One of the many joys of the Christmas season is the singing of Christmas Carols. How much we all enjoy heartily singing the old favourites or listening to a well polished performance such as we hear from Kings College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve. Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without "While Shepherds watched"? ěThe First Noel" and "O come, all ye faithful".
Christians are people who should be joyful, we have a personal and intimate relationship with the Living Lord and this should shew itself in the way in which we live and act. St. Paul tells us to be of a joyful and thankful countenance, singing and making melody to the Lord with all our heart.
Hymns and Psalms and Spiritual Songs have been part and parcel of Christian life and worship since the very beginning. We know that our Lord, after he had instituted the sacrament of Holy Communion sang a Passover hymn with His disciples before going to Gethsemane and following the way of the cross.
Contained within the Epistles of the New Testament we have a very fine verse from one of the earliest Christian hymns, The words suggest, with their reference to death and darkness, resurrection and light, that it is an early Easter Baptismal Hymn. The verse reads:-
"Awake, sleeper, rise from the dead,
And Christ will shine upon you."
It's easy to imagine a group of Early Christians gathering together in secret to sing this hymn. Persecution was a very real threat but the Light of the Risen Christ had shone upon them and nothing could contain their joy.
In the Prologue to St. John's Gospel - the Christmas Gospel - the Evangelist reminds us that, although the Light is constantly threatened by the darkness, yet the darkness never overcomes it. Some light - somewhere - always goes on shining. It must do - because in the end darkness is no real thing - it is merely the absence of light. The Church of God has always encouraged us to face up to the darkness without and within. As St. Paul says - that the God who said "Let there be light" has shone most fully in the face of Jesus Christ. It is indeed a glorious thing to be a human being, made in the image of God and called to grow in the likeness of Christ. There is no context, however bleak, in which Christ does not hold himself close to us, enabling us to reflect his light.
The novelist William Golding, best known for his novel "The Lord of the Flies", in which a bunch of cherubic-faced choir boys find themselves on a paradise island, and quickly split up into rival gangs who murder one another, was once asked whether he defined himself as an optimist or a pessimist replied that he was a universal pessimist but a cosmic optimist. That gets it about right from a Christian point of view. As far as the way of the world goes, we are pessimists, because there is nothing so bad that it can't get worse. Yet, as far as creation - upheld by, enclosed in and drawn to, the love of God in Christ is concerned, there is nothing so bad that cannot be redeemed and we must therefore be optimists.
St. Luke was most certainly a cosmic optimist. He made mention of the Light in his Gospel within the context of a song. When the infant Jesus was taken into the Temple by Mary and Joseph, the Holy Family were met by Simeon, a man to whom God had promised that he would see the long awaited Messiah and Saviour before death came. Simeon took the infant Christ in his arms and praised God in the words of the canticle we call Nunc Dimittis - or the Song of Simeon. His eyes had at last seen "The Light to Lighten the Gentiles and the Glory of God's people Israel."
Simeon's joy was so great that he burst forth into song; as indeed, did Mary at the Annunciation after the Archangel Gabriel told her that she was to be THEOTOKOS - The Mother of God or the God-bearer.
"My soul doth magnify the Lord
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my
Saviour."
Or, in a more modern translation:-
"Tell out my soul,
the greatness of the Lord."
So great was the joy of the angels at that supremely optimistic cosmic moment - the Nativity of our Lord - that they also filled the skies above Bethlehem with their song of peace and praise on that holy night.
The annual remembrance of the Birth of the Christ Child makes us want
to join with the angels in singing praises to God who was made man at Bethlehem.
So, let us join our song with the song of the angels as we offer our Carols
in praise of the new born Saviour in both of our churches during this Christmas
festival. At every Advent and Christmas service let the welkin ring
as we fill the air with the joy and exuberance of our singing, so that
men and women may know that God is with us and that it is to him that we
give the praise, the glory and the honour due.
CHRISTMAS BLESSINGS
FATHER DAVID