Belated Christmas

If you suddenly found yourself as VP of Marketing for Christianity, one of the "signature tactics" in your annual marketing plan would have to be the Nine Lessons and Carols service.  Originating in the Church of England in the late 19th century, it has since gained a foothold in other Protestant congregations, including mine in Geneva and many others around Europe and the US,  In roughly one hour, you pretty much get the Christian faith in a tight, energetic nutshell: nine Bible readings that span Genesis (the fall) to Isaiah (the prophecy) to Luke and Matthew (the Christmas stories you're familiar with), interspersed with nine or more carols.

The readings are the same every year, but the music playlist varies: this year we were treated with an anglicized version of the absolutely kick-ass Swedish carol "Jul Jul."  All leading up to a first-class climax in terms of depth, significance, and emotional power: "O Come All Ye Faithful," followed by John 1:1-14,* followed by "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."  John 1:1-14 is a tour de force, covering, in John's characteristic mystical tone, all the key ideas you want people to walk out with: light shining in the darkness, word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, grace and truth.  I imagine that "O Come All Ye Faithful" and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" have popped up once or twice on your Spotify holiday playlist this year, but I would suggest that until you've heard them, and sung them, in full voice in a packed congregation, you haven't truly experienced them.

I realize that I do a lot of hand-wringing around here, about faith and what it means and how I try to get my head around it, and maybe this entire website is no more than an exercise in such hand-wringing.  In any case, the Nine Lessons and Carols are a good reminder and example of how essential the practice of faith is.  By its very nature, faith is not something you can simply talk yourself into.  Later on in the New Testament, James will make this point even more emphatically, claiming that “faith without works is dead.”  Just like thinking about running a marathon has very little in common with actually running a marathon, thinking and reading and writing about faith is different than practicing one's faith, whatever form that might take.




* Which your humble author had the honor of reading this year, and which, directly following "O Come All Ye Faithful," he was worried he would be too choked-up to get through.