Unto us the King is born, a savior, in the city of David, who is Christ the Lord. We’ve been preparing for this moment during Advent and indeed we will continue to prepare for it during the long Advent of this life. But, on the night of his nativity, and this his birthday, when the King of Glory steps across the eternal threshold into our world, what song will we sing to honor him? How shall we celebrate the birth of the King of kings with voices dampened and spoiled, as deep calling to deep in the valley of the shadow of death, struck as we are with the sharp arrow of Adam’s curse and plague? The birth of God in human vesture is no ordinary birthday celebration, nor would it be appropriate to sing a funeral dirge. For today God bows the heavens low and comes down, with his strange and mysterious work, things that angels long to look into, and it is only with their songs that we may greet him. What song shall we then sing?

Let us take up the harp of David, from which the evil spirits flee in fear, and with which even the mouths of infants resound in noise of praise, singing not the songs of earth, and the foreign tongue of the lost sons of Adam, but the songs of heaven and the tongues of angels. For the Word of God now dwells among us, and the tabernacle of God is with man. We who lacked the words to greet him, the Word Himself now greets, in whom all songs, all praise, all promises, are Yes and Amen. Today’s message comes in the rhyme of an old Psalter, hymned out of Psalm 147 by Philip and Mary Sidney, entitled Laudate Dominum, as it was known in the Church long ago. Taking these words into our breasts, we sing back to God, in words, turned into rhyme, yet not our own, saying,

Sing to the Lord: for what can better be,

Than of our God that we the honour sing?

With seemly pleasure what can more agree,

Than praiseful voice, and touch of tune’d string?

For, lo, the Lord again to form doth bring

Jerusalem’s long ruinated walls:

And Jacob’s house, which all the earth did see

Disperse’d erst, to union now recalls.

And now by him their broken hearts made sound,

And now by him their bleeding wounds are bound

St. Luke tells of Christ’s birth as a royal birth, of God the King in human form. Surely he has come to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls, to restore the ruined house of Jacob, to mend the broken hearts and bind up the bleeding wounds. Yet in the manger we see no display of power, no creative might, but the glory of God in a tiny infant. He has come to bind our wounds, who is himself bound in swaddling clothes, wrapped up in the poverty of our nature, no place to lay his head, no angels there to sing him to sleep. Only the cattle lowing and the whistling wind of a cold and silent night. Truly this was a humble birth, by which we too might be born again in humility. Our song continues:

For what could not, who can the number tell

Of stars, the torches of his heav’nly hall?

And tell so readily, he knoweth well

How every star by proper name to call.

What great to him, whose greatness doth not fall

Within precincts? Whose pow’r no limits stay?

Whose knowledges all number so excel,

No numb’ring number can their number lay?

Easy to him to lift the lowly just:

Easy to down proud wicked to the dust.

Soon the wise men will follow the sign of his appearing, a star, a new star, one that had never before been seen, its name known only to the Creator. And yet, the star announces he, who holds all of the stars in hand and calls them by name. He whose greatness does not fall, whose power has no limits, upon whom no man can lay the measuring rod, or claim the skill to number the span of his almighty arm. How easily does he lift the lowly and bring the proud down to the dust. And yet, on this night divine, there he lay, himself clothed in the ashes and dust of our humanity, so that we might behold his glory, not by vaunting ourselves to the highest heavens, but adoring him, who in the beginning stretched out the starry heavens like a curtain, when the morning stars sang together, and when all the sons of God shouted for joy. St. Paul saw his light, so bright that it darkened the sun at noonday, and blinded the eyes of the great persecutor of Christ’s Church. His coming as a babe lying in a manger is no solar display, but a single star. Truly there is no power on earth that he requires. So we sing:

The stately shape, the force of bravest steed

Is far too weak to work in him delight:

No more in him can any pleasure breed

In flying footman foot of nimblest flight.

Nay, which is more, his fearers in his sight

Can well of nothing, but his bounty brave,

Which never failing, never lets them need,

Who fixed their hopes upon his mercies have.

O, then Jerusalem, praise,

With honour due thy God, O, Zion, raise.

Let us join our voices this Christmas and sing our blessed Redeemer’s praise, not with human voice or word, but with the voice of angels and with the Word of God made flesh. He comes bound in human weakness, to bind up our wounds. He comes as lowly as the dust, to rescue us from the dust of death, and He comes to raise the sons of earth, to put a new song in our mouth, that now we might be called sons of the living God, that now we might praise him, and truly honor him, even with imperfect speech and weak and weary voices, shouting with a merry noise in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs poured into us from the mouth of God himself, who lifts our voices all the way to the third heaven, as they proclaim the great mystery of our salvation, even things that angels long to look into. For the Tabernacle of God is now with man. And he shall rule over heaven and earth forever and ever. Amen.