The Lessons and Carols Service

The feast of Christmas lasts twelve days, until Epiphany on January 6. So this Sunday, the First Sunday after Christmas, we will have the opportunity to hear the story of our Savior’s birth told again, retold in a service of Lessons and Carols.

Our first lesson will take us all the way back to the beginning, where the birth of Jesus was promised from the very same day as the fall of man. God says to the serpent, at the end of our first lesson, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” In other words, there would be a child, born of woman, who would undo the fall that Satan had just caused. He would come to crush the head of the serpent, triumph over sin and death, and set us free. We sing about this in “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”: “This day is born a Savior of a pure virgin bright, To free all those who trust in him from Satan’s pow’r and might.”

Jesus accomplishes this freedom, this deliverance, this salvation by taking on human nature and raising it up to everlasting life in his death and resurrection. What we celebrate this Christmastide is the beginning of this redemption, his taking on our nature. “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail th’ incarnated Deity. Pleased as man with us to dwell; Jesus, our Emmanuel!”

This is the Christmas message which is life-changing for those who receive it; which totally transforms our perspective on life and death and God. For because God has come to be with man, we know that it is now possible for man to be with God.

Friends, as we sing these carols on Sunday, we are recounting the fact that God has come to dwell alongside us; and this message truly is good tidings of great joy.

A special thanks to Dcn. Kathy and all those who are reading for this service. Your assigned readings are listed below and can be found in the bulletin. I will see you all when I return from vacation next week.