God’s Plan
What are your standard Christmas songs? The songs you return to year after year after year? One of our family standards is Amy Grant’s “Tennessee Christmas.” Which is strange considering we’ve never spent Christmas in Tennessee and almost certainly never will. But after decades of listening to Amy Grant sing as we decorate our Christmas tree, this song drips with nostalgia.
All holidays carry some weight of nostalgia, but Christmas takes it to another level. This is true at church as much as it is at home. Singing “Silent Night” with the lights dimmed during the 11 p.m. Festival Eucharist on Christmas Eve is absolutely required. At least it is if a rector wants to keep his job!!
But nostalgia isn’t the goal. Christmas celebrates the wonder of the Incarnation; of God the Creator becoming flesh and dwelling among us (John 1:14); of God arriving as an infant to live among us in both the good and the bad of our world as well as the joys and the sorrows of our lives. At its best, Christmas inspires awe that God loves us enough to dare to do such a thing.
Branching out beyond the standard Christmas carols helps us detach from our nostalgia, at least for a few moments. During the 11 p.m. service on Christmas Eve we will sing “A Stable Lamp is Lighted,” a hymn that will never make anyone’s list of most popular Christmas carols. Yet, its very unfamiliarity invites us to pay closer attention. David Hurd’s lovely music and Richard Wilbur’s powerful text speak to the true purpose of the Incarnation. There is nothing nostalgic about the third stanza in which Christmas is connected to Good Friday. As we sing, we are reminded that the God who is born to dwell among us is also the God who suffers and dies for us.
Yet he shall be forsaken,
and yielded up to die;
the sky shall groan and darken,
and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
for gifts of love abused;
God’s blood upon the spearhead,
God’s blood again refused.
But thanks be to God the hymn doesn’t end there. The final stanza reminds us that the birth, life, and death of Jesus are all part of God’s plan of reconciliation, a plan which includes us. How can we not be in awe as we sing these words?
But now, as at the ending,
the low is lifted high;
the stars shall bend their voices,
and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
in praises of the child
by whose descent among us
the worlds are reconciled.
