Hark! a Christmas Message
When I was a kid, I, like many young ones, loved the all the familiar Christmas carols sung together for the Christmas Eve Candlelight service. I am not musically or vocally gifted, and Christmas was the only time of the year that I would actually sing the hymns out loud in church. But I remember, when I was little, being so brutally disappointed whenever Hark! The Herald Angels Sing wasn’t included in the in the Christmas Eve service. It was always my favorite hymn when I was little, likely because of the lovely and touching rendition that’s sung at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas. And while I don’t know that it’s my favorite anymore, something in me is still drawn because when I was getting the bulletin together for this service, I was trying so hard to get Hark in there, but there wasn’t really any scripture passage that it reflected well enough, there wasn’t really any place where it fit just right. For a brief second, I even considered replacing the traditional final hymn of Joy to the World with Hark; I even started out a text message to Becky, our choir director that read, “Would it be total blasphemy to replace Joy to the World?” I deleted it before I even sent it. There are some traditions you just don’t mess with. So I figured— why not selfishly preach about the hymn so I can make sure it fit in the bulletin? I was actually inspired by the fact that Paul Sawyer, my colleague over at the UU church in Four Corners, preached last week about the history of the ancient hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
Inspired, I started to look at the history of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing— the lyrics were originally written by Charles Wesley, the founder of Methodism. The version that we know and love, and will sing shortly, is certainly not the version that Wesley would have given us has he had more of a say. Even the tune the lovely words are set to, a tune of Felix Mendelsohn’s, was thought to be too joyful, too lively. Wesley wanted something more somber and solemn. It was actually a protégé of his, George Whitefield, who made it the joyful and celebratory hymn we know today. In fact, Wesley was so appalled by Whitefield’s adaptation, he refused to ever sing that version. [i]
And it’s not just the tune that was changed—many the lyrics that we know now are quite different than Wesley’s, but there’s one change that sticks out to me more than the rest. In Wesley’s version, the refrain reads, “Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the King of Kings!’” That’s “King of Kings” instead of “new-born King.” First of all, Wesley’s version, not so shockingly for such a clearly serious man, is more Biblically accurate—it borrows from the Gospel of Luke, the angels saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven,” whereas Whitefield’s version inaccurately implies that the angels are giving glory to the baby Jesus himself. [ii]
So maybe this isn’t Biblically accurate; but you know—who cares? In my humble opinion, it’s theologically accurate. During Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ—Christ who came to this earth as a vulnerable human baby, born a refugee, to two frightened refugee parents, hiding among barn animals and hay in a manger meant to be a feeding trough. Our savior, a new-born, born poor, born housing-insecure, born in danger among the elements. In Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, this is who the angels sing to—not God, but this defenseless human baby.
Now, in the protestant church, we, myself included, don’t always know quite what to do with angels—they seem to take many different forms in the Bible, we only know a couple by name. There are different classes of angels, there are fallen angels, it’s all very confusing and… let’s be honest, sometimes a little mystical, a little out-there for our rational New England minds. But more than anything, angels can simply be thought of us messengers of God. They are couriers of information. In just a few minutes, we’ll hear the stories of angels making it clear to Mary, to Joseph, to the shepherds, what the birth of this child really meant. And so how radical is it, that the Reverend Charles Whitefield took some scriptural liberties and had these messengers of God giving praise to this new-born infant, human king.
One thing that both Wesley and Whitefield had in common is that in both their versions of the hymn, the angels sing; yet, nowhere in the Bible does is there anything explicit about angels singing. They simply state facts, they give information. But there was one quote I found from medieval nun and saint, Humilitas of Faenza who, that just felt perfect for this night when so much of our worship is in song— in her windowless cell living as a scholarly recluse, Humilitas believed she once saw and heard angels— of this experience she wrote,
Whenever they unfurl their wings in flight and then gather them gracefully together again, they make their ministry a sweet song. Since they are spirits endowed with the power of the most high, they make a song that no other creature is able to sing.[iii]
So when this multitude appears to the shepherds, just think about this beautiful, other-worldly, impossible to replicate sound, saying, singing, playing, who knows, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favors!” And with the birth of Jesus, we know that God favors all— Jesus who came to be with the lepers, the poor, the cast-out, the exiled.
What a giant, beautiful contradiction Christmas is— an alleged miraculous virgin birth, angels relaying messages in other-worldly harmonies, a heavenly star leading the way—juxtaposed with a birth that couldn’t be more humble, the beginning of a life that would change the world, beginning under such unexpected and modest circumstances, in an area of the world troubled with political turmoil and insecure tyrants—a baby born in dangerous conditions; a baby who is the ultimate contradiction—human and divine.
So let’s lean into this divine contradiction— we might not make pitch-perfect other-worldly songs, but nevertheless, this year, and forevermore, let’s be messengers of divine glory for the humble, the outcast, the oppressed. Let’s sing to the vulnerable new-borns, to the poor, to the sick, to the grieving. Let’s live up to the divine contradiction. Amen.
[i] Giles, Gordon. O Come Emmanuel: A Musical Tour of Daily Readings for Advent and Christmas. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006, 100
[ii] Giles, Gordon. O Come Emmanuel: A Musical Tour of Daily Readings for Advent and Christmas. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006, 98-99
[iii] Weinberger, Eliot. Angels & Saints. New York: Christine Burgin/New Directions Publishing, 2020, 13
