Missional Christmas Carols - part 2

Good King Wenceslas makes no mention of Bethlehem, the Christ Child, nor even God or Christmas, although the feast of Stephen referenced falls on December 26th. It recounts the story of Bohemian Saint Vaclav who around 930AD went barefoot into the snow to give alms. He died at 28.   The last line of the fifth verse gives the missional punch:   "Therefore Christian men be sure, wealth or rank possessing, Ye who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing."   Originally published in a collection of Easter music, this beloved English carol was written in 1853 by John Mason Neale. The tune is much older, being collected as a springtime carol from the late middle ages. Aside from the cheerful tune, the carol also marked the church tradition of giving alms on St. Stephen's Day. Stephen was one of the seven appointed by the Apostles to care for the poor and widows as told in Acts.

Missional Christmas Carols - part 1

Millennial Christ-followers desiring a faith with street credibility will find common cause with many hymn writers of 160 years ago. O Holy Night was originally a French carol of 1847 and brought into the American song book by a Unitarian minister in 1855.

The third verse, tracking closely with the French original reads,

"Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name..."

Here the French carol feeds the emergence of the American abolitionist movement, itself an outgrowth of the Second Great Awakening. A powerful rediscovery of God leads inescapably to pracical matters of justice, not just in the life of the church, but in the economic sector as well.

Abraham Kuyper, Dutch theologian a few years later would declare, "No single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'"