I was chatting with Scott Worley the other day and asked him a question.  “Who,” I said, “Do you think is the greatest guitarist that ever lived?”  For me that’s a hard question to answer.  There are so many different styles of music and guitar playing that it’s hard to narrow it down.

Eric Clapton has always been a favorite – he just manages to transcend so many different styles and never seems to miss a note.  I saw a guy called Gary Potter play in Liverpool once – he was amazing but remains completely unknown.  There’s Django Rhienhart, the jazz guitarist – awesome in his particular style.  Likewise ‘The Edge’, the guitarist with U2, who talked about innovation and using just a few notes to create a wall of sound – he took it to a new level.

I think in the realm of heavy rock music I’d have to say Jimi Hendrix.  Although he died tragically young, and in technical terms and in speed of playing, there’s been some who could run rings around him.  He was a true original and did things with the guitar’s sound that had never been thought of before.

Now I realize that to some of you the question of who the greatest guitarist may be is really not a burning issue.  Some of you may well have an intense dislike of rock music, and that’s O.K.  We’re all different.  Me... no matter how wonderfully it’s explained and how much I appreciate the talent of those involved, I don’t think I am ever going to really be able to say, “I love opera.”

And to a British guy brought up on the game of cricket, I will never be able to fully comprehend the excitement that baseball generates in some of you.  But... you know it’s a big world, and there is room in it for all the variety and eccentricity that our likes and dislikes reveal about us.  So, indulge me just for a moment as I return to Jimi Hendrix.

Although he is always remembered for his guitar playing, less is said about his song-writing.  He also created some remarkable songs that complemented the imagery he created through his playing.  Admittedly, some of it was out there somewhere and we may never know what was really going through his mind, but that’s the artist’s privilege.

One of his early songs was titled “The Wind Cries Mary.”  Some of the words of that song fit in really well with the themes we explore during Advent.

Last week we were thinking about John the Baptist, a voice in the Wilderness – a voice that the religious folk of his day completely failed to hear, but which struck a chord in the hearts of many others, causing them to re-evaluate there lives and ‘get ready’ for something new that God was going to do.

John spoke to the midst of a world that just wasn’t fun any more – a world where hope had died and laughter had ceased; a world where everything seemed set in stone.  The rich would get richer and the poor would get children.  Redemption was unlikely, and deliverance from evil was only a dream.

The Israelites were, after all, a conquered and vanquished people who knew that time was not on their side.  They were losing their identity.  They were losing their faith.  Nothing seemed to matter anymore. It was just a case of sitting it out.

But God had other plans, the plans that we celebrate as Christmas.  God was about to get up close and personal with the world He had fashioned and formed.  God was about to turn everything on its head.  God would come in Christ, and nothing would ever be quite what it seemed again.

How would this be?  What was God going to do?  When would it happen?  Who would it involve?  It’s here that the evocative words of Jimi’s song, which I’m pretty sure he didn’t write about Christmas, nevertheless fit so well to this defining moment in history.

“After all the jacks are in their boxes,

And the clowns have all gone to bed.

And you can hear happiness staggering on down the street

Footprints dressed in Red,

And the wind whispers... Mary”

(© “The Wind Cries Mary” by Jimi Hendrix)

Way back in Bethlehem, in that dim and long ago time, there was a new song about to be sung and a new light about to appear. And the Holy Spirit, the Wind of God, was carrying one word on the breath of God… the wind whispered … Mary.

To young Mary, a peasant girl betrothed in marriage to a working man, in a tiny little village that would have been forever forgotten were it not for the acts of God that took place, there came an angel.  The angel told Mary that in her life there would be birthed a Savior for all the world, and that for all time afterwards, from generation to generation, people would call her Mary, the Blessed One of God, favored above all women, past, present, or yet to come.

Isaiah painted a bleak picture of a world abandoned by God.  John spoke from the wilderness of a hope that was to come.  The wind whispered Mary, and Mary’s heart burst forth into a glorious song that is recorded for us in Luke’s gospel – a song sometimes called the ‘Magnificat’ or the ‘Great Rejoicing’ and that transforms Isaiah’s words.

It’s a very different song from the one that Jimi Hendrix would later write.  This one is a song of hope and expectation.  This is a song about a turn-around of cosmic proportions. This is a song that laughs in the face of the way things were, for God was to do a reversal of fortunes that would leave the downtrodden leaping for joy and those who had been brought low, crying with tears of laughter.

Dr. Conrad Hyers, professor of Mythology and Religious history at Gustavux Adolphus College in Minnesota, once preached a marvelous sermon entitled “The Nativity as a Divine Comedy.”  Drawing on the images of reversal that are throughout the gospels, he reminds us of the radical nature of Scripture’s message, something he suggests that the church has often sought to suppress and control, because it appears so disarmingly new and disturbingly spontaneous.

He speaks of how Jesus is ascribed images more appropriate to a jester or a clown than to the Son of God.  He is, as we have seen, heralded by a wilderness prophet wearing animal skins, eating locusts and honey and throwing people into a river.  He chooses a bunch of misfits and unknowns to be his followers, amongst them one whom he knows will eventually betray Him.

Although He is given a host of titles such as ‘Son of David’, ‘Prince of Peace’, and ‘Lord of Lords, He appears to belong to the common man, incite violent opposition from religious leaders anxious to maintain the status quo, and expresses His royal position by the preposterous act of washing His disciples feet.

Jesus is born to a carpenter’s wife in an animal shelter, has a vagabond ministry amongst peasants, publicans and sinners, enters the holiest city on a donkey, and dies as a mock king with thorns for a crown and a cross for a throne.

His ministry attracts neither poets or philosophers, emperors or priests, nor generals or politicians.  His following is a parade of children, shepherds, gypsies, prostitutes, tax-swindlers, foreign soldiers, slaves, and refugees; a parade of the maimed, the blind, and the lame; a procession of lepers and demon tortured nobodies, a carnival of fools.

These appear as the chosen of God, chosen not because they have the most to offer, but because they have nothing to offer but themselves.  And the reward for their ‘chosen-ness’ is often that of being the clown, the scapegoat, the ‘fool for Christ’s sake’.

The wind cried ‘Mary’, and this little girl, Mary, this peasant in the midst of nowheresville, responds with a song of joy in which she proclaims this divine foolishness: “He who is mighty has done great things for me, And holy is His name…He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly.  He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.”

Dr. Hyers concluded his sermon with these words:

     “In this divine comedy a poor woman’s farthing cast inconspicuously in the temple chest may be worth more than all the benefactions of the rich.  Sinners, unworthy to set foot in holy places, may be justified over those faithful and comfortable in their righteousness.  Children may be closer to the Kingdom of God than the learned or pious.  Illiterates and fools may see what scribes and philosophers do not.  And the most godforsaken places may be precisely where God is found.  Emmanuel.  God with us.”  (© ‘Christian Century’, December 1974, pp 1168-1172)

Where will we find God in our Christmas celebrations this year?  As always it will be in the unexpected places, in the generosity of our giving rather than the wealth of our receiving, in the laughter of children rather than the compliments of strangers, and  in the fellowship of those whom others refuse to welcome.

Maybe around the T.V. set or in the midst of a shopping trip, God will catch us unaware. Maybe around a table laid with the best we can afford, or possibly around a table laid with little more than bread and wine, we will sense something of the divine foolishness that calls people like us to discipleship.

Could be that the wind, the wind of the Spirit,

will not be crying Mary, but calling our name.

“Christian, follow Me.

Christian, worship Me,

Christian, serve Me.”

May God help us to respond with joy to the unlikely Good News of Christmas; to respond with a foolish heart that declares, “I have nothing to offer but myself.”  But be careful!  Do that, and God might just start working out that crazy turn-around Kingdom stuff in our lives.

To God’s name be the Glory.

Rev. Adrian J. Pratt