[9] 108 It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

‘Yet with the woes of sin and strife
---The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
---Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
---The love-song which they bring.
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
---And hear the angels sing!’

Today I attended my university’s carol service, hosted by the chaplaincy. It was a really warm event, and it was an opportunity to sing the great tunes at the top of your voice with a nice loud organ! Bells were rung, songs were sung and the Carmelite Friars were wearing full-on monk-ish garb. It certainly struck a strong sense of thoughtful joy for the festive season – exactly what a carol service should do.

The highlight of the evening was the sermon delivered by the Anglican chaplain. Perhaps in the same vein as a Barabbas’ Carol missive (cf. [5] for example), she was discussing how ‘Victorian’ sentimentality and instruction to little children can get in the way of the message, and even can construct out-and-out lies.

She told us quite candidly of how she could no longer sing O Little Town of Bethlehem, because of the next line; ‘How still we see thee lie’. Having worked in Jerusalem and having visited Bethlehem itself during the Christmas period, she had seen first-hand the prejudice, the suspicion, and the lack of peace that still exists in the region. She couldn’t in good conscience bring herself to sing those words.

After such a thoughtful speech, the time came for a new song. Rather brilliantly, in place of the hollowly idealised ‘stillness’ of O Little Town, we were given It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. I’d had my eye on writing about this fantastic carol since the start of the project, and the clear replacement of one song with another in the service set me thinking.

Perhaps surprisingly, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (henceforth referred to as ‘Midnight’) shares some the idealism of O Little Town; the same kind of idealism that creates ‘stillness’ in Little Town also creates ‘that glorious song of old’ in Midnight. The difference is that the former claims its description as face-value fact, whereas the latter presents the hope of the angels’ message in contrast with the ‘two thousand years of wrong’. By always admitting the reality as well as the ideal, Midnight offers us a real hope, instead of a false one.

‘Babel sounds’ (over which the ‘blessed angels sing’ in verse 2) is a phrase that rings true particularly today, amidst the international fall-out from the Wikileaks ‘cable-gate’ scandal, causing politicians and diplomats from many nations to squabble and squirm. In our own country, the important debate about university funding is being clouded by party-politics, and misinformation. Worse still is the ever-present threat of ‘man at war with man’; the on-going conflict in Afghanistan, the hawkish manoeuvrings of Iran and North Korea, plus those of the West against them, and of course the constantly smouldering struggles in the Holy Land.

The very real hope that the carol offers us is that of the angels’ eternal song of peace, which man simply ignores for most of the time. How much better instead to listen carefully to the ‘love-song’ which the angels bring! They are singing of the great love of the Father (‘for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…’); their argument against war is the birth of Jesus!

Let’s plunge ourselves back into realism for a second. Do you believe in throngs of angels singing peace to all men? Literal celestial beings with wings and harps? Perhaps you do, and that’s fine. I personally find that quite a difficult image to reconcile with my rational streak, and with my experience of how the world works.

What makes more sense to me is the image of the group of people who have been singing this very song for the last century and a half, and singing at least the sentiment for the last two millennia. That’s us, if you hadn’t guessed. We as Christians are (or perhaps should be…) the standard-bearers for a war-less world; criers of ‘peace, peace’ and bringers of the ‘love-song’. I pray that this eternal message may be heard again and again, refreshed and renewed, resounding back and forth between nations, instead of trading insults or even bullets.

Connect the 'real' to the 'ideal'. We can be the change we want to see in this world. We are those angels. Let Peace be our song! Thanks be to God.