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HARK — AND THEN WHAT MESSAGE? #1
STOP, LOOK, AND LISTEN
It's got to be one of the great TEAM efforts in music history — and if
you walk through a mall tonight or go to church this weekend, you'll very
likely hear the musical culmination of something that took over a hundred
years to put together.
In the year 1739 a 32-year-old priest in the Church of England wrote a
10-stanza song entitled "Hymn for Christmas Day." It began like
this:
Hark, how all the welkin rings Glory to the King of kings.
Welkin, by the way, is a Middle English term
for the vault of heaven, the sky.
Eighteen years later, in 1753, a family friend of Charles Wesley — a minister
named George Whitefield — did some adapting of the lyrics, making them
somewhat more familiar. Twenty-nine years after that, in 1782, someone
else came along, unknown as far as we can tell, and gave the words another
spin, including giving the Christmas hymn the now-familiar chorus: "Hark!
the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King."
A half-century or so went by, and then another very young musician named
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy — or just Felix Mendelssohn for
short — wrote a composition entitled Festgesang an die Kunstler, translated
"Festival Song for the Artists." This was in 1840, and performed
at the Gutenberg Festival in Leipzig to commemorate the 400th anniversary
of the invention of the printing press. The GUTENBERG Festival, you see.
But what's that got to do with the Christmas song, "Hark! the Herald
Angels Sing"?, you ask. ANOTHER sixteen years went by before composer
William Hayman Cummings came along, lifted out part of Mendelssohn's Festival
Song composition, attached it to Charles Wesley's lyrics and made it the
song we know and love here in 2001: "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing."
Well, it took a total of 117 years, and five different men from different
countries to produce this unique Christmas masterpiece. And some of us
in Christian radio get discouraged if a script comes in two hours late!
You know, at this time of year, with Christmas eve in a few hours, music
is such a blessed part of our lives. All up and down the AM and FM band,
we hear Christmas songs. Every store has "Jingle Bells" going;
we get home in the evening and we get out all of the CDS that we only
play in the month of December. And it's nice; it's a marvelous tradition.
All last week here on the Voice of Prophecy, Ken and David and I enjoyed
discussing and sampling with you five of the great classics from Handel's
Messiah. I hope you were with us for some of that.
But there's a danger to Christmas music . . . and all this week as we
visit together, maybe we can notice it and sidestep the temptation. Here
it is: so often the MESSAGE of a Christmas hymn, even an overtly CHRISTIAN
carol about Jesus Christ being our Savior — it just becomes a part of
the pleasant BLUR. We have lights in our Christmas trees and a million
packages all around and cold, moonlit skies and decorations everywhere
. . . and all this music simply blends into the AMBIENCE of the season.
It's just a backdrop. And the POWER of the message really does get swept
into the trash can on December 26 along with the torn wrapping paper and
the mangled bows.
Friend, I don't want that to happen to us this week. Which is why we especially
appreciate the very first WORD of this 117-years-in-the-making Christmas
hymn. Here it is: HARK!!
What does that mean — HARK? "HARK! the Herald Angels Sing."
What do we DO when we HARK?
Well, there's no mystery to what the dictionary tells us. "Hark"
simply means "(quote) TO LISTEN ATTENTIVELY." When we hark,
we pay attention. We push to the sidelines all of the noise, the confusion,
the Santa Claus bells ringing in our faces, the infomercials and Seinfeld
TV specials. We LISTEN ATTENTIVELY to what the words of this song are
communicating to us. What's more, we LISTEN ATTENTIVELY to what the Herald
Angels are singing up there in the welkin, the "vault of heaven,"
the sky.
For example: in the very second line of this classic hymn is a line we
simply MUST NOT MISS. Here's what the angel choir is singing: "God
and sinners reconciled!"
Now friend, I don't know what's going to get blocked out for you on this
December 24th . . . but whatever you do, DON'T LET IT BE THOSE FOUR WORDS!
The Christmas story is one of reconciliation! What we experience this
Wednesday is the ultimate reaching out, the greatest display of divine
ENTREATY the universe has ever witnessed. "God and sinners reconciled."
That's really our topic for tomorrow, but let me encourage you right here
and now: hit the pause button and let those four words really pound into
your soul. Don't just hum the tune and then switch to another station.
Don't let visions of sugarplums dance in your head and crowd out the FACT,
the TRUTH that here on Monday, December 24, God wants to reconcile with
YOU.
Here's a second, related point. Friend, we're so grateful for the kind
of person you are — that you're tuned in TODAY. This has got to be a holiday
week for many of our usual listeners; people are off from work, so their
routine and schedule is off-kilter. People are sleeping in; they're at
the mall; they're frantically trying to round out gift lists and grocery
lists and guest lists. But here you are tuned to the Voice of Prophecy!
In a very beautiful sense, you are indeed HARKING to the message God has
for you. And from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate that depth of spiritual
commitment. I really do. Thank you for giving 15 minutes of your schedule
here less than 48 hours away from Christmas Day, and taking time out for
these moments together in the invisible House of the Lord.
You know, there's a bit of trivia about this hymn that effectively drives
this point home. Charles Wesley, as you may know, was the brother of John
Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church. And I guess talent must have
run in this family, because history tells us that little brother CHARLES
wrote something like six THOUSAND five hundred hymns. Six thousand five
hundred! I try to think about that, but I can hardly comprehend it! Now,
he lived to be 81, but no matter how you spread around the number 6,500,
it would be a hymn a DAY for nearly 18 YEARS!
And many of these, like "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" started
out, are long masterpieces: eight and ten complicated stanzas. He wasn't
just scribbling down "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on a party
napkin. These were major, substantial, deeply spiritual compositions.
And speaking of talent, we read in the archives that Wesley had a legendary
gift for poetry; even many of his letters were just naturally written
in rhyme. His son Samuel was a noted High Church composer, and his grandson
Samuel Sebastian was perhaps the greatest cathedral organist of his era.
In the official hymnal of my own Adventist denomination, out of less than
700 hymns and gospel songs and choruses and prayer responses, this one
man, Charles Wesley, has 18 of the top-rated hymns of all time. He and
Isaac Watts and Fanny Crosby pretty much own the franchise in the Seventh-day
Adventist Church. And we're deeply grateful for the heritage, believe
me.
But here's my point. Even for Charles Wesley — writer of 6,500 hymns —
it might have been a great temptation for these poignant words to become
a BLUR. When you're so prolific, when your stack of manuscripts reaches
right up to the roof of your home there in Bristol, England, four little
words like "God and sinners reconciled!" could so easily get
lost in the pile. That's why Charles Wesley, just like we do, keenly felt
the need of that word: HARK! "To listen attentively." To let
the world go by while we pause to hear the still, small Christmas voice
of our God saying, "Please. Open up the Present I have for you this
year."
I said at the beginning that it took 117 years for this song to come together.
And friend, I believe God intervened and even supervised in that process
. . . BECAUSE this Christmas carol is part of His reaching out to you
right now, today. He moved upon the heart and mind of Charles Wesley;
His Spirit quietly worked through Felix Mendelssohn. And here on this
Monday — for whatever reason — after those 117 years and then another
140 beyond that, you're here tuned into the radio at just the right moment.
From 1739 all the way down to this moment in time, in 1996 . . . and God
is working to personally reach you with His message of reconciliation.
"God and sinners reconciled."
Friend, would we dare consider letting a 257-year project of God's be
WASTED on us? I hope and pray not. Not for ME and not for you either.
Let's pray together, shall we?
Lord . . . it's almost Christmas. And here some of us are HARKING just
now; we're listening for Your quiet voice. We're noticing the fact that
You've reached out to us. And those of us here on the staff of the Voice
of Prophecy, and many listening today, I'm sure, want to respond. We want
to say yes to Your offer of forgiveness, of renewal, of coming home to
You here in the Christmas season, 2001. And we thank You for the invitation.
Amen.
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