Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Palestine, TX

Once in Royal David’s City -

One of the great Christmas Eve traditions of the British people is the Cambridge University Festival of Lessons and Carols. The first hymn sung in that service is “Once in Royal David’s City.” The hymn begins in the stillness of the candlelit chapel of King’s College, with the solo voice of a young boy singing, “Once in royal David’s city stood a lowly cattle shed . . .” But by the end of the hymn, the whole choir and congregation are singing out, with full organ accompaniment, “Not in that poor lowly stable . . . shall we see Him, but in heaven . . .

” What a way to communicate through music the whole point of Christmas!

The reason for the season is this: the baby boy born of Mary is also the incarnate Son of God Almighty!

The Savior of the Nations, Jesus the Christ, wasn’t born in a castle, a palace, or some ritzy neighborhood of a great world-class city. Emperor Augustus in faraway Rome didn’t send a birthday gift. Governor Quirinius of Syria didn’t publish a birth announcement. Jesus wasn’t even born in Jerusalem, the capital city of His own people, the Jews. He was born in “a lowly cattle shed,” with “a manger for His bed.”

There was nothing about the manger scene that first Christmas to suggest that people on an island of the British Isles, thousands of miles away, would be singing about it two thousand years later in a language not yet developed. But the last stanza of the hymn points us to the great mystery of who this baby in the lowly stable really is. When we see Jesus face-to-face, it won’t be like Mary saw Him that first night, or Joseph, or even the shepherds. We won’t see a delicate infant in swaddling cloths, dependent on Mary and Joseph for everything. We’ll see Jesus “set at God’s right hand on high.” We’ll see Him as His brothers and sisters, with us shining like stars, crowned with the crown Jesus won for us at His death.

Stille Nacht / Silent Night -

No Christmas Eve service would be complete for most of us without the hymn “Silent Night.” But this hymn, as popular as it is now, had a humble beginning. It was written in the nation of Austria, in a small village called Oberndorf near Salzburg. In 1816, Pastor Joseph Mohr a catholic priest spent Christmas Eve visiting the modest home of a woodchopper and his wife, who had just given birth to a baby. Inspired by the miracle of the birth, Mohr struggled home through the snowdrifts and spent the night writing a poem. Mohr, an assistant pastor at St. Nicholas Kirche, showed organist Franz Gruber the six-stanza poem he had written in 1816. He asked Gruber to write a melody and guitar arrangement for the poem. Gruber composed the tune on December 24, 1818. After a hasty rehearsal, during Christmas Mass, while Gruber played his guitar, the two men sang "Stille Nacht" for the first time. The St. Nicholas choir repeated the last two lines of each verse. Gruber wrote for guitar, since the kirche, or church organ was broken. This song bears many features of Austrian folk music.

The hymn begins with the most intimate of Christmas scenes: Mary, holding the Holy Infant, so “tender and mild.” Paintings of the Madonna and Child, Mary holding Jesus, are found in art galleries around the world. Maybe that’s because people of every nation on earth can relate to the image of a mother holding her firstborn child. People of every tribe and tongue can imagine the emotions and love felt at that moment, especially so if you’re a parent yourself!

But the hymn doesn’t stay in the stable with Mary and Jesus. It goes on to end with the perspective of eternity. This baby is “Son of God, love’s pure light” and “Lord” already at His birth.” Pastor Mohr and Headmaster Gruber, the Austrians who wrote the hymn, don’t want us to stay in the stable staring at Mary and the baby Jesus. They want us to praise the fact that this baby’s birth is “the dawn of redeeming grace!”

This Jesus, this Savior of the nations, was born from woman in time and from His Father from all eternity. The sweet baby in Mary’s arms will defeat the enemies of God and man and end the reign of death over us all.

Angels We Have Heard on High -

The hymn “Angels We Have Heard on High” is an old French hymn, possibly dating in some form to before the Reformation. It was probably sung in the day when Latin was still the only truly acceptable language in the Church, but when people also wanted to sing a song in their own tongue. This hymn is one of the first bilingual hymns. Even in our translation, we sing the stanzas in English and the refrain in Latin, much as the French would have sung the stanzas in their own tongue and the refrain as “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” as we do.

Our sinful desire to make ourselves gods caused the Lord to confuse our languages. Remember the tower of Babel incident? If it hadn’t been for that, there’d be no need for translators at the United Nations! Of course, if it hadn’t been for sin, there’d be no United Nations either, because there would be only one nation in the world under God. Singing in different languages reminds us that, in heaven, Christians of every language on earth will sing praises together around the throne of God and of His Lamb, Jesus Christ, who takes away our sin.

“Angels We Have Heard on High” contrasts the singing of the angels and the lofty mountains with the call to worship of the lowly shepherds. What a mixed congregation! The noble and the peasant, the celestial generals and the terrestrial privates of God’s army, the high and mighty and the poor and lowly—all have come together to sing the praises of the One born in Bethlehem. There is something moving about our lowly voices being joined together in song with the voices of God’s army, His heavenly host.

Savior of the Nations, Come –

“Savior of the Nations, Come” was written by a pastor from a “nation” that no longer exists! Ambrose, who wrote the hymn, was the bishop, or pastor, of Milan in the fourth century. At the time, Milan was part of the Roman Empire, even though now we think of Milan as an Italian city. Ambrose wrote the hymn to teach the scriptural truth that Jesus is both God and man. This baby was born to save not only the Jews but all people of every nation on earth. Even though the song was originally written in, a language no nation speaks any more, Latin. “Savior of the Nations, Come” has been translated into numerous languages and is still being sung around the world. Martin Luther translated it into German for his own congregations to sing.

Most of us were born and raised and still live our lives in one country or nation. But more and more often, people move away from their countries of birth and spend time in different places with different languages and customs. Our Lord Jesus Christ is God and Savior of every person, in every one of those nations on earth. Some of the nations, like Ambrose’s Roman Empire, have come and gone. Some have not yet arisen. But whether the nations are in the past, the present, or the future, Jesus is Lord of all of them. He loves them all and desires that all their people come to trust in Him. Jesus saved them all by giving up His own life as a sacrifice for the sin of the human race. By His death on the cross, Jesus has taken people who speak different languages, have different customs, and live in different parts of the world and made them all members of a new nation: the Church of Jesus Christ.