dresses and boots that would make many people in my pews suggest they put on a long coat. But the story is no doubt the story of Christ's coming and his continuing work in the world. I may blog another time about my take on the band's most famous work, called "Christmas Eve: Sarejevo." But for now...

It all has gotten me to thinking...the founder of Methodism John Wesley talked about "plain talk for plain folk", or something like that. The Apostle Paul spoke of becoming different things to different people. I believe the point both men were trying to make was: God has made clear that the divine will is for ALL persons to know the salvation of Christ. If that is so, and if people are so very different from one another, don't we need to tell the story of Christ to each group of humans in language they understand? Different generations have different ways of speaking. Different cultures relate to different imagery. Different groups can listen to different music. What is nonsense to one makes sense to another. What is noise to one is a melody to another. My husband and I seem to exist in more than one generation, language, culture...at least sometimes; maybe we're a bit "bilingual".

Maybe we all need to become "multilingual" in order to tell the story. It's always the same song we sing, with saints and angels. We just need to learn a few different tunes to tell the story of Christmas and Easter. The babe born in Bethlehem is counting on us to make sure the whole world, and all the children therein, hear of his love and his gift to us. Can we sing the song so that everyone will hear? Can we preach the gospel to everyone at all times, using words if necessary, as St. Francis said? The shepherds went to tell everyone everything they had seen and heard. I pray that we all can do the same.