Thinking Anew: ‘Hear again the message of the angels’

In a recent radio interview, John Rutter, the distinguished composer and arranger, said that Christmas starts for him when he hears the opening verse of Once in Royal David’s City, sung unaccompanied by a boy soprano – “innocent and angelic” – at the Christmas Eve Service of Nine Lessons and Carols broadcast from King’s College Cambridge. This somewhat formal hymn (no Ding Dongs here) was written by Cecil Frances Humphreys who was born at 25 Eccles Street, Dublin, in 1818. In 1833 her family moved to Strabane in Co Tyrone where among other writings she published Hymns for Little Children which included this hymn destined to become known and sung across the Christian world. She married the Rev William Alexander, who later became Archbishop of Armagh.

The Service of Nine Lessons and Carols has its origins in Cornwall where in 1880 the local bishop arranged a carol service hoping to attract “revellers out of the pubs and into church by offering a religious celebration of Christmas”. Some things never change.

In 1918 the service was introduced to King’s College Cambridge by the Dean, Eric Milner-White. The Bidding Prayer sets the scene, inviting us to “hear again the message of the angels and in heart and mind go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which has come to pass.”

In his interview John Rutter choked a little as he quoted the section of the Bidding Prayer: “Lastly let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore, and in a greater light, that multitude which no one can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh and with whom in the Lord Jesus we are one for evermore” – words that speak to many as they remember those “we have loved long since and lost awhile”, family and friends who gave us memories to treasure.

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Not everyone has good memories of Christmas. Some years ago, I visited a young man from another jurisdiction who was serving a long sentence in Mountjoy prison for serious crime. It was Christmas week and I remember talking with him about his early life and asking what the family did for Christmas. Nothing was his answer. None of the things many of us would consider normal because for his parents Christmas meant getting drunk so he and his sister from an early age did the same. No Christmas dinner, no presents, no family gathering, just bad memories, and there are many like him. As I left the prison, and the great metal gates closed behind me, I felt compelled to drive to the home of my happy childhood where I stood and thanked God for my good memories and those who made them possible.

But Christmas is not just about memories. It is about the here and now of life, that ever-present mixture of happiness and despair, joy and sadness. More importantly it is an emphatic assertion that we are never alone whatever our circumstances because we are children of the God who is love and who is present to us and with us in every loving moment shared or remembered, a kiss, an embrace, a hug from a grandchild, a warm handshake. Christmas is about Emmanuel – God with us in every situation, even in a prison cell.

Some talk about “it” being over for another year once Christmas Day ends and begin thinking of January sales or summer holidays. That’s rather like receiving a gift only to admire the packaging while ignoring the gift itself.

Fr Richard Rohr suggests it is for each of us to make a choice: “We, like Bethlehem itself, are too tiny to imagine greatness within us, but God always hides inside littleness and seeming insignificance, so only the humble and honest can find him. God appears at the edges, it seems. We do not have to see God if we do not want to. God trusts our desiring and lets us do all the discovering.”