Sample of Carols for the Newborn King
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Carols for the Newborn King
Sermons for Midweek Advent Devotions by Rev. Silas R. Krueger
1. FROM HEAV'N ABOVE TO EARTH I COME
If there
is anything that has called our attention more than anything else to the fact
that Christmas is coming, it is the music that has surrounded us during this
season. There are the decorations, of
course. Stores and streets and homes
graphically display the fact that the holiday season is here. There are the advertisements in the papers,
urging us to buy products that will be "just right" for the people on
our Christmas lists. But more than
anything else, there is the music.
Music
has always been an integral part of human societies. It can be used to express strong emotions or to "soothe the
savage breast". It can stir up soldiers for battle or draw lovers close to
each other. It helps us express our
worship and prayer and praise to God – and surely sets the tone for the great
religious celebrations such as Christmas.
The
music that we have been surrounded with so far, as we move toward Christmas, has largely
been the secular variety of Christmas carols.
They speak about the joy and merriment of the season; they tell the sort
of "fairy-tale" stories that have attached themselves to Christmas;
they emphasize the warm feelings within families and between friends – but they
never really get to the point about Christmas.
If Christ is mentioned at all it is just in passing – or his birth is
sentimentalized as an encouragement to practice the "spirit of
goodwill" of the season.
I
don't know about you, but I have been looking forward to the time when, in our
worship together, we begin to sing some of the great hymns and songs of
Christmas. They do get to the
point. They help us focus on the fact
that our Christmas, as followers of the King whose birthday we will
celebrate, is a most sacred time.
They take us to the center of our faith in Christ. That's why this year in our midweek Advent
Devotions we will consider some CAROLS
FOR THE NEWBORN KING. We turn to
the pen of Martin Luther for the first one:
From Heav'n Above to Earth I Come. In its classic, simple form, the song
celebrates these great truths: first,
that God has come down to earth; second, that we may now go up to heaven.
In the first five stanzas it is the
angel who speaks to us – the angel who brought the announcement of the Savior's
birth to shepherds in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night. The shepherds first reacted in fear. Wouldn't you? But the angel calmed their fears and pointed them instead to
great joy.
Typically,
Martin Luther focused on the Gospel – the Good News brought by the angel
herald. In our English version of his
German poem we hear the angel say,
From heav'n above to earth I
come
To bear good news to ev'ry
home;
Glad tidings of great joy I
bring
Whereof I now will say and
sing:
To you this night is born a
child
Of Mary, chosen virgin mild;
This little child of lowly
birth
Shall be the joy of all the
earth.
This is the Christ, our God
and Lord,
Who in all need shall aid
afford;
He will himself your Savior
be
From all your sins to set
you free.
Notice,
Luther is ready to take some liberty with the angel's words as they are
recorded in Scripture. Call it
"poetic license" or "theological license" – what he did is
let us celebrate the whole truth of Christmas by adding details from
other parts of the Bible account. For
example, the angel did not say it to the shepherds, but the song has the angel
say the child is "of Mary, chosen virgin mild." The angel pointed the shepherds to the birth
of "a Savior, Christ the Lord," but Luther's song draws on other Scripture
to say, "This is the Christ, our God and Lord." Thus, in this great Christmas hymn we
celebrate the wonder that it was none other than our God himself who came to
earth to be our Savior. And we remember the "how" of it: that he humbled himself to be born of woman,
in a unique virgin-conception and birth, to accomplish this as Jesus
Christ. Isn't that the message God sent
his angel to get across to the shepherds – and to us?
Luther
has the angel messenger speak clearly also about the results of Jesus'
birth:
He will on you the gifts
bestow
Prepared by God for all
below,
That in His kingdom, bright
and fair,
You may with us His glory
share.
Praise God! – that surely is the end result we need,
and the end result the Savior came to bring us! The Bible says, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has
entered into the mind of man, the things God has prepared for those who love
him!"
Luther
did not neglect the sign given by the angels to the shepherds by which they
could validate his words and know they had found the Christ.
These are the tokens ye
shall mark:
The swaddling clothes and manger dark.
Then he goes beyond the angel's announcement again
to remind us again just who this baby, born in such humble circumstances, is:
There ye shall find the Infant
laid
By whom the heavens and
earth were made."
That's a
momentous truth with which to end our
listening to the angel. It is God
our Creator who has come down to earth to be our Savior! We rejoice to hear that news again tonight
in our church – and we surely want it to be heard clearly in our homes in this
holy season.
Luther
wrote this Christmas song in 1534, nine years after he was married to his
Katie. He wrote it, not particularly as
a church song, but as a Christmas song for his family to sing – to be
part of their celebration at home.
Luther and Katie had six children, and each year Luther tried to come up
with a way that would help his children see the real meaning of Christmas. Many say that he was the originator of the
Christmas tree as part of the celebration in his home. It was the year in which the last of his six
children was born that Luther wrote From
Heav'n Above -- to teach
his children the great truths of Christmas. And you don't have to sing this
song too many times to agree that he achieved his objective. The song lays the great truths of our
salvation before us – and does so in ways that even children can
understand. No wonder it has touched
the hearts of Christian adults and children for more than 450 years.
In
his song Luther did not overlook the fact that the shepherds acted on the Good
News, found the Babe, worshiped him, and then spread the Good News to
others. In his song we join the
shepherds in going to Bethlehem to worship at the manger. Then the stanzas lead us in our response to
this saving event that assures us that, by God's grace, we now may go up to
heaven. First, we welcome Jesus:
Welcome to earth, Thou noble
Guest,
Through whom the sinful
world is blest!
Then we marvel at his humility and love and consider
our appropriate response:
Thou com'st to share my
misery;
What thanks shall I return
to Thee?
And we answer our question:
Were earth a thousand times
as fair,
Beset with gold and jewels
rare,
It yet were far too poor to
be
A narrow cradle, Lord, for
Thee.
And thus, dear Lord, it
pleaseth Thee
To make this truth quite
plain to me.
That all the world's wealth,
honor, might
Are naught and worthless in
Thy sight.
We
don't forget that what Jesus wants from us is our hearts, given to him
happily in faith and love because he has saved us from death and hell
and given us new life here and in heaven.
In what is probably the best known and the favorite stanza of the song,
we sing:
Ah, dearest Jesus, holy
Christ,
Make Thee a bed, soft,
undefiled,
Within my heart, that it may
be
A quiet chamber kept for
Thee.
Luther did not forget that the host of heaven's angels joined the heavenly messenger of Good News in praising God for his gift of salvation. And when we have heard and believed, and can't be silent either, but must praise our God, we may be confident that the angels are joining us in singing. What better way to praise God than with a CAROL FOR OUR NEWBORN KING?
We remember that the Good News is for
others to hear, as well as for praise to God. So, in the words of
Luther's hymn, we sing:
My heart for very joy doth
leap,
My lips no more can silence
keep;
I, too, must sing with
joyful tongue
That sweetest ancient
cradle-song:
Glory to God in highest
heaven
Who unto us His Son hath
given!
While angels sing with pious
mirth
A glad new year to all the
earth.
To help
us fully to enjoy and be blessed by this Christmas hymn it might help if we
were to sing it the way Luther and his family did. Luther would have some friend dress up like an angel and sing the
first five verses – bringing the angel's announcement. Then a couple of people dressed like
shepherds would sing verses six and seven, which say what the shepherds might
have said to one another after hearing the angel. Then he and his wife and children would join in singing the rest
of the fifteen stanzas he wrote. Acting
it out in this way would dramatically take us in our singing back to Bethlehem
to be with the shepherds as they heard the angel and found the Christchild.
On
the other hand, that might give us the impression that Christmas was just an
ancient event to be remembered – and Christmas is much more than
that! We sing CAROLS FOR OUR NEWBORN
KING in our churches and in our homes because Christmas is for here and now. The Savior came and lived and died and rose
again some 2000 years ago, and we are glad to know that all he came to do was
fully accomplished. But he is born anew
in us every Christmas, and he always brings us assurance that through
faith in him we may now go up to heaven to live with him forever.
"A glad new year to all the earth!" It's true indeed. How good to be able to hear about it – and to sing about it – once again.
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