'Born to raise the sons of Earth!' - Final Day of Advent

            Born to raise the sons of Earth!

            Born to give them second birth.

Christmas Eve marks the final day of Advent, and where could these reflections end but on that most iconic of carols, ‘Hark! the herald angels sing’? So revered is it within our canon that we are in danger of familiarity dulling us to the sensational text, penned by Charles Wesley. It is in richness of hope, theology and poetry unsurpassed by any other popular carol in the English tongue. And having a tune crafted by the great Felix Mendelssohn has undoubtedly consolidated its endurance and estimation!

‘Born to raise the sons of Earth!’ Jesus Christ was born, lived, died and rose again. He bids all people to die to themselves and follow Him, that he might raise them up in the same resurrection power with which He himself was raised. He came into the world to die that we would no longer be slaves to death, but be raised to new life. ‘Born to give them second birth’; not only did Jesus come to raise us from death, He came to make us new, to be born again, in a miracle of birth reflecting his own Christmas incarnation.

As the seasonal campaign proclaims, Christmas does indeed begin with Christ. But Christ does not end with Christmas; rather, His wonderful promises of new life and new birth to those who will receive Him reach down to us all even this day. So let us indeed give alert attention the heralding angels and worship Jesus Christ, our glorious King!

Hark! the Herald Angels Sing - words by Charles Wesley.

Sussex Carol and the Goal of Christmas - Advent Day 22

            “Glory to God and peace to men,      

            Now and for evermore, Amen!”

If the Christmas message is great news of hope, what exactly does that hope look like? What is its end or its goal? The final lines of ‘Sussex Carol’ summarise the three essential characteristics of the new relationship between God and Man made possible through the coming of Jesus Christ.

Firstly, ‘Glory to God’. All wrongdoing ultimately stems from pride, and all pride is an attempt to take the glory that belongs to God and place it on ourselves. It is not that we shouldn’t seek glory – for that is an essential stirring of the human heart – but that we should seek it in God, for that will ultimately satisfy us in a way that prideful striving never can. Jesus came to redress our woeful pride and liberate us again to give ‘glory to God’.

Secondly, ‘peace to men’. Not only had pride divided the human race from God, it had divided us from each other, and continues to do so when Christ is not honoured as the Lord. But Jesus came to reverse all the effects of the curse, including to restore right relationships between all people. And the creation-wrought dynamic of mankind was not to be at war but at peace with each other, that we could prosper without fear of evil.

Finally, ‘now and for evermore’. There is a forever, an evermore. Given the struggles we and the world still face it would be cruel to hold out all of these promises of restoration without their resolution. And while glimmers of their resolution shine today, these things will only be fully known in the New Heavens and New Earth that are still to come.

The invitation to a God-centred, glory-fulfilled, peaceful and eternal land has been issued in Jesus Christ – we must take hold of it! Or will we prefer to carry on in the comfort of self-centredness, conflict and instant gratification? That would be a tragic choice to make this Christmas time.

Sussex Carol (On Christmas Night) - traditional English.

The Age of Gold - Advent Day 21

            For lo! the days are hastening on,

            By prophet bards foretold,

            When through the ever circling years

            Comes round the age of gold.

There is a golden age coming. An age where peace shall reign over all the Earth. An age of prosperity, an age of fulfilment, an age of exploration. An age where humankind and God are united as in Eden; an age with no room for pride.

It is an age revealed to the prophets of the Old Testament, an age of which the apostle John saw glimpses of, an age hoped for by all the martyrs of Jesus. It is an age that all believers must long for. The age of the New Jerusalem come down to Earth.

It is the age that the angels proclaimed over Bethlehem that first Christmas, for it was in the birth of Christ that history’s corner was turned and the Earth could once again hope with the awe of a new morning. So let us cast away deafening noise and strife this Christmas time, that we may ‘hear the angels sing’.

It Came Upon the Midnight Clear - words by E. Sears

'O Holy Child of Bethlehem...' - Advent Day 20

            O Holy Child of Bethlehem

            Descend to us, we pray;

            Cast out our sin and enter in,

            Be born in us today.

Nostalgia is, to its core, bittersweet. A longing for something that was, but is not any more. “Do you remember when…”; “What would it have been like to be there when …?” A present detachment from the event is a requisite for true nostalgia. Indeed, we need not have ever experienced that which we long for in order to know nostalgia for it.

The first Christmas seems a prime candidate for such emotions, separated as we are by two millennia from those glorious events. And yet, it cannot be! There are two reasons for this – firstly, the promises of Christ heralded by the first Christmas are still here to be taken today. Secondly, the hope of Bethlehem is still to be perfectly fulfilled in an age to come. Therefore, we are not detached from the first Christmas, nor is it ‘not any more’.

The final verse from ‘O little town of Bethlehem’ recognises our present connection to the first Christmas through earnestly pleading for Jesus to ‘be born is us today’. We need Jesus to cast out our sin, to be present with us and to be preparing us for His final advent. There could not be a better prayer to pray this Christmas time!

O Little Town of Bethlehem - words by Phillips Brooks

'Born to set us free' - Advent Day 19

Soon it will be Christmas morning,
Cards and gifts around the tree;
But will you treasure, will you worship
Jesus born to set us free?

I am a big fan of the giving and receiving of presents. It is an opportunity to give those you love something they like. It is a way of saying to someone ‘I appreciate you’. Our family Christmas day is a great and multi-dimensional day, but the centrepiece for me is undoubtedly the present giving ceremony (yes, even ahead of dinner!)

Yet in buying our gifts, we can easily get weighed down under a sense of burden and duty. And in receiving, more of our emotion can settle on what the gift is rather than the fact someone having given it to us. The corporeal outweighs the symbolic; the actualised trumps the theoretical.

This song reminds us that cherishing material things is not the right path to walk at Christmas. And good as it is to cherish the heart of the giving exchange, the writer exhorts to go further than this still, and adore the One whose birth we give these gifts in remembrance of. And when we remember that Jesus was indeed ‘born to set us free’, why would we not treasure Him above all things this Christmas time?

On a Dark Night (link to lyrics only, sorry no YouTube available) - by Paul Oakley.

'Fear not, he said...': Advent Day 18

"Fear not," he said, for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled minds.

Who are they? And why would they fear? For those not familiar with the story of this carol, it is the account in the Bible of shepherds encountering an angel of God, announcing the birth of the Saviour in Bethlehem to them. At this point in the carol, the angel had just appeared to them, ‘and glory shone around’. So what to be afraid of? Aren’t angels, sort of, nice?

No. ‘Nice’ is not the right word to describe angels. They are good. They are pure. They are helpers of men. But they are also powerful and mighty, agents and messengers of God Himself. They are supernatural beings involved in all of history, including today, and they make appearances as and when necessary. So the fear of the shepherds was not misplaced, yet the angel was quick to reassure them, and to herald the Christmas news.

I don’t know how comfortable you are considering the supernatural, but Christmas is all about, as my pastor put it, ‘God breaking in’ to our world. These things demand deep wrestling, but ultimately the choice is clear cut – we can embrace the supernatural, or we can dismiss it as a trifle. But if we do the latter, we throw away the wonderful hope that the angels, the incarnation and the virgin birth tell of; to trade in Christmas is far too higher price to pay.

While Shepherd's Watched Their Flocks

'Let Nothing You Dismay' - Advent Day 17

God rest you merry, gentlemen,

Let nothing you dismay,

For Jesus Christ our Saviour

Was born upon this day

Peace and joy. Two words ubiquitous at Christmas time, yet two words I suspect we do not feel as frequently as we hear them, even during a festive season. Yet that is exactly what the (somewhat archaic) first line of this carol bids us to feel – peace and joy from God. And it doesn’t stop there, with freedom from all fear being thrown in also. The reason? The Saviour has been born!

So why the variance in our emotions when this saving birth has most certainly taken place? The fundamental reason is that we are imperfect beings whose emotions are affected by curse just as the rest of our constitution is. Yet we can misuse this sober assessment as an excuse for apathy, fatalism, self-pity or whichever brand of gloom we are most comfortable with. The right course is to take hold of these wonderful truths – to meditate on them, to sing them, to embrace them in our hearts.

God would not have us wallow in despair, and nor will this carol. Its tone is thoroughly pro-active: Seek peace! Rejoice! Do not be afraid! There is indeed great emotional resource to be found in the Christmas message, and it is up to us take hold of it.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - English Traditional.