Christmas Carols
I love Christmas and I love singing and listening to Christmas carols. In fact we’ve had Christmas carols playing on high rotation in our house since December 1st. I also love the carols because of the depth and theological richness of the words. I am struck each year by that richness as we sing about how “God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven” by the one who “came down to earth from heaven”, Jesus who was “born that man no more may die”. As I ponder this, I find myself thinking also about the many millions of people who will gather at assorted carols events across this weekend and throughout next week to sing about things that many give little thought to, except at this time of year. Here’s an excerpt from an article which (former Moore College lecturer) Andrew Cameron wrote about a carol that had me stumped for quite some time too: Good King Wenceslas.
“ … Australians get quite lost singing about tenth-century Czech winters, and for that matter, about first-century Jewish babies in Roman Palestine. [So] why this annual inspection of kindness? It’s as if these yearly thoughts about kindness inoculate us from actual kindness for the rest of the year. So I’m reminded of Matt Chandler’s book, The Explicit Gospel. (Now there’s a good present—in ebook formats too!) He tells of how he spent too long hanging around churches, hearing that Christianity’s about being moral, and not hearing what ‘powers’ that. What could possibly make Wenceslas step down from his house, and feast with a woodsman? Only that a greater King stepped down from heaven, to give you and me everything that mattered to him most.
We scrounge about, doing our thing and thinking we’re fine. But we’re not. Jesus Christ gave away his relationship with his Father, experiencing God’s wrath, so that we can feast in heaven where we don’t naturally belong. We are dearly loved. Good King Wenceslas would be a great carol if it made that explicit. Legend has it that Jesus’ kindness to Wenceslas fuelled years of generous reign in Bohemia, until Wenceslas was murdered on his way to church.
There’s nothing wrong with being kind on Boxing Day (the ‘feast of Stephen’). By all means, be with someone older, lonelier, poorer, sicker or sadder, and give to them from the wealth of your food, your time, your gifts.
But let’s be explicit, not incomprehensible: that can only happen each year, because One came who did it for us. He ‘did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage’ but took ‘the very nature of a servant’, and became ‘obedient to death—even death on a cross!’ (Phil 2:6–8, niv 2011) In this way, ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor 5:21, niv 2011).”
So this year don’t just sing the carols, and don’t assume what’s behind them. Instead as you sing reflect on the rich tsunami of extraordinary Christmas truths that we find in many of our beloved carols. And make sure you tell others what you love about the carols we sing at Christmas, because we’re the only ones who know. So let’s sing it, and live it, and tell it while we live it.
And whether we approach Christmas in strength or weakness this year, let us hang onto this Christmas truth: Jesus, Immanuel, is God with us. As we join our voices in song, let us also be encouraged by the voices of faith from fellow believers who surround us in the congregation.