“I heard the bells on Christmas Day their old familiar carols play and wild and sweet the words repeat of ‘Peace on earth; good will to men’.” It might seem a little early to be quoting carols when we just began summer, but maybe you remember that when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote that poem, later put to music, the United States was deep into the Civil War. His son had been badly wounded in the conflict. In 1863 the poet who hears the bells from church steeples joyfully announcing the arrival of Christmas very soon remembers sadly that their message seems to be a disappointment and a cheat. “Then in despair I bowed my head. There is no peace on earth,” I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of ‘Peace on earth; good will to men.” But the bells will not be silenced. As though reading his thoughts, the steeple bells answered twice as loud. “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep. God is not dead nor doth he sleep. The wrong shall fail; the right prevail with peace on earth, good will to men.”
What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops.
Jesus tells us today as he first told his disciples that the good news of God’s healing love is not meant for only a few but for the whole City of Man. Like Christmas bells, we are to be God’s town criers. Even when people doubt the message.
In Jesus’ day a Jewish teacher who explained the law in Hebrew always had an interpreter beside him, in whose ears he softly whispered his teaching; this interpreter then repeated aloud what had been thus whispered to him. Those who heard Jesus say, “What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops,” would have understood that he was giving them an important job to do. You and I are the Lord translators; indeed, his megaphones.
Jesus is telling us: whatever I speak to you is for the benefit of humanity – keep nothing from the rest of the world, Preach it from the house-tops. The houses in Judea were flat-roofed, with a balustrade round about, which were used for the purpose of taking the evening air, prayer, meditation, and it seems, from this place, for announcing things in the most public manner.
Even today in Muslim countries this is so. In Jesus’s time, the minister of the synagogue, on the Sabbath eve, sounded a trumpet six times, upon the roof of a very high house, so that all might know of the coming of the Sabbath. The first blast signified that they should leave off their work in the field: the second that they should cease from work in the city: the third that they should light the Sabbath candle, etc.
You and I are God’s rooftop trumpets. “Christians are not meant to be little lights in the refrigerator,” said Pope Francis. We do not come on and go off with the closing of the door. We are lamps on a lampstand, giving light to all in the house. We do not keep the love we have experienced in Jesus to ourselves. We do not reserved our charity for our little parish community. We are meant to be a megaphone for Jesus, his town crier. We are the summer bells of Christmas.