The Eve of Christ's Nativity-2023

Christmas Eve 2023 The Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg December 24, 2023 Many of you know that it is not uncommon for me to get a particular song stuck in my head. I’m a big believer in how the Holy Spirit uses that to get my attention and as an invitation to delve deeper into what might be unfolding in my soul in a particular season. If you’ve been here before for Christmas Eve, chances are, you’ve heard me talk about this. One year it was Dona nobis pacem (God, give us peace) which was lodged firmly in my soul. Another year it was two particular lines from O Holy Night: “a thrill of hope/ the weary world rejoices”. Last year, it was a different line from O Holy Night…. You get the picture. This year, the Holy Spirit has shaken it up a bit, because my obsession hasn’t been limited to one song; instead, I’ve been obsessed, all through the Advent season, with two very different songs. I think the second song came into play because I couldn’t figure out why the first song was stuck on repeat in my soul. (But more on that later). This first song that got stuck in my soul this year is brand new to me. It’s titled Lully, Lulla, Lullay, and it’s written by a contemporary composer named Philip Stopford. I encountered it when I attended The University of the South’s Lessons and Carols service earlier this month where my daughter was singing in the choir. We had talked with her about the program earlier that day, and she had shared that it was her favorite song in their program. So when they started singing, I was immediately captivated by the gentle lullaby nature of the song. (It’s set to the words of the Coventry Carol, if you’re familiar with that.) The chorus goes: Lully, lullah, thou little tiny child/ Bye bye, lully, lully. It’s a lullaby sung from a mother’s perspective. It could even by Mary singing it for Jesus. But as the song unfolds, its soaring and beautiful melody becomes haunting as the song tells about the murder of the innocents, all the young children murdered by order of King Herod in his attempt to wipe out the threat of the baby Jesus: “ O sisters too, how may we do, For to preserve this day This poor youngling for whom we do sing Bye, bye, lully, lullay. Herod, the king, in his raging, Charged he hath this day His men of might, in his owne sight, All young children to slay. That woe is me, poor Child for Thee! And ever mourn and sigh, For thy parting neither say nor sing, Bye, bye, lully, lullay. i Y’all know this story, right? Even though it’s not one we typically read on Christmas Eve, it’s still part of the story of the birth Jesus. We find it in Matthew’s gospel, which tells us that after Jesus is born, Herod, the King, gets wind of Jesus’s birth from the wise men, and he grows concerned about a potential rival king, so he sends soldiers to the area in and around Bethlehem with orders to kill all the children there who are 2 years old or younger. (Jesus escapes because Joseph is warned in a dream to take Jesus and Mary into Egypt where they will be safe.) As I’m listening to this beautiful song unfold in the magnificent space that is All Saints’ Chapel at Sewanee, I can feel myself coming apart. The one Kleenex that I have on my person cannot combat the weeping that has just overwhelmed me. I mean, I am wrecked. As I sit listening to this song, I’m thinking about my own children, who are way past the age of infancy (thank goodness!), and this crazy world they are growing up in. I’m thinking about all the children of the world now and since the time of Jesus who have been killed because of the decisions of men mad with power, about how it’s happening, even now, in the same place it did 2,000 years ago, in Bethlehem (whose Christians have chosen not to offer Christmas observances this year in their churches because they are at war, under siege). The song comes to a hauntingly beautiful conclusion. I am openly weeping, and then immediately next in the program is that the congregation is supposed to stand and sing Angels we have heard on high. I stand up, and I’m really trying to get it together, but I’m still a blubbering mess, who’s trying desperately to sing Gloria….in excelsis deio. And then I start to get mad—who’s idea was it to play such a sad song and then make us get up and sing, anyway?! By the time angels we have heard on high is over, I’ve pulled myself together, but I’m still haunted by the emotional whip-lash I’ve just experienced through the two songs. But here’s the really crazy part, y’all. I can’t stop listening to this song. I bought it, and I’ve listened to it over and over throughout Advent, and sometimes, it still makes me weep. (I was listening to it on my way to pickleball the other day and started weeping at 7:00 in the morning.) But I still hadn’t figured out what invitation is there in this for me from the Holy Spirit. So, this is where the second song comes in, and interestingly enough it’s next up after Lullay, Lulla on my Advent playlist, so I’ve been listening to it all season. (This is one of those times when my spiritual obtuseness has given the Holy Spirit a run for her money.) The second song isn’t an Advent or Christmas song, but it’s a song on one of my favorite artists’ new albums, and it felt Advent-y to me. It’s titled Singing in the Dark by Carrie Newcomer. (Those of you who were at the Blue Christmas service heard me sing it with my friend Joshua Varner.ii) It’s a song about singing prayers with the monks of Gethsemane in the early hours of the morning before dawn has broken, and it’s all about how we can carry each other through dark times with our song and our common prayer, how our voices raised together can call forth the light out of the darkness. Our reading from the prophet Isaiah tonight hints at some of these images. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. But just like in the darkness of night in Bethlehem when the light of the angel’s song breaks forth, these people who are in exile and hope to return once again to their homeland know that darkness and light are never really far apart. In fact, you can’t have one without the other. It’s all a part of the same story: the murder of the innocents by King Herod and the light breaking forth in the dark from angelic voices. It’s all a part of the same story. In one of my favorite prayers in the liturgy for healing that we offer every week here, we pray “Gracious God, we give you thanks for your beloved Jesus Christ, in whom you have shared the beauty and pain of human life.” And that is certainly what is at the heart of this night, what is at the heart of this collaboration of darkness and light, what is at the heart of the incarnation, at the heart of Emmanuel—who is God with us. The creator of all has come alongside us, in and among us, both 2,000 years ago and again this night, to experience all the beauty and pain that come together to make up this human life, this human story. We gather here this night to name that, to recognize it, to lift it up for each other when we need reminding. That God has not left us to our own pain and horror; that God is present with us in it, even as God is present in the beauty, in the shining singing of the angels, and in the soft candle-light of Silent Night. When our hearts are breaking with beauty, God is with us. When our hearts are breaking with pain, God is with us. It’s all a part of the same story. And God is with us. We gather tonight because it is the nature of Christian community to raise our voices together against the dark, to call forth the light with our singing and with our proclamation of the good news. And it is the nature of Christian community when one is suffering, then we carry that one through with our singing until they are able to sing again. So if you find yourself able to sing this night, then sing on behalf of your neighbors who can’t this year. And if you find you can’t sing this year, that’s ok. We’ve got you. Know you’re not alone. Bishop Stephen Charleston puts it this way: “We will stay with you. That is the ancient pledge that turned humanity from being solitary creatures to living in community. In family. In kinship. We will stay with you, whatever comes…We will never wonder if we are alone, for in our heart is the pledge of hope: we will stay with you.”iii This year, what I’ve learned is that my invitation from the Holy Spirit has been to dwell alongside the darkness for a bit. It has been an invitation to me to hold in my heart the needs of those who are suffering here in this parish and around the world. To learn the lesson as another writer puts it “It is healthy and holy for joy and grief to coexist.” iv I’m so very grateful to be here, singing with you, in the heartbreak of pain and the heartbreak of beauty here on this most holy night. Remembering together that it is all a part of the same story. i. You can listen to the Sewanee Choir sing this hauntingly beautiful song starting at 1 hr 5 min. https://new.sewanee.edu/campus-life/believing/all-saints-chapel/festival-service-of-lessons-and-carols/festival-service-of-lessons-and-carol/ ii.You can listen to Joshua and me sign this song here. Thanks to Elizabeth Varner for recording it for our mammas: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vkJ2-_gX0_tCT2NmnxxyqeBWqqyKaFcN/view iii.Bishop Stephen Charleston on Facebook. Thursday, December 21, 2023 iv. Attributed to Holley Gerth in a Facebook image

The Second Sunday of Advent-Year B

The Rev Melanie Lemburg 2nd Sunday of Advent Year B December 10, 2023 The Lonely Places by Melanie Lemburg Why is it that prophets so often appear out in the wilderness? The literal lonely places. The places of dusty desert and desolate valley. The places of expansive roads stretching out into nowhere under the endless-eye of the horizon. They come with challenge and comfort, with new direction and solace and a certain lostness. They help us see the danger and risk and nurture and care that all dwell deep in our loneliness. And they remind us of all the potential in a simple change of direction. Our gospel reading for today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, is the very beginning of Mark’s gospel. We are plopped down in the middle of a wilderness and John the Baptist appears there with us. We hear echoes of the song of comfort to the Children of Israel in exile in Babylon in the words of the prophet Isaiah. And in this opening section, the writer of Mark mentions wilderness two out of the ten times that he will reference wilderness throughout the gospel. The word Mark uses, eremos, is the Greek word for desert, but the first part, erem, literally means ‘lonely place.’ In this opening section, Mark is inviting us to hold together both good news and lonely places. What might that look like for us on this Second Sunday of Advent? I invite you to ponder when you have found yourself in a lonely place in your spiritual life? Consider how the wilderness or a lonely place can be a place of both danger and risk and loneliness and also a place of refuge and rest for those who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life. When have you found yourself in a lonely place and been offered a change of direction by one of God’s messengers? Where are the wilderness or lonely places in your life right now, and what is the good news you need to hear there? The Lonely Places by Melanie Lemburg Why is it that prophets so often appear out in the wilderness? The literal lonely places? The places of dusty desert and desolate valley. The places of expansive roads stretching out into nowhere under the endless-eye of the horizon. They come with challenge and comfort, with new direction and solace and a certain lostness. They help us see the danger and risk and nurture and care that all dwell deep in our loneliness. And they remind us of all the potential in a simple change of direction.