Christmas Carols 2023

It was a joy to preach an unusual message at Christ Church W4 last night at a packed Christmas Carol service featuring a brand new carol written by our multi-talented curate James West. Here’s the text:

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We come to the bit in the service where the person who stands up can do one of about four things. 

The first, and standard one in the CoE, is to pontificate on The Good King Wenceslas theme which finishes: 

Therefore, Christian men, be sure, 

wealth or rank possessing,

Ye who now will bless the poor, 

shall yourselves find blessing.

This is especially popular in school carols concerts, before passing round the collection plate.

The second is to try and move your heart strings rather than your purse strings to an affective relationship with God. Here we assume we are all poor and ask the questions What Can I Give Him, Poor as I am… The answer? 

Yet what I can I give Him, —

Give my heart.

This is an encouragement to develop our own sort of piety. 

The third is to give people a ‘before and after’ sales pitch for becoming a Christian. Usually best done with a testimony or two leading up to the talk the aim is to paint a ‘hero story’ where someone journeys from pain/misery/suffering/adddiction or difficulty generally, into a new state where they are pain and misery free, found meaning in suffering, conquered addiction and triumphed over disaster all because our plucky heroes ‘tried Alpha’ [or other generic course], had an experience of the Spirt, or met with Jesus in some other encounter. 

This is the ‘Good Christians all rejoice, with heart and soul and voice’ message with its promise that

Now ye need not fear the grave

Christ the Lord was born to save

Calls you one and calls you all

To gain his everlasting hall

Christ was born to save

Christ was born to save

This is the hope of heaven or ‘a relationship with Jesus’ that ‘completes you.’

And the fourth one is the political broad swipe, usually aimed at Government war machine, immigration policy, approach to homelessness, or general lack of morality. 

This is the God rest ye merry gentlemen approach where we’re reminded that 

With true love and brotherhood 

Each other now embrace

This holy tide of Christmas 

All anger should efface. 

Meanwhile our TVs, Spotify playlists and Radio DJs are happily selling us another set of messages: 

We were watching Nativity 2 Danger in the Manger yesterday and the medley of songs ranged from the gloriously honest ‘I want stuff for Christmas’, to the heart-wrenching ‘everyone’s got a Dad but me’. The thrust of these and similar songs are: 

1. All I want for Christmas is a relationship – even Santa baby will do
2. We should all be roasting chestnuts on a open fire, dreaming of a white Christmas in a beautiful family home
3. Something weird about a fairytale of New York 
4. And the glorious distraction of a jingling reindeer flying over a talking snowman pulling presents around the world at a speed that might cause a H&S protectorate to worry about spontaneous combustion. 

So having spelled out all these possible Christmas themes what can we say this year that adds to or focuses our minds from the cacophony of calls on our mind at this time of year. 

Let me just add one thing. 

The birth of Jesus didn’t make everything all right. 

It doesn’t make the desire for jingle bell distraction go away, heal every aching heart, give us a magical Christmas chestnut roasting experience or explain to us what on earth the Pogues were singing about any way. 

It doesn’t give us a divine right to political broad-swipes from the sidelines, encourage us to salvage our consciences by a once a year bit of generosity, and nor does it allow us to give our heart to God and then watch from the sidelines, and it definitely doesn’t make a narrative where I am the ‘before and after’ hero of my own rags to spiritual riches story. 

It introduces chaos and scandal and heartache and pain into an already painful story. It sees a young mother scandalised and then forced to flee into exile, as a despotic king commands the murder of all children under the age of two in an attempt to eradicate the Christ-child. It promises young Mary that a ‘sword will pierce her heart too’ and the gifts that come with the new baby King of Kings born in a manger promise that he too will need burial myrrh while his mother’s heart is pierced. 

I mention this because it’s real. Real life. Tough life. Painful life. 

Many here will be tired of a cheap sell ‘gospel’. Come to Jesus and it will all be better, sounds about as real as Santa Claus to Scrooge. You may have even drunk the cool aid and found it’s started to wear off over time. It started out like a buzz, but like any adrenaline enhancing drug the come down gets worse each time and the highs get lower and lower. 

But what if the message was ‘in this world you will have trouble, but take heart I have overcome the world.’ What if the message was it’s not all going to be sorted right now… and even the greatest acts of good (like God coming into the world) will have ripples of nightmares accompanying them (like the massacre of the innocents), even the good we try to do we find doesn’t make things perfect. The world is too far gone for a Hallmark ending every Dec 25th in every home, hovel and mud hut of the world. 

What if the incarnation of Jesus means God is really realistic about how much of a mess we’re in. Knows what it’s like to be in poverty, a refugee, to lose his step-dad, to have his brothers hate him, to be despised and rejected, to be a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. God – himself knows what it’s like. 

What if it means God-himself has been tempted in every way, knows our every weakness and knows what it’s like to be hungry, thirsty, and frankly depressed, even to the point of sweating blood when his career option was a bloody roman cross combined with drinking in the sins of the whole world for our souls.

The birth of Jesus doesn’t even make everything all right for God… in fact it makes it all wrong… a dangerous, desperate adventure to redeem a world that ‘hated him’ while ‘we were still his enemies’. His loving giving of himself on a cross splits the God-head in three as Father turns his face away from a Son who has become sin by drinking down your stuff and mine. 

But it’s an adventure that saves the world 

An adventure that has meaning in the mess

Perfection in the pain 

Glory in the dust

Hope in the final victory over death. 

This is the 

thrill of hope the weary world rejoices

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn 

It’s a hope that looks to the future. A downpayment on a time when he will come back, and as the creed says ‘judge the living and the dead and his Kingdom will have no end.’ 

Like the carol James West our curate just introduced to us tonight, its a promise of a ‘new creation’ where ‘shame and fear’ are cancelled out. But it’s an adventure that doesn’t have to wait to eternity to start. It can start right now in your life and bring your adventure and purpose where your restless heart has been longing for that for so long. 

Come to Jesus for that adventure, that refreshment, that hope. To the evergreen tree that means that hope lasts and leads us into our eternal home. 

Joining this adventure is not merely giving some alms to the poor, having an affective experience of God, telling your ‘before and after’ I met Jesus story that fades like any neglecting relationship would with time. It’s not about railing against this world, social justice or Santa baby… it’s an adventure that costs you everything and an adventure you have little say in how it goes. 

It just happens to be the best choice anyone can ever do or make. The hope option is to link arms with the revolutionary. To say NO to this world being all your life will be about. To build for eternity. To go on the adventure your heart has been longing for, the one that might cost you everything you’ve held on to, but give you everything worth having for a glorious eternity to come. 

The danger in the manger, grew up so dangerous that they crucified him 33 years later. But they’re still singing his name in cathedrals, malls and school halls today. As you sing his name tonight consider whether you want to sign up for this revolution as well. Take some time out of Hallmark movies, shopping sprees and family fights and read, read, read one of those four short stories of his life – mathew, mark, Luke or John and see if you might find 2024 makes a whole lot more sense if you embrace the danger for yourself and find a life truly worth living for eternity. Find hope this Christmas time as you 

fall on your knees 

Fall on your knees

Oh, hear the angel voices

Oh, night divine

Oh, night when Christ was born

Oh, night divine

Oh night, oh night divine