Advent 4 Hark the Herald Angels Sing, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, and Lord I Lift Your Name on High
Welcome this is Parson Paul on the hymns. I am
a retired United Methodist pastor with a great love of church music in general
and the hymns in particular. I hope to help busy church professionals, church
musicians and the people in the pew to have a great appreciation and
understanding of the music of the church. Today I want to share a couple of
hymns our first hymn is “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” UM 240.
I believe the hymns can speak into our
lives as well today as in the day when they were first written. Please feel
free to share this blog or podcast with others you think might enjoy and drop
us a line with suggestions or any comments. Be sure and check out the links and
notes I have placed at the end of this blog and in the show notes of the
podcast for full videos today’s hymn selection and others I found interesting.
I read from a recent article in Christianity
Today entitled “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”
“When Charles Wesley wrote this
carol in 1739, he had no idea it would become famous. He first named it “Hark,
how all the welkin ring,” welkin being an archaic English term for the heavens.
When George Whitefield published it in 1753, he changed the first line to read,
“Hark! The herald angels sing,” and so it has remained that way ever since.
For
the first 120 years, the words were sung to various tunes. But that changed in
1856 when William Cummings joined the lyrics with a tune written by Felix
Mendelssohn for the Gutenberg Festival in 1840 to celebrate the introduction of
printing. Mendelssohn would be surprised by that because he had written that
his tune would be welcomed by singers and hearers, “but it will never do to
sacred words.”
But
even the greatest composers can sometimes be wrong. The music and the lyrics
seem made for each other.
Charles Wesley’s hymn offers us a
good survey of theology. It mentions many of the names and titles of Christ:
King, Lord, Prince of Peace, Sun of Righteousness, Everlasting Lord, Desire of
Nations, Incarnate Deity, and Emmanuel. After the first stanza’s call to praise
“the new-born King,” the following stanzas celebrate the virgin birth, the
deity of Christ, the resurrection of the body, and the truth of the new birth.
Two phrases in particular deserve comment: “Mild he lays his glory
by” refers to Christ’s willingness to lay aside the glory of heaven to take on
human nature and become one of us. “Late in time behold him come” reminds us of
Hebrews 1:2 where we are told “in these last days” God has spoken to us through
his Son.”
1. Listen to
this version by the contemporary group Pentatonix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSLRzqM4G0Y
Wow
that is what I call fresh. The first verse sound very traditional and then they
freshen it up.
I said
that would be the first hymn which means there must be a second one and for our
second selection to go with the scriptures for this fourth Sunday in Advent I
have selected “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” this is found in the United
Methodist Hymnal as number 218
The
words were written as a poem by Edmund Hamilton Sears in 1849. Sears was a
Unitarian minister living in Wayland Massachusetts after suffering breakdown.
He writes the world is full of sin and strife under the tension of military
strife in Europe and Mexico. One account says the carol was first performed on
Christmas Eve by parishioners gathered in Sear’s home, but we don’t know what
tune they sung it to as the tune most often used with it in the US was not written
until the next year.
The music
a tune called “Carol” and was written by at Sears who was a student of Felix
Mendelssohn at the request by the American composer Richard Storrs Willis in
1850. In Europe a different tune is used call “Noel” which was adapted from an
English melody in 1874 by Arthur Sullivan.
2. This recording was done by Josh Groban a few years
ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiSqct-Ei80
My prayer
for you this week is that God would bless your worship preparations and that
you don’t get so hung up in the trappings of Christmas that you forget the
Christ of Christmas. He is the reason for the season. This is parson Paul.
Finally to round out our offering
for this week is a contemporary selection, “Lord I Lift Your Name on High”.
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