Sermon: "O Holy Night"

3rd in the "Forgotten Verses of Famous Carols" series.
Delivered December 13, 2009 by Rev. George Antonakos.
Sermon Text: Galatians 4:1-7

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I hope everyone has been able to hear the monologues that have been presented these last three weeks. Sometimes it's hard to get here right at the beginning but these monologues that have been written by Katie Kavalsky and been presented by her and some others have really been so helpful to understanding the theme each week of our service and today's, Tina shared today, was so spot on to both text and song that we're looking at.

Each week in this Advent series we're looking not only at the text of Scripture but a well-known song at Christmastime and look at some of the forgotten aspects of those songs to help us to learn as well. So I'm kind of tempted to have Tina to just come up here, say it again and then say, "That's it! We're good. Let's sing O Holy Night," and we're gone.

But whether you caught it or not, the first part of that monologue presented an unbelievable question. A question that I think, whether we articulate it in our minds or we do not, down deep somewhere it's always there. What determines my worth? What determines who or what something is worth? Good experiences, my net worth, someone telling me that I'm worth it, what is it?

We are now the proud grandparents of three little grandchildren. Our daughter, Andrea, and son-in-law, Tony, blessed us with little Ellie, about three months ago on September sixth. Named after my wife Ellen, little Ellie, and her middle name is Christine, named after Tony's mother's middle name. And we're all sitting together in our house and I was just holding that little baby and I was watching her, looking into her face. And I often say it's like looking at the ocean. I could just keep staring at her and just take her all in.

So I was kind of prodding Andrea and I said, "Ang, how much do you think it would take to sell Ellie? How much would you take for her? Would you take like, let's say, a billion dollars? Would you take a billion dollars? Come on, a billion." I can see some parents out here thinking, "Billion, huh? At 16 I'll give you a discount. I'll take a million." She said, "No way!" You know, she knew I was just teasing.

Back when inflation was not as bad as today, my mom would look at me and my brother and sister sometimes, I clearly remember this, and she would say, "My $3 million dollars. You know, my $3 million dollars." What was she trying to do? She was trying in a word picture to convey our worth.

But, is this where our worth comes from? I mean it really helps to have some worth by loving parents, but we all know because of human weakness, that that message doesn't always get communicated to us. I would think that for some of us here one of our core wounds has to do with how we look at ourselves, how we value or do not value ourselves. Now, I don't think it's exaggerating to say that we can feel enslaved by feelings of low self-worth.

Well, our Scripture today and the anthem, O Holy Night, speak to this issue of worth and reveal the source of our worth. In the seven verses we are going to soon read from Galatians, chapter 4, three times in those seven verses the word "slave" or "enslaved" is mentioned. Now, think of that concept of slavery, there's more slavery now in the world than there ever has been before. Think of the idea of slavery and worth and how they are completely juxtaposed.

The apostle Paul is trying in the context of this letter to help new Christians to not go backwards, to help them remain free in what they have in Jesus Christ instead of going back to legal ways of trying to gain God's favor. The theme of this sermon, the main idea, you're going to forget lots of this sermon. I'm going to forget lots of this sermon, but here's the theme. It is the freedom in Christ that we have. Who we are in Jesus Christ provides the deepest understanding of our worth no matter what our experiences, plus or minus.

The context of chapter 4, 1 through 7 is trying to explain the purpose of why God came to Moses with the Law. First, God called Abraham and then God, 400 years later, God called Moses and gave Moses and his chosen people the Law. And so here is kind of like Chris Berman's two-minute drill in Monday night football at halftime. Here is a two-minute, seminary-type lecture that tells us the reason for the law. You're going to remember this because I'm going to give it to you as simply as I can.

First, glasses. Okay? Think of glasses. I take my glasses off. I can't see anything. I put my glasses on. I see clearly. The Law defines sin clearly. I'll give you a law. You can only have two cookies a day. That's it. Two cookies a day are your limit. Now you have a law. Now you know what is sin and what isn't sin. Three cookies are sin; two cookies are okay. All right? Clearly, the Law gives us glasses, alright?

Two, it's a mirror. The mirror defines us clearly. We look into the law, and we recognize that we can't do it. There's a part of us that says, "Two cookies? What? Are you kidding me? I want another one. I want more than that." The law is not going to take away this desire and once I have the law, I'm going to feel even more inclined. Just like when you tell a kid not to do something, right? They're going to feel even more inclined to do it.

And a third is guard rails or blinders on a horse. Since we're moving along, the law was good; it tried to keep us on the path. It tried to show us what going off the path would, you know, keep us from doing that. And so even though we had something good attached to us to try to keep us on this path, we know, that even though it's good, we're going to wander if it's not there. If we take those blinders off we're wandering. We're going. That's the nature.

In other words it's 10 o'clock at night. I've had my two cookies. I know it's a good rule, but there's just something in me that just can't avoid it. So for all these reasons, the Law is a good thing, Paul says. We can't keep it. What are we going to do? Well, some people, frustrated by thinking that they should just be keeping the Law, they just don't want to have anything to do with church. They don't want to have anything to do with God. They just go out and, in a quest for self-discovery and trying to have some sort of self-salvation, they say, "Heck with it all." And they go out and live like heck.

And then other people, on the other side of the ledger, are rule-keepers. They like to be really good. They try to be really, they try to gain favor with God by being really good. Kind of like the Pharisees. They kept the Law at every point. And like Frederick Beekner once said, they are people who would always hit the right notes but always in the wrong tempo. And so they never came across right because they were trying to gain God's favor on their own effort.

And so both types are trying to undergird their worth in a false way. Both are enslaved. This is what Paul is addressing when he talks about slavery and freedom in Galatians, chapter 4. So let's pray and look at it.

Lord, we thank you for your Word. We pray that it would become more than historical record, more than even literary text. It would become your very Spirit's Word to us as we understand who we are before you. In Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Galatians, chapter 4, you can turn to page 1064 in your pew Bible if you'd like to follow. I'd encourage you to do that. Just these first seven verses.

"What I am saying is that,"

In other words what he's been saying about the law and its role in trying to bring us to another place.

"What I am saying is that as long as heirs are underage they are no different from slaves, although they own the whole estate. They are subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by their fathers."

You may be named in a will, but you will not inherit the benefits of that will until a set time. So the death of the parent or until some other time.

"So also, when we were underage,"

When we were living under the law.

"we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world."

Another translation of that is, "under the rudimentary principles of law keeping."

"But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.' So you are no longer slaves, but God's children; and since you are his children, he has made you also heirs."

Three hundred years before Christmas ever thought about being celebrated, the apostle Paul, in Galatians 4:4 and 5, defined Christmas. He said when the fullness of time had come, "When the set time had fully come." This harkens back to Jesus' first sermon. The time is at hand. The time has come. The time has drawn near. Repent. The kingdom of God is here. Repent. Believe the gospel.

Thinking about that I think, Paul says, "When the set time had fully come, Jesus appeared onto the scene," and then he said, "God sent his Son, born of a woman" Basically, code for saying, "became a human." Christmas is about God becoming a human being. He was born of a woman, born as one of us so as he could understand, not so he could understand, but so he could experience everything about our humanity, our suffering, everything, our alienation. And again, think about this, again I didn't say this in the two other sermons, but Jesus takes his humanity into heaven and the resurrection and so the sympathy of both divine and human continues to flow to us everyday. Jesus is uniquely both.

So born as a human being, born under the Law, limited by the legal requirements of the Law, bound in, hemmed in by, "This is how you please God." Why? In order to redeem us, that means to pay something, to purchase us, we who were under the law, we who couldn't keep it, we who keep, knowing who we are, that we can't get it done.

Ask Tiger Woods, okay? I'm not going to bust on Tiger Woods, I'm just saying that whole thing, it's an amazing collective understanding of how we look at people's sins and how we look at, when they're so public. You know every single one of us has broken the Law, but we are under the Law. We are enslaved to our sinful law-breaking natures, and so as such we're out of fellowship with God.

So why did God do this? Come down and pay a price, this humongous cost? So that we might receive adoption as children. So that we no longer would be under that slave mindset, always trying to please God by our own efforts, but so that we might be brought into the family. Just like little Ellie comes into the family. She's never getting out of the family. She's always going to be in the family. There's nothing I would not do for that little baby. She belongs to us, okay, and to her parents.

In those days when somebody wanted to free a slave, literally, out of kindness or appreciation or affection, they would go to the temple and they'd take a purchase price and they'd give it to the priest and the priest would declare, "The god Apollo has now purchased this slave from his owners. He is now free." And that person, who was treated as inferior all their lives, who always had to measure up, now doesn't only get to go off and do something else, they get to go off an be someone else, to live freely. And that's what Paul is trying to say, that in Christ we can live freely into the worth that God has conferred upon us. We don't have to keep trying to please people. We don't have to keep trying to please God in our efforts. We have that adoption and acceptance as God's children.

Now here's the great news. Each and every person, as Jesus said, who has ears to hear, but each and every person has been singled out for redemption. God has a price that he's paid that he wants to redeem you with to set you and I free.

One of the reasons I have this up here is just to try to get it into your minds how this works theologically. Here's the bull's-eye, right? We've all played darts. You know how hard it is to hit the bull's-eye. In archery, in the olden days, if somebody hit over here, or here, or even here, no matter how close, the distance to the perfection of the bull's-eye was called the sin. It was called the hamartia. It was called that gaff, that missing of the mark of perfection.

And so when Paul says that Jesus came born of a woman, born under the Law, he's basically saying that the Son of God was the only one under those circumstances to hit the bull's-eye. Nobody else can. And so in Hebrews, chapter 2, verse 17, speaking of the fact that he shouldn't have had to die, but he still paid this incredible price because he was a perfect Lamb. His purchase price was the Cross.

In Hebrews 2:17 it says, "For this reason he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every way," human, "in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people," so that his perfection would become our perfection, his death our death his resurrection our resurrection, his ascension our ascension and so forth.

Today we had a baptism. It points to being included in Christ so when we are in Christ, when we have the seal of Christ upon us, it's like we become like Christ in God's eyes. It's like God sees us in here, not out here, that we have the same standing as Jesus did with the Father, that we become the objects of divine favor. Just like when I look at little Ellie I just love her. I just want to favor her. I just want to do for her. We become those objects.

And so the call of the gospel is, just like in the Old Testament it says, "The name of the Lord is a strong tower. Blessed are those who run into it." It's like, today it's like blessed are those who run into the bull's-eye of perfection in Christ. It's only through him. See, we can't just go doing self-discovery, and we can't just do in rule keeping, we need a Savior to save us and free us from our inability to connect with God.

I mean in verse 6 of chapter 4 you cannot get much more Trinitarian than verse 6. "Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.'" Now we're children, not slaves any longer. And so since you're no longer slaves, but God's children you're also heirs. You get everything that Jesus gets in relationship with God. That's our identity. That's our destiny. That's the basis of our worth.

You know, if I was in another church somebody might say something. Somebody might say, "Amen." Amen!

You know we've talked about the hymns and I want to talk about how O Holy Night (wikipedia link) tries to bring all of this out and tell you a little back story on the hymn. In 1847, Placide Cappeau, known for being a commissioner of wines in a small French town more than for his church attendance, was a very good poet, and the parish priest came to him and said, "Would you please pen a poem for Christmas Mass coming up in a few weeks?" And he said, "Sure."

And he did it very quickly, and he was inspired by his own work. He thought it was inspired by God, beautiful poem. And he said, "This has to be more than a poem. This should be a song." And so he enlisted a Jewish man, a friend of his who was a famous composer at the time, Adolphe Adam. And he said, "Please look at this poem and put some music to it," and that's what happened. So Adam put together, with Cappeau's majestic words, a score.

Three weeks later, 1847 on Christmas Eve, it was performed. To put it mildly, it was a hit. But later, when Cappeau walked away from the church as sort of a lapsed church member because of political reasons, and then it was discovered Adolphe Adam was Jewish. The church sort of said, "We're scratching this song. We're not doing it anymore. It has no religious meaning involved with it." But of course that wasn't true and people loved the song and they still, in other contexts, would sing it.

Well that's a poem and that was in French, and nobody knew about it in America until 10 years later. A man by the name of John Sullivan Dwight, a Unitarian minister in Massachusetts, found that he could not function in pastoral ministry. For unknown reasons he grew physically ill every time he had to address his congregation, and so he couldn't do parish work. But he had other gifts.

And so for decades he published Dwight's Journal of Music, and so he was always looking for sources. He comes across Cantique de Noël, and he sees these beautiful words, and he translates them from French into some of the words that we sing today.

He took some liberties in the translation given to us, but there was a reason for that, especially the third verse. Part of the reason was it was 1857 in Massachusetts and it's pre-Civil War. Everything is building up to a divided nation over the issue of slavery. And he looks at the meaning, and he tweaks the words a little bit to sort of support the importance of the abolitionist movement in the North and for good reason.

And so what I'm going to share with you is the original meaning of Cantique de Noël, but it's different from the words that we sing. And I don't think this should ruin the song for anybody because it's all about God loving us and the importance of us loving one another. So let's put verse three up there that we normally sing. And this is Sullivan's translation, or Dwight's translation.

[TODO: insert the verse 3 as a sidebar box.]

"Truly he taught us to love one another. His Law is love," Notice how he captures that whole idea of the Law being a good thing. "But his gospel is peace." The gospel is what brings us peace with God. Next part, "Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease." We're good there.

Now, let's go to what we think is the French translation of this text, alright? This is the third verse from which he drew this from. "The redeemer has broken every shackle. The earth is free and heaven is open. He," Jesus, "Sees a brother," you and me, "where there was once only a slave," you and me.

Those who've been chained together by iron, by trying to keep the Law, can't do it, love now unites. Who will tell him of our gratitude? It is for every one of us that he was born, suffered, and died. That's why you and I are of such high value. That's why you and I are of such high worth, because we belong as beloved children in God's family. He broke through for you.

It's interesting, in the poem, you know we sing the song it's, "Fall on your knees, fall on your knees, fall on your knees," every chorus. In the poem the first one is, "Fall on your knees." The second one is, "Bow your heads." And the third one is, "Stand on your feet and sing of your deliverance. Noel. Noel. Sing of the Redeemer. Sing of the Redeemer."

I think we ought to do that as a way of responding to this Word as an expression of our faith in Christ. And perhaps for some I wonder if this isn't the moment when you might put your faith in his redeeming love, when you might run into his perfection for you by receiving the free gift of God's love in Jesus Christ and be assured of your worth before Him.

Let's pray: Lord, we thank you for your love, for your grace, for your mercy. Help us to understand the true meaning of Christmas, to understand that great cost of becoming human, of suffering, of dying, of bringing us back to you and back to the Father through you, so that now, in our hearts, we can cry, "Papa, Father." Lord, assure us of these truths, help us to receive anew your gift through Christ our Lord, Amen.

© 2009, Rev. George Antonakos
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org