Humming the Tune and Singing the Song

Christmas Eve 2005

Christopher H. Edmonston, HMPC

Luke 2 and Psalm 96

I.

I can remember being a child and being amazed with my father as we rode in the car. He seemed to know the words to every song on the radio. Each new song would come on, in a moment or two it seemed like he would be singing with them.

Now my Dad was somewhat a musician. He played trombone in the ROTC band at LSU. He was the lead singer in a high school band in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, called the The Viscounts. They once opened for the band called the Byrds at some football stadium – Dad says that was their big moment. He sang in the choir some when I was a boy and he taught me my first lessons in how to read music.

But none of that impressed me nearly as much as the fact that he seemed to know all of the words. I thought that was the coolest.

II.

Now I don’t know how old I was when I first realized that all was not as it had appeared. Dad didn’t know all the words. For example, in the song, “Who Are You?” which refrains: “who are you, who?, who?, who?, who?”, my Dad had been singing for years – “New Orleans, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.” It dawned on me that he was making up words all the time. One Christmas I realized that there was no king Stanislaus and that there was nothing particularly impressive about simply singing “Pom, pom, pom-pom, rump-a-pa-pom” for all 10 minutes of the little drummer boy. Most often it seemed like he just hummed really loud, and being able to match the pitch in the songs, he was able to sing along to anything.

Now in his defense he never claimed to know all the words or that he wasn’t making them up. I had just assumed that he knew them all along.

Embarrassed about my father and his propensity to hum along, I never shared this with anyone until the summer of 1991, when I flew to Connecticut to meet my girlfriend’s mother and father. Little did I know that the man who drove me all over New England that week would one day be my father in-law.

During one of those drives into Massachusetts or someplace like it, a song came on the radio that he like, and wouldn’t you know it – he sang the first few words and the started humming and la-ing along. Like this (only not this song): “Good King Wincelslas looked down, on the feast of Stephen, la, la, la, dee, dee, dee, da, dody, dee, la, la, la.”

Unbelievable. I met eyes with Colleen and saw she was embarrassed, and think I held her hand. She probably thought I was offering support, but I was offering sympathy and brotherhood. We were together in the fraternity of humming Dads.

III.

Even more unbelievable is the fact that about a month ago my nearly four year old son told me that he thought I was making up the words: “those aren’t the words daddy” he scolded me. I told him I was just humming along, and you didn’t have to get the words right all the time. I guess it is just something that father’s do – at least the ones that I am related to by blood and marriage.

IV.

“O, sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples. For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be revered above all gods.” That is how Psalm 96 calls us to sing and from where I sit it is one of the most stirring little pieces of scripture that we might find anywhere.

Back in the summer of 1996, I was an intern at First Presbyterian down in Smithfield. I learned many things that summer, but one encounter stuck with me. At a meeting of all the area churches, called a Presbytery meeting, a young woman who was there to be ordained as a minister talked about her calling to ministry. She talked about growing up in a home where they did not go to church when she was a girl. And she talked about going to church as a teenager for the first time. She said, “And when I walked into the church, it was like home, and the prayers and the scriptures for me were like a tune I had been singing my whole life, but for which I had no words. Thanks to God, I know the words to the tune now.”

She was singing a new song to the Lord. A new song indeed.

V.

My buddy Matt Rich (a pastor in Lowell, NC) sent me a story this week that just worked so well I am going to use it, and I hope he won’t mind. Its about a man named Fred Ammermeyer who set out one Christmas to give the “bums of Baltimore massive and unforgettable proof that philanthropy was by no means the monopoly of gospel sharks.”[1] For it greatly concerned Fred that in order to get a free Christmas meal, the homeless and out of luck residents of his fair city had to endure hours upon hours of Christian witness and testimony, sing Christian songs and carols, and then confess their many sins. He found such practices an abomination.

And so Fred rented the largest hall in town. The doors opened at 11 AM on Christmas Day and the first course of dinner began immediately. There were none of the usual preliminaries – no opening prayer, no singing of a hymn, no remarks by Fred himself, not even a fanfare by the band. As the “guests” found a table, a waiter appeared with as much turkey and malt liquor as anyone could possibly desire. Cigars were passed around and the rented band began to play the most outrageous songs they could think of.

The eating, the drinking, the smoking and the music all continued hour after hour until about 10 PM. Fred finally made his way to the stage and announced that the musicians needed a break and would return at midnight. Until that time anyone who wanted to could step up to the stage and lead a song. A dozen volunteers immediately rose to their feet and Fred sent up the first four as a sort of quartet.

The four men conversed for quite sometime until they finally made their way to the front of the stage. Fred was very curious what the first selection might be, but he fainted straight away when the men began to sing, “Are You Ready for the Judgment Day?” It was the prime favorite of the period in all the missions, Salvation Army, and other Christian parties on the waterfront. He merely groaned from the floor as they next launched into “Silent Night,” “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “Joy to the World.” Soon all the “guests” in the hall had tears running down their faces and were singing at the top of their lungs. Fred managed to crawl from the hall just before someone stood up and said, “O Lord, I’ve led a miserable life …”

Weeks later, when asked about the spontaneous singing of hymns at his anti-Christian Christmas party, Fred responded, “Well what could you expect from them bums? It was the force of habit, that’s what it was.”

And maybe it was, just habit, something so ingrained in these men that given the opportunity to sing they burst into the songs they always sang at their Christmas meal. It didn’t matter that their host, the food, and the entertainment had changed; those were the songs to be sung.[2]

VI.

The effort to reconstruct, or even deconstruct Christmas that I just talked about in Baltimore years ago, is alive and well in the world today. All around us the tune of Christmas is being hummed – as though we are taking the words, and by proxy the story of Christmas, for granted. Sometimes the new songs are the old songs – sometimes the best songs are the one that we learn by heart; the ones we can both hum and sing (like the “bums” of Baltimore above). This is especially true in our culture right now.

Here’s what I mean: yesterday’s News and Observer contained a history of the holiday Fesitivus on its front page. Festivus was made up by Jerry Seinfeld and his zany compatriots on Seinfeld. The writer of the article writes, “What started as a made up holiday in the fictional universe of ‘Seinfeld’ eight years ago is now so popular it seems real.” The writer goes on to report that “In terms of cultural relevancy, there are 550,000 [internet references] on Festivus, way up from 118,000 [references] about six months ago.” [3]

Need another example?: driving in my car this week I heard a story on public radio and the guy interviewed said something like, “This year we are celebrating the birth of baby Jesus the way it ought to be celebrated: with Santa suits, lots of booze, and rubber chickens.”

The irony of course is that that drunk guy gets quoted on national media, and the only stories about the church and her response to Jesus’ birth are about the churches who are deciding to forgo church services tomorrow on Christmas morning because of supposed conflict between Sunday and Christmas Day. The manager, the virgin, the wise men have apparently lost a little of there shine. We are forgetting the words; and while we might be humming the tune it’s getting harder to hear the music in the background to hum along to as our story gets muddled in the wash with every other story. Is the church in danger of becoming like the guy playing the guitar at the café on the coast – we are aware that he is there and that he has some talent, but don’t really hear what he is playing?

VII.

Perhaps the reason that most of us would rather hum than sing is that singing requires a lot of courage and a little work. Singing is public because sound travels. And public is always a little risky. We sing when we are full of joy or zeal, and zeal makes us nervous. Someone caught my attention this week when she wrote about how out of fashion zeal has become: “We prefer irony or sarcasm,” the author writes, “and regard zeal as pathetic if not pathological. When a person exhibits too much passion over anything – God, a political movement, the latest in tattoos or a popular television show – we label that person an obsessive compulsive, and mutter, ‘Get a life!’”[4]

No my friends, the rubber chicken, and the Festivus poles, and things like mistletoe ask for nothing and cost no public capital – they are thus so very easy. Christmas and Jesus, though easy on the side of grace, are harder on the sides labeled belief, and witness, and profession. We shudder in the event that we might be asked at the company Christmas bash: “Do you really think Mary was a virgin? Do you really think she knew Jesus would be the Messiah?”

VIII.

By now you’ve noticed that I have talked very little about Christmas in this sermon. That is because this whole service is about Christmas. If you cannot glean the Christmas story from that reading from Luke or from the hymns we sing or from the anthem by the choir or Terry’s piano offering then there is not much help my preaching can offer. You might say I am humming the harmony to the great opera that is going on all around us – an opera of carols and choir, of lights and angels, of a baby of promise and grace that we can barely envision.

But no matter what part I play, in this sanctuary right now the opera is going on. And the singers: named shepherds, angels, Luke, Matthew, Paul, and Mary know the words. The question is whether or not we will realize that in Jesus Christ, and his birth, God was singing to the world His new song. And when that song is sung, there is a spot in the course for each of us – we are called to sing along.

Now, to be sure, I think that God is a loving God – loving enough that if you are a hummer and the best you can do is to hum, then you can hum along as long as you want or need to hum. God welcomes humming as much as boisterous chorus.

But it is much more fun to sing. It is much more fun to sing! The boots just aren’t made for walkin’ – our voices were made for singing!

And so this Christmas I pray you will each sing with glee and joy – sing like you are in the car or the shower alone; sing like you did when you were 14 with your friends or at a show with a band that you love; sing to Lord the new song that is Christmas; that is Jesus; that is unbridled joy and celebration.

Christ is born on Christmas day, Alleluia! Amen!

[1] H.L.Mencken, “Stare Decisis,” Christmas at The New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art, (The New Yorker Magazine: 2003) 58-67. Originally published in The New Yorker in 1944.

2 This next section in quotes is from Matt’s sermon – I am quoting him in his sermon delivered 12/24/2005 called, “Maybe It’s More” at The Presbyterian Church of Lowell in Lowell, NC. Matt is a VERY good preacher and this is a powerfully good story, and to not use it would be a mistake as he sent it before Christmas Eve and it was about singing which was my planned “theme.”

3 Stacy Downs, “Seinfeld’s Festivus Catches On With the Rest of Us.” News and Observer, page 1A, December 23, 2005.

4 Kathleen Norris “Zealous Hope” page 19, Christian Century, 12/13/2005.

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[1] H.L.Mencken, “Stare Decisis,” Christmas at The New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art, (The New Yorker Magazine: 2003) 58-67. Originally published in The New Yorker in 1944.

[2] This next section in quotes is from Matt’s sermon – I am quoting him in his sermon delivered 12/24/2005 called, “Maybe It’s More” at The Presbyterian Church of Lowell in Lowell, NC. This is a terrible thing to do to Matt really, but he is a VERY good preacher and this is a powerfully good story, and to not use it would be a mistake.

[3] Stacy Downs, “Seinfeld’s Festivus Catches On With the Rest of Us.” News and Observer, page 1A, December 23, 2005.

[4] Kathleen Norris “Zealous Hope” page 19, Christian Century, 12/13/2005.