on the 3rd day of Christmas - I Will Find A Way

Hallway. 1953. Roy DeCarava.

Here is my favorite new song for Christmas. It is really a metaphorical song about the Incarnation as a whole:

I Will Find A Way

I heard Andy Gullahorn and Jill Phillips sing this live at the Ryman a couple weeks ago at the Behold the Lamb of God concert. It made me cry. I found out a little more about it on Andrew Peterson's website and blog, The Rabbit Room, when a few days later they wrote a whole post about this song and how it came to be written. It is based on a short story by Walt Wangerin Jr called "An Advent Monologue" that you can read here.

I saw a wonderful comment about this song somewhere online from a listener; they said something like this: at first I thought the song was about some woman, then I realized it was about Mary... then I thought no, it's about the world... then finally I knew it was about me.

the 2nd day of Christmas - Once in Royal David's City

Once in Royal David's City

Once in royal David's city stood a lowly cattle shed,

where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed:

Mary was that mother mild, Jesus Christ her little child.

He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all,

and his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall;

with the poor, the scorned, the lowly lived on earth our Savior holy.

This song was originally a poem written by Cecil Frances Alexander, who also wrote "All Things Bright and Beautiful." She wrote "Once in Royal David's City" as a children's poem, which is why it includes some moralistic fluff, particularly in her original Verse 3, about how Jesus was such a sweet little baby and therefore all children ought to remember how good Jesus was and be just as "mild, obedient, good as he." Ahem... yeah, except for that time he ditched his parents to stay on in Jerusalem at the temple. I'm sure Victorian parents would have appreciated such behavior from their kids... Mercifully, this verse is omitted from the Episcopal Hymnal 1982 and replaced with another (see below), and a few other changes are made to the lyrics to make them a little more adult-centric (ie, "lifelong pattern" substituted for "childhood's pattern" in verse 4). This is traditionally the first song of the Lessons & Carols service held in the Advent season in Anglican churches, begun at King's College Chapel Cambridge in 1919. Watch them sing it in King's College Chapel courtesy of the BBC. Boys choir alert! So adorable and talented.

You can read the hymn in its entirety here as Alexander originally wrote it and as its appears in the Episcopal hymnal here, in which her guilt trip of a verse 3 is exchanged for a verse written by James Waring McCrady:

We like Mary rest confounded that a stable should display

heaven's word, the world's Creator cradled there on Christmas Day,

yet this child, our Lord and brother brought us love for one another

Verse 4 is perhaps my favorite. It reminds us of the theological significance of the fact that Jesus began life as a baby; as a child. God took on human nature from its very start in order to share in all of its joys and sorrows:

For he is our lifelong pattern; daily, when on earth he grew;
he was tempted, scorned, rejected, tears and smiles like us he knew.

Thus he feels for all our sadness, and he shares in all our gladness.

Verse 5 and 6 contrast the scene at Jesus' birth with the glorious day when we shall see Jesus ourselves:

And our eyes at last shall see him through his own redeeming love;
for that child who seemed so helpless is our Lord in heaven above;
and he leads his children on to the place where he is gone.

Not in that poor lowly stable with the oxen standing round,
we shall see him; but in heaven, where his saints his throne surround:
Christ, revealed to faithful eye, set at God's right hand on high.

It's really lovely how this hymn moves effortlessly from the scene at the stable to the beatific vision of Christ enthroned in heaven. I wonder if Alexander had been meditating on Philippians 2 when she wrote this, because she captures both the great humility with which Christ gave up his heavenly glory to become incarnate, to become that little baby in the manger and the restoration of that glory at his ascension. One day we will have the honor of beholding him in that glory for ourselves.

Check out Sufjan Stevens' version of this song on his series of Christmas albums, "Songs for Christmas."

on the 1st day of Christmas

O Little Town of Bethlehem

(which the Magi would have a hard time getting to these days)

Happy Christmas! Today is only Day 1 of the 12 days of Christmas. I am determined to make a little headway towards bringing back those other 11 forlorn, forgotten days of Christmas. The 12 days of Christmas link the two great feast days, Christmas and Epiphany, which is on January 6th. As a 12 days of Christmas project this year, I thought I'd highlight a Christmas hymn each day and reflect on it a bit. Today: "O Little Town of Bethlehem."

It was written by Phillips Brooks, who was an Episcopal priest and later bishop in the 19th century. He was inspired to write this hymn after visiting the actual town of Bethlehem himself. Apparently (according to cyberhymnal.org, anyway) he assisted in a service in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve in 1865:

I re­mem­ber stand­ing in the old church in Beth­le­hem, close to the spot where Je­sus was born, when the whole church was ring­ing hour after hour with splen­did hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voic­es I knew well, tell­ing each other of the Won­der­ful Night of the Sav­ior’s birth.

I love the line "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." I think it poignantly describes that essential part of human nature that is wrapped up in waiting and longing, both for the arrival of joy and for the end of suffering. This line bridges Advent and Christmas well, acknowledging the time we have just spent dwelling with our longings, waiting for things to change and telling us that we are entering a new season now that this Everlasting Light has begun to shine over the streets of this little city.

The last verse is my favorite:

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;

Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

I referenced this verse in my sermon today. It highlights that the birth of Christ is the coming of Emmanuel, the God who wants to abide with us or "dwell among us" as John 1 tells us. It reminds us that Christmas is not just about remembering one event from "back in the day"; Christ wants to come into our lives today.

Knowing that Brooks based this hymn on an actual visit to Bethlehem and not just on some cutesy romantic painting of the town makes a big difference in my estimation of this hymn. I have always liked this song (I really like the tune, in particular), but this song can be a little schmaltzy and privatized in its emphasis on role of the human heart in faith. One thing I like about Over the Rhine's adaptation of this hymn ("Little Town") is that it takes very seriously the fact that Bethlehem the actual town has struggled to find peace, particularly in the past several years. (you can find the song here).

The lamplit street of Bethlehem we walk now through the night

There is no peace in Bethlehem, there is no peace in sight

The wounds of generations, almost too deep to heal

Scar the timeworn miracle and make it seem surreal

Bethlehem is a place that is special to me, because during our trip to the Holy Lands in 2008, we stayed in a hotel in Bethlehem nearly the entire time, with the exception of one night in Jerusalem and a couple nights in Galilee. This meant that we had quite a bit of time to explore, to talk with our hotel owners who were a Christian Palestinian couple, to visit Bethlehem Bible College, to walk through the checkpoints at the wall, to understand better what is going on there. More than once I have wondered since then God might call me to live and minister in Bethlehem one day. We shall see. But perhaps we might see this little beleaguered city where Jesus chose to make his entrance into the world as a snapshot, an encapsulation of what this whole world is caught up in - both the beauty and struggle inherent in creation - a place still waiting for the final coming of its Savior to make things right again.

(the view from my hotel room in Bethlehem)

mother mary comes to me

The one subject that has taken up more of this blog than any other has been the question of vocation and finding a vocation that evokes from you - draws out, calls forth, speaks into being - who you are meant to be. It's time to finally tell you a story that reveals the direction in which my vocation has unfolded since the last time I wrote on this blog.

In November I was in New York, just before Thanksgiving. One evening I lined up with a bunch of other tourists outside the TKTS booth in Times Square, and I successfully scored two tickets to Jude Law's rendition of Hamlet. Getting tickets to a long-awaited play/concert stresses me out more than almost anything else - I inevitably imagine great heartbreak upon the news of the show being sold out - so I was very pleased to finally have the tickets in hand to see one of my favorite actors live and in person on stage for almost three hours and to have my old college friend on her way to join me for the play.

Some other friends of mine were back at Rockefeller Center, so I headed there to meet up with them. On my way back, I noticed a familiar blue and white sign hanging out above the sidewalk ahead of me - "The Episcopal Church welcomes you." My friends and I had already visited a few other churches in New York - St. Patrick's and St. Bart's - and they were some of the best stops we'd made. When I'm in tourist mode, exploring cathedrals and churches is one of my favorite things to do, so I ducked into the church for a few minutes to check it out before meeting up with my friends. It was called St. Mary the Virgin. I had come in behind the altar, so I walked around to the side of the chancel to see the nave and the altar. The nave was darkened, but the chancel was lit up to illuminate its crown - beautiful white marble steps leading up to a white marble altar. It was gorgeous.

As I stood and took it all in, I noticed for the first time the words engraved in the steps leading up to the altar.

MY SOUL DOTH MAGNIFY THE LORD

AND MY SPIRIT HATH REJOICED IN GOD MY SAVIOR

FOR HE HATH REGARDED THE LOWLINESS OF HIS HANDMAIDEN

The words of Mary. Beautiful. It was incredible to see that the words of a woman adorning those steps leading up to sacred space, ironically the very space in which few women have stood. Mary is our example in her humility, her bravery to step into shoes that surely felt too big, her confidence to stand there with arms aloft, singing a song of high praise to the Lord that rivals any other song in the sacred scriptures. Her hunch was right - many generations after her have called her blessed: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus."

Seeing Mary's words on the steps had a lot of meaning to me, because Mary had already served as an important figure to me throughout my own discernment. Earlier I had been gently prodded towards the Visitation, Mary's meeting with Elizabeth, as a scene that I needed to meditate upon. That gentle prodding towards the story of the Visitation had the fingerprints of the Spirit all over it, as though someone had thumbed through the Bible, opened to that passage, underlined a verse, and then pushed the book in my direction:

"Blessed is she who believed

that there would be a fulfillment

of what was spoken to her by the Lord."

- Luke 1: 45

(This makes a dreadful sentence in English, but it is actually quite concise and beautiful in the Greek.)

I loved this verse in part because it was one of the few in the entire Bible that came with feminine pronouns in it; it felt like this verse spoke my "heart language," as those in Bible translation would say. This verse upheld and reinforced the two things that had been spoken to me by the Lord during a period of prayer while I was at Taize: "marriage" and "ordination." Elizabeth's words to Mary were words to me as well: I too would be blessed, if I believed that what had been promised would come to pass.

So there I was, really excited to see the Magnificat carved into the altar steps and trying to discreetly take pictures of them. I wasn't sure if pictures were allowed, but this was a moment I had to document for the future. Then the sexton came over to me and asked if I would like the lights turned on so that I could take pictures. (So much for being discreet.) Yes, that'd be great, I said. He went over to the wall and turned on a series of spotlights, which set the marble ablaze with white light. It was all even more beautiful than before. I stepped closer to the altar so that I could take a series of pictures of the steps, so that after this interlude was over and all I had were pictures, I would be able to see each of Mary's words clearly. I panned the camera left to right, framing a few words at a time and letting the sense of what Mary's words meant soak into me. Her marveling at how God has chosen her. Her "lowliness" paired with a quiet confidence, which fortified her against automatically deflecting the spotlight with an "oh, I couldn't, not me, how about somebody else." Her outspoken joy at God's goodness towards her.

This was kind of a big moment for me already. But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw next. (ha, that feels like a Dan Brown cliffhanger. get ready. if you can.)

If ever in my whole life my jaw has dropped, it was when I looked up at the side of the altar and saw my name was engraved in the marble.

Now, my last name isn't Murray, but my first and second names are "Sarah Elizabeth." As I stood there, my mind occupied with the shock of the "coincidence," my ears remembered the voice of a woman singing,

"Then will I go to the altar of God

To my joy, my delight, and my strength"

Jennifer Knapp set those words from Psalm 43 to music, and they have been ringing in my ears even since the first time I heard them. They immediately come to mind whenever I am walking down the aisle of a church towards the altar. And they came to mind while I stood there in St. Mary the Virgin near Times Square and realized that God was beckoning me to the altar, saying, Ascend these steps and stand here. Tell of what I have done for you, like Mary did. Praise me before the congregation, like Mary did. Tell the world of my marvelous works. Imitate her humility and her quiet confidence. See, I am fulfilling my promises to you even now. Blessed are you who believed that fulfillment would come.

When the Lord calls you like this, it's tough to be original in how you answer. Sometimes the only response you can muster has been used before:

"I am the handmaiden of the Lord.

Let it be to me according to your word."

deo gratias.

p.s. When I was planning my priestly ordination service, I discovered that Psalm 43 is the appointed psalm for the ordination of a priest. These sorts of divine coincidences have rippled throughout this entire process.