I’ve never known a soul to cry at an Easter hymn, but many of us cry singing Advent and Christmas songs and carols.
A friend was just telling me about the Lessons & Carols service she attended the first Sunday of Advent. “When the choir sang ‘People Look East,’ I started to cry—I always cry at that one,” she said. “And I looked at the person next to me, and she was wiping away a tear. I leaned over and whispered, ‘Are you crying too?’ She nodded, and I said, ‘Why?’ She just shrugged her shoulders.”
My Advent cry song is “Lo, he comes with clouds descending.” A former colleague, an organist/choirmaster, and I share the same lachrymal weakness for that hymn. The moment we hear it each year, we send each other a note. “’Lo, he comes,’” I write, “and here I go.” It’s the best cry of the year—a song that imagines the heavens broken open, a savior descending, and a future reign of God that puts all things to rights. It’s a fevered vision of justice that—like Isaiah’s promise of the lion and the lamb—depends nothing on present reality. But music makes it possible to believe the beautiful impossible. What we cannot say, we can sing—belt it out.
Still, that doesn’t explain why we cry at Advent and Christmas hymns. I’m no wiser than the woman in that pew who brushes her cheeks and shrugs her shoulders.
So I ask, What is the music that gets you every time? And, if you have a hunch, why? Where do those tears come from?
(If you want to hear a version of “Lo, he comes with clouds descending” that makes you think the clouds are actually parting right now, click here.)
I’ll never forget my first Christmas service at St. Luke’s when the lights dim and “Silent Night” begins. I cry every year – my husband and kids know I will and always smile.
I can see them smiling now!
Glorious advent carol. If you click on the comments in the YouTube link, you will see the lyrics which I found helpful. As also noted lamentably in the comments, verse 3 was omitted from this arrangement.
I saw that comment too, and I had missed that in Rutter’s version. Missed
With what rapture,
With what rapture,
With whaat rapture,
Gaze we on those glorious scars.
That’s one reason this breaks open the well of tears–here is a sovereign who comes bearing the scars of his own death–once horrid and now “glorious.” All of us deeply scarred people will rush to a savior like that.
David – I think music touches us in such a unique way because it’s multi-sensory…we’re moved by both the sound and lyrics together. We’re hearing, singing, and feeling all at once. The perfect trifecta. God working his wondrous way to crack open our hearts and the tears are a sign he has done just that. Thank you for the most beautiful listen at the start of this day!
The trifecta by which God cracks open our hearts–wish I’d written that! So good and right.
Mahalia Jackson – “Silent Night” because it makes my mom cry. Played it every year growing up decorating the Christmas tree on the record player.
I found the Mahalia Jackson version of Silent Night and gave a listen. I was imagining your mother’s tears, and what a blessed memory that is for you.
Hey David, thanks so much for this one. I keep saying, of one post, another and then another: This is your best.
Why do I cry?
Just this past Sunday as I was standing in the nave and the opening hymn began (and I don’t remember what it was) I started choking up. I had to stop singing and let the choir and the congregation carry me along. I couldn’t sing. And I thought to myself (because this happens frequently–and has for years): Why do I cry? I’m going to have to write about this. I need to write about this.
But then I didn’t. Until today, David, when you dropped this little reminder on my desk.
Bless you, bro.
Michael
Away in the manger, occasionally. Silent night, every Christmas Eve when the lights are out and the candles are being lit from pew to pew. Angels We Have Heard on High.
The Amen from Benjamin Britton’s Ceremony of Carols.
I cry because the world is beautiful, and because it is ugly. Music bypasses the logical brain pathways in favor of something more intuitive – maybe a glimpse of the fulness of all things? Thanks, David.
Different Advent/Christmas hymns have touched me at different times in my life. Sometimes it’s a phrase. Sometimes it’s a beautiful harmony. Sometimes it’s a single note (like that high note in “O Holy Night). I always wondered what it was about a note (words I get). I think maybe it’s the Spirit moving and arousing something familiar in our hearts. A longing for where our spirits came from and will return. It’s hard to come up with words to describe it – maybe that’s why we feel it.
That single high note—yes, that alone can do it.