December 9, 2018 “Sunny Song” – Luke 1:68-79

Luke 1:68-79
“Sunny Song”
December 9, 2018 – Second Sunday in Advent

[We apologize for the low audio level on the recording for this sermon as well as for the difficulty in hearing the responsive reading at any level at the beginning.]

President John F. Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. The next day a young African American tap dancer and singer was killed in a knife fight outside a nightclub in Nashville, Tennessee. Those two events were connected.

This is not some fabulousconspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination. The violent murders of Kennedy and a blackmusician named Harold were connected in the mind and heart of a man named BobbyHebb. Harold was his brother. Bobby’s response to a combination of tragedies,one national and one deeply personal, was to write a song.

In 1966, Hebb recorded one of the biggest hits of the 60s, “Sunny.” BMI rates “Sunny” number 25 in its “Top 100 songs of the 20^th century.” It is one of the most “covered” songs ever released, meaning that it was picked up and sung by dozens of other singers, including Cher, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Johnny Mathis, The Four Seasons, the Four Tops, and, if you can believe it, Leonard Nimoy. The most successful of these covers was by Boney M in 1977. In 2004, the Boogie Pimps sampled that version and created their own hit “Sunny.” In the last couple years, the song has shown up in commercials for an on-line job search engine, travel to Israel and the Volkswagen Golf.

Bobby Hebb was devastated by sorrow and darkness that touched his country and his family. Writing “Sunny” was his attempt to find some light. He said, “All my intentions were just to think of happier times—basically looking for a brighter day—because times were at a low tide.” So he wrote:

Sunny, yesterday my life was filled with rain
Sunny, you smiled at me and really eased the pain
Oh, the dark days are gone and the bright days are here
My sunny one shines so sincere
Oh sunny one so true, I love you

In the text we are reading and singing today, we find a man named Zechariah expressing through song a similar desire and hope for brighter days breaking into the darkness experienced by him and his nation. We read together the canticle traditionally called the Benedictus, for its first word in Latin. Benedictus Deus Israhel, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel.”

At the beginning of chapter 1, Luke tells us that all their lives Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth had suffered the frustration of being childless. They were by now elderly and without any hope for the joy of children. That is still no easy pain to bear. Some of you have struggled with such disappointment. I would never make light of your sorrow, but it was worse in ancient times, when terrible social shame and stigma were attached to people, especially women, without children. It was regarded as a mark of God’s disfavor.

Zechariah went through years of personal doubt and fear. Was he really a man? Had he failed God in some terrible way? Had his wife sinned in some manner he didn’t know? Why were they not blessed with a child? It was a long, bleak time for this couple.

It was an even bleaker time for Zechariah’s nation. For six decades the Jewish people lived under the thumb of the Rome, paying taxes to an unseen emperor far away in Italy. The Jews enjoyed just one century of independence and liberty after casting off the oppression of Antiochus Epiphanies in the great Maccabean revolt of 164 B.C. But the Roman general Pompey conquered Palestine in 63 B.C. Now in the time around 5 B.C. they were once again subject to foreign rule. They suffered under awful Roman-appointed kings like Herod.

Yet suddenly everything changed, both for Zechariah and for God’s people. Luke tells how the angel Gabriel came to him to announce that he and his wife would have a son. Because of their age, Zechariah doubted the angel, doubted God. His punishment was to be made mute. Imagine, nine months of joyful anticipation, but unable to speak about it, either to share his joy with Elizabeth or to tell anyone else how happy he was.

These sung words of praise to God are the first sounds to come from Zechariah’s mouth in 270 days. The first part of his song, verses 68 to 75, is all about salvation in terms any Jewish person would have understood. God kept his promises, the ones He first made to Abraham. He was raising up a “horn of salvation” says verse 69 literally. In ancient terms, an animal’s horns were its strength. A “horn” for Israel was a strong leader, a powerful man to protect and guide the people. Zechariah was not singing about John, but about a Messiah to be born from the house of David, a King.

In this part of the song, the promise of salvation is just as expected and desired, a tangible, visible salvation, a political deliverance. He would rescue them from their enemies and set them free to be the people they were meant to be. The Jewish people looked for David’s kingdom to be revived on earth. In it they would worship God, say verses 74 and 75, “without fear, holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.”

Verses 72 and 73 recall the great history of God’s goodness to Israel, the covenant promises He made to them through their ancestor Abraham. God never forgot those promises. Over the centuries He set the Jews free from the Egyptians, from the Babylonians, from the Persians, and, not more than two hundred years before, from the Greeks. Now he would put the Romans in their place and make them free once again. Zechariah sang with exuberant confidence that such a day had dawned once again.

Yet in the second half of his song, focus shifts. I picture Zechariah holding baby John in his arms while he is singing. In the first section, his eyes and voice lift up to heaven, praising God, marveling at His power, expecting to see Messiah riding in on a white horse to make everything right. But with the words which begin verse 76 those wrinkled old eyes turned down to marvel at the little life he held. His next words were addressed quietly and gently to the little boy, “You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare his way.” The song changes from an optimistic national anthem to an intimate, personal cradle song for newborn John.

In the last part of Zechariah’s song, the picture painted of God’s salvation changes as well, from national to personal. John had his own personal role to play. His future was to be an advance man for Jesus. John went out first, as we read from Luke 3 this morning, preaching that the Messiah was coming, calling people to repentance and baptizing them into a new way of living. When Jesus appeared to call disciples, there were already disciples of John ready to follow the Christ.

Bobby Hebb’s song “Sunny” was the connection between two deaths, the president of the United States and his own brother. Zechariah’s Benedictus connects two births, the birth of Jesus the Messiah, and the birth of his own son John. Tying together those two births, these words tie together the truth that God loves and cares for people both en masse as races and nations, and one by one as beloved individuals.

God meant to teach Jewish people that saving them was not only about political freedom. John’s message was a new revelation of personal freedom from sin. Beginning with the baptism John offered, God fulfilled His covenant not just by redeeming a nation, but by forgiving, cleansing and saving people, person by person. In verse 77 Zechariah sang that his son was destined “to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” God no longer just delivered them from external enemies. He would save them from themselves, from their own failures and self-destruction.

Zechariah felt in himself the reason for this new form of salvation. Verse 78 tells us sins would be forgiven, “In the tender compassion of our God.” Holding for the first time his own dear infant child, the old man grasped in a way he never had before what it was to feel tenderly toward someone. As he tenderly loved his baby son, so Almighty God loves the people who are His children. Like a father, He sees them not with eyes of condemnation and judgment for their many sins, but with tender compassion.

The word “tender” here is strange when translated literally. Splanga in Greek means something like “bowels,” or the “inner organs” of the body. What it means is the kind of deep, deep feeling that is almost physical. It’s what you felt when you peeked into your baby’s crib and saw her in those little pink jammies with feet, fast asleep with a hand around the leg of a fuzzy stuffed lamb, so full of peace, so innocent, so fragile, so beautiful. You love her so much that it’s like an ache welling up from inside you. It’s the kind of tenderness which Zechariah felt for his son, which he realized God feels for us.

God would not just save His people by great demonstrations of power that would drive off their oppressors and break their chains. In tender compassion, God forgave their sins and saved them in a deeper, stronger way. He would transform them into new people.

The coming of that tender mercy was a new day for the Jewish people. It was a new day for the whole world, a new day for you and me. So in verse 78, very much like Hebb’s lyrics about “Sunny,” the Benedictus speaks of God’s loving compassion like dawn breaking. The word here is anatole, the “dawn,” the “orient,” the “eastern sky.” I like the translation we read which says “the dawn from on high will break upon us.” But I also like the King James which says “whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us.” God’s grace in Jesus Christ is the spring, the fountain, of a new day.

The tender compassion of God’s dayspring comes from on high because so many of us are just where verse 79 says His light will find us, dwelling “in darkness and the shadow of death.” We hear a horrible story of a child abducted, or yet another mass shooting and we realize how deep the darkness is. Our own harsh words or selfish thoughts display the darkness inside us We live in darkness, much of it of our own making.

Our hope when lost in such darkness is the same as ancient Israel’s. We hope for light, for the light which will reach inside and forgive and cleanse and change us into new people. Bobby Hebb had some inkling of this, even if he was just singing about a new girlfriend with a sunny smile. He sang:

Sunny, thank you for that smile upon your face
Sunny, thank you for that gleam that flows with grace

We were living in the darkness of our own sin when Christ came into our world as a gleam of grace. God smiled upon us in tender compassion and sent us Jesus, like you or I would smile down on a child we love and plug in a little nightlight to comfort her should she wake in the dark. It’s that gentle, merciful light of our Lord, the Dayspring from on high, which we celebrate in this season with candles and strings of electric bulbs.

But I pray that each of you will receive the real light of Christmas, not the cheap glitter of neon and LED offering the false brightness of shopping and entertainment, but the gentle merciful gleam of grace which streams from Jesus. Accepting His grace, His forgiveness for your sins, is the only way out of darkness.

The Jewish people of Zechariah’s time desperately needed to see and comprehend the light of salvation that went beyond a national, political solution to their problems. They were very much in want of knowing their God in a tender, personal way, not just as the Savior of their country, but of their own souls.

For you and me, the message might nearly be reversed. We’re almost too comfortable with the idea that the light of God guides us into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. What we must not forget is that the Lord’s salvation involves more than just our own souls. The dayspring did not rise on high, Jesus did not die and rise from the dead, just to make you and me feel a little better, to bring us sunny days. He came to save our world.

When Jesus Christ came to us, God’s plan was that the whole world would be transformed by the light of His kingdom. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus preached to those who followed Him. He saved us to make a difference, to set forth a salvation that delivers men, women and children from their enemies, just as Zechariah sang.

The enemies are still there. Some of the people who slept in our sanctuary this past week struggle with addictions and mental illness. In Pakistan and South Sudan and Syria and Yemen both adults and children have very tangible enemies that maim and shoot and rape and starve them. As we enjoy the light Jesus shined on us, let us remember God’s salvation is meant to make a difference in our society and in the world now.

Zechariah’s song ends with the ultimate goal of God’s salvation for us, “to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Peace is not a private matter. You and I are not really at peace when we are comfortable and quiet in our own hearts. The peace, the shalom of God’s salvation is bigger and more complete than individual and personal happiness. The way of peace is God’s route not just to changing you and me, but to changing the world.

Let us recall this morning the people around us who have not yet seen enough of the Lord’s dawn to find the path. Like the poor disoriented man I saw Friday morning trying to leave our warming site, they just don’t know where to go.

Salvation is not just from our own misery, but from selfish darkness that keeps us from seeing and caring for those around us. In a hymn you can find at #284 in our hymnal, Elton Trueblood sang:

Save us now from satisfaction
When we privately are free
Yet are undisturbed in spirit
By our neighbor’s misery

The way of peace. The light of Jesus Christ illumines that way for us. Years ago my daughters got me to accompany them on a hike up Spencer’s Butte to see the sun rise, like I know our friend Bob often does. The girls and I arrived in a dark parking lot at the bottom of the hill and started up the trail with flashlights to keep from tripping or falling over a steep bank. As we walked, the light of the sun began to creep up into the sky, offering more and more light as we went on, guiding us up the path. Finally at the top it seemed the dawn did suddenly break upon us in all its splendor, and we looked out on the beauty of the valley we live in and the mountains which surround us.

When we get our flashlights out and take small steps forward to shed some light into the darkness, it makes a difference. Some of you are doing that by providing gifts for foster children this Christmas. It lit up my evening on Tuesday to see volunteer after volunteer from Valley Covenant walk in to staff our warming center.

You can light up the darkness in all sorts of ways. You do it when you drop some socks in the mission barrel or some cans in the food bank barrel. You light things up for parents when you help a child dress up as an angel or a sheep or patiently talk to them about Jesus in Sunday School or children’s church. You brighten the gloom for us all when you offer your voice like Zechariah to sing God’s praise. Even helping us make a good impression on visitors by keeping the building clean is a light in the dark keeping them from being distracted by dirt or clutter.

You can also shed some light when you deal with the darkness in yourself and in those around you by biting back a harsh reply to a person who offended you, or by apologizing to someone you’ve hurt, or by making amends for some serious wrong you’ve done. Offering and receiving forgiveness in relation to other people is the gentle illumination which flows from the light of our Lord’s forgiveness for us.

All those things I just mentioned may seem pretty small, just little flickers in a desperately dark world. But they each lead us forward on the way of peace, out of the shadows of death, and up that mountain where the dawn from on high will certainly break upon us. His dawn is coming.

Christ’s light is rising in this world. It has been ever since Zechariah sang and his son John went forth to announce Jesus’ arrival. Let us have eyes wide open to the gleam of Jesus’ light, to the gleam of grace that sets us free from sin and that will also set our world free from all its darkness. May you and I see His dawn before us and take a few more steps forward on the way of peace. And may the Dawn from on high break upon us. May the Dayspring visit us. May Jesus our Lord come to us soon.

Amen.