Dec 13, 2021
Many popular Advent and Christmas traditions come to us from the German-speaking world—the Advent wreath, the Advent calendar, the Christmas tree—and the hymnody of the season is no exception. Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming, written in a monastic community in Trier in the Rhineland-Palatinate, refers to Jesus as a flower much in the same way as the book of Isaiah does (“… a shoot from the stump of Jesse” Isaiah 11:1; “For He grew up before Him like a young plant…” Isaiah 53:2). The German composer Felix Mendelssohn thought that the tune from his Festgesang, Op. 68 “would never do to sacred words.” But he was proven quite wrong when it was published with Charles Wesley’s text “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” in 1861, becoming one of the world’s most beloved Christmas carols. Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676), a Lutheran pastor and poet from the seventeenth century, supplies two of this morning’s hymns. All My Heart This Night Rejoices uses images such as “angel voices” and a “star from afar” to evoke the joy we feel at the coming of the Conqueror who overthrows sin, woe, death and hell. Less well known is O Savior Dear, Thy Manger Here, sung to a tune by the composer Johann Crüger whom Gerhardt met in Berlin and collaborated with numerous times. The gentle, child-like hymn is a study in contrasts: the humble manger is a paradise of glory; He who calms the winds and seas is given to us as an infant; the taint of Adam’s fall is erased by Christ’s saving grace. —Henry C. Haffner
Key Words: Fulfill, Prophet, Virgin, Immanuel,
Commanded, Name, Jesus, Birth
Keystone Verse: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). (Matthew 1:23)
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). 24When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, 25but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called His name Jesus.