The Christmas story is not, primarily, a news report of Jesus’ birth—it is an account of the significance of Immanuel; God with us. In his book, The Hungering Dark Frederick Buechner explains:

The longer I live, the more inclined I am to believe in miracle, the more I suspect that if we had been there at the birth, we might well have seen and heard things that would be hard to reconcile with modern science.

But of course that is not the point, because the Gospel writers are not really interested primarily in the facts of the birth but in the significance, the meaning for them of that birth—just as the people who love us are not really interested primarily in the facts of our births but in what it meant to them when we were born and how for them the world was never the same again, how their whole lives were charged with new significance.

“How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given. So God imparts to human hearts, the blessings of His Heaven.” remarks Phillip Brooks’ 19th century hymn, “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.” Brooks had visited Bethlehem and was so moved by Christ’s birthplace he said the experience would be forever, “singing in my soul.” In a letter to his father in December of 1865 he wrote,

After an early dinner took our horses and rode to Bethlehem. It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. It is a good-looking town, better built than any other we have seen in Palestine. As we passed, the shepherds were still “keeping watch over their flocks,” or leading them home to fold.

The simplicity of Bethlehem became Brooks’ artistic contrast for the remarkable brilliance of Christ’s advent. In the same spirit, Buechner concludes, “Once we have seen Him in a stable, we can never be sure where He will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation He will descend in His wild pursuit of men.”

Listen: O Little Town of Bethlehem by Sarah McLachlan (3:50)

The Morning Psalm
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy. Then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” — Psalm 126.1-2

– From Christmastide: Prayers for Advent Through Epiphany from The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
2 Chronicles 21 (Listen – 3:25)
Revelation 9 (Listen – 3:30)

“Emotions run high during the holidays,” observes the American Psychological Association. “People in the United States are more likely to feel their stress increase rather than decrease,” The research tracks increases in fatigue, stress and irritability along with the season’s happiness, love, and high spirits.

In this way, the human experience around Christ’s birth hasn’t changed since Mary responded to the angel’s announcement. Mary didn’t initially reply with exuberant praise but simple obedience; “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Her unadorned submission stands in stark contrast to the deluge of joy-filled worship Luke records just eight verses later:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

Mary was overwhelmed in her first response; as an unwed mother in the ancient Near East her plans for the future—her marriage, social status, even friendships—vanished the instant the angel spoke. She told no one of the angel’s words, rushing out of town before anyone could notice her pregnancy. Then she walked into the house of Elizabeth.

Luke records Elizabeth’s generosity of spirit, “And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!’” This is when everything changes. There is such power in the affirmation of her trusted friend that Mary immediately bursts into ardent worship, looking toward her future with welling hope.

Sometimes the hope people need is carried in our prayerfully chosen words. It’s a risk to affirm something unseen—Elizabeth’s words made no sense apart from her faith. Yet they were the very thing that led Mary to her need for a Savior and her faithful response to live into the journey to which God called her.

Listen: Go Tell it on the Mountain by Francesca Battistelli (3:01)

The Refrain
Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. — Psalm 33.20

– From Christmastide: Prayers for Advent Through Epiphany from The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
2 Chronicles 17 (Listen – 2:48)
Revelation 6 (Listen – 3:12)

This Weekend’s Readings
2 Chronicles 18 (Listen – 5:51) Revelation 7 (Listen – 2:56)
2 Chronicles 19-20 (Listen – 8:09) Revelation 8 (Listen – 2:15)

The promise of Advent is that of longings met. In this way, Advent—longing for God’s presence—stands in contrast to hell, which C.S. Lewis describes as a place of “infinite boredom.” In A Preface to Paradise Lost Lewis contrasts the brilliant longings of humankind (Adam) with what he calls the profound “un-interestingness” of evil personified:

Adam, though locally confined to a small park on a small planet, has interests that embrace ‘all the choir of heaven and all the furniture of earth.’ Satan has been in the Heaven of Heavens and in the abyss of Hell, and surveyed all that lies between them, and in that whole immensity has found only one thing that interests him.

Satan’s monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament. Certainly, he has no choice. He has chosen to have no choice. He has wished to ‘be himself,’ and to be in himself and for himself, and his wish has been granted.

To admire Satan, then, is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography.

Compare Lewis’ (and Milton’s) vision of hell as self-consumption with Isaac Watts’ celebrated 18th century hymn, “Joy to the World.” It is profoundly communal—“Let earth receive her King; let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.”—wonderfully enveloped in ‘all the choir of heaven and all the furniture of earth.’

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
he comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found.

Watts was burdened by lifeless worship; ”To see the dull indifference, the negligent and thoughtless air that sits upon the faces of a whole assembly, while the psalm is upon their lips, might even tempt a charitable observer to suspect the fervency of their inward religion.”

His answer wasn’t simply better, or “more relevant,” music, but the restoration of the soul that comes filling the longings of our hearts in “the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.”

Listen: Joy to the World by Red Mountain Church (3:56 – lyrics below)

The Call to Prayer
Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise. — Psalm 51.16

– From Christmastide: Prayers for Advent Through Epiphany from The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
2 Chronicles 16 (Listen – 2:51)
Revelation 5 (Listen – 2:39)

John Francis Wade was a published hymnist and a rebel who died in exile—though little else is known about his life. The song he is now best known for, “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” was originally believed to be an anonymous Latin hymn. Recently discovered fragments of Wade’s journal revealed the four original stanzas, penned in 1744, and the centrality that faith played in his life.

Not long after he completed the hymn, Wade filled the margins of the page with calls for the Jacobites to rally against England’s King. It’s unclear how entwined the lyrics of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” were with the Jacobites larger mission—the then century-old commitment to restore the lineage of James II—although it is clear that the hymn is a rallying cry at its heart.

History did not favor the rebels. The Jacobite Rising of 1745 was decisively defeated by the British in less than a year. The uprising’s leader had a price placed on his head and fled to France with what was left of his men.

“Oh Come, All Ye Faithful” was originally written in French and published in England in 1751, between the Jacobite exile and Wade’s death in Douai, France. The hymn fell into relative obscurity until it was translated into English by Frederick Oakeley in 1841.

Nearly a century after Wade first marveled at the Christ, the song would be adopted by the Church, with new verses added and translations made into over 100 languages.

John Francis Wade also left a reminder that Christ’s birth is a rally cry. All earthly kings must be displaced. Wade wanted to replace them with kings of his own choosing; Christ’s call is for purity in lordship—he is a good King and he will not share the throne.

Through Wade’s words, we are also reminded of the power of awe. It is rare, even more in our world than his, to stop and marvel. But what we find in meditations strengthens our souls, readies our hearts for action, and roots our lives in the true faithful one.

Listen: O Come, All Ye Faithful by The Baylor University A Cappella Choir (2:59 – lyrics below)

The Refrain
I will exalt you, O God my King, and bless your name forever and ever. — Psalm 145.1

– From Christmastide: Prayers for Advent Through Epiphany from The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
2 Chronicles 14-15 (Listen – 5:42)
Revelation 4 (Listen – 2:09)

Christmas is a musical outlier—no other modern holiday is set to its own soundtrack. The downside to seasonal music is that nearly everyone has a Christmas song that they can’t stand. Little Drummer Boy, Feliz Navidad, and Santa Baby occur frequently on modern lists of annoying Christmas songs.

For Charles Wesley, the 18th century theologian, the song that bothered him so much that he refused to sing it was Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Now a popular carol, it was originally published by Wesley’s student George Whitefield. Most of the lyrics, however did not belong to Whitefield, they came from the pen of Charles Wesley himself.

When Wesley originally wrote it as a Christmas Day hymn for his church. “Hark! How all the welkin rings, glory to the King of Kings,” he wrote, echoing the angel’s praise in Luke,  “Glory to God in the highest heaven.” Welkin means sky, and while the skies were filled with praise, there is no Biblical record of the angels singing.

Whitefield went further than narrative adaptation, however. And the verses he chose to drop from the hymn demonstrate Wesley’s ability to capture robust theology in verse:

Come, desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.

Now display thy saving power,
Ruin’d nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thy image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.

Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner man:
O, to all thyself impart,
Form’d in each believing heart.

Ultimately the song has stood the test of time, in part because of both men’s work. Whitefield shaped what we now celebrate as heaven and earth rejoicing at the coming of Christ, but Wesley’s theology still resonates with our longings in Advent as we sing:

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.

Listen: Hark the Herald Angels Sing by Paisley Abby Choir (2:59)

The Request for Presence
Bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down; touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. — Psalm 144.5

– From Christmastide: Prayers for Advent Through Epiphany from The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
2 Chronicles 13 (Listen – 3:56)
Revelation 3 (Listen – 3:53)