{"id":5265,"date":"2009-12-18T16:02:59","date_gmt":"2009-12-18T21:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/?p=5265"},"modified":"2013-05-10T15:07:56","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T19:07:56","slug":"december-18-2009-victoria-sirota-extended-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2009\/12\/18\/december-18-2009-victoria-sirota-extended-interview\/5265\/","title":{"rendered":" Victoria Sirota Extended Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read more of Kim Lawton\u2019s December 6, 2009 interview in New York City with the Rev. Canon Victoria Sirota, pastor and vicar of the congregation at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and the author of Preaching to the Choir: Claiming the Role of Sacred Musician<\/em> (Church Publishing, 2006):<\/strong><\/p>\n

Talk a bit about the service of Nine Lessons and Carols and what it means.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"victoria-sirota-3\"The Festival of Lessons and Carols, in a sense, is a vigil. How do you spend time waiting for something to happen that hasn\u2019t quite happened yet? What do you do if you\u2019re with friends waiting for something? Well, you tell stories, you pray, you sing songs, and that\u2019s exactly what Lessons and Carols does. From a theological standpoint, and actually from a visual standpoint, it is getting that wide-angle lens and moving back and seeing the whole story, seeing the panorama of God\u2019s plan for salvation for humankind and why that was even necessary, so we have to start at the beginning. We start with Genesis.<\/p>\n

Tell us more. Why start with Genesis at Christmas?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, the story of Adam and Eve is evocative of profound truths about humanity and our relationship to God, and what you get from that story is this vision of Adam and Eve walking in the evening with God when the cooler breezes are blowing\u2014from having a relationship with the divine, being able to walk with God in the Garden of Eden, which is Paradise, and then disobeying God, feeling shame about it, blaming each other, and then Eve blames the serpent. So they\u2019re always blaming \u201cother\u201d\u2014\u201c\u2018it\u2019s not my fault, it\u2019s because so and so told me to; it\u2019s not my fault it\u2019s because\u2026,\u201d which immediately sets up a block into your relationship with the Holy One, so they can\u2019t walk in the garden anymore. That\u2019s the saddest thing about that story\u2014that they have lost that ability to be present with the Holy in Paradise, and that story still speaks to us today. We understand that, and I think we long as human beings to get back to a place of Paradise, to get back to a place where things are right and just and beautiful, where there is not anger and fear and evil, and where we are at one with God.<\/p>\n

In the service several Old Testament passages are read. Talk more generally about how that leads to Christmas.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the readings in the Hebrew Bible, in Isaiah especially, we have some beautiful passages about the people of Israel being in exile and longing for Messiah to come, longing for a Savior, longing to return to the city of Jerusalem, longing for that reconnection that is proof that their relationship to God has been reconciled, and so we have promises of the Shoot of Jesse, promises of the House of David, promise that a Messiah will come, and Christianity has taken all of those beautiful promises, and we use them as showing that Jesus was foretold. Probably the most powerful place that that happened for us happened musically, and that\u2019s when George Fredrick Handel decided to choose all those beautiful Isaiah passages and to set them to music in \u201cMessiah,\u201d and we hear that all the time now. Christians\u2014actually everyone in the world is aware of those particularly wonderful passages because they have been set to music so wonderfully, and we do of course sing them a lot at this time of year.<\/p>\n

Why is it important and meaningful to weave the scripture readings with the carols and the music?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Scripture is the basis for our understanding how God operates. We are leaning on the experiences of souls of light before us who have felt connected to the divine, and those are the people that\u2014we really stand on their shoulders. We look to them, the great prophets, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah\u2014we ponder their stories, their struggles with God, and from that we glean how to have a relationship with God. So those stories are showing us more profound truths. In a sense, the hymns and carols\u2014most of them are based on biblical sources, so they are interpreting for us, and it\u2019s interesting with carols and hymns you have two different things happening at least: You have someone who wrote the text. You possibly have a translator\u2014some of the texts were in Latin or other languages. And then you have a musician, a composer who either wrote the music for that carol or wrote it for something else, and it gets turned into a carol. So it\u2019s very interesting how that process works and how people who sing actually make the decision what it going to end up in that song.<\/p>\n

The Scripture and the music build on each other, interpret each other. How does that work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The music really tells you how to feel about the text. It\u2019s not a small thing. For example, \u201cJoy to the World\u201d: As soon as you start singing it it\u2019s on a high note, you have to support your breath, you\u2019re joyful even singing it. \u201cSilent Night\u201d is more of a lullaby, and it makes you think more of a little baby coming into the world at night time. It settles you into a different place. \u201cO Come All Ye Faithful\u201d is a procession. You can see people lining up and walking. That first verse\u2014seven times the words \u201cO come\u201d are in there, \u201cO come let us adore him, O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord\u201d\u2014so it\u2019s inviting people to join this procession of faithful people across the ages. I think most churches will use it as the opening procession, because it\u2019s a march tempo.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about the difference between Advent and Christmas.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Advent is the church\u2019s preparation for the second coming and also for that first coming again, so we prepare for Christmas, but we also are preparing for the eschaton<\/em>, for the final things, the second coming, the end of the world. Like Christians always say in Advent, \u201cthe end is near,\u201d and we don\u2019t like to talk about that, and the secular world pretty much jumps to Christmas. That\u2019s a much safer place to be than talking about the final judgment and what will happen then. But for Christians it\u2019s important to be thinking every year\u2014it\u2019s like cleaning house, it\u2019s sweeping out, it\u2019s preparing and trying to remember what it is that is really important in our lives and getting back to that, so it\u2019s letting go of our need to try to be in control and remembering to let God be in control so that there is a place to invite God into our hearts.<\/p>\n

And how is that reflected in the music?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The music of Advent\u2014a lot of it has to do with John the Baptist, who was the prophet who came before Jesus just a little bit, enough for him to be baptizing people in the River Jordan when Jesus showed up and was calling people to repent and saying the kingdom of God is at hand, make yourself ready, and that\u2019s the message of Advent. The message of Advent is this time is coming. I think the Advent hymns and carols tend to be more eschatological. They\u2019re talking, again, about larger issues other than just a baby Jesus being born. They\u2019re talking about opening our hearts to what heaven is really about. When we then move closer to Christmas and we talk about the Angel Gabriel coming to Mary, then it gets much more specific in preparing for Christmas. We tend to be more comfortable with that. A little baby Jesus is coming, and that\u2019s great, and we know we are all loved by God. But when we get this bigger John the Baptist yelling in our ear from the desert \u201cyou should repent,\u201d you should figure out what\u2019s important and follow the truth, follow God, work toward authenticity\u2014that\u2019s a little harder to take.<\/p>\n

Christians talk during this time of year about the Incarnation, and a lot of the music of Christmas speaks to that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. Incarnation means coming into the flesh, literally, so it\u2019s becoming human. What\u2019s wonderful about Incarnation is God actually lowering God\u2019s self to become human and in doing so reminding us of how awesome it is to be human. That original sin with Adam and Eve and that break between divine and human which was so huge\u2014the whole thing changes when God becomes Jesus as a little baby, and now we are reminded that our humanity is not something to be thrown away or discarded. That God would use the Virgin Mary, would use a human mother, that a mother could be the mother of God changes how we think about ourselves, and I would just say in our own lives that often God comes to us in the form of someone else always, and it\u2019s always a human being, and if I go back in my own story about my own conversion as an adult, re-conversion, I can tell you the people who have touched me, where I saw God in them, I saw Christ in them, I saw a love beyond what I could understand and imagine. So, in a sense, God Incarnate is coming to know love in a very personal, very real, and very human way.<\/p>\n

You have talked about the God who is far away and the God who is close. Can you talk about that concept and relate it to Christmas?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The transcendent God is God who is the skies, above us, so far away that we often don\u2019t feel any connection whatsoever, or we\u2019re so fearful of God that we can\u2019t imagine approaching God in that form. \u201cImminent\u201d means that God is right here with us, God\u2019s presence is here now, and that\u2019s the gift of Jesus coming into the world, of being born as a child. In the Christian world, one of the great, great gifts we have been given is the gift of Communion, of Eucharist, of being able to break bread with each other and drink wine, and in that simple act of sharing these very basic things, bread and wine, we believe that Christ is present again with us and becomes incarnate anew, so that every time that we join together in a service of Holy Communion we are reenacting this Incarnation, and God comes in us.<\/p>\n

We also spoke about a tie between Christmas and Easter. How are they related, and how does the music show us this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, the interesting thing about Christmas music is that we love best the ones that just tell the story clearly about Jesus being born, about shepherds coming, about angels singing, about wise men coming. We sort of like to leave it there. But there are some carols that hint at what is to come. Our Advent lessons and carols [service] today is going to end with a wonderful hymn \u201cLo! He Comes!\u201d that really talks about Jesus now having to go and to suffer and die for our sins and then to be resurrected. Also, it\u2019s interesting that Bach\u2019s \u201cChristmas Oratorio\u201d\u2014the very last chorus in it is beautiful and joyful and has a wonderful trumpet solo, but the music is the same music that we sing to the chorale \u201cO Sacred Head Now Wounded,\u201d so Bach is speaking very theologically, knowing that, yes, this is joyous, this is the end of the Christmas festivities, but you know how the story ends.<\/p>\n

The themes of hope and joy are really present, and the music highlights that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe hopes and dreams of all the years are met in thee tonight\u201d: That\u2019s part of \u201cO Little Town of Bethlehem,\u201d and in this particular carol Phillips Brooks had been in Bethlehem three years before, and he had stood on the hills where the shepherds might have been and looked down at the little, sleepy town of Bethlehem. So here he is at his job as a priest, a young man, and he\u2019s asked to write a text, or a carol, for the Sunday school, and he thinks about looking down at this little town of Bethlehem, and then Lewis Redner, who was not only his organist but also the Sunday school supervisor, was in charge of composing a tune for it, and he couldn\u2019t. Nothing came to him, it didn\u2019t come, and then Christmas Eve he finally had a dream, and the tune was given to him, and it\u2019s chromatic, it\u2019s thorny, it\u2019s beautiful. We know it so well as the American tune for \u201cO Little Town of Bethlehem.\u201d But what it does is it captures the darkness, the sadness, the fear and then also turns it to this hope and this joy in the baby Jesus being born in Bethlehem. The words have meaning, but the melody tells you what that meaning is and how to listen to it. We\u2019re used to Redner\u2019s version in America, but in England they\u2019re used to a different tune, \u201cForest Green.\u201d The two versions give you a very different sense of those texts. The Lewis Redner\u2014\u201cSt. Louis\u201d is the name of the tune\u2014has a much more profound sense of the darkness of being in the city and hoping for something beyond ourselves and of longing that God will come to us. The \u201cForest Green\u201d version sounds like it\u2019s Christmas morning already. Everything has happened already, and we are safe in heaven with God.<\/p>\n

Hope is deep in our communal soul. We want to be saved. We understand that we as human beings somehow let our pride, our egos, take over and when we do that it tends to alienate us from other people. We tend to cut ourselves off. The people who really are the happiest are not the people necessarily with the most things. It\u2019s often people who have a community that they care about, a family where there is love that prevails even in the times of darkness. Almost anything that we face as human beings\u2014if we can face it with other people of faith, other people who share love with us, they can be endured, and I\u2019ve seen this again and again watching couples who have been so in love with each other, and one partner dies and being honored to be able to step into this holy place and to witness this extraordinary love that finally transcends the grave. It\u2019s absolutely clear to me that there is something beyond, and there is a part of us that wants to be part of God, that wants God to dwell within us. I believe we\u2019re happiest when we give. I think we are happiest when we are able to love. This season with the beautiful carols, many of them sentimental, many of them more lullabies, many of them helping us deal with the darkness\u2014they are reminders to us that we are loved and that we are loveable, and in getting to that place it actually allows us not only to give gifts, but to receive love in a way we didn\u2019t think was possible.<\/p>\n

The amazing thing about Christmas is that it allows us to celebrate a really profound joy, the joy of being re-found by God, of opening our hearts to that love in a new way and of receiving this light that will transform us and reconcile us not only with God, but with each other.<\/p>\n

And the themes of darkness and light?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Advent really is dealing with the fact that our days are getting shorter and that we are losing light, that we feel a sense of darkness encroaching and that the true light of the world now will come in the form of this baby, and if you think of a dark room and just one small, tiny candle, that will indeed make a difference. You will see that. So we\u2019re reminded that even when things seem the darkest, seem the most impossible, seem absolutely like we have lost our way that we look to that light of Christ, and we invite that light within us.<\/p>\n

Candles and the verses about darkness and light are important: \u201cThe people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely, and I believe those lights, the Christmas lights, the lights in the store, the shiny baubles that get reflected light\u2014I think that\u2019s our society\u2019s way of trying to be mystical, and I think it works.<\/p>\n

What about the meaning that \u201cO Come, O Come Emanuel\u201d transmits? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cO Come, O Come Emanuel\u201d is one of the hymns that is based on Latin chant and is at least nine centuries old or more, and there were \u201cO\u201d antiphons that were written for every day before Christmas, for the eight days before Christmas, and each one had a different word for who was coming, a different word for God: O Come, O Come Emanuel; O Come O Wisdom; O Come O Root of Jesse. But it\u2019s inviting God in, and that\u2019s what Christmas is all about. It\u2019s asking, pleading with God\u2014this yearning, this desire to be reconciled, to get it right once more. Hymns such as \u201cO Come, O Come Emanuel,\u201d which has been chanted through the ages by monks and nuns in processions of faithful Christians\u2014you have this sense of a timeless melody, and you join all these fellow souls of light and the communion of saints when you sing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHark! The Herald Angels Sing\u201d is very typical in the lessons and carols service. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Charles Wesley, one of the great hymn writers of all time, wrote \u201cHark! The Herald Angels Sing\u201d and the story goes that he was very moved by the sound of the bells ringing on Christmas morning and that inspired him to write that song. The other interesting fact about it is that Felix Mendelssohn\u2019s music was actually from another secular work that he had composed, and Mendelssohn didn\u2019t think it was appropriate at all, but we have so taken over that tune, and we so accept that as wedded to that particular text that, for us, that is the angels at Christmastime.<\/p>\n

What do people feel when they sing that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is where heaven and earth meet. In our society I don\u2019t think we\u2019re ever going to get rid of Halloween. We have horror movies at Halloween that remind us that evil is present in the world, and I don\u2019t think in our secular society we\u2019re ever going get rid of Christmas, because we need those angels. We need that image of something outside ourselves, and somehow we know that. Often I talk to people who say they\u2019re atheists, they don\u2019t believe in God, struggle with that, there\u2019s nothing out there, but I have to say that when people who proclaim that to me are then in some grave difficulty, health problems or someone they love is dying, that my conversation is always very different to them, and I don\u2019t need to talk anyone into believing in God. But I have to say in my own experience with life and death and with being with people who are dying and have died that there are mystical things that happen that I cannot explain in any rational way. I\u2019m aware that if we live in a place of hope and faith that opens the door to beautiful things happening, wonderful coincidences that we can\u2019t explain that change our mood from one of darkness and despair to one of joy. Christina Rossetti\u2019s wonderful text \u201cIn the Bleak Midwinter\u201d makes this point very well about this moment between heaven and earth coming together in the second verse: \u201cOur God, Heaven cannot hold Him \/ Nor earth sustain; \/ Heaven and earth shall flee away \/ When He comes to reign: \/ In the bleak midwinter \/ A stable-place sufficed \/ The Lord God Incarnate \/ Jesus Christ.\u201d So that brings together the sense of Advent, when we\u2019re looking towards the end time, and then focusing it finally on this little baby who saves the world.<\/p>\n

Is it the words, is it the melody? Is it both?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is always a combination of the words and melody, as far as I\u2019m concerned. When we sing \u201cGloria\u201d in \u201cAngels We Have Heard on High\u201d we\u2019re singing this long melisma, all of these notes on one word that allows us to get into a place where we\u2019re actually going beyond the verbal. The music is going to tell you how to feel about it, and oftentimes it will flip you into a nonverbal place of ecstasy. Many, many notes to the same syllable is a way of trying to express the ineffable. We are trying to express what cannot be expressed. We are trying to get to a place of ecstasy that is beyond our normal experience.<\/p>\n

How does sitting in a service of lessons and carols take us through all of this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The gift of lessons and carols is that it takes time, and that you sit there and at the beginning you\u2019re thinking about all those things you should be doing, and hopefully you just take out a piece of paper, write them down, and let them go. And then you let the music, the carols, the texts, the prayers wash over you, and if you do it well you will open your heart into a place of deeper and more profound meditation, and the light will break through. Some text, some image, some musical phrase will change you, and that’ll be the gift you get.<\/p>\n

Many different kinds of churches and congregations have taken the traditional lessons and carols service but have changed it, adapted it. What does that say?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The idea of lessons and carols probably comes from the oldest service we have, which is the Easter vigil, and that was very early Christianity, so it\u2019s the idea of waiting around for something to come. What are you going to do? Well, you\u2019re going to sing, you\u2019re going to read scriptures, etc. So for us to keep changing the order of what is read and what carol is sung is absolutely appropriate. It is good and right for us to keep recreating something so that it speaks to us now.<\/p>\n

Some people coming to a lessons and carols service may expecting that it\u2019s going to be all the old carols that they know so well, but there may be some carols they are not as familiar with. How does that work into their experience of it? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Lessons and Carols is not a concert. It\u2019s not where you\u2019re going to applaud after everything. You\u2019re going to allow yourself to meditate at a much deeper place. It can be very annoying if you\u2019re expecting to sing carols that you know and are confronted with hymns you\u2019ve never heard before, that go into different places. But my best suggestion is rather than being annoyed at it, talk to God about it, and say, okay, why are you telling this to me now? And then if you open your hearts you\u2019ll find that all of the anthems, all of the carols are going to show you a different side of what you know in the familiar carols , but they\u2019ll help you to attach it to your life now, in the present. Sometimes when we sing carols, we forget the text altogether, and we are at our grandmother\u2019s knee, or whoever first taught that to us. But the gift of new carols is that God is working among us today, even now, inspiring us anew with the Holy Spirit breaking through in new ways, and often the Spirit is talking to you right now, and it could be that that most annoying new anthem or carol is just for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read more of Kim Lawton\u2019s December 6, 2009 interview in New York City with the Rev. Canon Victoria Sirota, pastor and vicar of the congregation at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and the author of Preaching to … More →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":16871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7069,7024,7068,6934,6868,7082,7070,600,5483,2313,6866],"class_list":["post-5265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advent","tag-carols","tag-cathedral-church-of-saint-john-the-divine","tag-christmas","tag-hymns","tag-incarnation","tag-lessons-and-carols","tag-music","tag-scripture","tag-theology","tag-victoria-sirota","topics-literature-and-the-arts","faith-christian"],"yoast_head":"\nDecember 18, 2009 ~ Victoria Sirota Extended Interview | December 18, 2009 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read more of Kim Lawton\u2019s interview about Advent and Christmas services of lessons and carols with the Rev. 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