Sometimes It’s Hard to be Merry at Christmas

By the rivers of Babylon— 

 there we sat down and there we wept… 

How could we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?

How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land wept the Israelite exiles? The Babylonians  have plundered and destroyed Jerusalem. All of the elite, the teachers, business leaders, land  owners, artists, all of the prominent people have been taken to Babylon. Everything, absolutely  everything, reminded the Israelites of their banishment from the holy city, and so they sit down  by the river in sorrow and cry out to their mockers**: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in this  strange land?”** We don't belong here in Babylon. This language is not our language. This food is  not our food. The stories told to our children are not our stories. These values put on family and  community are not our values. And most significantly of all, these gods are not our God. We are  aliens here; we are refugees here and so how can we sing the Lord's song in this strange place?

By asking the question, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?” the early Hebrews  were, out of their anguish and anxiety, asking some deep questions about who they are and  who God is. In Exodus 15:2, the writer stated, "The Lord is my strength and my song, and he  has become my salvation." Singing the Lord's song means having the staying power as God’s  people: linked to a land and linked to God’s saving grace. Can we sing the Lord’s song in this  different context? Is it the same God who is with us? What new things do we learn about who  God is and who we are through living in this new and strange land? 

This means learning to rejoice even while in exile, knowing that the Lord is in control of their  situation. The song they sing is not to be a borrowed song; it must be born out of their own love  and trust of God. This is what Jeremiah has learned as he laments over the destruction of  Jerusalem and while he, too, experiences exile in Babylon. He writes his own song, a song he  has learned through his darkest days and yet he is still able to declare his trust in God. In the  darkest moment of despair, he has written*, “I remember my affliction and my wandering…and  my soul is downcast within me.”* A fellow exile he too remembers Jerusalem and laments**,**

“How lonely sits the city that once was full of people” (Lam. 1:1). And then, suddenly out of  the darkness of this lament shines this new song. 

But this I call to mind, 

 and therefore I have hope: 

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, 

 his mercies never come to an end; 

they are new every morning; 

 great is your faithfulness. 

“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, 

 “therefore I will hope in him.” 

The LORD is good to those who wait for him, 

 to the soul that seeks him. 

It is good that one should wait quietly 

 for the salvation of the LORD. (Lam.3: 21 – 26) 

Jeremiah has turned to something he has come to know well, the loyal love of God and  remembers that “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an  end.” The Hebrew word used for ‘steadfast love’ is hesed. While it’s impossible to capture in a  single English word or phrase what hesed really means, it’s saying something like this: “I will  never leave you nor forsake you. I love you perfectly, consistently, and unconditionally. I am  going to redeem your life.” Jeremiah remembers who God is and how he has experienced God’s  presence in the past, and, for the moment, it is enough. 

Sometimes we, too, feel like exiles in a strange land especially during the Christmas season. Our  hearts are heavy and all we want to do is get to the other side of Christmas while the world  around us insists we join in the merry chaos of Christmas preparations. We walk into a store  and hear Burl Ives singing, “Have a holly, jolly Christmas; It’s the best time of the year,”  quickly followed by Andy Williams crooning, “It's the most wonderful time of the year, with  the kids jingle-belling and everyone telling you, Be of good cheer. It's the most wonderful time  of the year it’s the hap-happiest season of all.” These songs aren’t our songs. In truth we feel  much more closely aligned with Ebenezer Scrooge’s, “Bah humbug!” 

There’s a story about a grade school class that was putting on a Christmas play which included  the story of Mary and Joseph coming to the inn. In that class was one little boy who wanted so  very much to be Joseph. But when the parts were handed out, his biggest rival was given that  part, and he was assigned to be the inn keeper instead. 

He was really bitter about this, so during all the rehearsals he began to plot how to get even  with his rival. Finally, the night of the performance, Mary and Joseph came walking across the  stage. They knocked on the door of the inn, and the inn-keeper opened the door and asked  them gruffly what they wanted. 

Joseph answered, "We’d like to have a room for the night." 

Suddenly the inn-keeper threw the door wide open and said, "Great, come on in and I’ll give  you the best room in the house." Now, that wasn’t in the script and for a few seconds the poor  little kid didn’t know what to do. 

But finally the young Joseph had an idea. He stepped up to the innkeeper, and looked beyond  him through the door that represented the inn. He made a big production of looking right and  left. He stepped back out beside his “wife” and said, "No wife of mine is going to stay in dump  like this. Come on, Mary, let’s go to the barn." 

There are times when Christmas just isn’t what it’s supposed to be; we know what the script  ought to be but somebody or something changes the lines on us making it seemingly impossible  to sing the Lord’s song in this strange land. We are just too miserable, worried or sick to sing  any song. Yes, there are times when it just seems too hard to be merry at Christmas.  

“Sing to us, Israelites,” mocked the Babylonians, “Sing us songs of joy!” But how could they sing  when their hearts were broken! How could they sing to people who were laughing at them!  What they felt was humiliation, anger and despair and out of the depths of these emotions they  rage,

Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites 

 the day of Jerusalem’s fall, 

how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down! 

 Down to its foundations!’ 

O daughter Babylon, you devastator! 

 Happy shall they be who pay you back 

 what you have done to us! (Psalm 137: 7 – 8) 

This is the cry of a singer who feels acutely the dishonour inflicted by an arrogant empire. It is a  cry for vengeance, a cry that we are discomforted to hear in Scripture, We often skip over  these parts, both in public worship and private devotions and yet they too may be ways for us  to learn to sing the Lord’s song and find peace, if not joy at Christmastide.  

The Psalms are not all about how we ought to feel or what we wish we believed. They’re about  who we really are. And we do have angry thoughts and feelings that we need to honestly  confess. Sometimes those Psalms express our secret anger. Expressing those feelings doesn’t  mean we give our hearts to them; in fact usually saying those things out loud names what we  renounce, and leaves us with an uncomfortable feeling: a deep need to repent right now. And  so we are brought to confession and it is confession that ultimately frees us to move into  newness. 

There are times when we too want to rail at God; tell him how unfair life is and that we really  wish Christmas was over and done with. That was last year for me. It was the worst Christmas  ever. Tony slipped off the curb and ruptured his Achilles tendon 6 days before Christmas. He  was really in great distress. He wouldn’t or couldn’t follow the medical protocols. The more I  insisted the more he resisted. The more I tried to help him, the more I seemed to make things  worse. My birthday celebrations went out the window, Christmas morning seemed hollow and  lonely and for the first time I didn’t attend any Christmas services. I felt angry, disappointed,  unappreciated….and shame! Tony wasn’t to blame. Life happens! But it took many tears and  time to finally realize that the only way I could find peace was to sing the Lord’s song, a song of  thanksgiving; that song is the prayer that never fails, the prayer of gratitude. I thanked God for Tony and all the joy and security he had bought into my life and thereby found a new sense of  patience and peace. Nothing had really changed – except me. 

In our Gospel reading, the Angel Gabriel tells Mary that “…the child to be born will be holy; he  will be called Son of God”. That baby boy was born into the real world – a world where another powerful empire had conquered the Jewish people. It was a world where a heavily pregnant  woman and her betrothed were forced to travel miles at the whim of a Roman emperor to be  registered in their home towns but when they arrived no one would offer them shelter, and so  they had to deliver their child in a place where animals fed. It was a world in which a cruel king  would order all the children under two years old to be killed because of his jealousy and fear of  this child. It was a world in which even the Son of God was forced to be a refugee. No, this first  Christmas wasn’t all Angel songs and kingly gifts. It wasn’t a holly, jolly Christmas for this child  was born under the shadow of the cross.  

But even though that shadow of death followed Him to the end and finally held him in its  deathly embrace, Jesus never stopped singing the Lord’s song; that song of forgiveness, of  hope, of love - a song Jesus continues to sing over us. It is a song that can pierce the un merriest of Christmases, for it is the Lord’s song that says I know the cry of your heart, but “Do  not fear….I have called you by name, you are mine.” (Isa.43: 1b) It is a song that cannot be  silenced for “…neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to  come, nor powers, not height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to  separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 28) Amen.