Today’s Scripture Reading (December
25, 2015): Judges 5
Welcome to
Christmas Day 2015. A day of trees, lights and presents. But sometimes we miss
that it is also a day when the walls are being torn between people. The birth
of Jesus was the great equalizer. The king who was born in a barn. Angels sang
to lowly shepherds. Foreign representatives, Magi who worshipped a different god,
on this day were welcomed into the presence of the God that they did not know
come to earth. I am not sure how any of this could have been expected. The song
that the angels sang was not aimed at just one race of people. And the audience
was not just the shepherds – it was the world and every person in it. On this
day, the universal message is proclaimed, and the universal song is sung.
Song is a
common way of celebrating something. We sing often to express our emotion and
our desire. We sing because we are happy and we sing because we are sad. We
sing because we worship. We sing to express ourselves. In the church that I
pastor, a Kirundi speaking congregation also meets. They have quickly become my
friends, which is a lot to say because there is a difference in the language we
speak. And, when I can, I love to just sneak into the back of the church and
listen to them sing. I don’t understand the words that they are singing, but the
truth is that I don’t have to understand. The song they sing is universal. I
can hear the joy in the melody and see their joy in the worship of our God in
their dancing.
Deborah’s
song is a universal song. It is a song that belongs to everyone. And we know
this partially because of the way she addresses the song. It is sung to Kings
and Rulers, as well as to the Princes of Israel. And while it might be tempting
to imagine the Kings and Rulers as being the poetical imaginings of Israel
leadership, we still need to be aware that at this point Israel had no King on
the throne. Israel was designed to be a theocracy where only God could rule as
King. And at this point in their history there seems to be no desire to put an
earthly King on the throne that belonged to God. (That desire would surface
later) The object of Deborah’s song is
the King of Israel - and all praise belongs only to him. She wants the earthly
kings to realize that God is on the throne, and she in victory worships him – a
behavior that the kings of the earth might want to adopt – because the one who
had proved her power also bowed her knee in worship of this God.
Today we
sing our own universal song. And the object of the song is the King born in a
manger. He is the one who rules the earth. And heaven and nature sings his song.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Judges
6
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