- Christmas Music Program (Cantata) 2005
- Christmas for Everyone
Christmas is coming! It’s the season of spicy smells, twinkling lights, a chill in the air and warmth in the heart. It’s the time when we address cards to our friends, label packages for our family, drop donations in red kettles to help others. We love Christmas because we can give to others, not just because others give to us. So who is Christmas really for?
When the ancient Hebrew wrote of their hope for a Messiah, they hoped for one who would come for Israel. They sang praises to the God who comes to his people, the God who delights in his people’s songs, the God who called a people to be his own, that they might announce his salvation to all the world. They commanded: tell the world of his coming, the one who brings justice and truth, and let the very earth and heaven rejoice in his advent. For today is born our Savior!
- Music: Today is Born Our Savior
- Text: Psalm 96, alt. Music: James Chepponis
-
- A contemporary translation and setting of Psalm 96, the Psalm appointed for Christmas Eve. We anticipate that celebration in this introduction to our program..
But could this Savior from God be truly a Savior for all? From the beginning of his surprising life, that was a question. Could a descendant of Jewish kings somehow be Savior of the whole world? What do we make of this odd birth, in a forgotten corner of the Roman empire, attended by animals and strangers?
And if he is a Savior for the whole world, how can the world be told of his birth? What kind of story is this, for people who know nothing of shepherds and sheep, nothing of mangers and stables, nothing of God at all? In 1641 a Jesuit missionary to the Huron tribe in Canada struggled to tell the puzzling story to a people who had no sheep, no cleared fields, no mangers. To help them hear the story he turned shepherds into hunters, fields into forests, angels into replacements for the birds departing for winter. This child is born for you, he told them. This Savior is for you.
-
- Music: Twas In the Moon of Wintertime
- Text: Jean de Brebeuf, OSJ, 1641
- Music and adapted words: Francis Patrick O'Brien
- The earliest Canadian hymn in existence and perhaps the earliest Christian hymn written in the Americas, this carol was composed by a Jesuit missionary for the Hurons of Canada. It uses images familiar to native Americans to tell the good news of Jesus' birth, a Savior born for all.
That the Huron people would need to hear the Christmas story might not surprise us. They were people of a land unsuspected by those long-ago Jewish shepherds, who slept on a hillside with their sheep and were startled awake by voices from heaven. But perhaps we should feel surprise and even wonder that God reached out to people so small and insignificant as those shepherds. The silent darkness became musical light as angels spoke to humble people, the great servants of heaven greeting in God’s name the humble servants of earth. Christmas came for them that night, for poor and lowly shepherds.
One of the most beloved European Christmas carols was written in just that spirit, to be sung by German villagers in a church whose organ was broken and could not be played. Instead their pastor wrote a hymn to include them in that year’s Christmas celebration, and his friend devised a tune he could play on an old guitar. They heard the song and spread it across Germany and then across the world. For Christmas was for them, too, inhabitants of a humble village, on a silent night.
- Music: Silent Night
- Text: Joseph Mohr Music: Franz Gruber
- Arranged by Jack Schrader
- The story is told that Joseph Mohr wrote the words to this most beloved of Christmas hymns when the village church’s organ was broken, and his friend Franz Gruber invented a tune to accompany him on the guitar.
- Can we imagine what it meant to the shepherds, those people whose lives knew only poverty and hardship and long hours of hard work? To be so poor that your life meant sleeping on a barren hillside just to be sure your sheep would not wander off, and yet God’s own angels came to you!
- Could it be that God cared about them, too? Could it be that the God who created heaven and earth, who called Abraham to be father of a great nation and Moses to lead that nation out of slavery and David to rule over it in justice – could that very God care about poor, grimy shepherds on a forgotten hillside? Could God send Christmas, the birth of the Messiah, for them, too? Such joy they must have felt, when they understood the angels’ message! No wonder they ran to Bethlehem, to see what wonderful thing the Lord had done.
- Music: Tell Us, Shepherds
- Text and Music: Traditional Slovak carol
- Translated and arranged by Godfrey Tomanek
- A lively Eastern European carol communicates the excitement of the shepherds dashing to Bethlehem to see the newborn Savior.
- Who is Christmas for, anyway? Who is Jesus for? Was he born to benefit a few people, maybe just the really good ones who led virtuous lives and knew their place in God’s favor? Is he on the side of the righteous and wise and just people of the world? What about all those who aren’t so righteous, who lack wisdom, who know nothing of justice and less of peace? Would Jesus want anything to do with them?
- Strangely, surprisingly, amazingly and graciously, he does. Throughout his life Jesus reached out to the wretched ones of his time, the sinners who were shunned by others, the poor beggars people crossed the street to avoid, the diseased required to keep their distance from the healthy. In his death and resurrection Jesus reached out to them and to all the world, to all in such fearsome need of his grace. In his humble birth, Jesus proclaimed in his own helplessness and poverty that he would be on the side of the needy – and he knew that everyone was needy. Without a bed, without a decent roof, even laid in the prickly straw of an animal feedbox, Jesus the Savior was indeed Lord of heaven and earth.
-
-
- Music: Away In a Manger
- Text: verses 1-2, anonymous; verse 3, John T. McFarland
- Music: James R. Murray, arr. by Larry Harris
- Though often attributed incorrectly to Martin Luther, this hymn first appeared in an American Lutheran songbook for children in 1885. Perhaps it was written to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of Luther’s birth.
- This Jesus who comes for everyone, comes as one of us. He comes as a human infant, born to a human mother, watched over by a human man to serve as his guardian. So God declares that he is not only for us but with us, not only on our side but one of us, not only God our Father but Jesus our Brother.
- One of the most glorious mysteries of our faith is this: God includes us in his saving work. He came to a young, unknown woman, and asked her to be the mother of his son. He came to a bewildered man, and asked him to be his son’s guardian. He came to earth through the willingness of human beings to join him in his work. So that Christmas can be truly for everyone, Jesus asks everyone to join him in what he does. And so in grateful remembrance of the human beings who joined in God’s work, that very first Christmas, we sing of them, giving glory to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
-
- Music Sing of Mary
- Text: Roland F. Palmer and Omer Westendorf
- Music: trad. American, arranged by Richard Proulx
- The Holy Family is celebrated in this adaptation of the beloved American melody Pleading Savior with modern Christmas lyrics.
-
- He is for everyone, this child of God who comes to us in such a strange place, in such a wonderful way. He is for the hurting and the happy, the abused and the adored, the forgotten and the fondly loved, the cruel and the kind, the lost and the located, the hateful and the loving. Christmas is the declaration that God’s joy is not complete until everyone’s joy is complete.
- So as we remember the amazing child of Bethlehem, let us remember in his name all children, all grownups, all young, all old, everywhere: everyone born on this earth, each one beloved by the God who sent his own son to be a child himself, and thereby made childhood holy. In this season of longing and faith, may our prayer be that God’s love for the world may shown in this season: may Christmas truly come for everyone, everyone on earth.
-
- Final Music Star Child
- Text: Shirley Erena Murray, tr. Raquel Gutiérrez-Achón
- Music: Ronald F. Krisman
- For our final anthem we have chosen a piece written in both Spanish and English. The words reflect on Jesus’ birth among us as a helpless child and on his presence in the lives of all children, especially suffering children:
- Star-Child, earth-Child, go-between of God,
- Love Child, Christ Child, Heaven’s lightning rod:
- This year, this year, let the day arrive
- When Christmas comes for everyone, everyone alive.
-
- Street child, beat child, no place left to go,
- Hurt child, used child no on wants to know:
- This year, this year, let the day arrive
- When Christmas comes for everyone, everyone alive.
-
- Grown child, old child, memory full of years,
- Sad child, lost child, story told in tears:
- This year, this year, let the day arrive
- When Christmas comes for everyone, everyone alive.
-
- Spared child, spoiled child, having, wanting more,
- Wise child, faith child knowing joy in store:
- This year, this year, let the day arrive
- When Christmas comes for everyone, everyone alive.
-
- Hoped-for-peace Child, God’s stupendous sign,
- Down-to-earth Child, Star of stars that shine:
- This year, this year, let the day arrive
- When Christmas comes for everyone, everyone alive.
|
