First Presbyterian Church of Watertown
Isaiah 35 and Luke 1
“Repeat the Sounding Joy”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry
December 16, 2007
Many years ago a group of educators and child psychologists got together. The question gathering their interest was television and education, could they go together? Was there a way to create something for television that would educate children?
These were not the first people to ask a question regarding methods of teaching, or pedagogy. Yet, it was the television aspect that created some exciting things. The idea that the screen couldn’t demand a child to sit still, the show couldn’t use coercion to keep a child’s attention set the stage for asking some great questions about how a child might enjoy learning.
So instead of simply asking what needed to be learned, they asked that too, the first question was, how can a child be taught something and not even know they are learning on their own? Again, not the most novel of questions, but good questions never are.
The result was Sesame Street. Although Sesame Street has become a staple of our culture, everyone knows the Cookie Monster; there was a time before it. And much to the chagrin of the researchers their first attempt at Sesame Street, the pilot, was flop with test groups of children. In the first run at the show the people and the puppets were separated. The child psychologists thought it would be troubling for toddlers to see what appeared to be monsters interacting with people. Once they mixed them together, it was like crossing wires and the rest is history.
Flash forward a few decades and children’s programming is huge. Yet, there truly hadn’t been any new discoveries, new directions, until a group asked about repetition. When Sesame Street was in its initial stages of development one of the key questions they asked was: how long can a child focus or pay attention to one thing. The result was short skits, short segments, all meant to capture their attention again and again. Another group of researches asked the question, does it always have to be new? Sesame Street worked on the presumption that things needed to be fresh and novel, because it needs to be that way for adults.
It turns out, not so much for children. Children, especially very young children, can watch the same show over and over again, until they are blue in the face. The television show that tried this was called Blue’s Clues. The show is based upon a challenge, a mystery as it were. With a series of clues the children, along with Steve and “Blue” the cartoon dog, seek to solve a puzzle. While this too is not novel at all, what was novel is that the same show was broadcast every day of the week.
Try to imagine how hard this would be to sell to a network. I can imagine the advertising department thinking, how in the world can I sell ad time for a show with fewer and fewer viewers? It may not be hard to sell time on Monday, but by Friday, no on will be watching this. And then, much to everyone’s surprise- well maybe not everyone’s- the viewers that watch the show grew as the week progressed. The child who watched it on Monday, watched it Friday, and for many each day in between. Instead of losing its appeal, the individual program drew a greater audience with each repeat. The show was a phenomenal success and it was all about repetition.
I am notorious in our house for my love of the repeat button. Once I find a song I enjoy I will hit repeat and listen to it for an hour. Given that most songs are between 3-5 minutes that means 12-20 times in a row. My children can confirm that is a lot of time to hear Nina Simone sing, Trouble in Mind, or Bob Marley sing, Redemption Song. And you would think that the song would grow old, but for me its value increases. Now, not all songs have this potency, but the ones that do are treasures.
I think this all started with Mozart. The first classical music LP I purchased was a performance of his 19th and 20th piano concertos. The repetition was a strange feature of my stereo. My turntable had a quirk to it: it wouldn’t shut off when the side was done, but start again. Looking back now I am sure it was simply flipping a switch, or moving a lever, but it worked for me because it would play the music over and over and over again.
I listened to the 19th piano concerto of Mozart for nearly five months. I listened to it until it wore out. I never replaced it or changed it for something else; I just listened to it again and again. And then, literally, the grooves of the album just wore off. So I did what made sense, I turned the album over. I had never heard the other side.
I still see it in my mind. This was really exciting. I had fallen in love with the freedom and joy of Mozart, the sense of unbridled hope and a readiness to live. Hence I was completely unprepared for the 20th piano concerto. In between these two pieces of music Mozart lost his father. And all the freedom, all the joy, all the beauty for beauty’s sake was gone. In its stead was a deep, brooding question. Where before he was dancing, now he was stomping and stumbling. Before I knew it I was sitting on the ground in tears, cried like a baby. Although I would come to understand the reasons for the change, at that moment all I knew was that the voice of joy was gone.
This may not be a good confession, but I listened to the 20th until it wore out as well. With each hearing the voice of Mozart, now different, offered a glimpse of his heart. The repetition was the key though. I don’t believe I would have felt the change, sensed the loss without having worn out the 19th; nor would I have appreciated the loss expressed in the twentieth had I not grown so attached to his joy.
Most of the time sermons are born in the text. A preacher’s job is to sit with texts and listen to what they have to say. This sermon is a bit different. This sermon really began at the end of the Northern Choral concert two weeks ago. At the very end the audience rises to sing Joy to the World with the choir as it processes out. Looking down at the bulletin though I couldn’t get past the line “repeat the sounding joy.” Repeat the sounding joy.
I have sung this line a thousand times. In our house singing is a gift you offer to others with gusto whether they want the gift or not. And Joy to the World is a musical gift I have offered my children, the dogs, even Kathy a thousand times- although to her alone do I give the option of the mute button. I sing this carol mostly during Advent, but not exclusively. Sitting up in the balcony at Asbury, though, the line leapt out at me as if it were the first time. And I could not help but ask, what does this mean? Repeat the sounding joy?
So when I got to our readings today, very traditional advent readings, my question wasn’t what do you have to say, but, what do you make of this “repeat the sounding joy?” What does it mean to repeat joy? What does joy sound like? Are you the joy? Is that why we are reading you again, because we always read the Magnificat and selections from Isaiah during Advent? I didn’t get a good answer. In fact I felt shooed away. It was as if Mary said, “You’re not ready yet, go look around and tell me what you find.” Isaiah just seemed to roll his eyes to suggest I needed to listen to her. So off I went.
I looked first for an answer to this in Kierkegaard. Although he may not appear a likely first step, he wrote a book entitled “Repetition.” It’s been a few years since I read it, but in reviewing it I got an answer to repeating joy. Kierkegaard believed, while it can be repeated, you just can’t do it on purpose. Joy, salvation, or conversion- which is closer to his words- is something we desperately want to be repeated, but if we try to make it again, it cannot be, it is futile. Kierkegaard is more of a guide toward more questions than clarity in my experience.
But I believe him. Joy, like love, can’t be contrived, it can’t be an attempt. You can’t try to love someone; that’s not love. By repetition he meant something closer to reoccurrence without duplication. It’s having more, but not by addition. Okay. I kept going.
From 19th century Copenhagen I headed south to 14th century Germany to see what Meister Eckhart would say of this. For he introduced a thought that, although was deemed rather heretical, is something I always ponder during advent. He took the notion of Mary, especially the words she is offering here, and said, what if this is what it means to believe? What if to believe is to have Christ born in us? What if Mary is both unique and yet a kind of example or way to follow? The church at the time wasn’t too keen about this for a number of reasons, but I believe he is on to something. John records Jesus as saying we must be born again; Paul says, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Advent is when we are celebrating the moment where Christ was born of Mary, but could it be we are also living what it means that Christ is born in us as well? What if the experience of Mary is both unique and a kind of repetition, repeated as it were?
Then I thought it would be good form to ask the author; I asked the hymn writer himself, Isaac Watts. The answer he gave wasn’t so much in the hymn per se, but in Watt’s life’s work. Watts is considered the father of English hymnody, as he was the one who jettisoned the practice of using only the words of the psalms for hymns, setting the actual psalms to music. Instead he used them as an inspiration, a starting point as it were. Taking a phrase, a line he would then write a whole new hymn. He was, of course, ridiculed for this. Yet, what he did was to repeat the psalms without duplicating them. They lived again, yet, in a new form.
So with these three in hand I came back to Mary and her Magnificat. Is this what it means, I said? Are you a moment of joy that is repeated anew without contrivance, more a desire, an openness and occurrence than an act of will? Are you repeated as it were again and again? The same, yet new. It may just be my imagination, but I felt a smile. Isaiah just looked relieved.
Most days I ask our youngest, Dave, a question. School, I say, same old or was there something exciting today? Most days he says, “same old.” Same old. Had I not read about Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues, I may think something was wrong. Maybe they are not engaging him; maybe the teacher is not putting enough into the class. Knowing David’s teachers in the past, I can’t say it’s the latter. Yet, now, I have started to think that the “same old” is a good thing. In fact it may just be exactly what he needs.
Every year we do Advent. The greens go up; the poinsettias arrive. Ellie Van Eenenaam does as great job. After Thanksgiving Bill, our sexton, fights with the trees the Johnson’s provide. Each year he tries to get smaller ones so to make it a fair fight; each year I hope they are bigger. On Wednesday our staff will gather at Tin Pan Galley for breakfast just like last year. Sara, our new choir director, received my obligatory “Christmas Eve” speech. Don’t change the order. Sing whatever you want, but keep it in line. This one is carved in stone- which, besides Faure’s the Palms on Palm Sunday, is the only thing carved in stone here.
No other time of year has this kind of repetition. No other time of year is so chalk full of traditions, moments where we yearn to do the same thing. And, for that matter, no other time of year do people at large believe it is good to go to church. But now, yes.
This is what I have come to believe, in Advent we are experiencing the very nature of salvation: the repetition without duplication of an abiding joy; a moment of life that transforms all the rest that cannot be made or created, only given; and God comes to us, not as he needs to be approached, but how we do, how we live, how we die, how we hope, how we believe.
The child born of Mary is not about God’s needs, God’s glory, but what we need, what it means for us to see and behold it. It is a moment where God reaches us, becomes us, and if we to believe Paul, where our life becomes Christ. The child born of Mary is a repeated joy in us. Our hymns, our prayers, our very life become the repetition of that sounding joy heard in the fields of Bethlehem, treasured in the heart of Mary.
We are the repeating of the sounding joy. Each life here is this; our souls longing for salvation, knowing it cannot be contrived or concocted, only received as if it were love itself. That is a pretty good repetition. And all of these Advent traditions, they are quite a lovely way of gathering our attention to once again receive Christ in our hearts. It is a “same old” which brings great comfort and joy anew and yet, again. Amen.