Sing together: Christ is born!

Humans have always been singing. We have sung since the beginning. No one knows when exactly we started singing, but we know that the earliest collections of songs we have are religious in nature, among them the Psalms and the other songs of the Hebrew Scriptures. In the Hebrew Scriptures, as in our lives, the people sing when they are happy, when they are sad, when they are perplexed, or angry, or frightened, or defiant -- and when they are scared.

The Jewish Mary is an unwed teenager and is told that she will bear the son of God in a broken world, and the first thing she does? Sings the Magnificat.

Zechariah's son John the Baptist is born, and he knows that his son will live a hard life and die and an ugly death, and the first thing he does? Sings the Benedictus.

The first century Christians are beset by strife from within and persecution from without, and what does Paul tell them to do? Sing. Sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, he says. Sing in the face of terror.

Another thing about humans. Of all the singing animals, we are the only ones with a precise and shared sense of rhythm. Which may not sound like a big deal, but think about this: a precise sense of rhythm is the very thing that allows us to sing together. Two birds might sing at the same time, but without a shared sense of rhythm, they're just singing next to each other. Whales might sing to each other, but they can never sing the same song at the same time.

But humans? Because of our sense of rhythm, 50 of us can sing a Christmas carol at the same time. And when a room full of people sings together, they don't just sing together, they start to breathe together, too. And if the rhythm is strong enough -- studies show that our hearts will literally start to beat at the same time as well. And if we're singing together and breathing together and our hearts are beating together, then it's like we're one body -- and you know whose body it is.

At Christmas, we wait for that tiny baby body of Christ to be born, and when we sing, we become the very body we're waiting for.

Christ is born! Come let us sing!

•••

Editor's note: John Gibson is the pastor of Mt. Vernon Presbyterian Church, Pea Ridge. He can be contacted through this newspaper at [email protected].

Religion on 12/25/2013