Singing at Christmas
Text: Luke 2:1-20
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There’s something about singing that transcends what we are able to fully understand. The combination of music and words, the use of the human voice as a musical instrument, the way it taps into our memory, how it causes actual physical and chemical reactions inside our bodies—there’s no great explanation for how these things all come together and affect us the way that singing does. So it should be no surprise that whenever we see the people of God rejoicing over something in Scripture, they’re not satisfied to simply express their joy and gratitude with speech or with musical notes alone. No, word and music are combined into song.
In the perfection of Eden, Adam sings when he first sees Eve. At the shores of the Red Sea, Israel sings about the Lord’s triumph over Pharaoh and his forces who were racing to destroy them. The prophets and sages—Isaiah, Jeremiah, King David, King Solomon—they all distilled their praise into song. Through the weeks of Advent, we gathered here to examine the songs sung as the fulfillment of the promise of Messiah inched closer and closer. John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah; Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel; Mary, the mother of our Lord; saints and prophets all sang about the coming of the Lord, the light of His arrival growing brighter by the day.
And so tonight we hear the song of the angels to complete this growing concert of praise. “Glory to God in the highest,” they sing, “And on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased!” It’s a song that the Church sets aside for the season of Advent, those weeks before Christmas, as we anticipate it being sung with full hearts and voices tonight. The glory of Christmas shines bright and we can’t help but take up the song again, “Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth!”
But what is that glory of God? Where can we see it? For the shepherds watching their flocks by night outside Bethlehem, we might say that when the first angel appeared and the light of the Lord’s glory shone around them and they were sore afraid, that there is the glory. But that was not it, for in their fear there was no peace. We might say that it was in the full choir of angels arriving to sing that new song, as they had once sung “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth” in the temple centuries before, when Isaiah, the mighty seer, saw the Lord seated in majesty. But that was not it either, for if it were, the shepherds would have remained in that glorious place, the peace of the Lord would have settled on them to abide then and there.
No, the glory of the Lord is not found in the things that we would assume could contain His splendor—shining light and thunderous rumblings, strength and majesty and awe. The peace of the Lord is not found in impressive displays that shake the soul to its core. Rather, look to where the angels are pointing with their song: “You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” Look to where the shepherds run to behold the true glory of the Lord: “Let us go over to Bethlehem to see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And look at what they find when they arrive at the place the song of the angels had directed them, the place foretold by the songs of the prophets: “And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.”
The glory of the Lord is found hidden in an infant wrapped in strips of scrap linen. His greatest glory is found in the One who has come to live a life alongside mortal lives, a boy born to a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law. The glory of the Lord—immense and infinite and eternal as it is—is found tucked away in the tiny body and blood of the little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay. It’s hard for our eyes to see, impossible even, and yet there it is. The Lord has never felt the need to satisfy the visual expectations of humans—we think in too limited of ways for Him, expecting glory and wisdom and power to look and sound as we would have them. But our God is different.
For that we give thanks tonight. We sing. We sing a lot. It’s a service of lessons and carols, after all. We come together and unite our song with Mary and the shepherds, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, with saints and prophets, martyrs and sages and poets. We sing of the glory that can never be matched, hidden in a manger. We sing of the salvation found in the tiny body of this Savior, who will grow as all boys do to adulthood. We sing of the end of sins and sorrows, the end of thorns infesting the ground, because of what this Lord will accomplish on the cross. We sing of the glory hidden in a little bread and wine, a little water, some ink splashed on a page, words of forgiveness proclaimed by a man sent to do that job. For in those little things, as in the manger, as in swaddling strips of scrap linen, we find the glory of salvation, the glory of our Savior’s body and blood, the glory of forgiveness, the glory of a new life with God—all hidden, but there nonetheless. And so we do as our ancestors in the faith have done: we combine words of truth, words of God, words of salvation, with the gift of music, and we sing. We sing of glory to God in the highest, stored up in those unexpected places. We sing of peace for His people on earth, the peace that comes from knowing our God is with us. We sing. In the name of Jesus, the Word made flesh. Amen.
