Carol Six: Hark! the Herald Angels Sing

For a second time, with a mixture of nostalgia and love that the Peanuts gang sings looking up...listen to this version of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing"...and soak in the blissful joyfulness.

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 hosts proclaim,

“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”

Watching A Charlie Brown Christmas is one of the signals and sign posts for me that Christmas time is here (which is a reference to one of the opening songs in the cartoon).  What helps you usher in, know deep within this season?  Maybe it is making cookies with recipes that have been passed down generations.  Maybe it is going out to look at Christmas lights.  Maybe it is decorating the tree with ornaments that the moment you touch them take you back to the places and people from which the ornament came.  Maybe it is standing awash in candle light singing, Silent Night on Christmas Eve.  The point is not for me to be exhaustive or prescriptive, but descriptive that there is a wide range of ways we can find ourselves in this season.

Take a moment to name and claim what can help you enter the mystery of this sacred season.  Have you been able to participate in that yet?  Can you consider this permission to go and do that now?  It's okay, I'll wait.

By the way...I like extra sprinkles on my sugar cookies.

Sometimes we tend to divide the world that anything active this time of year is clumped together in the category of "hustle and bustle".  But don't forget that God entered in to our world amid crowded, chaotic streets and when the buzz (unholy hum) of people frantically trying to get somewhere.  It doesn't have to be either or.  Yes, God can be found in the silence and stillness, but God can also be found thoughtfully/prayerfully shopping or cooking or decorating.  It is our attention and intention that opens us to the holy of every moment.  

So, again...what is that moment that can help you usher in Christmas this year?  Let's go do that.

Prayer: God who offers a variety of ways for us to find You, move in our midst with an openness to You wherever and however we find You at this time.  Amen. 

Carol Five: What Child Is This?

Listen and let the words of this beautiful, haunting Carol, sing to your soul on this day.

What Child is this, who, laid to rest,

On Mary's lap is sleeping?

Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,

While shepherds watch are keeping?

Chorus:

This, this is Christ, the King,

Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:

Haste, haste to bring Him laud,

The Babe, the Son of Mary!

Why lies He in such mean estate,

Where ox and ass are feeding?

Good Christian, fear: for sinners here

The silent Word is pleading.[Chorus]

 So bring Him incense, gold, and myrrh,

Come, peasant, king to own Him.

The King of kings salvation brings;

Let loving hearts enthrone Him.[Chorus]

One reason why I love this Carol is it gives, grants us permission to ask questions.  To ask, what kind of a child is this?  What kind of God would enter into the world in a barn of a backwards town known as Bethlehem?  What kind of parents would like shepherds (who were seen as shiftless and thieves because they let their sheep graze on land that didn't belong to them) come and adore their baby?  Do you think they held the child?  While we are at it, why weren't the shepherds involved in the census?  Could it be that no one really cared about shepherds...save God who invited them over for a party?  Who brings a baby incense and myrrh?  I mean, a jell-o salad and casserole, yes, but these gifts are just plain odd, except the gold. 

But then there is that line.

The line that gets me all choked up.

The line that stops me cold in my tracks.

"The silent Word/Wisdom/God is pleading.  This...this is Christ our King."

You see, Christmas isn't some test we have to cram for hoping and praying we pass.  Christmas is the invitation to listen, to lean in to the truth that God, who is comfortable in a barn can even find a place in my messy life, and then to live that truth every single day of the new year.  

How?

That is a great question. Maybe, just maybe, if you listen to the Carol and re-read the words again, God might be found in the spaces in-between the words and notes and in your very life.

Prayer: God who provokes such powerful questions, let us live them, lean into the questions, and find You, not as the One who supplies all the answers, but the One willing to live in the messy mystery of life.  Amen.  

Carol Four: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Listen to this beauty piano arrangement of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear."  First, let the melody move into your ears, minds, travel down to your heart and knock on your soul.  Second, listen again, this time, read through the third and fourth verses.

O ye beneath life's crushing load,

Whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow;

Look now, for glad and golden hours

Come swiftly on the wing;

Oh rest beside the weary road

And hear the angels sing.

For lo! the days are hastening on,

By prophets seen of old,

When with the ever-circling years

Shall come the time foretold,

When the new heaven and earth shall own

The Prince of Peace, their King,

And the whole world send back the song

Which now the angels sing.

Okay, I totally understand that these are not exactly the most uplifting lyrics.  I get that in someways it is like unwrapping a present today to find a fruit cake.  And you plaster on that phony smile and say, "Oh, how exciting, a fruit cake."  I don't understand how this is still an item you can purchase.  But I have digressed and took an exit ramp.  These words give voice to something important, especially as we inch closer to the longest night on December 21.  These words give voice to the reality that right now not everyone is holly, jolly, merry and bright.  Too many people have had their candles of hope blown out and peace seems about as possible as us colonizing Pluto.  Too many people this time of year, do put on, plaster, a smile for the sake of appearances.  Too many people are weak and weary and need to rest by the side of the road.  That is exactly, why I wanted to share this verse, because it calms me down in the midst of too much busyness.  I need a single piano to invite me back to the beautiful simplicity of God.  I need to breathe and be in this moment, even with all of its imperfections. There is a great prayer I was taught some time ago that goes, "Here I am, God."  As in here, I am, God in my stumbling and bumbling, still have not found a gift for my wife kind of brokenness.  Here I am, in my worn down-ness and wondering if Christmas can really come without tags. Can it come without packages, boxes or bags? (Again, bonus points for getting the Grinch reference that you might have expected today).  The second part goes, "Here You are, God.  Here we are together."  Togetherness in the here-ness and now-ness, even when it isn't perfectness.  Just let that sentence find some wiggle room in your life right now.

God's entrance was amid the hubbub and hectic, but the not the cause of it.  Caesar thought he was in charge.  He thought he was the puppet master making everyone move around, but what he really unearthed and unsettled was nothing short of the sacred entering into our world.  Caesar thought he was in power amid his palace, but God's grace broke in another way, albeit out of the way place called, "Bethlehem".  This story needs space to sit and sink in.  So, go ahead and play this brief video again inviting God into your messy, worry, frazzled, even frantic self.  Because of God can be comfortable in a manger and barn, then God might find room at the inn of our hearts, if only we notice God's desire to come in and stay for awhile.

Prayer: Come, o come, God into this moment, messy and disorganized, not to help me fix everything but to be with me here and now.    

Carol Four: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Listen to Ella Fitzgerald soulfully sing to us about the mystery of God's arrival.  Let the words of the first two verse wash over you, breathing in their promise and possibility.

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth,

To touch their harps of gold:

"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men

From heavens all gracious King!"

The world in solemn stillness lay

To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,

With peaceful wings unfurled;

And still their heavenly music floats

O'er all the weary world:

Above its sad and lowly plains

They bend on hovering wing,

And ever o'er its Babel sounds

The blessed angels sing.

There is a liminal space that this season invites us into.  A space between.  It is like standing at the threshold of a door where you are not inside or outside, but in the middle of each where both be experienced.  There are a couple of poignant lines to this Carol.  First, the hymn the angels sing is one of blessing.  They come to pronounce peace to all, in response there is a stillness of the whole earth.  That is a kind of liminal space where both song and silence co-exist.  A space between sound and stillness.  A space that is rare in a world filled (overflowing) with noise.  As I type, outside someone is cutting trees, the sound of chainsaws mix and mingle with the words Ella sings.  I could be frustrated by this.  I could go find a good pair of noise canceling ear phones and shut out the world.  Or I could remember that the first night of God's arrival was not as silent as we sometimes have made it out to be.  There was a crowded streets, voices filling the air waves, just the noise of everyone being together.  There was a hum hovering in the air that night.  That is the space the angel's song enters into.  It was a weary world that the notes of the angels broke into.  My hunch is that many did not hear the song or feeling the blessing.  It is easy when the weariness of this world gets too much of us, when we are constantly on the go, always moving, that we miss the music of mystery God is still singing.  The Carol references, "Babel", which is what a lot of what we hear today might be classified as.  Yet, the invitation is to listen closer, for even amid the noise, noise, noise (bonus points for those who just got my Grinch Stole Christmas reference there), there is a sacredness.  The Grinch reminds all of us that sometimes what we are expecting to hear is not actually what we encounter.  The Grinch thought after he stole Christmas from the Whos down in Whoville there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth...but he gets a hymn.  A hymn that doesn't come down, but raises up.  A hymn that disrupts and interrupts (just like the workers using those chainsaws).  Sometimes it isn't always sweet, sentimental music that God sings, but a melody we were not expecting, but nevertheless lets us know that we are in the presence of God.  May these Carols continue to help guide us in ways that what we are hearing around us truly teaches and tells us about God's presence that is here and now in our lives.

Prayer: God, in the melody of the voices I hear around me, help me hear and discern Your still singing voice in those I encounter.  Amen.  

Carol Three: O Come All Ye Faithful

Listen to this acapella version of O Come All Ye Faithful version.

I include this version for a few reasons.  First, I am always amazed what the human voice is able to do.  The sounds we can produce are vast and varied.  The longing to communicate with another person is powerful and profound.  When we have something we want to express, so often we rely on words.  But poems, paintings, photography, cave drawings, even a grunt or glance can sometimes communicate volumes.  Words might be our the preferred or prevalent means by which we try to express ourselves.  But sometimes, it is good to step outside our comfort zone and communicate in another way.  For example, I can talk or tell you about grace.  Or I can make you my grandmother's homemade sugar cookies that, for me, communicated grace, joy, and love in ways I can never fully explain.  So, when we come, we don't need eloquent speeches as if God only desires a dissertation from us.  Or as Brian McLaren once quipped, "God isn't sitting around all week anxiously waiting for our Call to Worship."  But what God longs for is a connection that is life-giving and life-changing.  When we come, with faith spilling forth from our lips, that is what we are joining.

 Second, there is a joy-filled-ness to this version that beckons me and draws me close.  When the group sings about "coming joyful and triumphant," it is more than words, they become a lived reality. When you consider that the Word/Wisdom is becoming flesh, as John 1 says, I hear that/experience that promise in this version.  Words are more than simply vehicles that convey an idea.  Words (as Rabbi Heschel said) do create worlds.  Sometimes those worlds are ones where we want to dwell.  Other times, I would rather put up a for sale sign and move out of the world a person's words created.  Sometimes are words are exciting, other times boring, lulling us to sleep.  Sometimes words open up possibilities and other times they slam shut the door.

If you had to describe the world that this particular Carol created, what would it be?  Not just this version, all three together.  Would it be a colorful world or one of gray serious somberness?  Would it be a world where you would want to live or excuse yourself?  Would it be whimsical or cause weariness?  And, as always, why?  Why that reaction?

The world these words create for me has Dr. Suess like shapes and playfulness.  I come not as a command or demand, but dancing joyfully (even though I can't dance).  I come for the fun and because my soul suggests that such an invitation doesn't always come my way, so I'd better make good on this one.  The world these words create as me to do more than observe, I am pulled into singing out at the top of my lungs.  It is a world where I want to linger and live.  And while the world that the words of the news and headlines create might sing another song, it isn't as though one is true and the other false.  Both/and might help us sense God's word made flesh here and now.  So, come on, play the video again and join me in singing.

Prayer: Beckoning God who creates and crafts music that sets our souls soaring, thank you for the constant invitation to sing along.  Amen. 

Carol Three: O Come All Ye Faithful

Listen to this more modern version of the classic Carol as you do pay particular attention to the second verse:

 Sing, choirs of angels; sing in exultation;

sing, all ye citizens of heav'n above! 

Glory to God, all glory in the highest!

Part of the power of Christmas Carol is that they shine a bright light on the well known phrase that "To sing is to pray twice."  To sing we need to breathe deeply, breathe in the very breath of life that God first breathed in.  To sing we need to breathe deeply, remembering that when God gave God's name (YWHW) to Moses at the burning bush that name sounds like the sound of breathing.

Breathe in right now.

Breathe even deeper with your hands on your stomach.

Breathe with your arms like you are holding a yoga ball, letting your arms expand wider as you inhale.

Breathe with your arms reaching for the ceiling and drop them as you exhale.  Now again...as you exhale let out a very loud sigh.

Breathing is central to singing and to life.  If we join with the choir of angels belting out in gusto to God, we need to breathe to support and sustain the notes.  We need to breathe in order to support and sustain our very life.  We need to breathe in God's presence here and now in this moment as these words wash over us.  We need to breathe and simply be.

So, listen again breathing rhythmically with this hymn...and if you want to join in singing, that would be even better.

Prayer:  Help us pray twice this day, O God, as we let these words of prayer and praise guide us closer to the barn where You are born.  Amen.  

Carol Three: Come All Ye Faithful

I am a huge fan of Nat King Cole...and while I apologize that you cannot see him passionately singing this beautiful Carol...maybe you can close your eyes and feel not only the warm of the fake fire but the warmth of Nat's amazing voice.

The first version is another variation on the word, "Come"...a beckoning for us to bring our whole selves.  Here are the words:

O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,

O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem! 

Come, and behold Him, born the King of angels!

Refrain:

O come, let us adore Him; 

O come, let us adore Him; 

O come, let us adore Him, Christ, the Lord!

Adore, like the word, "Love", might be weakened by its overuse in our world today.  We say, "We adore those shoes...or coat...car...or whatever."  We are trying to say we really, really like it. But I wonder if we are missing something with such use in our everyday lives.  Adore means, 'to love and respect.'  So, I do adore my wife, my kids, my family, people in my church...but what commercials are trying to tell us at this time of year is that somehow we can buy that adoration on Christmas morning with a piece of jewelry or Lexus with a big red bow in our driveway.  I am not sure where the person was keeping that car until Christmas morning or who exactly buys a car for Christmas?  Not exactly my experience!  But adoration...like love and respect as the Beatles and Aretha Franklin respectively taught us...cannot be purchased and don't come pre-packaged ~ as though those qualities are manufactured somewhere else.  Adoration - love and respect - are made in our lives...in our words and daily actions.  

We are heading to Bethlehem for adoration...which brings up the second meaning of this word...'to worship or to venerate.'  This kind of prayer posture...we bring our love and respect to a vulnerable baby because this is God's love and respect for us in flesh, breath, and bone.  What is evoked with Emmanuel is what love and respect and worship looks like, smells like, and feels like.  An adoration that is honest and open and uncontrollable.  This is why I so love the passion of Nat King Cole's voice, I not only want to listen - but sing along. Which is really the whole point of this Carol...not to just sit back and be entertained, but to enter the fray and be part of the joyful worship of the One who beckons all of us to come to Bethlehem so that our soul might feel its worthy and sing out joyfully.

Prayer: As we come, inch closer, O God...come near to keep us moving faithfully forward.  Let each step toward the straw be filled with love, respect, and worship.  Amen.