December 27, 2024

The Hymnal 1982, our authorized Episcopal hymnal, contains thirty-nine Christmas hymns. Most years, I lament the fact that we’ll only have three occasions to sing these hymns during the Christmas season. But this year, because of how Christmas falls within the calendar, we’ll have two Sundays in the Christmas season. This gives us more opportunities to sing from the great treasure of hymnody for the Christmas season.

Many of the hymns are standard favorites, hymns you wouldn’t imagine not singing at Christmas. At this point in the Christmas season, we’ve already sung many of them. But there are some overlooked gems. One of my personal favorites—both tune and text—is #104, “A stable lamp is lighted.” The text is by the late American poet Richard Wilbur. The tune is by the living American church musician David Hurd, currently Director of Music at the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in New York City, one of our sister Anglo-Catholic parishes. In my opinion, David Hurd’s tunes are some of the best examples of American hymnody in the previous and current centuries.

I adore both the tune and the text of “A stable lamp is lighted.” The tune is poignant, even sad. The text is theological poetry at its finest, redolent with Scriptural allusions and centuries of Christological ponderings. One of the reasons I’m so fond of this hymn is that the text moves to a deeper level than some of our beloved Christmas hymns. Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t want Christmas without “O come, all ye faithful” and “Angels we have heard on high.” But “A stable lamp is lighted” reminds us that at Christmas, we celebrate a mystery that transcends a cozy birth story or feelings of constant merriment. Christmas joy is not mere happiness or cheer. Joy assumes a measure of hope, and joy can come to us even in our sorrow. Joy is profound enough to withstand suffering.

In Wilbur’s great hymn, all of creation responds to the birth of the Messiah. “The stars shall bend their voices/And every stone shall cry.” Wilbur references, obliquely, Psalm 19 but also, more directly, Habakkuk 2:11, where in the face of injustice, even the stones themselves will not be able to remain silent. Recall that when Jesus enters Jerusalem in Luke’s Gospel, some Pharisees ask Jesus to rebuke his disciples, who are greeting him with praise. Jesus says, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Luke 19:40). “Every stone shall cry” is a constant refrain in Wilbur’s hymn. This refrain expresses the mystery of Christmas: all of creation cries out at the birth of the Messiah, but the cry is mixed. It’s a cry of both joy and sorrow because the happiness felt at Jesus’s birth is tinged with an unshakeable feeling that a sinful world will not be able to hold the perfect goodness found in Jesus the Christ. In the Christian life, joy and sorrow can’t be easily separated.

Wilbur’s hymn plays with imagery inspired by the Church’s early Fathers, where in the manger, “straw like gold shall shine” and “A barn shall harbor heaven” because a stall will “become a shrine.” The extraordinary meshes with the ordinary. Jesus’s throne is in the manger. From Jesus’s birth, the cross is already in the picture. This Light of the world will be rejected and refused by the world, even though the darkness can’t overcome the Light.

All of this might not immediately seem like good news on Christmas. It might, in fact, seem depressing. But the truth is that this season can be bittersweet—even deeply sad—for many people. It’s mistaken to assume that if we’re good Christians, we’ll be happy and cheery all the time. The real truth of Christmas tells us otherwise. Jesus was born to a wandering family who ultimately made his crib in a barn or a cave, not in a palace. Jesus was born under the boot of Roman oppression. Jesus was born to peasant parents in questionable circumstances, at least from a human point of view. The mystery of Christmas is complicated and messy, and the good news is that in such a manner, our redemption comes to us. As the Church Father Gregory of Nazianzus told us, “that which is not assumed is not saved.” Jesus comes to save it all.

As Wilbur notes in his hymn, the sky whose stars bend their voices at Jesus’s birth will “groan and darken” at his death. When heaven touches earth in the Incarnation, all of creation is affected. The mystery of Jesus’s birth leaves no corner of the earth untouched. And today, for those of us struggling with sadness or illness or despair, the mystery of Christmas assures us that we can be joyful Christians who retain hope even when we can’t facilely dismiss our sadness.

The final verse of Wilbur’s hymn explains the heart of the mystery of Christmas: “But now, as at the ending,/The low is lifted high;/The stars shall bend their voices,/And every stone shall cry./And every stone shall cry,/In praises of the Child/By whose descent among us/The worlds are reconciled.” No darkness can squelch the light of Christ. No sorrow can eliminate the joy. And no matter how many voices are silenced by oppression, the stones themselves will cry out in testament to the One who is our Savior and has redeemed the world.

May God bless you and yours this Christmas. If you’re in town, please come to Mass to sing the wonderful hymns of Christmas and to give thanks in the Eucharistic feast for the birth of our Savior, who continues to reconcile the worlds and whose light always shines in the darkness.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle