Yesterday, we had our annual carol service. One of the few Anglican traditions I am pleased to incorporate into church life is their service of nine lessons and carols. Partly, that is because it requires practically no effort to put together – it is, indeed, what it is! But it is also because I think it does one thing very helpfully and quite well; namely, it just reads lots of the bible and does an exclusively bible-read biblical theology of covenant to Christ. It even manages to capture the Creation-Sin-Exile-Restoration super-structure of scripture quite helpfully. It is hard to knock a service of bible readings followed by songs backing up the bible readings.
Anyway, as part of our nine lessons and carols we sang Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. I recently discovered – that few people know one of the verses that we always like to include. I would call it the fourth, or the fifth, but depending on which book you read from it might be neither (if it is included at all!) The verse I am talking about is this one:
Come, Desire of nations, come;
make in us your humble home!
Rise, the woman’s conquering Seed,
bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Adam’s likeness now efface;
stamp your image in its place;
second Adam from above,
give us life; impart your love.
Why it’s left out is beyond me. It’s a belter. But particularly good when we have read the protoevangelium at the beginning of the service and John’s prologue at the end.
I have no other goal here than to encourage more of us to include this verse when we sing this carol. If you’ve got a Christmas Day service and you are going to sing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, maybe think about including it.
Thanks for the tip off. It is a belter of a verse. Most hymns have more verses than we sing. Also I agree with you about the 9 Carol’s and readings. I winder if we shouldn’t include something like that at other times. Just lots of Bible readings and hymns/worship songs.
I think most nonconformist evangelical churches have a limited amount of Bible reading in their service.
We always have four readings in ours: an opening reading linked to the sermon, the reading for the sermon, a reading before communion (which we do weekly) and then a benediction. This tends to give us a fair bit of actual bible every week.
Obviously 9 lessons and carols is more still, but there are no other elements to the service. Just carols and readings, with the readings very much taking you through the story from creation to christ, promise to fulfilment, which is quite good I think. We always have a 10 minute talk on one of the passages too, but I don’t think you necessarily need it.
BREAKING NEWS – Steve Kneale on the verge of shock conversion to Anglicanism
It’s proof!