God Bless Us Everyone
Christmas Eve 2008 - Communion Service
Christmas Eve 2008 - Communion Service
Let us pray: O God, we gather in the presence of the manger, a powerful and simple symbol of your presence among us - as a child, as vulnerable, as scared. And yet we find in you strength, comfort and courage. May these words reflect the mystery of that truth. Amen.
It seems that each year as Christmas approaches, a particular piece of music sets a tone for me for the coming season. I began to notice this situation a few years ago, and accepted it as a sign of the ways in which we are called to see familiar things in new ways, and accept new things and the perspective they bring. You see, the piece of music is not always a new one. In fact, it is often a Christmas Carol - a piece of music I’ve sung countless times before, but some years a particular carol, or even a line in a carol seems to haunt me and describe new insight and new ways of understanding. Other years, it might be a popular song that I’ve heard before, but which pops up on my personal radar in ways that I’ve not experienced before. Still other years it will be a new Christmas song - perhaps a less familiar carol, or something written by a popular artist. Let me give a few examples for you. Several years ago, strangely enough, it was the popular classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. You may have heard it the past few Christmases as a particular favourite of school choirs, especially with the added commentary that seems to get added to it in present day performance. I think you know what I mean - join in any reindeer games (like Monopoly). The insight for me that particular year was that the story of Rudolph was really a theological message about inclusion and giftedness. Another year it was John Lennon’s Happy Christmas which if you listen carefully is a call for peace. In fact, the full title of the piece is Happy Christmas (War is Over). Still other years the music was “The Huron Carol” and “Silent Night”. Like scripture, where new meaning can be discovered no matter how many times a particular passage is read, it seems that many Christmas carols and songs carry with them a meaning that runs deeper than the even the songwriter had imagined when the words were first scrawled on a piece of parchment, a napkin or typed into a word processor.
Now, I don’t give credit for this “Christmas song of the year” in my life completely over to randomness or the workings of the spirit. I’m sure that in some ways my song of the year is dictated by popular culture as well. My choice is dependent in part on the fact that I’ve heard the piece a few times over the radio or perhaps in a Christmas concert. However, the spirit works in many ways and who am I to say in what ways and how it is guided. It would be foolish of me, someone who is constantly inviting people to be open to the many surprising and unexpected ways that the presence of the Holy Spirit appears, to suggest that there any restrictions on how God’s presence is to be known.
Like other years, there was indeed a Christmas song of the year for me. It was a new one, but with an old and familiar title. I first heard it early in December.
The title is perhaps the most well-known line of a well-known Christmas Classic - the words of Tiny Tim, repeated in the very last words of Charles Dickens famous Christmas masterpiece A Christmas Carol.
Maria Dunn, an Edmonton folk singer who excels in writing music with a celtic lilt that hearkens back to such times as those of Dickens and his characters has echoed the words in her contribution to a modern day depiction of Dickens classic known as The Carol Project. Yellowknifers were privileged to host the musicians of The Carol Project a few weeks ago, and like many of the ways in which the Holy Spirit breaks into our lives unexpectedly, such was the case this time for me as well. We had the tickets because we bought the season package. Would we have gone anyway?. I hope so, but I don’t know so. And of course we were blessed to be there and hear the work of many different singers and songwriters skilled in many different styles of music. But perhaps iconically, the most memorable of the songs is the one that also reminds us that we who were in attendance were blessed by what we heard there, and that blessing is the work of God and that blessing often comes in surprise and wonder, breaking us away from our expectations and normal patterns.
Perhaps you weren’t able to attend. Perhaps you need to be reminded of the words. I heard them again on Monday afternoon, and I repeat them here for you. They say better what I would wish to say this Christmas Eve than I could say myself.
When the world is feeling cold and the sky more grey than blue
And the snow it seems to fall heavy heartedly on you
Time to count your blessings though seemingly but few
Time to take a look at what's within and without you
For health is more than walking
And wealth much more than gold
But kindness overwhelming as a gentle hand to hold
So God bless us everyone with the riches of the soul
And may hopelessness ne'er be the demon darkening our door
When the world is feeling cold and the sky more grey than blue
And the snow it seems to lie heavy heartedly on you
Remember when you see us: the hungry, lame, the meek
Who would feed us, heal us, keep us is the same one that you seek
For joy is more than dancing
Good cheer much more than wine
But love is all enfolding as beholding hearts entwined
When the world is feeling cold and the sky more grey than blue
And the snow it seems to lie heavy heartedly on you
To the counting house of blessings may we often chance to stray
And in company together spend many’s the night and day