Text: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
To rise up and sing—this is one of the most ancient and most natural forms of worship. According to our scriptures, when the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea from slavery into freedom, once they had made it to the safer shore, Moses’ sister Miriam picked up her drum and began to sing and dance, and all the people joined her. Across cultures, around the world, people express their highest joy and their deepest sorrow in music.
In the New Testament too, possibly the oldest verses are found in the Philippian hymn. Paul’s letters predate the gospels—you know that, right? And within Paul’s letter to the Philippians he quotes a hymn that might represent one of the first hymns of the first Christians, and the first attempt at Christology (which is one big word that stands in for many. Christology is about making sense of who Christ is in relation to God).
In this letter, Paul was trying to correct some bad behavior that resulted from dissention among the church of the Philippians. He said, stop your quarreling. Stop acting all superior. That part is a paraphrase, here is the actual quote:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
And that is possibly the first hymn of the Christian church. Many thousands, or millions more were to follow. Charles Wesley, to whom Hark the Herald Angels Sing is attributed, wrote 6,000 hymns in his lifetime.
Actually, the hymn as it is presented in our hymnal bears only a slight resemblance to the original, by which I do not mean the Pilgrim Hymnal version, because that one too is several contributors and editors removed from Wesley’s original version, “Hark How the Welkin Sings,” published in 1739, almost 300 years ago. But, that was a common problem pre-copyright law. Once published, an author’s work went viral (as we say now); people picked it up and reworked it and published their own versions. Wesley’s hymn was tweaked a bit more a century later to fit with Mendelssohn’s melody. So what we have today is more than just a Wesleyan hymn, it is a hymn of the church. With apologies to ASCAP, and a nod to Wikipedia, sometimes a collaborative effort produces a better product.
So, let’s look not so much at Wesley’s original but at the “canonical version” of the hymn, the version we have before us. The first verse is easy to parse; it is of course a retelling of that bit in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel about the shepherds seeing angels who praise God and say “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to all people!” And then the hymn invites us all to join in with the angel’s song.
The second and third verses are stuffed with Christological references. These verses identify Jesus as the “offspring of the Virgin’s womb,” and “Emmanuel,” and “Prince of Peace,” all references to Isaiah’s prophecy. “Son of Righteousness” like “Son of Man” is another title given by the Hebrew prophets to identify the one who would come to restore the balance of justice, bring down the mighty and lift up the lowly and vindicate all who are oppressed. When we sing these titles we are celebrating the God of the oppressed. This is an invocation calling on the one who comes to destroy the rule of greed and violence, to replace it with a reign of peace. These titles, Prince of Peace, King of Kings, are political titles, and as such, would be as appropriately sung in an Occupy Wall Street rally, as in church. Maybe more so. When we use these titles and sing these verses we are making a political statement. Not a partisan political statement, mind you. God is not a Republican or a Democrat; God transcends all that. But by identifying Christ as the Prince of Peace we are identifying an ideal to which all leaders should be held accountable. All leaders will fail to live up to that ideal, but it is better to aim high and fail then to be aimless.
The concluding lines of the third verse are a reference to the same theme we found in Paul’s Philippian hymn—a confirmation that Jesus, though he was in the form of God, chose to be born in human form and was obedient unto death, and furthermore that somehow that obedience gives us eternal life. Mild, he lays his glory by, born that we no more must die. Born to raise “the sons of earth,” born to give us second birth. The Christ of the carol is one who does not grasp at crowns, but lives to serve, and serves to give life to others.
So let us be of the same mind, as we sing Glory to the newborn king, or as our newest version reads, “Glory to the Christ-child bring.”
