Should Christmas carols be biblical?
I am aware that all the readers of this blog are fastidious in their strict observance of liturgical seasons. So I am confident that, during this season of Advent, you will accept only immune yourself to sing Appearance carols, and will not however have either sung or planned to sing anything near Christmas until that season is upon us. It is, therefore, an appropriate time to reflect on the nature of carols and some of the things that they say.
Concluding week I posted a link to David Baker's mildly provocative critique of some traditional carols:
What a load of nonsense is written in some Christmas carols. Of class, many are excellent. But forth with the gold there is a lot of dross. Have the line in 'Away in a manger' which asserts boldly: 'Fiddling Lord Jesus, no crying he makes'. Actually? On what ground is that stated? It's certainly not in the Bible.
His short slice isn't a comprehensive assessment of carols, but he conspicuously has his favourite targets.
But perhaps the well-nigh annoying carol of all is the well-known 'Nosotros Three Kings'. This was written in 1857 by one Henry Hopkins Junior, who equally Rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, really should have known improve. The trouble is simply stated, and yous know what it is: the Bible merely states that the visitors from the east who came to visit Jesus were 'magi' – or wise men – rather than kings, and furthermore it doesn't say how many there were.
In amongst the theological problems, David as well asks questions about problems with the rhythm and rhyme, and offers a brief three-fold exposition of the kingship of Jesus. I felt David asked some interesting questions—simply much more fascinating was some of the response I received on posting this. The virtually radical was from a friend on Twitter:
It's a kind of bland puritanism which demands literal truism at this level. Next thing we'll be arguing is that Noah's ark is parked in Essex, The Skillful Samaritan was a real bloke called Eli from Shechem and the Johannine vine nevertheless grows in an Ephesian cavern.
The most striking affair about this response is what it reveals about attachment to traditions. Information technology sometimes seems as though information technology'southward possible to question whether anything in the gospels really happened (even whether Jesus existed!) or doubt some central theological convictions of the Christian faith, and you are request responsible, searching questions that whatsoever modern person would inquire. But question a cherished Christmas tradition—even one of recent invention—and all hell is let lose!
But two further assumptions hither are worth farther reflection. The get-go is that staying with what the text of the New Testament says should be interpreted equally literalism, and the second is that such literalism involves stripping the text of its imaginative and poetic potential. The same point about 'wooden literalism' was fabricated by Michael Sadgrove, sometime Dean of Durham Cathedral:
It comes downwards to *how* we engage in a deep reading of the text. Carols, hymns, poetry & art wean us off wooden literalism into an imaginative immersion into the tradition.
I confess that I find this contrast between the text and the imagination rather bizarre, not least because of the long-standing Anglican discipline of feeding our imagination with biblical metaphors, and shaping our thinking by them. Michael countered that 'information technology's precisely that imaginative engagement with the text that gives united states permission to search for new symbols & metaphors, and indeed for new words also, as the creeds bear witness.' But that was not, historically, the function of the creeds. They sought to draw boundaries around the undisciplined evolution of new ideas that moved away from the apostolic witness in the New Attestation, and not ready a trajectory of development for new ideas.
We do demand imaginative date with the text, just (as Richard Bauckham argues) such imaginative reading also needs discipline—historical discipline which prevents the states making the text hateful what it could non take meant, and textual discipline, which takes the text seriously in its canonical context. Without that we miss the identify of the magi inside Matthew'due south story that focuses on men and their power (in contrast with Luke'due south focus on the women and their relationships). We miss the biblical allusions to the wider narrative of the Old Attestation, and we miss the insertion at the beginning of Matthew's gospel for 'the lost sheep of the house of State of israel' (Matt xv.24) of a reference to 'all nations' to which nosotros return (as aninclusio) at the end of the story (Matt 28.19). At that place is plenty of nutrient for the imagination here! To suggest that we need to pull away from, disassemble, or add to the biblical text in guild to give full flourish to our imagination assumes that the biblical writers themselves lack poetic imagination, or that their language was not in itself a rich source for reflection.
Michael offers two further defences of traditional hymns, regardless of whether they are true to the biblical story. The kickoff is that there is much other poetry and art that similarly departs from the narrative; are we to dismiss this too? I retrieve this is a slightly odd question. All art will have a mixed runway record when it comes to illuminating biblical stories, and I am unclear every bit to why any art should be above question in this sense. Many love Rembrandt'south 'The Return of the Prodigal'—but this is because it gives real insight into the human meaning of the parable Jesus told, not simply because it takes u.s.a. into a new imaginative world. Michael'due south other defence is the standing pastoral value of traditional carols that people have grown up with.
If I am on my deathbed during Christmas, perchance barely conscious, nothing would comfort me more than to hear little children sing "Abroad in a manger". "Be about me Lord Jesus…", "And fit united states for heaven to live with thee at that place". And I'd promise not to have lost my God-given sense of enchantment in my last hours.
The issue for me not nigh loss of enchantment, but about being enchanted by the right things. I'd rather exist enchanted by the transforming presence of Jesus by his Spirit, and sleeping in death awaiting resurrection to inhabit the New Jerusalem—a kaleidoscope of the imagination in itself. And when we challenge or keep these Christmas traditions, we are not onlyresponding to traditions laid down in previous generations, nosotros are alsocreating them for future generations. What kinds of enchantment would we like to instil in those who are at the start of their imaginative journey? For me, 'away in a manger' perpetuates the myth that Jesus' birth happened abroad from the normal bustle of everyday life. Jesus' 'sweet caput' suggests that I should primarily be moved past sentimental admiration. 'No crying he makes' removes him from the realities of human life, something that Stephen Bullivant powerfully rebukes through the experience of his own child'southward illness.
St Athanasius says somewhere – you'll forgive me if I don't have the total bibliographical details to manus – that Christ couldn't ever have fallen sick. Frankly, I'yard not remotely convinced. In fact, Chalcedon'due south "like us in all things but sin" rather implies the opposite. Afterward all, Isaiah 53 informs us, he has "borne our infirmities and carried our diseases". The words of that bully Easter hymn apply to Christmas as well: "O who am I, that for my sake, my Lord should have frail mankind…"?
'Look down from the sky' seems to deny the presence of Jesus with us past his Spirit. And 'take us to heaven' supposes an unbiblical eschatology which is about escape from the world rather than transformation of it. I retrieve we can find a better enchantment.
Just with great intendance. For thousands, carols volition be their just link with a church building. At the aforementioned time, sentimentality is peradventure the single nearly unsafe feature of our Church and culture—and the sentimental air is never thicker than at Christmas. The Incarnation is messy, dingy, and resonates with the crucifixion. We need a new wave of carol writing that can gradually swill out the nonsense and catch the piercing, joy-through-pain refrains of the New Testament.
And some accept risen to the challenge. Paul Bradbury, who is a pioneer minister in Poole, Dorset, has offered iii updates of traditional carols. They might not be appropriate for your carol services this year, but they brand the indicate almost connecting with reality, and the real world of the nascency texts.
Away and in Danger
Abroad, amid strangers, who gave them no bed
The new built-in Lord Jesus
Lay down his wet head
The stars in the night sky
Looked down in dismay
'This was the Christ!? Comatose on some hay!?'
The cattle are lowing, this baby awakes
And just like a baby, a great din he does make.
'I dear you, Lord Jesus?
But delight exercise non cry,
It makes you wait human
Not aloof or on high.'
Be near me, Lord Jesus, get upward from the hay
Grow into a human and exist near me I pray
Bless all the children
In hurting and despair
And don't stop you're crying
It shows that you care.
O Occupied Zone of Bethlehem
O little town of Bethlehem
In captivity you prevarication
Amongst your nervous, terror-ed sleep
The sentinels pass past.
In occupied streets shining
An endless burning low-cal,
The hopes and fears of exiles' tears
Are met in Him this evening.
How naturally, how painfully
the wondrous gift is given!
And God imparts to broken hearts
the promised reign of sky;
Great ears take heard his coming
But in this world of din
Where Roman soldier'southward madness holds;
The liberator breaks in.
Sleepless Nighttime
Sleepless nighttime, horrible nighttime
Infant cried, one-half the fourth dimension
Round we walked this Mother and Child
Holy Infant non tender or mild
Sleep is desperately need-ed
Sleep is all that I demand.
Sleepless dark, horrible dark
Shepherd's came, what a sight!
Covered in poo and smelt similar a bar
Brought their sheep, that's going to far!
I can't wait for the morning
I can't wait for the morn.
Sleepless night, horrible night
Son of God? Yes, alright.
Asleep at last, merely look at his face up,
See the dawn of ordinary grace!
Jesus Lord at your birth
Jesus Lord at your birth.
On a more practical notation, Neil Bennetts and Rhiannon Davies have written additional words to the traditional 'In the Dour Midwinter', and combine the traditional and a gimmicky in a way that might be very constructive in services where visitors are nowadays—visitors who might know the tradition, but demand it every bit a bridge into reality. Enjoy.
In the comments below, why not post your ain reflections on your favourite carols, and why they communicate the Christmas story well, then that we can develop a resources for future years?
Don't forget to book your place at the the Festival of Theology on Jan 30th!
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