Protest Songs for a New Year

We shall overcome We shall overcome We shall overcome some day

 

CHORUS:

Oh, deep in my heart I do believe We shall overcome some day

Is this your idea of a protest song? Some of us grew up hearing Pete Seeger and others singing this song and others in the 1960's, claiming a new way and a new day beyond racial injustice.

I'm grateful to Jarrod McKenna for suggesting that many of our Christmas carols are protest songs, again claiming that the old order of "might makes right" will be overcome and a new day will come in Christ. In a recent blog he offers that the Christmas story in Luke makes that promise.

For some, [the Christmas] bible reading with its talk of empires is too political. For others its talk of angels too spiritual. But today’s gospel reading wants us to open our eyes to the empires and open our ears to the angels and their protest songs.
“Joy to the world” is a protest song if you are singing about the nonviolent King Jesus.
“Hark the herald angels sing” — a protest song.
“O holy night” — a protest song!
“O come all ye faithful” — guess what? Protest song!
 
Hear the angels' voices — God’s protest song to all oppression, evil, injustice, sin, violence, and death.
So maybe listen again to how the tune of Jesus’ life is composed. Listen again to the melody of the incarnation, born not in a palace but in an outhouse for animals. Hear the angels' voices?
Born not to the ruling elite but among the poor and oppressed masses. Hear the angels' voices?
Born not to a queen but to a yet-to-be-properly-wed teenage mum. Hear the angels' voices?
A king who will bring peace not with a sword but with nonviolent love — hear the angels' voices?
A king who brings good news to the poor, sight to the blind, healing to the lame, inclusion to the excluded, forgiveness to sinners and makes the last first. Hear the angels' voices?
A savior who will save not by killing his enemies but loving them, by suffering for them even to the point of death on a cross. A king who conquers and is coronated while being executed on cross as the world’s true Lord! Hear the angels' voices? A protest song divine?

McKenna goes on to say that if you miss the different ways of getting to the world God dreams of, you miss the gospel. In the last Christmas sermon of his life — three months before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. preached,

“It's one of the strangest things that all the great military geniuses of the world have talked about peace. The conquerors of old who came killing in pursuit of peace, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, were akin in seeking a peaceful world order. If you will read Mein Kampf closely enough, you will discover that Hitler contended that everything he did in Germany was for peace... And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek… it is a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

But the song doesn’t stop there. Death could not hold him down. Love raised him from the grave as the world’s true king and he will reign in love for forever and ever! Hear the angels' voices? A protest song divine? Yes! With the coming of the baby hear the angels' voices in the face of empire sing, “Glory to God in the Highest, and peace on earth.” The way of the manger, where the Almighty takes on all vulnerability, leads directly to the way of the cross, where God is victorious over violence and injustice through suffering love.

As we head into this new year I hope we can do so with passion for the Good News of Christ. Pessimism and cynicism and all those other darker "isms" don't serve us well, so we will remember to sing the new song of God-With-Us.