Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. – Psalm 63:7

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 24, 2012): Psalm 63

Tonight is the night for angels. This is the night that we celebrate the angels breaking the silence in a small village named Bethlehem. It was on this night in 1865 that Pastor Phillips Brooks was half a world away from his congregation in Philadelphia. He was tired, burned out and discouraged. The American Civil war had taken its toll on him. He opposed slavery, but the idea of American’s killing American’s was an idea that Brooks could not understand. And then in April 1965, President Abraham Lincoln opposition to slavery and support for the black vote resulted in his assassination. Phillips Brooks was eloquent as he spoke at Lincoln’s funeral, but it was the last straw. Brooks was done. And by the end of the year, Brooks was in Palestine. He expressed a desire on Christmas Eve to ride up to Bethlehem - despite warnings that thieves made that ride dangerous. But Brooks ignored the warnings and arrived in Bethlehem as the sun was setting. It was Christmas Eve. The town lay silent and still. And Brooks remembered the events that had taken place in these Palestinian hills 1800 years earlier. It would be this memory that three years later would turn into the Christmas Carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and the line “While mortals sleep, the angels keep, Their watch of wondering love.”

Angels are such prevalent characters in the Christmas drama. And yet, this year I wanted to play with that image. So I asked a question - Did angels really sing? The Luke text strongly suggests that the answer to that question is no. The angels spoke the good news. Oh, it is quite possible that there was excessive dancing that accompanied the announcement, but no singing. At least, there was no singing on the part of the angels.

It could even be argued that angels simply do not sing – or, if they do sing, it is because they are joining in on a song that we are singing. It is not a hill that I am willing to die on, but I do find it an interesting proposition. What if the song is our private language with God? What if that is the reason why music seems to be the universal language, and why we get so attached to the idea of the song – and why singing has always been part of what the community of God has participated in. It is a language that only we can speak – and angels can only try to imitate the way that we communicate with God.

David says he sings in the shadow of God’s wings. His singing was the automatic reaction of a man who realized that God was his help. His song was his cry in a language that was reserved for communication between him and his God. On that hill in Bethlehem a little more than 2000 years ago I think that there was singing – but it was not done by a choir of angels, but rather by a group of shepherds, communicating with their God under his wings (and the wings of his angels.)

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 24