A lot of things have changed over the centuries since the Bible was written, from the food we eat to the clothes we wear to the animals that we share our homes with. But one thing that hasn’t changed is our love of music, and the way that it reflects our emotions and the situations we are going through. We sing to express our joy, and we sing when we are grieving. We have songs that are angry and fed up with the world, and if you’ve ever listened to an 80’s power ballad you know how much passion can be expressed in a 3 minute song!
Unfortunately the Bible isn’t an audiobook so we don’t have the tunes for the songs recorded in there, but there are actually hundreds of songs in scripture. Most of them appear in the book of Psalms, but there are also song lyrics scattered throughout the rest of both testaments, old and new. This morning in our reading from the Gospel of Luke we heard the Song of Simeon – the song he sings when he meets the brand new baby Jesus.
This isn’t just a lullaby to put Jesus to sleep, and it’s not even a song of blessing like we sing when we welcome new babies into our church family through baptism. Simeon’s song is something much more – it’s a prophecy, a promise, a revelation of God’s actions for all of humanity. There’s a lot packed into those three little lines!
We haven’t met Simeon before, and he won’t show up again in scripture, so we are left to wonder who he is and what happens to him after this amazing moment that he’s waited for all his life. What we do know is that God was with him and he led a good life, but he was waiting for something more. Simeon and Anna, the prophet who is with him at the temple, are two people that represent all who were waiting for God’s salvation for the people of Israel, that represent everyone who longed for God in this world. Simeon and Anna represent us here today, we who long for God’s presence in our current world, and when Simeon meets God face to face his joy overflows and there’s nothing he can do but sing out.
And what comes out of his mouth is nothing short of incredible. You see the Jewish people had been waiting for a saviour, a messiah, to be raised up in Israel for generations. But what was unexpected, and what Simeon is the very first to understand and articulate, is that this gift of grace, this prince of peace, this face of God now shining in the world… was for ALL people, not just those who walked in the way of Moses. What burst forth from Simeon’s heart was a declaration that this salvation was to be for ALL PEOPLES, and then just in case it wasn’t clear, he sang another line that emphasized “this is a revelation to the Gentiles and a glory for your people Israel” (Luke 2:30-31).
I know in this century we are pretty good at dividing ourselves into “us” and “them”, but make no mistake God’s people have always been unfortunately rather talented in this regard… and so for God to declare, through Simeon, that not only the Jewish people were part of this plan of salvation but also the Gentiles (which is a word for non-Jewish folk)… this would have been absolutely shocking.
Unless, of course, people had been paying attention to what God was doing all along. Because all the time, throughout the generations, when the people had been keeping track of who was in and who was out of God’s family, GOD had been choosing outsiders and non-Jews and people without any real power to do God’s work and share God’s message with the world. Sarah and Elizabeth were way past child bearing years when they were called to be the mothers of Isaac and John. David and Jeremiah were youth when they were called to be leaders. Rahab was a sex worker and a foreigner who saved God’s people. We could go on and on but you get the idea – God has never been hesitant to bless and welcome outsiders and Gentiles.
Simeon finishes his song and goes on to say to Mary “this child will be the cause of the rising and falling of many in Israel and will generate great opposition, and a sword will pierce your soul” (Luke 2:34-35). Now if you had taken your first born child to church for a blessing and a stranger said that to you it would likely be a jarring and upsetting experience. But Mary… she had already sung a song of her own.
In Mary’s song that she sings while pregnant with Jesus she declares that God will lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things, while bringing down the powerful and sending away the rich. She sings that God’s mercy will be shared from generation to generation, just like God promised her ancestor Abraham. Again, this isn’t a song about how happy she is to be starting a family and how wonderful her baby would be, although she likely felt that too… it’s a song about the fate of all humanity and her joy that she gets to be a part of God’s plan.
Mary grew up in the Jewish faith, learning the stories and songs of her ancestors and one of them that she surely knew and echoed in her own song is the Song of Hannah. Hannah was a Jewish woman and she, like Sarah and Elizabeth, was not able to get pregnant. After many years she does give birth to a child and names him Samuel, and when she takes him to the temple to be dedicated she, too, sings a song. And again, rather than a simple song of thanksgiving to God for this wonderful child, her focus is on something bigger than herself – she sings of how, because of God, those who stumble receive strength, the hungry will hunger no more, the weapons of the mighty will be broken to pieces, and the poor and the needy will be raised up. Sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it?
From the hearts of Hannah, Mary and Simeon came these songs, songs that were so powerful they echo thousands of years after they burst forth. Songs that spoke not just of their own joy in receiving God’s blessing in their lives, but songs that reflected and echoed through the ages God’s care for the poor and the oppressed and God’s love for all humanity, not just the insiders.
The songs that we sing matter because they stick with us in ways that other words don’t. If you’re like most of us, you can’t remember why you walked into a room or what you said you would get at the store but every single lyric of your favourite song when you were a teenager is seared into your brain for all eternity. There’s a reason people with dementia or Alzheimer’s don’t remember what they had for lunch or even sometimes the names of loved ones… but if someone sits down at the piano and starts to play they immediately remember the words to “amazing grace.” Songs are locked into our hearts and our minds in a different way than any other memory.
The songs that have been passed on to us from Simeon, Mary and Hannah are not cutesy songs for babies. These are powerful declarations about the way God is acting in this world, and there’s something in them that is missing from the songs we sing these days. Don’t get me wrong, the songs we bless children with are beautiful and important – when we sing to our kids that on the day they were born “the angels sang and they blew on their horns and they danced, they sang and raised up their hands” or when we offer the blessing song “may God who protects you give you joy, may God who surrounds you give you peace” these are exclamations of joy and prayers from the deepest part of our souls that every child who comes through these doors knows that they are beloved and we pray they would experience joy and peace within their lifetime. Of course we should sing those songs.
But I wonder what might change in our world if we broadened the scope of the songs a little. If we sang to our kids “you are amazing and wonderful and loved” and also added “God’s hope for the world is different than what you see here… God’s love is for ALL. The poor and the misfits and those on the margins will be lifted up and honoured and cared for, and those who use power and violence to hurt others will be brought down.”
I wonder what it would be like for kids to grow up hearing THAT kind of song, just as Jesus grew up hearing the bold resistance songs of his mother before he went on to proclaim God’s message of radical love. I wonder what our next generation would remember deep in their souls as they grew up if they had these songs in the back of their minds – not only that they were important and beloved, but also that every person is a child of God and that they are a part of something bigger than themselves. And I wonder how WE might be changed in the singing of it.
These songs from Mary, Simeon and Hannah have been gifted to us through the generations. May we receive them gratefully and carry them with us as we go out to proclaim God’s radical love in the world. Amen.
