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HARK! THE HERALD ANGELS SING

Songs of the Season, Part 3

Luke 2:1-14

December 17, 2006 – Third Sunday in Advent

Pastor Bob Sanders

This is the third Sunday in Advent and we continue with our series on the “Songs of the Season” – the great Christmas carols we love to sing.  We’re thinking about their history and the powerful ways they convey the truths of Scripture about the coming of Jesus into our world.  My hope is that we’ll better understand these carols, that we’ll sing them with deeper meaning, and that we’ll memorize a few more verses as we go along. 

We started a couple weeks ago with “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” and then last week we looked at “Joy to the World.”  This morning we come to Charles Wesley’s great and theologically profound carol, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”  It’s packed with Scripture references, but the main theme comes from the great Christmas text in Luke 2 – the story of our Savior’s birth in Bethlehem. 

We’ll hear these words again next Sunday night on Christmas Eve, but let’s give them our full attention now. 

Luke 2:1-14

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.  This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  All went to their own towns to be registered.  Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.  He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.  While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.  Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger."  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"

“Hymn for Christmas Day”

The word carol comes from an older word “carola,” which refers to a ring dance.  Carols are an early form of sacred folk music, dating back to the Middle Ages.  During that time the medieval church used them in pageants and plays to teach the stories of the Bible.  In 1627, however, the English Puritan parliament abolished the celebration of Christmas as being too “worldly.”  And so during the rest of the seventeenth century, and well into the eighteenth century, you don’t find many Christmas carols coming from England.  One of the few important carols written during this time is the one we have before us today.

Take a look at the hymn on page 31 in your hymnal.  You’ll see three names there under the title: Charles Wesley, who wrote the words in 1739, and Felix Mendelssohn and William Cummings who are responsible for the melody.  Charles Wesley has been called “England’s premier Christian poet and songwriter.” 1  He wrote more than 6,500 hymns, 11 of which are found in our Presbyterian hymnal – including “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today,” “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” and “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.” 

Born in 1707, he was the youngest of 18 children, and the brother of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement.  He studied at Oxford and was ordained a priest in the Church of England.  In 1735 he came to North America to be the personal secretary of James Oglethorpe, founder of the colony of Georgia.  But after a while he became discouraged and homesick, so he returned to England and not long afterwards he gave his life to Jesus Christ.  It is thought that he wrote the lyrics to this carol about a year after his conversion, inspired by the joyous chiming of bells in London as he walked to church. 

Wesley called it a “Hymn for Christmas Day” and the original version begins, “Hark, how all the welkin rings, Glory to the King of kings.”  Welkin is an old English word for the vault of heaven, and Wesley was saying that all of heaven’s vastness rings with praise to Jesus Christ, the King of kings.  He put the words to his own melody, taught it to his congregation, and it quickly became a favorite among Methodist assemblies.  But it was Wesley’s friend, the fiery evangelist George Whitefield, who changed the opening words to the ones we know: “Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King.’” 

Unfortunately, he never asked Wesley for permission, and Wesley was not pleased with the change.  Wesley was a stickler for biblical accuracy, and nowhere in the Bible does it specifically say the angels sang about the birth of Christ.  It says, “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’”  As long as he lived, Wesley never used Whitefield’s version.  But because of the change in that one line, most people today think that’s what the Bible says.  And even if Wesley rejected it, millions of people around the world soon embraced the idea of singing angels – in sermons and music, in literature and art.  One of those was William H. Cummings. 

Cummings was a noted English music scholar, and he took a melody from an earlier work by the great composer Felix Mendelssohn and combined it with Whitefield’s rewrite.  That was in 1855, over a hundred years after Wesley penned his original lyrics.  Within a decade it became one of the most recognized carols in the world, and the version we love to sing today: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

Wonder of Wonders

I can never sing the opening line without recalling something that happened at a Christmas concert Debbie and I attended a number of years ago.  It was held in a beautiful old sanctuary, the kind that smells of incense and prayer books, and illumined that night by dozens of candles.  It was packed with people all waiting expectantly, and in front of me was a young family – a father and mother and their five-year-old son.  None of us knew it, but just before the concert began, the choir gathered behind us in the back of the church.  And suddenly, as if out of nowhere, they began to sing, and this shimmering anthem of praise floated over and around us: “Gloria in excelsis Deo!” 

It was magnificent.  But what I’ll never forget is that little boy in front of me.  When the first notes reached his ears, he sat up perfectly straight and looked all around, his eyes wide with wonder.  He couldn’t figure out where the song was coming from, so he turned to his father, and in a whisper that could be heard for several rows asked, “Dad, are they angels?” 

And his father, bless him, smiled and said, “Yes, son, they’re angels.”

I think what I most want for Christmas is what I saw on that little boy’s face: that sense of wonder and awe.  What I want most for Christmas is to be struck dumb like those shepherds out in the fields, to fall on my knees and hear the angel voices.  Which is exactly what this great hymn invites us all to do: “Hark!” – another old English word for “Shut up and listen!” – “Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King.’

Peace on earth, and mercy mild,

God and sinners reconciled!

Joyful, all ye nations, rise,

Join the triumph of the skies;

With the angelic host proclaim,

‘Christ is born in Bethlehem!’

And what could be more wondrous than this birth?  What could be more amazing than God’s invasion of planet Earth in the form of a human baby, “wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger”?  Think of it: “The high and lofty One made low and helpless.  The One who inhabits eternity come to dwell in time.  The One whom none can look upon and live delivered in a stable under the soft gaze of cattle.” 2  As John puts it in the first chapter of his Gospel: “The Word [that] was in the beginning with God, that was God” – that “Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” 3  Became flesh.  Became human.  Became one of us.  Wesley captures the wonder of this incarnation in these words from the second stanza:

Veiled in flesh the God-head see;

Hail the incarnate Deity,

Pleased in flesh with us to dwell,

Jesus, our Emmanuel.

And then in the third stanza, Wesley takes Scripture from Old and New Testaments alike – from Isaiah and Malachi, from Luke and John, from 1 Corinthians and Philippians – and weaves it all together into a tapestry of praise, this powerful reminder that Jesus comes to be born not just in Bethlehem, but in human hearts.  Jesus comes that we may be born again as God’s own sons and daughters.  It’s the great message of the Gospel, and so we sing,

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!

Hail the sun of righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings,

Risen with healing in His wings.

Mild He lays His glory by,

Born that we no more may die,

Born to raise us from the earth,

Born to give us second birth.

Hark! The herald angels sing,

‘Glory to the newborn King!’

I am so grateful Wesley wrote these words, and Christmas would not be the same for me without them.  But I have to say: I think Whitefield got it right on the first line.  On that first Christmas Eve, when the shepherds were watching their flocks by night and an angel announced the holy birth, the multitude of the heavenly host filling the sky didn’t just say it.  They sang it.  They sang it like nothing has ever been sung before, and all the welkin rang with their voices: “Glory to God in the highest.  Glory to the newborn King.”

Let’s prepare now to join them.  Take a moment to look over these magnificent words.  Think about the wonder of what you’re singing.  And may God grant that somewhere in this season you and I hear an echo of the angel voices – maybe even this morning. 

1. Ace Collins, Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas (Zondervan, 2001) p. 70.  Other sources for background on the hymn include The Presbyterian Hymnal (software edition); Kenneth W. Osbeck, Joy to the World: The Stories Behind Your Favorite Christmas Carols (Kregel, 1999); Dale V. Nobbman, Christmas Music Companion Fact Book (Centerstream, 2000).
2. Frederick Buechner, “Emmanuel,” in Secrets in the Dark (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), p.93.
3. John 1:1-2, 14.