Epiphany: Feast of the Three Kings

I wonder if the three magi were disappointed when they finally found Jesus.

The magi, traditionally referred to as the wise men, would have arrived in Bethlehem around the time Jesus already was toddling around on two feet and speaking in two-word sentences. Jan. 5, also called Epiphany or Twelfth Night, celebrates their arrival in the traditional Christian calendar. In Mexico and the Caribbean, this is also known as the Feast of Three Kings.

We don't know much about them. The Bible never tells how many of them there were, where exactly they came from, or even what their names are. It tells us that they saw a star that they understood was announcing the birth of a new king, and they came to find him and to worship him.

Over the years, people have tried to fill in the gaps. Because the Bible mentions three gifts, tradition has asserted there were three magi as well. It also gives us names: Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar. Lew Wallace, the author of “Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ” suggests that they were from Egypt, India and Greece, respectively, to stress the universal message and appeal of the gospel, but there's no basis for any of that.

The gospel uses the Greek word magi, the plural of magus, so it's a fair assumption that they were occultists of some sort. Given that they were following a star, they very well may have been astrologers. At the same time, I've read scholars suggest that they may have been wealthy merchants, magoi, who came to sell expensive wares to Herod; and other claims that they were Jews living in Babylon who saw the connection between the Star of Bethlehem and a prophecy in Numbers 24:17.

These are all interesting ideas, but what I can't help but wonder is how they reacted when they arrived. The gospel of Matthew says that they initially went to Jerusalem and met with Herod the Great, which seems like a fairly obvious thing to do. If you're looking for a newborn king, the home of the current reigning king does seem like a logical place to look.

Except Herod had no son young enough to meet their expectations, and his own people reportedly cited a prophecy from the prophet Micah that the messiah would come from Bethlehem.

I can't help but think that the magi must have felt some sort of letdown when they finally arrived. When my own children were 2, their personalities were truly starting to emerge. This was the age when they were starting to speak, follow simple directions, and start to explore the world with enthusiasm. It's also when the tempers began.

Over the weeks and months that the magi had been following that star, did anything really prepare them for the sight of a child who still didn't have all his teeth, who walked confidently but still fell down and cried when the ground was uneven, and who liked to bang his bowl on the table to get attention at dinner?

I wonder how they reacted when Jesus kept screaming his head off because an exhausted Joseph was trying to carry him on his left shoulder (not his right) while walking (not bouncing) inside the house (not around it outside) and talking soothingly to him (not singing). If you don't have children yourself, you can trust me on this. That's exactly how Jesus would have behaved when he was 2.

Talk about first impressions.

One presumes from the gospel that they had expected some sort of god-man who lived in a mansion. Instead they found an ordinary child with working-class parents who lived in a small house in a godforsaken little town on the outskirts of nowhere.

You can almost imagine the three of them arguing outside in the street about whether they had the right address, if they had misunderstood the message of the star entirely, and even whose idea it was to bring all these expensive gifts for a Capricorn, anyway.

God can be so disappointing when he doesn't do things the way we expect him to, and yet that's what keeps happening. He exceeds our expectations by reaching so far below them that in the end we're stunned by how sublimely perfect his wisdom is.

At some point the magi realized that they did have the right address. The Bible records that they gave their gifts and worshiped, one presumes while Jesus grabbed their beards, pulled their noses, and played with their lips.

And when they realized the threat this completely ordinary child posed to the people in power, the Bible says that they snuck out by another route.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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The fading wonder of Christmas

I remember when Christmas was an easy holiday to believe.

It was easy to believe as a child, but that's no surprise. The world is already wondrous and strange when you're a child. I once told my youngest daughter that a mermaid named Bathilda lives on the nearby college campus and gets her mail from a turtle, and she believed me. Compared to that, it's a piece of cake to believe story about angels, a newborn baby and three wise men who found him by following a star.

When I turned 18 and awakened to faith in a way that I never had before, Christmas became even more wonderful. For the first time I understood properly what the holiday was about. I started to grasp the mystery of the Incarnation, that the Almighty God too vast to be measured had somehow become a baby who weighed about 6 pounds.

A being who had spoken the universe into existence, whose very word had set the stars spinning through the heavens; brought forth fish in the sea, animals on the ground, and birds in the air; had become helpless, with no way of caring for himself. He had to cry when he was hungry, or sick, or tired; and he had to rely on two confused parents to sort out what he needed and to take care of him.

A God who had dug up the earth with his hand, sculpted a man from the clay, and breathed life into him, now had become a man.

It was amazing. It was inspiring. It filled me with awe. It gave me chills.

Some time in the past twenty-eight years, some of that has slipped away.

I know what some will say: that one day Faith walked down a road she should not have, and there she met Doubt. She fled the highwayman, but not before he had attacked and injured her. If Faith returns to friendlier quarters she is sure to recover, but if she stays where she is, then it's only a matter of time until Faith dies.

Or as someone once put it, “When I was a child, I thought like a child, I spoke like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”

The Christmas story is no longer as easy to believe as it once was, because the story of Jesus no longer seems as unique as it once did. There are stories from all over the ancient world about dying gods and god-men, miracle workers and would-be saviors, with similarities to the Christ story.

In one story, widely told and widely believed in the Roman Empire, there was a god who was born in a cave on Dec. 25. Born of no human father, he came to save the people from death and sin. His name was Mithras.

The ancient Greeks worshiped a different god, whose father was the almighty king of heaven. He was killed unjustly, but raised to life again; and ever afterward his worshipers commemorated his death and resurrection by eating bread and drinking wine. He was Dionysus, although the Romans called him Bacchus.

And on it goes.

None of the stories is an exact match for Jesus. Mithras was never crucified, for instance; and Dionysus, while born of a human mother and Zeus, was no virgin birth. Still, for all that, it's easy to see how one story could pick up elements of another, or how religious holidays celebrated around the same time of year or around similar themes would affect each other.

This is a process called syncretism, and it happens all the time. It's how Christmas gained traditions like lighting the Yule log, it's why Santa Claus for a while looked like Odin and still lives up North and hands out presents like Odin did, and it's why Hanukkah has become such a big thing in the United States. Syncretism was one of the things the biblical prophets saw as a tremendous danger to the proto-Judaic religion.

Aside from syncretism, some questions come from the Christmas story itself. The virgin birth is so foundational to Christmas that Tim Keller recently asserted in an interview with Nicholas Kristoff that it's as essential as the Resurrection. You can't be a Christian, he argues, without believing in it.

But while Matthew and Luke both mention the virgin birth, the gospels of Mark and John give it a pass. Luke has an angelic visitor tell Mary what's coming, while Matthew claims there was a prophecy in the book of Isaiah that the virgin would conceive and bear a son.

A 750-year-old prophecy about the virgin birth of Jesus has got to count as a slam dunk, except for one problem. The prophecy wasn't originally about Jesus, and it never specifies a virgin birth. The Hebrew word is almah, which means “young woman.” It could mean virgin, but that's a stretch. There's not a serious linguistic scholar without a doctrinal dog in the fight who considers such a translation responsible. It's not the primary, secondary or even tertiary definition of the word.

The only way Isaiah prophesied that virgin would give birth is if he prophesied in Greek. I say that because the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, uses the word parthenos, and that unmistakably does mean virgin.

So yes, there's a virgin birth promised here, but only if you're relying on a questionable translation, as apparently the writers of both Matthew and Luke's gospels did.

And on it goes. In our imaginations and devotions we often like to blend the canonical gospels together into one seamless whole, but in doing so we overlook important and telling differences among them. Matthew wrote for a Jewish audience, so his gospel is filled with passages that he cites as fulfilled prophecies. Some of them are quite a stretch, one to the point that no one is entirely sure what he was talking about.

Meanwhile, Luke wrote for a Greek audience accustomed to affirmations from the heavens that presaged important events. His gospel includes an angelic visitor to Mary to declare her pregnancy, and a host of angels appearing over Bethlehem to announce the birth.

Enough of this and the Christmas story not only loses a bit of its luster, it becomes the Christmas stories. They're beautifully told, full of unquestionable literary value, and containing a message of supreme value -- but they're very much stories.

And yet. And yet …

In “Down Among the Dead Men,” writer Alan Moore once observed: “There are people. There are stories. The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse is often closer to the truth.”

The story I tell is this: “One day Faith walked down an unfamiliar road, and there she met Doubt. At first she mistook him for a highwayman, and she fled and hid.

“But Doubt was persistent and found her, and after they had spoken a while she realized that he was not an enemy, but a friend who wanted what she did. And she knew at once that if they continued the journey together, then not only would she make it to the end, but it would be a far more rewarding and satisfying journey than if she had tried it alone.

“So Faith quieted her fears and took Doubt's hand, and together the two pilgrims set out on the road to find their destination. They've had their problems, but they've always faced them together, and they've always overcome them.”

Christmas is the season when we believe that the unchanging Tao changed forever. At the first Christmas in Bethlehem, the eternal Tao became mortal, with a fixed beginning point and an endpoint, even as the line of its existence continues infinitely beyond those points.

The Tao that cannot be understood assumed dimensions, senses, affections and passions. It subjected itself to the same diseases that we suffer, and allowed itself to be warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as us.

Even after all these years, that message still fills me with wonder and it still gives me chills.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'Silent Night'

Outside it is cold and windy, and darkness has blown over lawns, across walks and into deep drifts near buildings. The darkness is chilled by the heavy snows of an early winter, and is enough to make the weary soul ache for bed and a thick blanket. To anyone unfortunate enough to be outside by themselves, it's a lonely enough to burden the soul.

Inside the tiny church, it's a different story.

There the lights have been dimmed by choice, and the air is filled with the rustle of children like the wings of impatient angels. Above and below this susurrant murmur the organist plays an unending and nameless tune as the congregation and the minister grow silent and wait. In a moment, God will draw near and this unassuming neighborhood church will be transfigured.

It begins slowly. As the notes of the organ sort themselves into place a light the size of a single candle springs into life under the watchful eyes of the pulpit. In a moment it spreads to another candle, and then to another, and another. As the light spreads throughout the church and a hundred candles push back against the dark, the organ begins to play “Silent Night.” A holy Presence fills the room.

This is the first Christmas Eve service I can remember. It ran from 10:30 p.m. until just past midnight. I was 6 years old.

“Silent Night.” If there is a single Christmas carol that captures the wonder and the joy of Christmas, this is it. Composed in Austria in the 19th century with a simple guitar arrangement, it arrived in the world barely a month past the end of World War I. More than 17 million people had died in the war, including an estimated 7 million civilians, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in human history.

In the midst of that carnage – quite literally, since its lyricst, Father Joseph Mohr, had written the song at the height of the war two years earlier – “Silent Night” described a moment when peace as perfect and as restful as a lullaby had come to earth.

Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright.
Round yon virgin mother and child.
Holy infant, so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night, holy night,
Shepherds quake at the sight;
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ the Savior is born,
Christ the Savior is born!

Silent night, holy night,
Son of God, love's pure light;
Radiant beams from thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.

Silent night, holy night,
Wondrous star, lend thy light;
With the angels let us sing,
Alleluia! to the king.
Christ the Savior is born,
Christ the Savior is born!

It's easy to crack wise about silence and the site of the Nativity. The manger Jesus was born in most likely was a cave and not the barn that serves as a staple of contemporary fancy and imagination, and silence seems unlikely for a family with a newborn in any setting, let alone one where livestock are likely to disturb them.

Nor was the peace of the era of a sort most would treasure. The Romans guaranteed order, not harmony; and kept that order by suppressing dissent. Herod the Great, king of Judea at the time Christ was born, was known for his own excess of brutality, to the point that the historian Josephus recounts an occasion where Herod had his own son strangled to death at dinner.

But the peace celebrated in “Silent Night” belongs to a higher order than the pax Romana or the stringent load set upon the vanquished by the Treaty of Versailles. In the Christmas story reported in the gospels we have the beginning of the marriage of heaven and earth, where glory is made known to the outcast, and the mighty stand still with wonder.

The peace that Christ offers is real peace: peace with one's self and peace with God, so that one may act with abandon and seek peace on earth as well.

In Christmas, as in “Silent Night,” we have a moment of respite, where something as mundane as listening to an old song played on an organ can be transformed into a holy moment where the Transcendent intrudes into the commonplace and creates an anchor point for a new life.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'Angels We Have Heard On High'

Surveying the collection of carols in American hymnody, one might be excused for thinking that Christmas was about angels.

The Christ child gets attention in carols like “O Holy Night” or “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and the magi of Matthew's gospel take center stage in “We Three Kings,” but we just can't get enough of those angels. Whether the heavenly host sings alleluia in “Silent Night,” or angels greet the newborn Christ with sweet anthems in “What Child Is This,” it's rare to find a Christmas carol that doesn't mention them. We just can't get enough of the angels proclaiming Christ's birth to a group of frightened shepherds.

The angels take center stage in the story of the first Christmas in “Angels We Have Heard on High.” In the structure of the song we are neither shepherds receiving the announcement of Christ's birth, nor are we angels declaring the news. We are instead a third party, wandering the countryside and arriving too late to witness the stunning tableau that transpired outside Bethlehem.

Imagine and take it in for a moment, what that spectacle would have been like. The gospel of Luke mentions a group of shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem tending their flocks of sheep, one presumes in connection with the sacrificial system at the Temple in nearby Jerusalem.

On the one hand is the landscape, barren except for the scrub, meadow muffins and a small flock of sheep that dot the area. Scattered through that flock are rough-spun shepherds, some sleeping, some possibly drunk and some watching the scene with whatever emotion sits in the hearts of a shepherd late at night. On the other hand is a heavenly visitor who has just appeared, illumined and illuminating with an unworldly light that burns with a wondrous terror.

Caesar and other rulers concern themselves with halls of power and faraway kingdoms. Whenever they have an important proclamation to share, like the birth of an heir, they send messengers throughout the realm to declare it to the mighty. The angelic messenger is here to declare that God has restored the royal line of David, Israel's golden king.

Fifteen hundred years earlier, Moses went to Pharaoh and declared that God had sent him to save Israel from slavery and genocide, and to deliver his people to their own land. Now the angel is declaring that God is sending a new Moses to free Israel again, but the announcement isn't going to Caesar or even to Herod. It's going to the beneficiaries of that news, a group of social outcasts who can't even give testimony in court.

It's hard to tell which is a bigger shock to the shepherds: that the messiah has been born, or that they're the ones who are receiving the birth announcement.

This is the scene of wild, uncontainable wonder expressed in the opening lines of “Angels We Have Heard on High.” That first verse comes from the shepherds themselves, struck senseless with wonder. They have seen a host of angels and heard those angels, lost in worship, as a heavenly song rolled over the plains and came echoing back from distant mountains.

This is their witness account of what they heard and what they saw, and frankly it is incredible.

By the time we arrive on the scene, it is 2,020 years later. The angels are gone. Their music, however glorious it once sounded, has faded into silence. There is no one left living whose great-grandfather might have been stirred by that song. All that remains is what purports to be a written record of their encounter, and whatever questions we have.

The first verse is the account of the shepherds; the second verse is ours, and it is addressed to the shepherds. Why this celebration? Why this singing? What could you possibly have heard to set you to such celebration?

These are all reasonable questions, whether they are asked as the shepherds rush toward Bethlehem, or two millennia later as we wonder at the story we have heard. Either way, the shepherds' response in the third verse is the only one suitable. They don't argue theology with us. (As for how they feel about it, that should be obvious from the major key and upbeat tempo to the carol.)

Nor do the shepherds even talk about what they think the birth of Jesus will mean for them personally, for their nation, or for the world. Their initial response is simply “Come to Bethlehem and see.”

What do we find there? A baby, certainly; some would say, no more. The remainder of the third verse, and the fourth verse as well, state what the shepherds themselves believed they would find: Christ the Lord, the newborn king, Lord of heaven and earth, laid in a manger.

And woven throughout the song at the end of every verse is the song of the angels itself, rendered in a rolling chorus that rises and falls in rapid tempo, the Latin Gloria in Excelsis Deo, “Glory to God in the highest.”

This, then, is our cue, as visitors to this pageantry. We have missed the angels, and are witness only to the record of what Luke tells us the shepherds found.

Follow the shepherds. Come to Bethlehem. What do you see there?



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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"Angels We Have Heard On High"

1. Angels we have heard on high Sweetly singing o’er the plain And the mountains in reply Echoing their joyous strains Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo! 2. Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains prolong? What the gladsome tidings be? Which inspire your heavenly songs? Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!

3. Come to Bethlehem and see Christ, whose birth the angels sing; Come, adore on bended knee, Christ, the Lord, the newborn King. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo! 4. See Him in a manger laid, Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth; Mary, Joseph, lend your aid, With us sing our Savior's birth. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!

O Come O Come Immanuel

This Sunday is the fourth Sunday of Advent, something I suspect has escaped the notice of many Christians in America.

What we popularly consider the Christmas season technically is the Advent season. Advent is a part of the traditional Christian calendar, beginning four Sundays before Christmas, and ending on Christmas itself. The four Sundays of Advent are marked by lighting candles on a wreath, each with a different theme. The fifth candle, the Christ candle, is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas. In a liturgical sense the Christmas season does not begin until Christmas itself, and lasts for 12 days before ending on Epiphany, or Twelfth Night.

Fortunately, this doesn't make a difference to any but the stodgiest and most annoying people. Luckily for the rest of us, they have their own churches where they can fret over these things and wait until Christmas before they start singing Christmas carols, without ruining the fun of the season for the rest of us. (You know who you are.)

Advent technically has its own set of carols, such as “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,” written by Charles Wesley; but for whatever reason these have not received the elevated status of Christmas carols. With some exceptions.

Chief among these exceptions is “O Come O Come Emmanuel.”

Like all other great songs, whether they are hymns, Christmas carols or something else, “O Come O Come Immanuel” is best learned not from a lyrics sheet but by immersion. You grow up hearing it sung as the last leaves fall from the trees and as the sky first grows leaden with winter. You first sing it yourself before you can read, and learn to lose yourself in its somber notes at an age when it still thrills you to watch your breath chill in the air around you.

Some Christmas carols contain lessons on the meaning of Christmas, or they retell a familiar story around the Nativity. Some try to do both. None of that applies in this case. There is no progression of ideas in this carol, no breakthrough or “aha” that it tries to impart. Each verse begins the same way as its fellows, and each verse ends the same way: God, come rescue us. We are suffering here for want of you.

“O Come O Come Immanuel” was not written as much as it was grown — not from among the mountains, fields and forest rivers, nor from the bustle and jostle of our cities. It springs instead from the eternal longing in the human heart to transcend this sullied flesh and to connect with God. It is the prayer of a soul chained to the earth while it longs to dance in fields of glory.

“O Come O Come Immanuel” is not merely a hymn. It is Advent itself, given words and stretched over a frame of music that glides by as regularly as the chimes that call monks to prayer. It is a song that exudes the universal yearning for relief from the tedium of mortality. We are exiled here, we are under sentence of death, we are oppressed, we are weary. Come save us.

And always, in the same cadence that it gives voice to our longing, the carol returns to that same patient reminder: “Rejoice! Rejoice. Immanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”

So we wait. Thousands of years ago God's people waited in faith for the coming of the promised deliverer, whose arrival we now celebrate from the vantage of a faith rewarded. We also wait for his promised return and the fulfillment of the deliverance that he began when he first arrived. And lastly we wait for him to come more fully into our hearts and change us.

You came into the darkness and you made a difference, Anglicans pray at this time of year. Come into the darkness again.

Even so. Come, Lord Jesus. We are waiting. Amen.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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O Come O Come Immanuel

1.O come, O come, Immanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 2. O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan's tyranny ; From depths of hell thy people save, And give them victory o'er the grave. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 3. O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer, Us mortals by thine advent here. Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, And death's dark shadows put to flight. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

4. O come, Thou Key of David, come And open wide our heav'nly home ; Make safe the way that leads on high, And close the path to misery. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 5. O come, Adonai, Lord of might, Who to thy tribes, on Sinai's height, In ancient times did give the law In cloud and majesty and awe. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'

If you want a quietly solemn way to end the midnight service, sing “Silent Night.” If you want a song that will transport the congregation to heavenly realms, go with “O Holy Night.” But if you want to get people out of their seats, charged up and ready to move, the Christmas carol you want is “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

The secret is in that tune. Written with an upbeat tempo and in a major key, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is the Christmas carol for a celebration. It's a versatile song, one that can sound heavenly when it's sung acapella or accompanied by a violin; but if you listen to the music, it's just as easy to imagine it played on trumpets like a quartet of heralds announcing a royal arrival. It's virtually impossible to get this song wrong. It can even be played on an organ and still come out inspiring.

We owe “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” to the prolific creativity of Charles Wesley, the credited author of more than 6,000 hymns. Wesley — who, like his brother John and their father, was an ordained minister of the Church of England — is also remembered as the founder of Methodism. The denomination takes its name from a prayer group the Charles Wesley founded while he was attending Christ Church, Oxford, that was known for its intensive, methodological approach to studying the Bible.

Wesley considered hymns, made easier to remember by virtue of being sung, a natural way to teach. He brought his meticulous approach to Bible study to bear so that the lyrics became not just recountings of stories in the Bible or passages of Scripture set to music, but miniature lessons in church doctrine. It would be as though contemporary theologian N.T. Wright put portions of “Surprised by Hope” to music, and then received airtime comparable to popular Christian singers like Chris Tomlin.

Originally published in 1739, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" underwent some minor changes under the revival preacher George Whitefield, who changed the opening lines of the first verse (from “Hark! how all the welkin rings / Glory to the King of Kings”) and added the familiar couplet that closes each verse. The song originally had the same tune as "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," but in 1855 musician William H. Cummings adapted Mendelssohn's song to fit the lyrics. For all that, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is no exception to the depth of Wesley's writing.

The carol begins by placing the singers in the position of the shepherds of Luke's gospel as the angels appear and announce the birth of Jesus. To modern sensibilities, this a nice place to be. The shepherds are a quaint pastoral touch, and most of us are happy to identify with them in the gospel narrative as the first to hear that Christ has come.

We lose sight of how radical and subversive Luke's gospel is on this point, because the truth is that the shepherds embody the sort of people we usually go out of our way to avoid. People in the first century were discouraged from buying anything directly from shepherds because it was a given that anything a shepherd tried to sell was probably stolen. Even their testimony was inadmissible in the courts. This wasn't a quaint or pastoral group of people; it was an assemblage of crack addicts from under the bridge who aren't allowed to vote.

It's among this group of felons and illiterates that Wesley's hymn places us, as they receive the unexpected announcement from the angels, along with the news that the new king has removed any barriers that may have kept the from God:

Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

That's standard Bible stuff. In the second verse Wesley starts to teach about the Incarnation.

In Bible studies I've attended or led, I've encountered some pretty surprising attitudes toward Jesus. It seems we like Jesus to be something unreal or unnatural. We see the miracles in the gospels and assume that he had special God powers, and that this is why people followed him; or we catch the doctrine of his sinless nature and assume that life was easy for him, free of temptation, doubt or fear.

This is an old error. Christian orthodoxy teaches that Jesus was not a demigod like Herakles or some other hero of Greco-Roman myth, but as fully human as he was fully God. The Bible makes a point of it. He gets hungry. He gets angry. He gets tired. He cries, and even has full-blown panic attacks. He even cooks food and folds the laundry. Wesley addresses that point of doctrine in Verse 2.

Christ, by highest heav’n adored.
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate deity,
Pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

The proclamation of the angels and the mystery of Christ revealed, Wesley in the third verse turns to the shepherds' response, which is to worship. But here Wesley sneaks in a reference to Easter, as he proclaims that Christ is come to see the end of death:

Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Ris’n with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

There are two other verses Charles Wesley wrote for the carol that George Whitefield cut. To this day, they are rarely sung. But reading these, you can see firsthand the attention that Charles Wesley gave to Scripture as he wrote:

Come, desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display thy saving pow’r,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!” 

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner man:
Oh, to all thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

I hope your church incorporates this Christmas carol into worship at least once this Advent; and if it doesn't, I hope you can find time to enjoy it yourself, around the table with your family, or out caroling with your friends.

“Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is one of the greatest Christmas carols ever written. It's scarcely possible to imagine Christmas without this song.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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"O Little Town of Bethlehem"
"O Holy Night: Christmas Remembered"
"Rudolph the Red-Nose Savior"

'O Little Town of Bethlehem'

Christmas is coming, and if you want a deeper worship experience in church, that's good news. In addition to the latest worshiptainment song from the radio, chances are good that you're going to hear actual Christmas carols. And by “hear,” I actually mean “sing.”

Traditional Christmas carols have several advantages going for them that popular and trendy worship songs don't. For starters, because American society is largely influenced by Christianity, people usually are familiar with Christmas carols even if they grew up outside the church. They probably recognize with the tunes, and if they have the lyrics in front of them, they almost certainly can sing along with confidence from the start.

Secondly, unlike many contemporary songs which deal strictly with a reductionist gospel of loving God and receiving forgiveness of sins, most Christmas carols are heavy lifters when it comes to doctrine. They'll carry their own weight in every verse, if not on every line.

Carols like “The First Noël” retell the story of the first Christmas around the supporting cast of shepherds and magi, while “O Come All Ye Faithful” teaches good doctrine on the hypostatic union. “We Three Kings” explores the coming life of Christ down to his death and Resurrection, and “O Holy Night” reflects the gospel call for social justice.

And then there's “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” a four-verse meditation on the Nativity itself.

Written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal priest from the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia who had visited the Holy Land three years earlier, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is a song people know of but don't know. Without the lyrics in front of them, most people can sing the first line with great enthusiasm before trailing off into “Da dee da dee dee dum” on Line 2.

If you sang “O Little Town” in church as a child, you probably sang it accompanied by a battered and tuneless organ. When you finished singing, you may even have looked at the carol itself with a measure of pity for all the trauma it had just suffered. Many songs suffer horribly during congregational worship in church, especially when they're sung without enthusiasm and played on an organ.

If your church still uses hymnals you're more likely to find “O Little Town of Bethlehem” than a carol like “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” but there are no guarantees you'll sing it during Advent, on Christmas or during the days leading to Epiphany. It's more of a bench-warmer than a Christmas titan like “Silent Night.”

That's a shame, because this song has what it takes to be a winner. The melody fits comfortably within a one-octave range, and proceeds at a steady, easily managed pace. The carol is lyrically unassuming as well, starting out like the opening montage of a Hollywood movie before delving into its deeper themes.

The first verse of “O Little Town” begins with the camera tracking slowly across a field of stars against the cold night sky before it drops down toward Bethlehem. It's a small town, scarcely more than a village. Many of the houses are hovels, owned by working-class families, although a few are bigger. Winding through the village are roads made of dirt and frozen mud, beaten paths made by the steady footsteps of people and their livestock over the years.

It's night, so as the camera pans through town we see the darkened windows of the houses. The only light comes from the stars and moon above, except for one mysterous source. As our field of vision steadily shifts leftward we perceive an unearthly light, small but steady, coming from the edge of town.

The second verse takes us to a closeup of the manger. Mary is lying on a pile of straw. Her face and her entire body are streaked with dust and dirt, and she is leaden with exhaustion. It's more than 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and if it weren't for that Roman census, she and her husband wouldn't have made the trip. It's too much to manage when you're nine months pregnant, but it did have one benefit. All that travel made labor a lot faster than it would have been otherwise.

The scene in the manger is perfectly idyllic, the proverbial calm after the storm. A moment ago Jesus was screaming fit to raise the dead, but he has finally settled down. Right now he's nestled in the crook of Mary's arm, latched onto her breast and lazily drinking colostrum as his eyes close and his tiny body unclenches.

In a moment Jesus will fall asleep and then Mary will too, but that won't last long. He's going to wake up a lot the next few nights, and aggravate his parents to no end. That's how it works when you have an infant.

Now the camera pulls back from the manger scene, and pans up toward the heavens again. It's quiet in town. Aside from Joseph, who is trying to decide if he puts too much stock in his dreams, pretty much everyone in Bethlehem is asleep right now.

That’s a shame because the people in the town are missing quite a show. The gates of heaven are open wide, and the angelic host is looking in amazement at the scene below them. While the stars themselves announce the birth of Jesus to anyone who is watching, the angels are lost in worship to the God who is at once too vast to comprehend and yet so tiny and vulnerable that it beggars description.

As rare as it is that we sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” it's rarer still we sing the third and fourth verses. That's our loss. The third verse contemplates the unassuming gospel, which by its nature comes silently and without fanfare or acclaim to the meek; rather than with the might and bluster we ourselves often rely on to advance it.

The fourth verse moves to entreaty, asking for our own transformation. Two things I find compelling about this verse: Rather than focusing on the crucified Christ we focus on so much, it welcomes the infant Christ into our lives, and it does so with the title Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Why is this important? I can't speak for others, but too often I take the adult Man of Sorrows for granted. I pause, consider his death for my sins, breathe a quick prayer of contrition and ask for forgiveness, and then I move on, my life largely unchanged. You can't do that with a child.

I became a father 17 years ago. I can think of nothing that upended my life more than the arrival of my daughter on that October afternoon. My wife and I had altered our lives to accommodate one another, but either one of us could and often did manage just fine without the other around when it came to day-to-day living.

I went to work in the morning and came home in the evening, just as I had done before we got married. My wife did the same with her studies and teaching post at graduate school. The big change in our lifestyle after our wedding was that now, when we returned to the apartment for the evening, somebody else would be there. That was it.

Not so when Oldest Daughter arrived on the scene. She required our presence in her life constantly for food, for comfort, for cleaning and for education. If she was hungry, we had to drop everything and feed her. If she was upset, we did our best to comfort her immediately. As soon as she started babbling, we started babbling back to encourage her to speak. Even a trip to the supermarket or to a friend's house was altered fundamentally by her presence. She didn't run the house, but her well-being became our highest priority, even above our own. If she couldn't sleep because of an ear infection, we didn't either.

It's been 17 years now and Oldest Daughter has learned remarkably well to stand on her own two feet. She gets herself food, works her own job, and pursues her own learning at high school and at home. For all that, our lives remain ordered around her needs, her goals and her for her own sake, because we love her. The same is true for her sisters.

In that sacrificial and occasionally selfless devotion to her life and well-being, I see a shadow of the life-upending transformation that Christ can bring when the unassuming infant from the manger arrives in our midst and compels us to place someone else truly first.

That's not just singing a song. That's worship.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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"'O Holy Night: Christmas Remembered"
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The lyrics:

O Little Town of Bethlehem

1. O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight. 2. For Christ is born of Mary, And gathered all above While mortals sleep, the angels keep Their watch of wondering love. O morning stars together Proclaim the holy birth! And praises sing to God the King And peace to men on earth.

3. How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of his heaven. No ear may hear his coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive him still, The dear Christ enters in. 4. O holy child of Bethlehem, Descend to us, we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in; Be born to us today. We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell. O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel.

'O Holy Night': Christmas remembered

The mythic Christmas is a white one, but one of my greatest Christmas memories involves weather that was easily fifty degrees above freezing.

It was December 1993. I was teaching middle school English at Cradle of Life Christian School midway between Port-au-Prince and Petionville. I was more than two thousand miles from home, and couldn't help but feel a little yearning for the days when I used to wake up early and rush for the presents under the tree. And I couldn't help feeling a little wistful when I thought about the Christmas Eve services my brothers and I had attended as children.

On this particular evening, those teachers who felt so inclined had gathered for a school Christmas party. It was a hot night, and although there were Christmas decorations and there was a general effort afoot to get into the Christmas spirit, I don't recall much success.

At one point, the power failed, this being Haiti, and our hosts produced kerosene lanterns. It was shortly after this that Jim Muchmore produced a guitar and started leading us in Christmas carols. We sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Tammy Lynn Johnston joining me on the tags at the end of each line; and we sang a Christmas song Jim had written about the economic embargo then in effect; and then we sang "O Holy Night."

It was a new song for me, one I knew the existence of but one that I had never actually heard at church as a boy. As we went on, I felt the awe and wonder of the song steal over me. By the time we had finished, the Christmas spirit had arrived, and this hymn had become my favorite Christmas carol.

Like many Christmas carols, "O Holy Night" is a song that is rarely sung in full, and that is a tremendous loss to us all. While carols like "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "Adeste Fideles" beautifully express deep and timeless doctrine about Christ, "O Holy Night" expresses a deep truth about the nature of Christ and the gospel he brings:

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
'Til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope! The weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! O hear the angels' voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night divine, O night, O night Divine.

Truly he taught us to love one another;
His law is love and his gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break for the slave is our brother;
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise his holy name.

Christ is the Lord! O praise his name forever,
His power and glory evermore proclaim.
His power and glory evermore proclaim.

Written in the 19th century, the song was translated into English by John Sullivan Dwight, who gave it a strong abolitionist message at a time when many in the South were still defending slavery as their God-given right. Not surprisingly, while the song became very popular in the North, it took a while for it to find an audience in the southern states.

While the first verse recounts the wonder of the Incarnation, and the second verse (not shown above) recounts the Christmas narrative of the magi coming to Bethlehem, the third verse recounts nothing. Neither warm nor fuzzy, it instead challenges us to consider the stark contrast between the way we do business and the way Christ does it.

In recent months there has been some fear among some churches about the resurgence of the "social gospel." Some people feel that it neglects the spiritual tones of Jesus' message, and others fear what a faith-driven political liberalism could change.

People are right to be afraid. The gospel is one of the most subversive messages ever proclaimed. Socialism, which has become a byword in America the last two years, is merely an economic system. In the end, socialism wouldn't uproot even a fraction of the American way of life that would be undone if we took Jesus as seriously as we claim we do. The ridiculous salaries and bonuses of Wall Street and corporate CEOs wouldn't just be indefensible, they would be unthinkable. Our entire health care industry would be overturned. Our welfare and immigration rules would be undone, and our foreign policy would be torn to shreds. And that would be just the beginning.

Since I first discovered the song in Haiti, "O Holy Night" has stuck with me in a way no other Christmas carol has. The tune is too beautiful for words, and the words are a challenge to the comfortable life I live. Christ has come, and he has made the slave my brother. Every time I benefit from the debasement or exploitation of another, through the clothes I wear, the food I eat, or by any other means, I am out of step with the call Christ has placed on all our lives.

At this time of year, it is common for Christians in some churches to pray, "You came into the darkness and made a difference. Come into the darkness again." We must always remember that Christ has come, not just into the darkness, but into us as well, and it is up to us now, his people, his body, his partners, to see that the difference is made.

Copyright © 2010 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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Rudolph, the Red-Nose Savior

About sixteen years ago, when I was teaching English at Cradle of Life Christian School in Haiti, a co-worker of mine regaled us one lunchtime with the frustrations of that morning's lesson.

Ruth, who like me was a first-year teacher at the school, had been going over classic Christmas carols with her students and trying to get them to appreciate the wealth of doctrine contained in their lyrics, especially once you get past the first verse. "O Come Let Us Adore Him," for instance, talks about the divine nature of Christ, the virgin birth, and Christ's eternal pre-existence. It sounded like a compelling and thought-provoking lesson, I thought.

Alas, Ruth taught middle school students.

"Look at this line," she had told them as they stared blankly at the lyrics sheet to "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." "'Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.' What do you think he's talking about?"

One almost imagines the angels leaning in with anticipation. Spiritual regeneration, the "born again" experience, is foundational to Christianity. Would the students see the connection?

"Reincarnation?" suggested one particularly penetrating student, and a thousand angels wept.

The other middle school teachers and I listened sympathetically. We taught these kids too. I'd had to explain something on the order of thirty-seven times to Georges al Reyes that a sentence that goes on for 93 words counts as a run-on sentence. He had remedied the problem by writing one even longer.

"Maybe," I suggested, "you're setting your sights too high. Why not pick a Christmas carol they're more familiar with? Something like 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.'"

"Really," said Ruth. She was already amused, and probably wondering where I could take this impromptu suggestion. I'm sure she knew I hadn't thought it out any further than picking a title at random.

"Well, you have to understand that it's written in code," I said as I stalled for time. "It was written at a time of intense persecution."

"Go on," she said.

And go on I did. I have a bachelor of arts in English language and literature, but I'm pretty sure that on that day, I earned a B.S. as well. The reindeer in the opening lines, I argued, clearly represent the saints and other heroes of the faith. But the writer reminds us that they are not the cause celebre, as he moves on to ask if we remember that "most famous reindeer of all." This is an oblique reference to the heart and soul of Christianity, he reminds us. Do we remember?

The song goes on to share how Jesus (Rudolph) was tormented and reviled, persecuted by his fellows, as prophesied in Isaiah 53 (being denied his rightful place in the reindeer games), but then God (Santa, who also is artistically depicted as an old man with a beard) came and asked, "Rudolph, with your nose so bright" -- my voice rose in crescendo, and students at nearby tables turned to see what I was up to now -- "won't you guide us through the spiritual fog that has enveloped the world?" After this, Jesus (Rudolph) sees his vindication as the reindeer love him, and he goes down in history.

"Interesting," Ruth said when I had finished, her mood lifted by the bizarre conversation we had all had. "And what do you make of 'Frosty the Snowman?'"


Copyright © 2009 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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