The need to try to alter the words of traditional hymns so they are less divisive sometimes works well and sometimes leads to nonsense. One of my Christmas favourites, which is certainly good for singing right through to Epiphany, is Edmunds Sears’ It came upon the midnight clear. The original refers to ‘man at war with man’ but the editors of Rejoice and Sing (number 144) altered the phrase to read:
And we, at bitter war, hear not
The love song which they bring.
‘They’ are the angels whose love song risks being drowned out by our many disagreements from petty squabbles over the way we say things right through to full scale war.
Britain has just been through one of the most divisive periods in peacetime history. The matter of Brexit has divided many of us in families, churches and socially. Feelings ran deep but now it is all over. Whether you wanted it or not, like it or not or think it matters or not, the issue that has provided a solid, indigestible core to our newspapers for a long time is resolved.
The love song of the angels is designed to work like that. As if by magic, or rather, by the mystery of God incarnate among us, if only we will listen, the love song can dissolve the indigestible core of our seemingly indissoluble disputes and disagreements and take away the need for polarisation around great points of human-designed principle.
The hymn ends by concluding that in the time foretold the world will ‘repeat the song which now the angels sing’. We are starting a New Year where the dominant hope is for a successful vaccination programme and some normalisation of life in the next, less threatening phase of living with COVID-19. Let’s go into the year with an ear for the love-song which the angels sing.
A prayer
God, whose love among us is easily lost in our own, self-generated noise, help us to develop the wisdom to spend more time in seeking your way and less time in trumpeting ours, for the sake of the Christ in our midst.
Amen.