On a recent podcast, my colleague Jennifer Watley Maxell offered that “hope is not scarce, and it is not fragile.” Our conversation took other turns, leaving that important insight behind. I want to return to it now. “Hope is not scarce, and it is not fragile.”
Honestly, this statement needs some defending in a world like ours. Surrounded by all the skepticism, pain, injustice, and anxiety our culture displays, Mary offers the best testimony to hope:
My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for God has looked with favor on the lowly state of God’s servant.
Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is God’s name;
indeed, God’s mercy is for those who fear God
from generation to generation.
God has shown strength with God’s arm;
God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
(Luke 1:46b-53)
Hope is often eroded by anxiety. Seth Godin writes: “If we define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance, we can also understand its opposite: anticipation.”
Yet anticipation can become a channel for anxiety. Will this happen? Will I avoid that trap? Will I survive this? Can our future be bright?
For many years, the most popular Christmas song in America has been “The Christmas Song” (aka the “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire” song). The second most popular is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which debuted in the 1943 movie musical, Meet Me in St. Louis, starring Judy Garland.
The most familiar version today is the one Frank Sinatra sang:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on, our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
From now on, our troubles will be miles away
Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more
Through the years we all will be together
If the fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now
That’s the 1957 version, the one Sinatra recorded after complaining to the song’s composer, Hugh Martin, that the Garland version wasn’t “jolly enough” for Christmas. The version that Judy Garland sang did not end, “hang a shining star upon the highest bough.”
In Meet Me in St. Louis, which opened during the hard days of World War II, Garland had sung instead:
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now
And those lyrics had been changed from the original version that was deemed too hard to handle:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
It may be your last
No good times like the olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us no more
But at least we all will be together
If the Lord allows
From now on, we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now
Garland’s muddle-through-somehow version hasn’t disappeared altogether. It makes occasional appearances in benefit concerts after tragedies like 9/11 (where it was sung by James Taylor) or Hurricane Sandy (where it was sung by Billy Joel). But the version heard in stores and on Spotify feeds these days is always and only the happy tune.
Like the serial re-writers of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” we often feel the need to water down the hope we have been given by God’s promise, so it is not mocked in the public square. We might try singing a happier tune. Maybe even get the lyrics changed, to cover over our anxiety.
Mary does no such thing. As in all holy songs, Mary faces reality—the radical upheaval of God’s coming. Mary trusts hope’s promise. Mary is not singing of “golden days of yore.” She is looking forward—which for her, an unwed 14-year-old pregnant girl, living in a culture where she is nothing—is a future that looked bleak and heartbreaking.
Yet, she leans into God’s future and God’s hope. She trusts in a future where she will not be broken, and this world will not be broken. She lives in that hope. Mary’s song is audacious in not giving in to anxiety. It is a rebel song that rocks the foundations of the world we know.
All holy songs face reality, trust hope’s promise, and are audacious in rejecting anxiety’s pull. All holy songs are rebel songs.
Mary’s song is a rebel song that we desperately need today. Yes, it starts out with the beauty of Mary’s pronouncement that her soul magnifies the Lord, and her spirit rejoices in God. But then notice the turn it takes. God doesn’t just look with favor on her, but rather on her lowliness. God notices Mary—her station and her struggle—and, more even than that, God takes her side. The Bible always is on the side of every person who is of little account in the world, and who trusts God for their redemption.
What would it be like to just let Mary’s song surround us? What would it be like to hear God’s hope as real and durable and abundant? What if we were to live – and crucially, what if our faith communities were to live – as if this were the most powerful truth in all creation?
Several years ago, the Irish American folk group “The Roches” embarked on a project to collect people’s prayers. They clarified: they didn’t want Book of Common Prayer prayers. They wanted prayers people actually prayed, and then they set some of them to music.
One is called “Hallelujah!” It’s by a woman named Frankie Harris, who has AIDS. It’s a rebel, gospel song in a slightly different key.
“Hallelujah”
dear most merciful God
humbly I approach your throne
of grace and mercy
thank you
for putting your hand in the midst
of our trials and tribulations
cause you bless me
so many times in the hospital
when I was afraid
hallelujah
Father I am calling out to you
bless each patient name by name
these are your children
Lord bless their families
and those who do not know
you are in this
go in Lord and touch ’em
hallelujah
you are the healer
give to the doctor
a heart for compassion
an ear to listen
touch the nurse
may the strength of your hand be upon them
and Lord give ’em a kind word to say
cause you are the beginning of this
and you are gonna be the end
dear most merciful God
hallelujah
In the liner notes of the CD, Frankie Harris writes: “This is a prayer out of once being hopeless and ending up hopeful, once traveling a road with no light and then traveling down the same road with a brighter light. I know that God had me in the palm of His hand when everyone else gave up on me. I have faced death three times and there is nothing to hold me into fear.”
All songs of hope are rebel songs, and when we sing like Mary, at the top of our lungs, we find that anxiety has, by God’s grace, become holy anticipation. Against all odds—that literally saves our life. In a world where we’re just “muddling through somehow,” Mary’s holy song doesn’t ever let go of the truth: God’s hope is not scarce. God’s hope is never fragile.
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