Isaiah 35:6 “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”

Isaiah’s vision of how it will be when the Messiah reigns. Today I want to home in on the last one:
“Then shall…………….the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”

I remember with great affection my Church History tutor when I was a student in training for the Methodist ministry. His name was Norman Goldhawk, and not only was he an extremely able church historian, but also he was a very competent organist and musician generally. He had a comprehensive knowledge of hymnody, especially the hymns of Charles Wesley.

I remember him once telling us a story of a man who had led a very dissolute life, but who had been soundly converted through the Salvation Army and decided to follow the Christian way. So it was that this once foul-mouthed drunkard joined the Salvation Army band, and enthusiastically took up the playing of the trumpet. The day came when, in the market place of the town where the band was playing, he was asked to give his testimony as to how the Lord had saved him, and with a great smile on his face he announced to those who would hear him (and I ask you to excuse the language, but this is how Norman Goldhawk told it) “My name is Sam, and the Lord has saved me, and my life has changed I’ve given up the drink, and I’ve stopped swearing, and now I’m playing this trumpet, and I’m so happy I could blow the bloody thing straight!”

Well, at least there was joy there! The prophet Isaiah tells us that when God’s anointed is to come, the tongue of those without speech will be unlocked and they will sing for joy. And so I want this morning, on the 3rd Sunday of Advent, to take as my theme singing and joy. And there is good reason for this.

Today is the day we are asked to celebrate the birth of that great religious poet, Charles Wesley, as his birthday falls on Tuesday, December 18th. We have given him good coverage in this his tercentenary year, so this is really to bring it to a close.

The history of hymnody and the church is interesting. Christians have always sung about their faith, and some of the earliest hymns are in the New Testament, quoted by the writers of the letters we find there. It was the monastic movement, perhaps, which did most to develop liturgical singing. After the Reformation in Britain, things began to change. The Anglicans had their canticles and psalms, which they chanted, and the Presbyterians their metrical psalms, all in the same metre, sung to tunes which would fit them all.

Then came a new generation of Christian poets – George Herbert, Tate and Brady, and then Isaac Watts. Music, which had largely been the preserve of clergy and choir now began to expand into a congregational experience. The hymns of Watts were extremely popular, and have stood the test of time. Think of ‘O God our help in ages past’, or ‘When I survey the wondrous cross’, for instance.

And then in the 18th century, Charles Wesley appeared on the scene. After his profound spiritual experience in 1738, hymns flowed from his pen almost non-stop! The Spirit took hold of him, and a great outpouring of praise and devotion flooded over the newly emerging Methodist movement. Singing the faith became its hallmark, and Methodists became renowned for their singing. Think of our gospel reading. The poor were having the good news proclaimed to them in words and music. Labouring men and women - coal miners, farm workers, domestic servants, factory workers - all began singing their faith, and, indeed, began to sing in harmony as they formed choirs and, after some stiff resistance, even began to install organs in the chapels they had built. It was all very empowering indeed. The speechless were singing for joy, and it really was the ‘joy of heaven to earth come down.’

This, then, was Wesley’s gift to the Methodists, and Methodism’s gift to the church universal.

At the heart of all Charles Wesley’s hymns is the Good News that Christ died for all humankind, for all, for everyone. The gospel preached by brother John is enshrined in this four-fold mantra:
All people need to be saved.
All people can be saved.
All people can know they are saved.
All people can be saved to the uttermost
Charles helped the Methodist people to sing it. Here are a couple of verses from one of his hymns:

Come, sinners, to the gospel feast,
Let every soul be Jesu’s guest;
You need not one be left behind,
For God has bidden all mankind.

Sent by my Lord, on you I call;
The invitation is to all;
Come, all the world; come, sinner thou!
All things in Christ are ready now.

For me, there is in that something glorious, something joyful, something the prophet foretold as a sign of the Kingdom of the Messiah, God’s Anointed one, and there is, of course, an echo of the eucharist in it.

In this past year we have only scratched the surface of the prodigious output of Charles Wesley, and I know that for many of you, some of it was quite new ground. For someone like myself, a lifelong Methodist, who has heard Wesley sung since the day I was born, to revisit him has been a joy. As I said at the ‘Big Sing’,the joy is not just about celebrating a dead poet. It is much more about singing out the gospel, which in the way in which Wesley wrote it down is unmatched. It is like being in a storeroom full of gold and gems. Every time you enter, you find some treasure your had either forgotten or never knew was there.

On Advent Sunday we sang one of Wesley’s greatest hymns ‘Come, thou long expected Jesus’, and it is being used as the Advent theme on the Radio 4 Sunday Worship this year. The Messiah will come not only to rule over his people; not even to rule the nations, but also to ‘rule in all our hearts’ and to raise us to the throne of heaven. And we sing of the ‘joy of every longing heart’ – there is that word again – joy.

‘The tongue of the speechless will sing for joy’, wrote the prophet. The coming of the Messiah is to empower the powerless, as just the promise of it did for those early Methodists, and as it can still do today. All of this is echoed in today’s gospel, words of Jesus to the disciples of John the Baptist who was beginning to despair of ever finding the Messiah:

‘Go and tell John what you hear and see:
the blind receive their sight,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
and the poor have good news brought to them.

A good news, gospel feast indeed! O that we each had a thousand tongues to sing it!

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