A Great Light
Nativity of the Lord
I’m a big fan of overlooked or oft-neglected Christmas carols. While there will always (rightly) be a place for the greatest hits, like “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” “Silent Night,” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” it’s fun to dip into lesser known songs or verses that are usually skipped over. Sometimes, this works splendidly in a group setting; other times, not so much. I have fond memories of church services when those of us leading worship have tried to guide everyone through the entire tale of “Good King Wenceslas,” or moments when lyrics like “Pray you, dutifully prime/ your matin chime, you ringers,” from “Ding Dong, Merrily on High!” provoked looks of bemusement rather than enthusiastic delight. But whether they are always met with joyful participation, and no matter how infrequently we turn to them, I’m glad these songs exist. They often serve to guide us into new, or at least different, ways of embracing the Christmas season and the stories bound up with the birth of Jesus.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve found myself reading the words and listening to another traditional favorite that we don’t sing much anymore, “In the Bleak Midwinter.” This carol is based on a poem by Christina Rossetti, originally published in 1872. The tune, whether sung by the King’s College Choir or a group of friends around a fireplace, is hauntingly beautiful. But the words alone are enough to draw us into an encounter with the astonishing wonder of the Nativity:
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
In Luke’s gospel, this story that many of us have read and heard over and over, we are introduced and reintroduced to a cast of characters who are all making their way through a world that stood hard as iron, a world longing for redemption, a world waiting for the Word made flesh to come and dwell. Some of these characters, like Caesar Augustus and Quirinius the governor of Syria, would have resisted any softening of this iron-hard world. Their power rested in this hardness, in the ways they exercised authority over the vulnerable, the ways they ruled over the lowly children of God who yearned for that God’s purposes to be fulfilled and that God’s kingdom to break into this world. These alleged masters of the universe would have dismissed or maybe even scoffed at the words of Isaiah heralding a child who would change everything, one who would set prisoners free and shatter the rod of the oppressor. They certainly wouldn’t have welcomed the child upon whose shoulders the government, a new sort of government, would rest. These emperors and governors, reigning over their self-made dominions, might have ignored what God was doing on that bleak night. They might have laughed at it or shrugged it off. But it’s hard to imagine them making room in their heart for these things, or allowing themselves to be transformed by these things. They had too much to lose. This world of iron, in their estimation, provided exactly the sort of security and comfort they desired.
But of course, these names known to the ancient history of the empire aren’t the only characters in this story, or even the most important ones. We also encounter Joseph the carpenter and his betrothed, Mary, making the long journey from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem during Mary’s ninth month of pregnancy. We have to imagine that night was profoundly difficult in so many ways for this couple, and that the world through which they moved, in its iron-hardness was inflexible and inhospitable. Compelled by a distant ruler to come and be counted, turned away at the door of an inn that had no room for them, relying solely on the promises of God, delivered by angels, to sustain them as they navigated this dark night, hopefully anticipating the inbreaking of God’s light even as the bleakness of their situation threatened to overwhelm them.
We also meet the shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks at night. As forgotten and overlooked as an obscure verse of an obscure Christmas carol, huddled together in the fields and waiting for the morning sun to put the darkness to flight and with it the dangers that threatened them and the sheep in their care. When they came face to face with the light of God’s glorious love, first one angel and then a heavenly host proclaiming that Christ was born in Bethlehem, that the Messiah they had been waiting for was here, just a little up the road, in a stable of all places, they could scarcely have been prepared for that shocking news. In the iron-hard world where they lived, these sorts of miracles didn’t happen, and when they did, they didn’t happen to lowly shepherds.
Finally, we meet a baby. The one that the carol talks about as the Lord God Almighty and that Isaiah refers to as Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. The one in whom the entire universe holds together had entered this iron-hard world in the most vulnerable way we could possibly imagine, as a small child. In that moment, as the carol reminds us, a stable place sufficed. In his humility and in his sacrificial love, the God of the universe had chosen to sleep on a mangerful of hay, to drink from his mother’s breast, to be wrapped up in swaddling clothes while farmyard animals looked on, bleating and baying their songs of welcome.
In the beautiful way that both poetry and gospel have of bringing the most powerful and world-changing images to light, both the carol and Luke’s passage bring us back to a picture of Mary, taking it all in. Kissing the child that she is cradling in her arms. Treasuring up all of these things in her heart and pondering them. In a way that the Caesars and Quiriniuses and the Herods of the world could never really understand in a way that probably eluded even Joseph and the shepherds, this young mother somehow knew that she was face to face with something so astounding that the only appropriate response was silent wonder. This baby she had carried in her womb for nine months, and that she now held on her lap in the stillness of a stable, would put this iron-hard world to right. He was the light that would overcome our darkness. He was the wisdom who would overcome our foolishness. He was the peace that would overcome the bloody brutality that defined us. He was the salvation that would overcome our sin and selfishness. He was the life that would overcome death. All these things were, and are, too wonderful to comprehend. All these things can only be pondered, and treasured, embraced in worship, contemplated in silence and lifted up in song. In all of these things rests our greatest hope—God with us.
