From Blues to Praise: Letting Our Songs Out

Christmas Eve Message

The year: 1934. Amateur night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. A girl, 17 years young, was about to go on stage to perform a dance routine. But the act preceding her featured a dance performance so good the girl decided she couldn’t possibly follow it with her own. She decided to sing instead – though she had never sung in public, and didn’t even know whether she could sing.

She sang – and won first prize.

The girl’s name? Ella Fitzgerald. One of the greatest blues vocalists of all time.

The blues. Ken Burns goes so far as to call the blues “the underground aquifer that fed all of the streams of American music” in the 20^th century: jazz, r&b, soul, and rock and roll. (1) Music telling an intensely personal story – expressing great sorrow. Sculpting meaning from a situation defying meaning.

The blues. Twin sibling of black Baptist church music. Sacred, in its own way.

Certainly, Mary and Joseph felt if not sang the blues that first Christmas Eve. Expectant parents? They were not yet married. Home birth? The government had other ideas. Labor room? Try a cow trough.

As for the little Lord Jesus: No crying he makes? There was a lot of wailing in that manger bed. For Jesus sang the blues.

The blues. That first Christmas evening: Mary and Joseph and I’m sure Jesus had the blues.

And yet there’s a great difference between having the blues and singing the blues. The miracle takes place in the singing. For the singing gets rid of the having. And all who hear it feel better in the end.

On behalf of Mary and Joseph and Jesus – all three – Luke’s gospel sings the blues with his birth narrative. Helping us all, each Christmas, to do the same. To sing forth the labor of our expectations, inevitably unmet. Helping us all – each Christmas – to let our songs out.

For Luke’s tale begins as a blues-drenched tale. Setting us free to hear, and to sing, the resonances of our own blues. And through hearing the resonances of our own blues, we hear the blues of the world. And we become more human. And we become more humane.

And once we hear our blues being played in the white spaces of this first Christmas story, we can them become more able to hear the praise, bold and in the black:

            And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,

  praising God and saying,

‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,

               and on earth peace among those whom (God) favors.’

“Praising God and saying …” – or might they have sung this? An orchestral outburst – “a multitude of the heavenly host” – supports the solo intro of one angel to all the shepherds.

I cannot hear these angelic words without hearing the strains of my mother’s favorite hymn: “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” Here is verse one – with two more verses soon to follow:

It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men (sic)
From heavens all gracious King!"
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.

“To hear the angels sing.” Each of the four stanzas of this timeless treasure ends with a version of this phrase. “To hear the angels sing.” Letting their songs out – so we might hear, and then let out, our own.  

Song belongs with the Christmas story. It’s a match made in heaven – and given to us on earth. It’s why we call our Christmas Eve service “Lessons and Carols.” Proclaiming good news of great joy … glory to God in the highest … and peace on earth to the lowliest. As the most accurate rendering has it, “Peace on earth among those whom (God) favors.” Namely in this narrative those dirty, unrespectable herders of sheep. Namely in this narrative Mary and Joseph and Jesus. Those who could and would initially be found singing the blues.

Song belongs indelibly to the Christmas story. Blues into praise. Brokenness into healing.

My soul wanders back to a Christmas week several years ago. The scene: a packed memorial service at First Presbyterian Church, Kalamazoo. A witness to the resurrection of the mother of one of my Ann Arbor parishioners.

The mother was named Jane. She was a joyful and much-beloved woman in her community. And yet she refused to sing her entire adult life … in church, or out. It seems she had been told as a child that she could not sing. And so, being the decent and orderly Presbyterian she apparently was, Jane did not sing. Which made Jane more … plain. She just would not sing.

Until her final year on earth. The last year she and her family suffered with the dementia Jane had had for some time. For that final year – her memory of “you cannot sing” now completely spent – Jane burst out in song. And it was then – and only then – that her family realized that she seemingly knew every stanza of every hymn she had ever heard. For Jane could sing – even if she could not carry much of a tune!

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled;
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world:
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel sounds
The blessed angels sing.

“O’er all the weary world … Above its sad and lowly plains … The blessed angels sing.”

Or were these angelic strains simply those of the shepherds who had been singing the blues every single day of their forlorn lives?

Blues into praise. The shepherds, traveling to Bethlehem to tell Mary and Joseph of angels’ praise, find the full range of their voices. And in finding that range, their lives take flight.

            O ye beneath life’s crushing load

            Whose forms are bending low,

            Who toil along the climbing way

            With painful steps and slow;

Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
Oh rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing.

Hear the angels sing, this Christmas. Hear them sing your song.

For the crushing load and weary road – the glad and golden hours …

… the blues and praise of Christmas both lie nearer to our hearts than we might think.

(1) From http://www.pbs.org/jazz/classroom/bluesimprov.htm