Monday Morning Music Ministry

12-29-14

One of the most beautiful lullabies anyone has heard or sung is known as the Coventry Carol. A mother’s song to her child, its lyrics from the late Medieval era remind us of Olde English, when the presence of French still sweetened the tongue: “By by, lully, lullay,” its comforting choruses end.

It is soothing but eerily compelling, and even mysterious. Certainly, melancholia is a part of its appeal. Why? A lullaby (note the common roots with the comforting words of the chorus), identified with Christmas? Sad? Its tune, especially its oddly modern harmonies and dissonance, seems to transcend the ages.

In truth, no matter how re-purposed by contemporary performers or loving mothers at children’s bedtimes, the Coventry Carol is indeed melancholy: it was meant to solemnly memorialize an event full of sorrow, dread, and grief. The song imagines the lament of a mother protecting her child about to be slaughtered by soldiers of King Herod. As recorded in the Book of Matthew, the Roman-appointed ruler of Palestine was aware of the Wise Men’s prophecy that the King of the Jews would be born in Bethlehem… and that they had warned Joseph to hide the Child of Mary as a precaution against a cruel ruler’s deadly intentions. All this fulfilled Old Testament prophecies (Jesus’ parents fled with Him to Egypt).

In Herod’s bloodlust, and in fear that another king of the Jews would be his rival, he decreed that male babies under the age of one in Judea should be killed. Precise history or legend, this became known as the Slaughter of the Innocents or the Massacre, or Martyrdom, of the Holy Innocents.

In annual Christmas programs during the Middle Ages, Nativity plays akin to Passion plays of another time in the church calendar were performed in many chapels and towns. In Coventry, England, the Guild of Shearmen and Tailors between the late 1300s and the late 1500s traditionally staged Nativity plays. One Robert Croo is tentatively ascribed as the author; the tune’s origins are unknown. It became a day of observance, an event in the church calendar, of profound significance, a call to introspection – and is similar to many other spiritually momentous holidays (holy days) that our contemporary world scarcely recognizes any more.

But here we are: the “Innocents’ Day,” sometimes called Childermass – following Christmass – was celebrated around this time. December 27 for many of the ancient churches in the Middle East, the ancient rites of the Syriacs, Chaldeans, Maronites, Syrians. December 28 is the traditional observance date of the Roman Catholic church, the Lutheran and Evangelic churches, and the Church of England. Eastern rites, most of the Orthodox churches, celebrate the day on December 29. In a German tradition of that time, youngsters exchanged roles with adult clergy and teachers on Childermass; sometimes students for the priesthood presided over worship services, with clergy in the pews.

My purpose today, however, is not to open our eyes to obscure or neglected history, despite its fascinating features or appealing music (please click the link, below, to a haunting performance). It is to have a look around us, not just back in time.

We are reminded that all the aspects of Christ’s Birth were not unalloyed joy. The birth pangs of Mary were prophesied in Scripture, even from the Garden… but the purport was not solely one mother’s labor. We have the grief of Judean mothers. The Bible addressed the difficulties attendant to the coming Messiah’s birth… and, indeed, His life, ministry, rejection, betrayal, and death. Yes, the Resurrection was foretold, but His life would not be one without pain and suffering, clearly. The same is foretold of believers like you and me: a startling prediction, but also a challenging warning.

Jesus, centuries before His Birth, was identified as a Man of Sorrows.

And many of the sorrows occurred around Him, and because of Him – such as the Slaughter of the Innocents – are a sorrowful side of this King’s incarnation. This truth, infrequently recognized in today’s churches where clapping, hopping, smiling, and colorful banners predominate… is still truth. Joy is ours, and we rejoice at the reality of God-with-us, and the peace that is to come; but we need to remember that there is much that is serious about Christianity.

To be a Christ-follower – to go where He leads today – sometimes obliges us to be grim. Holy, but grim. The stakes are high. His church, our civilization, the heritage we share, our families and children, the well-being of fellow Christians around the world, are in serious jeopardy. I am not being pessimistic; I am being realistic. I read my Bible.

The Slaughter of the Innocents continues today – the evil world’s gift that keeps on taking, to coin a phrase. Yes, we can look to adults who are being persecuted and martyred for their faith, and we can see them as Children of God, which they are. But let us here remember the children. We start (but sadly do not end) with the slaughter that is abortion. Some children can at least protest or cry out, but millions and millions of the innocent unborn are massacred in routine fashion.

The young girls in Nigeria who were kidnapped and violated because they were Christian… schoolchildren who were massacred by Muslims for not following Mohammed… the children in East Asia who are imprisoned or executed when they refuse to renounce Christ. I could detail places and dates, but you see the headlines. Please read the stories, not just the headlines; and pray. May God forgive us as a nation for not condemning our government – our selves – for condoning such atrocities.

Permit me to list a few more latter-day slaughters of innocents in our own land: youngsters reared in a society that virtually outlaws Christian expressions of belief and faith… children no longer allowed publicly to pray or have Bibles in schools… classrooms that discuss bizarre sex and secular scientific theories but ban Christian viewpoints… the bombardment of worldly, even deviant, lifestyles from every corner of the “entertainment” media… the apostasy and heresies of many churches themselves, who ought to be children’s first responders…

I could go on. We all know it. Our children’s minds and souls are threatened with hideous slaughter. And sometimes, for the cause of their consciences and the Kingdom of Christ, they also are physically massacred. In the Year of Our Lord 2014.

Can we sing with the mothers of the Coventry Carol: “Lully lullay, thou little tiny child, By by lully lullay. That woe is me, poor child, for thee; And ever mourn and pray, For thy parting, neither say nor sing, By by lully lullay.” Can we identify? Can we do more, beyond singing and praying?

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A performance of the ancient carol in the ancient chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, England, by a youth choir.

Click: The Coventry Carol

By Leah C. Morgan

He’s only 10. He’s not a threat. He’s rather ordinary, but the girls in eighth grade who ride his bus target him as the object of their ridicule. Day after day, they humiliate and torment him, and there’s no one to care. The school is contacted but nothing changes. The boy cries, inside and out, his agony overtaking him.

Then one day, right about the time people out there are celebrating God’s love come down, talking about Advent, and the visit of an advocate from heaven, a new ninth-grade girl moves to the area and starts riding his bus. She sees the cruelty of her peers. She doesn’t care much about impressing them. But she becomes outraged, incensed with their behavior.

She is moved with compassion for him and comes to sit with him in his misery, right beside him, on his seat on the bus. She associates with him, the outcast. She smiles at him and identifies with his suffering. At Christmas time, the greatest gift appears in the most unlikely forms, the shape of his tormentors.

And the unthinkable happens.

The girls who had picked on him begin to ridicule the new girl and punish her for showing him kindness. They tell her she’s ugly. This one, who is beautiful like an angel. But she is unflinching, unmoving. She stays by his side taking his pain, absorbing the blows. And the faces of the tormentors contort with rage, their mouths spewing out hatred. The angel girl, the one surely sent down, begins to laugh.

She looks on at the ridiculous, outrageous scenario, the mean girls angry at kindness, and she laughs. She laughs and laughs, inflaming the bullies even more until one of the girls grabs the heaven-sent one by her long beautiful hair, and bangs her head against the bus window. Over and over they hurt her for loving him and he is as helpless to save her as he was to help himself. Is there a God anywhere to stop the injustice? Even his savior is subject to this evil?

At this very moment, the principal of the school walks by the school bus window. She sees the abuse and rushes to help.

Finally, the boy is heard. After months of humiliation and scorn, someone listens. In fact, it really does seem that God has listened, as though He heard his cries and sent a representative of Himself to hurt alongside him and bring a rescue. It sounds a great deal like the Christmas story itself.

This encounter happened yesterday in our neighborhood, and is the greatest Advent experience of the season for me. It is the most picturesque. My niece, Eden, is the one putting on the Christmas robe, playing the role of the suffering, humble Savior, loving the outcast, defending the weak. Her example of love has brought Christmas down to me.

UPDATE: 12.23.14 – Christmas keeps coming down, falling like love. The mother of the angel-girl lives with her daughter, and knows too well that she is very human. Mom cheers her compassion for the boy, but is concerned for the hostile relationship between her daughter and the angry girls. She pleads with her daughter to consider their struggles, to see them as needing love every bit as much as the boy.

The daughter considers this as she enters her home after school. She reaches for the door, and hears the taunting girls behind her: “You’d better go home! You better run!” She whirls around to face them. They throw down their backpacks, readying for a fight.

She looks into their angry faces and says, “I want to apologize.”

The girls’ jaws drop so low, they nearly make contact with the backpacks on the sidewalk. “What?”! They demand an explanation.

“I was really mad at what you were doing to that boy on the bus, but that didn’t give me any right to call you animals. You’re people with feelings too,” said the very human, heaven-sent one.

The girls answered, talking together at once. “It’s okay. We’re sorry too. Maybe we could be friends? You seem like a really cool girl.”

And today, the one “giving” Christmas, received a Christmas present from an apparent former enemy, because she “looks like a princess.” Pink lipstick.

This is what Jesus living in us is meant to do. Love the unlovable. Pierce the darkness of hatred with the blinding light of love.

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This tender but powerful guest essay, a true story just days old – no: actually 2000 years old – was written by our friend Leah C. Morgan. She writes about beauty, laughter, and life here and after as witnessed from her home in Western Maryland. Your comments can be directed toleahcharlenemorgan@gmail.com. The music video is by Joy Williams.

Click: Here With Us

12-22-14

A century ago this week, one of the most miraculous of Christmas miracles occurred. It is known today by some people, but largely has been forgotten. At the time it was scarcely acknowledged and, when discussed, was often criticized. Had it been more widely respected and discussed – if its effects had spread in place and time – we would be living in a different world today.

I refer to the “Christmas Truce” of World War I.

The “Great War,” so called at the time, was what I have called in my historical writing the most useless of history’s many useless wars. It had been a ticking time bomb, so to speak, for years. Rival monarchies of Europe, and their growing economies and colonial empires, were increasingly restive and jealous of each other. Germany was late to the game of unified nations (only having become a country in 1871), and asserted its merchant marine, except that England wanted to preserve her own supremacy; and wanted to stretch its borders to include the German-speaking minorities in neighboring countries, which no neighbor was willing to cede.

Also, the war rolled out as a family feud – as ugly as the drunken wedding-reception brawls you see on TV news – since most of Europe’s “royalty” were related and interrelated, swapping titles for land, to the point that hemophilia was almost as common as dusty crowns and musty robes. Royal cupids shot arrows for the sake of trade advantages and national alliances, many of which proved temporary anyway. It was a pile of dry twigs, a bonfire waiting to be set aflame. When the fire was lit – by a crazed anarcho-patriot from Serbia shooting an Austro-Hungarian archduke – the response became a virtual wildfire, then like a forest-fire of Western Civilization, monarchs tripping over each other to declare war left and right. Secret alliances were revealed; new alliances were formed; old alliances were abrogated.

Doddering royals and their overly decorated retinues strutted, waved flags, and called the masses to defend them. It was like a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta except for the bloodthirsty nature of it all. And the gore. And the new inventions of death – “Big Bertha” guns that could land shells six miles away; Zeppelins that could survey and drop bombs from the air; mustard gas that killed soldiers from the inside out; destruction of civilian populations; airplanes that could shoot, drop bombs, and attack each other in the air; submarines that could sink ships from unseen places in the seas.

The war, begun with a burst of patriotic fervor on all sides by the docile masses, was maintained by propagandists and absurd atrocity stories. But after the first few months, the soldiers in the trenches – in Belgium and France, principally, where British and French soldiers squared off against German counterparts – faced each other, sometimes dug in as close as 60 yards apart. And for three years there was virtual stalemate: despite advances and retreats, offenses and repulses, campaigns and campaigns, hardly any land changed hands. Battles made headlines, but the details consisted of tens of millions of the dead, their drained blood and rotting corpses feeding the weary soil.

The first winter of the war heaped cruelty upon cruelty. Cold, wet rain and snow turned battlefields and trenches into flooded swamps. Dysentery, rot, and gangrene visited the soldiers, just as the horrors of snipers and ‘round-the-clock shelling frayed their nerves. The “No Man’s Land,” between sets of trenches, was in fact no land for any living creature, as even trees and bushes were destroyed by the constant withering gunfire.

But a funny thing happened – if you could call Peace breaking out “funny.” It was more Happy than Funny. During Christmas week, a hundred years ago this week, strange things occurred. Strange to the war culture that had been whipped up; strange to the hatred that was force-fed the common soldiers; strange to the history and practice of warfare. Peace sprouted, if not fully “breaking out.”

It became known as “The Christmas Truce,” and there was a danger that it would spread. Danger?

Many legends subsequently arose after the Christmas Truce, such as a soccer game between fraternizing German and English troops (not true), but a lot of facts were documented about those days before Christmas. Evidently German soldiers made the first moves. Accounts say that during a lull in the fighting, Germans under a white flag delivered pastries sent from home, to the English, with a request that the Allies hold fire over Christmas so the Germans could sing and worship. The Brits apparently assented, returned Christmas goodies of their own and, when hearing the singing, joined in from across No Man’s Land.

After that, there was an impromptu Peace Offensive. Undoubtedly spurred by the words of love and peace that permeated Christmas carols, soldiers from each side soon left their lines and met in between. They exchanged cigars and drinks, and they sang Christmas hymns together. This reportedly spread along the entire 27-mile battle line, south of Ypres and east of Armentieres, site of the song about les Mademoiselles.

Superior officers, up the chain of command, tried to prevent this fraternization – the root of the word meaning “brother.” But it was futile. Many of the “enemies” could understand each other, and when they couldn’t, chocolates and cigars and beer and photos of each other’s sweethearts, wives, and children, served as a common language. So were familiar Christmas carols and hymns, no matter what words each man sang. So were prayers, as candles and torches lit the scenes.

A British soldier recalled the Christmas Truce almost two decades later: “On Christmas morning we stuck up a board with ‘A Merry Christmas’ on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one. … Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans done the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench.

“[The Company Commander] rushed into the trench and endeavoured to prevent it, but he was too late: the whole of the Company were now out, and so were the Germans. He had to accept the situation, so soon he and the other company officers climbed out too. We and the Germans met in the middle of no-man’s-land. Their officers was also now out. Our officers exchanged greetings with them. … One of their men, speaking in English, mentioned that he had worked in Brighton for some years and that he was fed up to the neck with this damned war and would be glad when it was all over. We told him that he wasn’t the only one that was fed up with it.” (Frank Richards, “Old Soldiers Never Die,” 1933)

Another history records: “[The British] Brigadier General G.T. Forrestier-Walker issued a directive forbidding fraternization: ‘For it discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys offensive spirit in all ranks. … Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and exchange of tobacco and other comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited.’” (Stanley Weintraub, “Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce,” 2001)

To the military brass, such fraternizing, these celebrations, even prayers and hymn-singing – maybe ESPECIALLY prayers and hymn-singing – were discouraged. “Discouraged” is too mild a word; historian Weintraub records that “strict orders were issued that any fraternization would result in a court-martial.” Summary executions of soldiers who fraternized with the enemy were also threatened.

It is tempting to think of how the 20th century would have been different if peace had in fact broken out. No more carnage, no harsh “peace terms,” no crushing reparations, no nation-building with resentments, no post-war economic crises; likely no rise of Communism and Lenin and Stalin; or social disruptions and Fascism and Mussolini and Hitler. Probably no seeds of the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War.

Hardly less consequential, the men who dared to stop killing, and to sing hymns and pray with other men – most of whom probably died in short order, themselves – would have rejoined their families and led normal lives. A special moment in history, virtually unprecedented; and I don’t think repeated, anywhere, since.

Such moments should not be rare “miracles.” They are what God intended for us, His children. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

There have been, and still are, many such opportunities. What a concept. Men singing Christmas hymns of love and peace, and actually listening to the words. And acting on them.

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A song written by Garth Brooks was built around the Christmas Truce, moving its location to Belleau Wood, the French site of a mighty battle in 1918. So: slightly fictionalized lyrics, but the powerful memory and message of the Christmas Truce comes forth in this video. I have chosen a cover version for its excellent and powerful graphics and slide show.

Click: Belleau Wood

12-15-14

Many generations ago, in the hazy origins of science and the scientific method, alchemy was a respected pursuit of the learned, the powerful, and the greedy. Turning “base metals” into “noble metals,” after all, was to seek a shortcut to gold; wizards and doctors seldom were invited to turn, say, daffodils into broccoli. In similar distant times, astrologers looked up rather than down, and charted the stars… and tried to reckon what they tell us.

Through the ages, as alchemists became chemists, and astrology gave birth to astronomy, humankind’s primal impulses broadened. But they have not gone away. For instance, although we (that is, the human race) recently have sent our mechanical devices to Mars and small, distant comets, a large percentage of our neighbors still subsists on horoscopes. The putative message in the zodiac consistently is in the first-five items people read in newspapers; on many dating sites it is impossible to cleanse one’s profile of your “sign.”

My friend Dan Rupple once led the Christian comedy troupe Isaac Air Freight, and I have always remembered one of his characters dismissing the zodiac and horoscopes as useless nonsense, mistaken, evil, and warned against by the Bible… “but I’m an Aquarian, and we tend to be skeptical.”

We believe, and we want to believe.

So with alchemy. We might think the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life were rendered obsolete by philosophy, the scientific method, tummy tucks and Botox, but not so. Alchemy continues apace. Maybe not turning iron to gold, except as dross is discovered to have commercial uses.

But I often have wondered just how different the ways and means of old alchemy are from the development of hybrid plants and the genetic modification of our foodstuff. Gregor Mendel and Luther Burbank are regarded as benefactors of humankind. They did, frankly, with plants and animals, what wizards could not do with tin and bronze: a different sort of gold.

There are still geniis, so to speak, and they keep escaping bottles. As we (that is, the human race) hurtle toward the logical extensions – GMOs, transplants, cloning, the “invention” of new species – we bid fair to become helpless spectators, like Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The Meyer Lemon is a cross between a true lemon and the mandarin orange. Tasty. The Cockapoo is a hybrid dog, the result of arranged marriages of cocker spaniels and poodles. Cute. (To some.) Pigs have been “bred” to be leaner, but now discriminating cooks and fans of gool ol’ pork fat are growing nostalgic.

So old scientists and new alchemists work at their business still. Having generally given up on gold, they invent things as valuable as gold. To an extent, this is an affirmation that God creates and men fiddle. There are no new elements, apparently even on distant comets, and as the human race transforms things – even, in our minds, ruins or eliminates things – in fact the earth yields, accepts, and yields again.

If the physical realm is intransigent and malleable at best in the face of our efforts at transformation, a certain form of alchemy is still common amongst us. Rife, in fact.

Everyone practices it: we do not need lab coats or college degrees. If the “scientific method” prevailed, we would abandon it, for it has proven over and over and over and over again since the dawn of history to be a failure. Worse – dangerous and deadly. Yet we fool ourselves it is plausible, and has merit. And that we might be the first generation to find success in it; the first people to make it work.

I speak of moral alchemy.

The world, generally – and I am afraid the church itself, lately – has tried to genetically modify the Ways of God. Of all the new theologies and versions of truth that are offered up, we can categorize many of them as the Loophole Gospel. The Word made safe for Modern Man. God created, but in our flawed hearts and misguided souls we try to create a different God. The loving Jesus required of us a modest yet meaningful life-choice, but people’s inclinations are to manufacture a different Christ, and His message modified to comfortably clothe our sins. The 10 Commandments have become 10 Suggestions.

“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil,” it was warned in Isaiah 5:20, “who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”

When you have a chance, rush to your Bible and read what God says in the entirety of Isaiah’s fifth chapter. “Woe” is the most extreme form of pity that can be felt toward those who suffer. Read what God says – He has laid out for us, His children, riches and promises of joy, yet we tend toward rejecting Him and toward our self-destruction. And toward His inevitable wrath! Again, do we think we are the first generation in history to turn up the “Get out of jail free” card?

“Therefore, as the fire devours the stubble, and the flame consumes the chaff,
so their root will be as rottenness… Because they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One…. Therefore the anger of the Lord is aroused against His people; He has stretched out His hand against them and stricken them, and the hills trembled. Their carcasses were as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this His anger is not turned away, But His hand is stretched out still.”

Modern alchemy is a moral experiment, doomed not only to failure but reproach and disaster. Our sophisticated brains subliminally rejoice that we have developed a substitute for justice. New words, new excuses, new rationalizations for sin. An acceptable alternative to obedience… we hope.

In the process, contemporary man has achieved a sort of alchemy the ancient sorcerers never could approach. We have succeeded to transform the shining, precious gold that God offers each of us into cold, dull chunks of common iron that represent the inclinations of our evil hearts.

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Faithful believers, and in end times the remnant, are rooted in Truth and not persuaded, nor dissuaded, in their spiritual walks. Like a tree that’s standing by the waters, they shall not be moved. Those are the words of the favorite Negro spiritual, sung here by Blind Pig and the Acorn, kitchen music from the heart of Appalachia. Paul Wilson, lead, and Jerry Wilson, harmony.

Click: I Shall Not Be Moved

12-8-14

This is awfully secular, but a lot of us have memories from television’s black-and-white days. On Thanksgiving afternoon, before, after, or in-between the turkey and four varieties of carbohydrate side dish meals, a local station would air Laurel and Hardy’s “March Of the Wooden Soldiers,” based on Victor Herbert’s “Babes in Toyland.” The tenuous connection to Christmas was trouble in Santa’s workshop, but it was enough to usher in the Christmas season.

Now, black and white movies are most obsolete. Laurel and Hardy have been banished, too. My friend Jean Shepherd’s classic “A Christmas Story” does make it annual appearance now, usually in a 24-hour cycle on TCM, but closer to Christmas, warning boys everywhere to be careful not to shoot their eye out. But. Thanksgiving is no longer the starting-line for the Christmas race.

After Hallowe’en, these day, stores start festooning aisles and windows with Christmas decorations and merchandise. Some stores before THAT. Observant chambers of commerce start decorating Main Streets with lights and messages while pedestrians underneath often still wear shorts and Ts.

You know the complaints, because you probably complain, as most of us do – and not all from a theological perspective, of course: everyone has internal Tackiness meters and Tawdry antibodies in our systems. I hope. It is all too early… too cheesy… too pushy… too commercial…

… and, of course, even atheists take note, very little about Jesus. And “He is the reason…” etc. Shop owners and greedy legal consultants can say that secularists should not be offended, but in truth merchants, window decorators, chambers of commerce, and many of our neighbors, could not care less about the advent of Jesus, the Incarnation of Jehovah, God-with-us, the Word made flesh, the Savior of humankind. But: Disney characters around a cartoon manger do not cut it, folks.

“Getting ready for Christmas,” it is argued. “All for the kids.” Heaven forbid. Never in the history of ideas has a civilization worked so hard to commemorate a holy event by straining so mightily to deny its holy significance.

Interestingly, “getting ready for Christmas” does not depend on commercial, sanitized fluff, and never did. God does not need our sophisticated understanding to become flesh and dwell among us. He did not, despite the announcement via angels, 2000 years ago. Nor did He, approximately 700 years before those events, when He prophesied through Isaiah the birth of the Savior.

A great teaching of Mark Driscoll laid out many of the prophesies, meanings, and fulfillments concerning Christ’s Incarnation – God becoming human and living amongst humankind:

Jesus will come from the line of Abraham. Prophecy: Genesis 12:3. Fulfilled: Matthew 1:1.

Jesus’ mother will be a virgin. Prophecy: Isaiah 7:14. Fulfilled: Matthew 1:18–23.

Jesus will be a descendent of Isaac and Jacob. Prophecy: Genesis 17:19 and Numbers 24:17. Fulfilled: Matthew 1:2.

Jesus will be born in the town Bethlehem. Prophecy: Micah 5:2. Fulfilled: Luke 2:1–7.

Jesus will be called out of Egypt. Prophecy: Hosea 11:1. Fulfilled: Matthew 2:13–15.

Jesus will be a member of the tribe of Judah. Prophecy: Genesis 49:10. Fulfilled: Luke 3:33. 

Jesus will be from the lineage of King David. Prophecy: Jeremiah 23:5. Fulfilled: Matthew 1:6.

Jesus’ birth will be accompanied with great suffering and sorrow. Prophecy: Jeremiah 31:15. Fulfilled: Matthew 2:16.

Jesus will live a perfect life, die by crucifixion, resurrect from death, ascend into heaven, and sit at the right hand of God. Prophecies: Psalm 22:16; Psalm 16:10; Isaiah 53:10–11; Psalm 68:18; Psalm 110:1. Fulfilled: 1 Peter 2:21–22; Luke 23:33; Acts 2:25–32; Acts 1:9; Hebrews 1:3.

Many Old Testament writings prophesy the coming of the Messiah and His birth. All without snow bunnies and frosty snowmen. No electric lights, no cartoon characters, no commercial jingles. For those who have not read Isaiah (especially) 52-53, many of its themes and words are familiar anyway through the citations of Christ, St Paul, the Book of Revelation, the libretto of Handel’s “Messiah,” which was not a poetic paraphrase but the actual words from the Bible.

God let the world know Christmas was coming. Shame on us: unlike the shepherds in Bethlehem’s hills, we KNOW the tremendous spiritual significance of this humble birth that was also the most life-changing moment in history.

He is coming. He was coming. He died and rose. He will come. He rises every day. “If He be lifted up…” We lift Him up. We are crucified with Christ. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He sits at the right hand of the Father. He comes again with glory. He is forever Mary’s son, the Babe in the manger.

The Resurrection is as real – and is as fresh – as the Incarnation, the birth of the Holy One. They are new every day, or should be to us, and renewable as sources of Truth and Strength and Life.

Actually, Christians could, and perhaps should once in awhile, think of the Easter message on Christmas Day, and celebrate the advent of our Lord, Jesus’s birth and Incarnation, on Easter Sunday.

It is the same Message; He is the same Savior. We could even exchange gifts at random times. After all, the Father’s Gift to a lost humanity was not meant for one day, one season, or one people, or one time.

For ever and for ever, amen: Jesus, the Gift that keeps on giving.

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A relatively new song that has become a commercial standard but also a sacred favorite, sure to find a hymnbook home is “Mary, Did You Know?” by Mark Lowery (lyrics) and Buddy Greene (music). Sung here by the Christ Church Choir to images from “The Passion of the Christ,” all reflecting our message that what was, is; and what is, was, in the providence of God.

Click: Mary, Did You Know?