Carolling

I love a good Christmas song – everything from dreaming with Bing Crosby, driving home with Chris Rea to Hallelujah-ing with Handel. But there’s nothing like a traditional carol. Some of the best are centuries old and I enjoy the continuity between carollers past and present. I wonder whether in years gone by the singers understood the lyrics better than we do now. Some of them are seriously wordnerdy!

Hark the Herald Angels Sing is a must at every carol service, with words by Charles Wesley and music by Mendelssohn. The second verse contains 2 nerdy words – ‘Incarnate’ and ‘Emmanuel.’

‘Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
hail th’ incarnate Deity,
pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.’

Wesley poetically describes ‘incarnate’ as ‘veiled in flesh’ because Christians believe that Jesus was God in human, bodily form. ‘Emmanuel’ simply means ‘God with us.’ The unusual word order also makes the sense difficult to follow. Wesley is inviting us, as we consider Christmas, to ‘see’ God in the flesh, to hail or welcome the divine being in bodily form - Jesus, God with us, content to live with mankind as a man himself.

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity… For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might… make atonement for the sins of the people. Hebrews 12: 14, 17

The wonder of Christmas – the creator of the universe humbles himself to grow within a woman’s womb and be born as an utterly dependent human infant, so that he might grow up experiencing human life among us, and ultimately give his life for our salvation. Now that’s worth singing about.

‘Glory to the new-born king!’