The Encourager Newsletter - Vol.3 Issue 53 - 2009.12.18 - Our Religious Symbols (Part 3) - Hark! the Herald Angels Sing

The Encourager Newsletter

Toward Knowing God and Walking With Him

A FREE WEEKLY PUBLICATION with a BIBLICAL WORLD VIEW – Volume 3 Issue 53

December 18, 2009 Dan Carr, Editor

      Our Religious Symbols (Part 3)

The Christmas season produces an explosion of color, music, plays and pageantry, rich food, decorated trees and houses, and a plea for snow. It's a national holiday and families invest time and money to get together. Red and green are the dominate colors of which the Poinsettia is queen and is flanked by the red berries of Nandina and Holly. God is the author of color and celebration and even in our fallen state, there's something about Christmas that draws millions of people to its excitement. We want to enjoy color! We want to celebrate hope!

 

It's the most exciting time of the year and the loneliest time of the year. Suicide rates go up at Christmas time because people are reminded of their emptiness and loneliness and bad experiences they have tried to keep locked up. For them, Christmas overwhelms them with a feeling of failure and futility. No other time of the year has this much power to highlight excitement and despair—and debt!

 

Last week we looked at our incurable exercise of inventing and using symbols throughout our human activity. Industry and commerce is laced with its copyrighted logos and icons. Our computers depend on icons.

 

Status symbols are subtle but powerful and people will labor for them 'till they have a heart attack or kill another human being. These symbols cover clothing, hair styles, cars, houses, neighborhoods, clubs, occupations and our reading and viewing habits. In Detroit and New York City, police records have shown several killings to get the shoes from the feet of the victims because the shoes were coveted status symbols. Religious Symbols  are a small section of the world of symbols.

 

In the earliest days of Christianity the "sign of the fish" was an important part of communication. When Rome realized that Christians were not a mere branch of Judaism, Rome went after Christians to extinguish them. The Empire found it necessary to examine the various religions of the nations it conquered. If those religions would "give licit to Caesar," that is, if the religions would submit to the authority of Rome, they were considered to be licensed by the Roman government.

 

Christians would not "give licit" to Caesar and therefore were considered by Rome to be illegitimate.  Rome said "You can say that Christ is Lord if you are willing to say that Caesar gives you permission to make Christ Lord." Their supreme loyalty was to Christ as Lord, not to Rome as Lord. It cost them their lives.  Christians began meeting secretly and in some situations used the sign of the fish to point to their meeting places. They were also fishers of men, so the symbol was convenient and easy to use.

 

Another major symbol of early Christianity was the symbol of the cross. It was resisted at first but then began to be used.  The Apostle Paul wrote: But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world (Galatians 6:14).

 

Today, millions of gold necklaces are in use for the purpose of displaying a cross. The hymn: "In the cross of Christ I glory – towering o'er the wrecks of time" embodies the great feeling of this important symbol.  The cross remains the most widely used symbol of Christianity today.

 

Jesus established the greatest symbol: By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another (John 13:35). A gold cross necklace may or may not express who we really are. But love is impossible to fake and is the ultimate symbol of who we are.  …the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us (Romans 5:5).  …the fruit of the Spirit is love,…(Galatians 5:22)

 

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind (2Timothy 1:7)

 

Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins (Proverbs 10:12). It is true that some people are hard to love. However, if I love you I am not going to blab your sins all over the neighborhood.

 

Paul had this to say: Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart (2Corinthians 3:2-3).

 

Christmas is a special holiday (Holy Day) that serves as a symbol. It is not in the Bible. Christmas comes from two words: Christ and Mass, of Catholic origin. Aside from the Catholic coining of the term, it means dismissal or mission. Christ's Mission. A Mass is usually a special program of music focused on a theme. The word: Christmas has escaped its Catholic birth and is in the mouth of millions of non-Catholics. The commercializing of Christmas has damaged its public celebration. The importance of snow and decorations and the mythical Santa Clause have kidnapped the birth of Christ and stuffed Him in a closet out of sight.

 

Nevertheless, there remains a very strong remnant of dedicated Christians who sincerely seek to honor the birth of Christ as the most important advent (arrival) in history to this present hour. We use music, pageantry (plays) special sermons and decorations and many kinds of festivities. The four weeks of the Advent Season prior to Christmas day gives a longer time to reflect on the history and meaning of Christmas celebration. Some do not use Christmas trees and other decorations because of their personal feelings about it and some do not exchange gifts and other symbols of Christmas. I have met many people through the years whose idea of Christmas was to soak themselves in alcohol and really get "plastered." They wake up broke and feeling like a truck has run over them.  I think I can get by without that.

 

One word of caution. If someone has misused something, it doesn't mean that we can never use that item because its image is tainted. In my neck of the woods, bootleggers used glass pint jars to package their moonshine. My mother never stopped filling pint jars with jams and jellies because the bootleggers misused glass pint jars. Trees have been misused and made into wooden idols (Isaiah 40:20 and 44:19). But I have never seen anyone use a Christmas tree like that. Christmas trees symbolize many positive things about God and about us. We have the star of Bethlehem and green for eternal life and a lot of Christian history wrapped up in the symbol.

 

But, if your whole idea of Christmas is a Christmas tree and gifts and partying and artificial exuberance, then you have missed the whole point of Christmas. We use Christmas symbols because of the greater and deeper thing that has happened: Christ has come to die for the sins of the world and eventually to sit upon the Throne of David in Jerusalem to rule over a new world government for a thousand years. That's what all the symbols of Christmas are about. It's not about snow and trees and gifts and cookies.  Christmas is about Christ. He has come! He is coming!  Because He lives, you shall live also. Merry Christmas!

 

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

–Barbara Carr

 

Our last Christmas carol before Christmas Day is Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.  I have enjoyed looking up the history of several carols but these three are my favorites.

 

Hark! the Herald Angels Sing was written by Charles Wesley.  He was the younger brother of John Wesley the man who began the Methodist movement in the Church of England.  "Upon his conversion, he immediately began writing hymns, each one packed with doctrine, all of them exhibiting strength and sensitivity, both beauty and theological brawn. He wrote constantly, and even on horseback his mind was flooded with new songs. He often stopped at homes along the road and ran in asking for 'pen and ink.'"(R. Morgan)

 

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing was first published in 1739 in a book called Hymns and Scared Poems.The version of this carol we sing today is a compilation of the efforts of Charles Wesley, George Whitfield, Felix Mendelssohn and WH Cummings.

 

Wesley was protective of the songs he wrote.  He did not want the wording changed.  He is quoted as having said, "Many gentlemen have done my brother and me the honor to reprint many of our hymns.  Now they are perfectly welcome to do so, provided they print them just as they are.  But I desire they would not attempt to mend them for they are really not able.  None of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse.  Therefore, I must bet of them these two favors: either to let them stand just as they are, to take things for better or worse, or to add the true reading in the Margin, or at the bottom of the page, that we may no longer be accountable for the nonsense or for the doggerel of other men." (Morgan, 49)

 

However, Wesley's friend George Whitfield disregarded his friend's warning.  The first two lines were "Hark, how the welkin rings, Glory to the King of kings."  Welkin means "The vault of Heaven."  He changed these two lines to read, "Hark, the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king."

 

Felix Mendelssohn composed a cantata in 1840 to celebrate the invention of the printing press.  The song was called "Festgesang" or Festival Song."  W. H. Cummings, an organist, adapted Mendelssohn song to the lyrics of Wesley's Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.  He organized the song into the ten-line stanzas that we sing today.  The final version was published in 1856.

 

Roy (Sonny) Gamble teaches our adult Bible Study on Wednesday evenings.  He has been teaching on the birth of Jesus.  Everyone has learned  and enjoyed this class.  In our last class, he quoted the first verse of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, stating that it is his favorite carol.  He commented that he wonders how many people sing the song without hearing the words.  In one of my early articles, I had said, "How many of you sing the hymns on Sunday and your mind is on something else?" We who have sung the hymns all our lives practically have them memorized. We can sing them and never hear a word.  Let's read the following words.  Have you really listened to them before?

 

Hark the herald angels sing "Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinners reconciled"
Joyful, all ye nations rise Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:  "Christ is born in Bethlehem"
Hark! The herald angels sing "Glory to the newborn King!"

 

"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." (Luke 2:13-14) 

 

The Encourager may also be read at www.biblewalking.blogspot.com .

 

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