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.