The Gospel Sung In Christmas Carols

A Seasonal Service for December 24, 2023 

Point Reyes (CA) Community Presbyterian Church

Rev. Douglas Olds

Bulletin Quotes

God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” Isaiah 64:1

“And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Rev. 21:5

 

Today, we sing our traditional songs, but as Psalm 33 directs us to sing to the Lord a New Song,

let us sing these favorites with a new awareness, a new dedication—

to how God is guiding our hearts and shaping us into aware and caring neighbors in God’s love.

Let our hearts sing to the Lord anew.

 

Please join me in a gathering prayer:

Gracious God, we have gathered to sing our praises to you for the great gift of your son who brought the healing light of your gospel that reveals your mercy and its triumph over every evil. We celebrate his birth and sing the ways of your grace that is the hope of all people.  Empower our spirits to be witness to our understanding and attendance to this grace and healing presence in our lives. and may the light of our journey in you become the shining light of joy on us, in us, and through us. In your name, let us pray your prayer, saying : Our father, who art…

 

Like so many others, my childhood's exposure to these beautiful Christmas hymns was my opening to the path of the gospel.

Christmas continues to resonate for our communities focused by their children.

It is fitting that our children light the fourth candle of Advent and kindle ever anew the Christ candle,

 the star of Christmas that comes first by a child to children,

and then by children to every corner of street and place of struggle. It is in this spirit of Christian service we light the Advent Candles. //  

  

Contemporary society ever promotes nostalgia and its mythic Christmas, seasonal sentimentalities of Going Home’s Magic:

I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams.

I’m dreaming of a White Christmas just like the one I used to know.

Here we are as happy olden days, happy golden days of yore.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

Yet these ditties derive and are supported by the transformative power of the birth of the savior child Jesus who is becoming all in all, as the carols we sing this morning testify only a minute portion of the whole and ever growing range of the human soul and history.

Christmas is not just about going back, but mostly about how to reorient to this beautiful story to move ahead./

Long before the birth of Christ the poet-prophet Isaiah of the Exile gave lyrical expression to Israel’s longing for God to decisively intervene when he sang to the people:

 Isaiah 64:1     O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

    so that the mountains would quake at your presence!

It was a long wait.

 

"The season of Advent [concluding today has been] about learning how to wait for God."

 Brian Zahnd notes:

“In our high-tech, high-speed, high-stress age, we're not very good at waiting—

it feels too much like doing nothing.

But it’s not doing nothing. As we wait, we slowly become contemplative enough to discern what God is doing.”

Isaiah knows that God, who created both time and space, is therefore not limited by either.

God can step out of eternity and come as the Lord of Earth and Sky—can come as Emmanuel, God with Us.

Emmanuel can and will demonstrate what Lordship dominion is,

which is not domination, but walking in the way of Jesus that sets people free and calms the furious raging all around.

We long for this calming freedom.

With Isaiah, we sing:

O come, O come, Emmanuel, vv: 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7//

 O come, O come, Emmanuel

and ransom captive Israel,

that mourns in lonely exile here

until the Son of God appear.

Refrain:

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, O Israel.

2 O come, thou Wisdom from on high,

who orderest all things mightily:

to us the path of knowledge show;

and teach us in her ways to go. [Refrain]

4 O come, thou Root of Jesse, free

thine own from Satan’s tyranny;

from depths of hell thy people save

and give them victory o’er the grave. [Refrain]

6 O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer

our spirits by thine advent here;

disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

and death’s dark shadows put to flight. [Refrain]

7 O come, Desire of nations, bind

all peoples in one heart and mind;

bid envy, strife, and discord cease;

fill the whole world with heaven’s peace. [Refrain]

 

The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came (The Presbyterian Hymnal‎ #16)

Oh that you would rend heavens and come down, Isaiah prayed.

Another prophet of the exile in Babyon, Daniel, prayed for the messiah,

and Gabriel, an angel named only thrice in the Bible,  answers him with the prophetic timeline: the 70 weeks!

Gabriel now returns in the Gospel of Luke with a message,

 first to [edited: Zechariah, father] of John the Baptist who is to prepare the announcement of the way of the Lord, who is Jesus come to the world.

Then to Mary, who prays that magnificent and magnifying magnficat: "My soul magnifies the Lord!" (Luke 1:46) Let this pregnancy be done as is your will, God! (Luke 1:38: according to God's word, the Logos, the principle of creation now repairing).

Her Magnificat is the height of OT righteousness: the acceptance of God's will to become

the Ark of Israel. She embodies the witness of the nation of Israel now carried by her womb for the repairing essence of creation.//

1 The angel Gabriel from heaven came,

his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame;

"All hail," said he to meek and lowly Mary,

"most highly favored maiden." Gloria!

2 "I come from heav'n to tell the Lord's decree:

a blessed virgin mother you shall be.

Your Son shall be Immanuel, by seers foretold,

most highly favored maiden." Gloria!

3 Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head;

"To me be as it pleases God," she said.

"My soul shall laud and magnify his holy name."

Most highly favored maiden, Gloria!

4 Of her, Immanuel, the Christ, was born

In Bethlehem, all on a Christmas morn,

and Christian folk throughout the world will ever say,

"Most highly favored maiden." Gloria!

 

(Glory to God Hymnal)  113. Angels We have Heard on High

So Mary knows from the very named Angel who gave Daniel the timeline of the messiah.

 It is now. It is to her.  Yes, Mary knows.

Because of the Daniel 9 prophecy, Judea and Galilee were energized with anticipations of the Messiah.

According to the Roman Historian Josephus, there were about a dozen presumptive messianic pretenders from the first decree through Herod the Awful (who thought he might be the messiah)  to the fall of the temple in 70AD and later. 

Only one was a non-military aspirant,  only one named but misinterpreted by the crowd.

Ps. 85 tells us this awaited figure will speak peace, but the others spoke militarism.

Failed messiahs always speak violence and coercive and authoritarian control.

 

The Daniel 9 chronology delivered by the angel to Daniel contextualizes the gospels of Luke and Matthew and in the letter of Paul to the Galatians (4:2-4): “in the fullness of time...the date set by the Father.”

The gospel of Luke adds that after Mary the shepherds were the first to hear from angels.//

113. Angels We Have Heard on High

1 Angels we have heard on high,

sweetly singing o'er the plains,

and the mountains in reply

echoing their joyous strains:

Refrain:

Gloria, in excelsis Deo!

Gloria, in excelsis Deo!

2 Shepherds, why this jubilee?

Why your joyous strains prolong?

What the gladsome tidings be

which inspire your heav'nly song? [Refrain]

3 Come to Bethlehem and see

Him whose birth the angels sing;

come, adore on bended knee

Christ the Lord, the new-born King. [Refrain]

[4 See Him in a manger laid,

Jesus, Lord of heav'n and earth!

Mary, Joseph, lend your aid,

sing with us our Savior's birth. [Refrain]]

 

 

#145. What Child is This?

The anticipation was high, but the confirmation came to Mary, Joseph and the lowly shepherds.

The spiritual ancestors of the slain Abel—they exemplified his calling so tragically cut short by his brother Cain.

Now God is going to make right that first murder by the life-giving spirit.

The Gospel of Matthew has another sequence to the anticipated countdown for the saving messiah. It begins with a chronology to situate the coming Emmanuel in a human genealogy that includes major figures both related to Abraham and gentiles incorporated into the people of Israel by participation:

the Moabitess Ruth, Bathsheba the wife of the Hittite.

We recall other prominent women who aided the history of Israel:

the midwives Shiphrah and Puah who lied to the evil Pharoah to preserve the baby Moses’ life.

Rahab of Jericho who aided the Israelite’s entry into the promised land of Canaan, again by deceiving its evil king.

Jesus’ ministry was repeatedly characterized by the question: “who do you say I am?”

Everyone since who hears this Christmas story is asked the penultimate existential question:

“Who do you say this Jesus is?”//

 

1 What child is this, who, laid to rest,

on Mary’s lap is sleeping?

Whom angels greet with anthems sweet

while shepherds watch are keeping?

This, this is Christ the King,

whom shepherds guard and angels sing;

haste, haste to bring him laud,

the babe, the son of Mary!

2 Why lies he in such mean estate

where ox and ass are feeding?

Good Christian, fear; for sinners here

the silent Word is pleading.

Nails, spear, shall pierce him through;

the cross be borne for me, for you.

Hail, hail, the Word made flesh,

the babe, the son of Mary!

3 So bring him incense, gold, and myrrh;

come, one and all, to own him.

The King of kings salvation brings;

let loving hearts enthrone him.

Raise, raise the song on high.

The virgin sings her lullaby.

Joy, joy, for Christ is born,

the babe, the son of Mary!

 

#140. Once in Royal David’s City

Being born into the land is disorienting [am ha’aretz] especially when into a brutal and brutalizing regime,

 but the incarnation of the messiah Christ is crucial to understanding who God is,

and he is not represented by the landed arrogates—

the awful hegemons of Rome and Herod and the temple elites wrapping themselves to them.

Symbolic transformations everywhere now come to reign—to rein our minds by new spiritual understandings:

 every thing that made sense will be reversed.

 In the Roman founding myth, Rhea Silvia was violated by the god of war, Mars,

and gave birth to two twin sons: Romulus and Remus who were abandoned to suckle on a she-wolf.  

Romulus killed Remus and the Roman nation shaped its mythic founding in this fratricidal wolf kingdom.

Generational, civilizationed trauma cycles but intensifies from the first murder of Abel until the establishing fratricide of Remus until:

Mary is overshadowed by the God of peace and gives rise to the shepherd redivivus of the sheep kingdom,

for the shepherd’s task was interrupted by Cain but now to go forth uninterrrupting.

The symbolic displacements of Mars, of sexual violence, of predatory wolves, of the divinity claims of Caesar, etc.

should alert us to rereading the two ways of the Book Proverbs and that these are opposites—the Roman way and the way of Christ are not hybridizable. Blendable. [note 2]

Image the baby born into refugees displaced by the imperial demands for a census:

outside the flimsiest door the Roman wolf howling of the absolute pit of history.

 In that predatory howl, A baby cries.

It is that baby’s cry that will tame the howling wolf.

 

For Comes a baby into a swaddllng  company  of marginalized and liminal Jewish Palestinian refugee couple.

Into this moment, the repair of creation is sparked!

Our next hymn, Once in Royal David's City was written for children.

It has a child's heart and is central to my message of how God transforms every human wisdom from the perspective of children.

“Let the Children come to me!” (Matthew 19:14)

Where we have all been asked what I called the penultimate question: who do you say this child is?

The ultimate question, “will you follow his childhood pattern day by day from now on?”//

 

1 Once in royal David’s city

stood a lowly cattle shed,

where a mother laid her baby

in a manger for his bed:

Mary was that mother mild;

Jesus Christ, her little child.

2 He came down to earth from heaven

who is God and Lord of all,

and his shelter was a stable,

and his cradle was a stall;

with the poor and meek and lowly,

lived on earth our Savior holy.

3 Jesus is our childhood’s pattern;

day by day like us he grew;

he was little, weak and helpless;

tears and smiles like us he knew;

and he feels for all our sadness,

and he shares in all our gladness.

4 and our eyes at last shall see him,

through his own redeeming love;

for that child so dear and gentle

is our Lord in heaven above;

and he leads his children on

to the place where he is gone.

 

133. O Come All Ye Faithful (Magi of the Star)

The magi—the 3 kings--were sages who were studying all the literature of the known world.

The gifts they brought to the cradle side were products of the [religious] world system [-- the latter two in accord with Exod. 30]: status and finance (gold [now become charitable--Exod. 35:5]), traded goods of [perfumery] (frankincense), and myrrh's ancient medicine of body part healing.

Their gifts indicate the worldliness of ancient wisdom which could interpret religious calendars but [might] not understand its meaning as beyond the temporal bodily orders of earthly kingdoms.

 As the Book of Esther testifies, the Hebrew scriptures were well-studied by outsiders, and the decrees of the Persian emperors Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes (in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah) reflect too that they, or their religious advisors, were well aware that the descendants of Israel claimed a special relationship with the highest god as the sages would have understood it.

Which these descendants came to know as the one God. (Deut 6:4)

From their studies, These wise student magi thus recognized the “star” of his rising.

They made their decision about what child is this they found.

Herod the Awful interrogated them, and the magi turned back by another route rather than betraying the Christ. (Matt. 2:7, 13)

They rejected Judas’ later path to serve the most bloodthirsty of imperial strategies.

Like the magi, before we grow into the swaddling of peace,  to know of the astonishing and adoring beauty of the Christmas prophecies:

we must cross deserts to serve them!//

1 O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,

O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem!

Come, and behold Him, born the King of angels!

Refrain:

O come, let us adore Him;

O come, let us adore Him;

O come, let us adore Him, Christ, the Lord!

2 God of God, Light of Light,

lo, He abhors not the virgin's womb;

very God, begotten not created; [Refrain]

3 Sing, choirs of angels; sing in exultation;

sing, all ye citizens of heav'n above!

Glory to God, all glory in the highest![Refrain]

4 Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning;

Jesus, to Thee be all glory giv'n!

Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing! [Refrain]

 

 

134. Joy to the World-- [vv. 1, 2, 4]  (Leading to Baptism)

 

Jesus’ grew in wisdom, including by interrogating the ritual authorities and religious elites who later became his chief opponents.

As he came into his adult maturity, he accepted baptism by John,

and the heavens opened with birth imagery of the dove descending (Mark 1: 9-11).

The personality of the messiah has become the essence of king:

 from birth to personality to spiritual essence of heaven come to earth in human form.

This is the message of God's incarnation—the Christian incarnation!.

The site is the Jordan, where the wilderness generation 12 or so C before crossed over to take possession of the land (Joshua 4:19-5:15); Gilgal, where Samuel judged the people (1 Sa 7:16) and where later Saul was crowned king (1 Sam 11:14–15). Many other important events in the declining history of the kingdom of Israel and its prophetic notice took place there [detailed by the reference in note 1, below].

And now Jesus takes possession of the kingdom, to heal it through heaven:

the earthy witness role of Israel is advanced into a heavenly mission to bring the gospel.

And the Gospel brings joy.//

1 Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

Let earth receive her king;

let every heart prepare him room,

and heaven and nature sing,

and heaven and nature sing,

and heaven, and heaven and nature sing.

2 Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!

Let all their songs employ,

while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains

repeat the sounding joy,

repeat the sounding joy,

repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

4 He rules the world with truth and grace,

and makes the nations prove

the glories of his righteousness

and wonders of his love,

and wonders of his love,

and wonders, wonders of his love.

 

119. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

While the exodus generation of Israel led by Moses suffered testing in the desert,

 Jesus withstands the desert testing by the devil. He “binds up the strong man.” (Mark 3:27; Matt. 12:29).

Now king of heaven bearing the dove’s witness and of earth by the defeat of the devil, Jesus does not ride about on white stallions like the triumphal entries of Caesars after their military campaigns.

He rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, meek, not full of himself despite his existential victory because he knows that all too will have to reengage these battles.

The crowd lay palm fronds, and sings “Hosannah” meaning “May God Save!

 Hosannah is now Hark because we are indeed saved—

by the Cross’s supplication prayer of forgiveness in the face of the deepest possible evil without calling for vengeance.

The prayer ratified by his resurrection: Hark! Means listen! Listen for this message, attend to repairing world.

Psalm 33 states: the earth is full of the steadfast love of the LORD.

If you know how to harken to its dominion—the dominion of steadfast love.

Which is revealed by the gentling and peace-enabling power of Jesus.

The images and myths countered in the gospel stories become part of the entire reimaging of the human: the biological, the symbolic, the mythic, the sociological, the religious, etc:

 

"It’s an unwed woman who carries God.

"It’s pagans from the East who recognize God.

"It’s the workers in the field who hear first from God.

"It’s the marginalized neighborhood who welcomes God."

It’s the Jewish baby, born in Judea now called Palestine, "who welcomes all."/

 

Harkening for the gospel, which if you know how look--. Hear, feel, dance-- is everywhere hovering and surrounding,

in the beauty in nature and in our peaceful communities,

 at our tables and on our service to our street corners

or in every culture’s historical literary documents that tell of resisting every form of hegemony and coercion,

And the gospel is that God’s mercy is revealed apart from Law (Rom 3:21),

so that grace structures justice. and not vice versa. You see:

Mercy triumphs over evil. Hark!

Malachi 4:2:

“But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and playfully jump like calves from the stall”

It is the sun, the star that gives growth, that dances in the new day, the grace of providence and NOT a righteousness apart from grace

It’s the SUN of pure grace that is Christ’s dominion.

He is not  SON of the old Canaanite war god wreaking vengeance.

Harken to this hymn’s S-U-N light!//

1 Hark! the herald angels sing,

"Glory to the newborn King:

peace on earth, and mercy mild,

God and sinners reconciled!"

Joyful, all ye nations, rise,

join the triumph of the skies;

with th'angelic hosts proclaim,

"Christ is born in Bethlehem!"

Refrain:

Hark! the herald angels sing,

"Glory to the newborn King"

2 Christ, by highest heaven adored,

Christ, the everlasting Lord,

late in time behold him come,

offspring of the Virgin's womb:

veiled in flesh the Godhead see;

hail th'incarnate Deity,

pleased with us in flesh to dwell,

Jesus, our Immanuel. [Refrain]

3 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.

Mild he lays his glory by,

born that we no more may die,

born to raise us from the earth,

born to give us second birth. [Refrain]

 

122. Silent Night (Sending): 

"Behold, he lies in his manger, Calling to himself Me and you..."

Joyfully shall my heart leap as his wings float ever through/

The incarnation means that human history, embodiment, culture, and virtues matter. Christmas embodies our Hark! for grace’s dove—

hovering, awakening us to grace that cares—for us but also caring by us to those in need:

who will join us in eternity..

God, as creator of space and time, comes to us in God’s own creation of space and time.

God, creator of eye and ear is ever attendant to them and in them, monitoring our experience of the world—the looping of our hearts inside the challenges and joys of this life.

So that this ever-inner attending, outer shaping God addresses and ever shapes our hearts into the keen instrument of peacemaking.

We are by his call becoming ourselves Emmanuel, we are called from the darkest pits of history to become new lights,

To lead our free will shaped by human drives to freely will what God wills.

To lead us to freely and constantly will whatever is good for our struggling neighbor.

 

Embarking into the Christmas silent night—not estranged from our creator,

to recollect and discern our own journey into God’s arms,

into a new tonight’s silent wonder and star-filled awe.

our childhood wonder at the gospel story committed by our adult’s gentled  and grateful craft

to share its blessings.

God is righteous and God is steadfastly merciful.

 That is Christ’s gospel manifest in his path of human life amidst struggle.

The Gospel is the child’s power over human strategies,

 the lamb that tames the wolf,

the Nazorean (Matt 2:23) service displacing the Caesarean myths of subordination and coercion.

 Our nights are now silent of the howls of accusation and threat.

We are freed from the calls for vengeance.

Adam is no longer in the dark, Adam is no longer driven by haste and chaos.

Adam’s murdered shepherd son Abel lives on in Christ.

The decadence of trauma-making civilization comes to an end in Him.

And now: Let us lean into—let us harken to-- this night’s silent holiness.

In this we sing with the angels.

By the gospel won by him, we are peacemakers at rest with God.

 Through Christ our Lord, Amen. //

 Silent Night

-----------

Recapitulation:

The incarnation means human history matters, that embodiment and culture matter, that virtues matter.

Christmas incarnates our Hark! for Jesus’ and now for grace—the harkening to his angel wing—this dove—hovering above and through our world, awakening us to grace and care.

--how trom eternity, God has brought spiritual creatures into existence in the only way such creatures could be formed: by calling them to ascend out of the darkness of nonbeing into the infinite beauty of the divine nature.

And God, the creator of space and time not only MAY, but DOES come to us in the time and space he has created. God, who created eye and ear knows and is ever IN them monitoring how we attend the world, this creator—ever creating God—knows how to address each and every one of us by our hearts God that is renewing.

 We are becoming  Emmanuel,

as Isaiah prayed and as Gabriel mediated between Daniel and Mary.

Rending the heaven to come down to lift us into mercy and forgiveness so that we too becoming forgiven mercymakers.

Now we embark into a new kind of silent night—not a night estranged from our creator,

but to recollect and discern our own journey into God’s arms,

 into a new holy peace of tonight’s silent wonder and star-filled awe.

And in our recollections of our childhood wonder at this blessed gospel story,

let us know to the depths of our hearts and with great gratitude that we commit to share our blessings and our forgiveness with others.

For this is the gospel: God came down in Jesus to walk our paths in the most evil darkness humankind has ever known:

the perversion of religion enmeshed with the ultimate brutality of the imperial Roman state.

On the cross, surrounded by evil and enemies, Jesus made supplication: and because he was God’s son, that supplicating prayer had cosmic effect and revealed what Paul says in Romans--that God’s righteousness works apart from the Law.

God is righteous and God is steadfastly merciful.

 Mercy triumphs over evil. Christ is the gospel that manifests that path of human life amidst struggle.

It is the child’s power over human strategies,

 the lamb that tames the wolf, the Nazorean religion over the Caesarean myth.

 Our nights are now silent of the howls of accusation and threat.

We are freed from the calls for vengeance. Adam is no longer in the dark, Adam is no longer driven by haste and chaos.

Adam’s murdered shepherd son Abel lives on in Christ. The decadence of trauma comes to an end in Him.

 And now: Let us lean into—let us harken to-- this night’s silent holiness. For

Christmas is indeed truly here and is becoming everywhere.

---

[1]   Kotter, W. R. (1992). Gilgal (Place). In D. N. Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Vol. 2, pp. 1022–1023). Doubleday.

[2]  Olds, Douglas B. Architectures of Grace in Pastoral Care: Virtue as the Craft of Theology beyond Strategic and Authoritative Biblicism. Wipf and Stock, 2023 (136-7):

Bible passages rule out a third-way syncretism (heterodox hybridization) that blends agon with shalom.[n. 1] Especially in its moral center, the book of Proverbs, the Old Testament speaks of but rules out blending the dichotomy of paths—the way of the good and justice and the way of wickedness (Prov 2:20–22). In chapters 10–23, Proverbs contrasts the two ways of strife and righteous peace, death and life in B-A and A-B structures. Often imaged as walking along two disparate ways (דֶּרֶךְ derekh, including the pedagogical path of conduct per Prov 22:6), this dichotomous structure formalizes the explicit contrast between (as opposed to hybridization of) shalom and agon. No diversion is allowed from the right path (Prov 3:6; 8:20; Proverbs 4). The good is straight and straightaway to be followed. The one true way does not admit a third-way syncretism between the truth and error, between the straight and what strays. We are never to waver from the one path of truth and peace—not “to the right or to the left” (Deut 5:32–33; 17:11; 28:14; Josh 1:7; 23:6; Prov 4:25–27; 2 Kgs 22:2; Cf. Prov 10:9, 17; 12:28) by applying the techniques of agon in the attempt to deliver oneself from agon. To do so is to live inside death-dealing clouds of deception, to wander into the quick-mud and become trapped...

---

 n. 1: Agon is physically competitive and compelling strife, valorized in pagan epics like the Homeric as the arete (excellence) of combative cultures. Shalom is the Hebrew Bible’s alternative to pagan agon—it is the state of a cultural collective living with secure attachment to its God and God’s gracious provision. The state of shalom is peaceful, with its civilian constituents living with a wholeness of body, soul, and God’s spirit.

In the biblical binary of the two ways, there is no centrism: “Do not envy the violent and do not choose any of their ways” (Prov. 3:31).