Old Song, New Beginnings

Christmas eve 2019

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, born to us this day, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

We love beginnings. I think this is why people love birth announcements and weddings so much. After all, who doesn't love to eat wedding cake and hold cute babies (especially when you can give them back to their parents…!)?

Christmas movies and making candy, babies and weddings all take us back to a time that seemed simpler and happier. That’s probably we like to remember beginnings so much – they are so full of potential. They’re not messy or complicated with real life problems. We can remember the good stuff and forget about the bad.

Maybe this is why we also remember opening lines of our favorite stories: “Once upon a time” and “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” “It was a dark and stormy night.” “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

I wonder if you would recognize where this one is from: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

This is the start of the greatest story of all time, a story could not be contained one just one book and could not take place in the span of one lifetime. It is a story that begins at the very beginning and tells of a God, who created a world that was good and full of life and wanted to share it with us. Even though we tend to mess thing up God’s nice beginnings, over and over and over again, not fulfilling our God-given potential. So, God began a new chapter to the story. And this one also starts with the words, “in the beginning.”

In an example of divinely sanctioned plagiarism, this is how John chooses to tell us the Christmas story. There are no angels or shepherds or censuses or managers or even Mary and Joseph. Instead, John takes us back to the very beginning, to the dawn of time, to tell Jesus’ birth story like a dramatic crane shot that zooms out and out and out until you can see all of creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Which you will hear when we light our candles later this evening.

It would be pretty hard to imagine a Christmas Eve service without lighting candles and singing “Silent Night.” It would also be almost as hard to imagine Christmas without the hymn that follows, as we extinguish our candles and bring up all the lights – singing the epic, Joy to the World!

Now THAT is a memorable first line to a song, isn’t it! Da da da da…. And you’ve got that song stuck in your head all day. This marks the 300ths year this song has been in existence! Looking pretty good, I might say, Joy to the World! What is your secret? Is it the catchy tune, or the Christmas cheer-filled lyrics? Well, it’s probably NOT the words, because this beloved Christmas hymn isn’t actually about Christmas! Or at least, not originally.

Yes, you did hear me correctly. Joy to the World actually about the end of the world: the second coming of Jesus. Christmas is the first coming of Jesus, remember. If you take a moment to flip to the back page of your bulletin, and scan the words, you’ll see that there are a few things missing here too – there is no baby Jesus, no Mary and Joseph, no manger or animals, no shepherds.

So, why are we singing it 300 years later, at just about every Christmas eve and Christmas day service? Well, this hymn IS based on Psalm 98, which is technically the Psalm that is appointed on Christmas. You can see why it’s chosen for today – this is a BIG celebration, and all of creation participates in the joy! This joy was captured by both the lyrics written by Isaac Watts, British non-conformist Christian, and the tune arranged by American Lowell Mason, based on a tune by Handel – the guy better known for composing “The Messiah.”

Isaac Watts was a hymn-writing powerhouse in his day, but he was better known for classics like “When I Survey the Wonderous Cross,” “Our God our Help in Ages Past” “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed” ….you know, all that cheery Lent stuff. While this one man is credited with over 700 hymns… THIS is the one we remember. He probably would be aghast that it so necessary our Christmas eve worship services, since this of course was not intended to be a Christmas hit Though you really can’t deny that it helps us make a joyful noise to the Lord!

But sometimes, our hearts just don’t seem to be in a “Joy to the world” frame of mind. Perhaps getting here to Christmas has been a struggle. Illness, family feuds, stress, grief, depression, anxiety, all try to zap away any feeling of joy we strive to have. Singing Joy at Christmastime can feel extra painful, and extra hollow.

But it is when things look their most frightening or frustrating, when the way that took you here has disappeared and the way forward is still hidden… at the time of the year when the night is the longest - THIS is when our hope is born.

This baby who was born this night to literally embody the love of the God who created us, to walk with us, to dry our tears, and to know what it is to be human, to show us that “Love has Come.” This baby’s parents had a hard journey ahead of them for him to be born in that “Little Town of Bethlehem.” He was born, not in a palace or among the best medical care money can buy - this special baby was born in a cave where animals were kept. This baby’s first crib was the only thing available – “away in a manger,” an animal feeding trough with hay.

The night this baby was born, shepherds watching their sheep in field by night were waiting for the sun rise. Instead – “Hark, The herald Angels Sing,” shocking the shepherds their shining angel army making joyful noise and tell them the good news – a baby named Jesus was born, and he would usher in a new kind of kingdom, one based on love.  And much later, the wise men from far away followed the leading of a “star of wonder,” which they could only follow at night. … “westward leading,” On and on and on through those long nights over many, many miles, to find the child whom they had been waiting for.

[Maybe you’re done with waiting for dawn to show up, like the shepherds. … because you have done enough waiting… waiting in the doctor’s office, killing time in the hospital waiting rooms drinking bad coffee, perched in borrowed chairs, waiting in the night by the bedside of someone you love. It is here, in this night, as the writer of Psalm 98 put is, "the LORD has made His salvation known. " (v. 2) It is here, on this night, that God’s promise to be with us always. Like a song that you just can’t get out of your head, and your heart.

A choir director of at a women’s prison once shared that she wanted to give a gift to the incarcerated women she leads every week. Since the prison prohibited physical gifts, she wrote them a song instead, also based on the same Psalm as Joy to the World. Her song went, “Sing a new song… sing a song of hope. For the song that you sing will set you free… it will be with you always wherever you go.” And so, Joy to the World was reborn with a new beginning. (Story from Here my Voice, A prison prayer book) ]

God has a new beginning in store, and it happens right here, tonight - God’s word became flesh and living among us. The word made his home with us. He bought a house in the neighborhood and moved in next door. God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that whoever believes in him should not die but have eternal life, to quote from another famous verse in the Gospel of John.

O Come, all you faithful, we sing old songs to remind us that God is the song that is in our hearts. We might be too preoccupied, too worried, and too burdened to hear sometimes, but we still carry this song in our hearts as a reminder of this promise, that a new song is on the horizon. “Let every heart prepare him room and let heaven and nature sing.” And let us join in the song too, this night and always. Thanks be to God. Amen.