The Old Testament Background to Christmas
Please join us for our 15th Annual Festival of Lessons and Carols
December 12th at 5:00 pm
Since 1918, it has been the tradition to hold a festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at Kings College Cambridge, on Christmas Eve.
It is a service of surpassing beauty and power. This is due in part to the setting of Kings College Chapel, an architectural gem with perhaps with the finest stained glass and choral acoustics known to the world. It is due in part to the glorious singing of the choir, which is likewise world-renowned.
But it is finally due to the surpassing power of the service itself, a power that is derived from its simplicity. Nine lessons are read straight from the scriptures, four from the old testament, five from the new, with appropriate carols interspersed, and a simple opening and closing prayer.
Listen to the classic lines of the opening prayer, which capture the force of the event:
Belovèd in Christ, be it this Christmas Eve our care and delight to prepare ourselves to hear again the message of the angels: in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, and with the shepherds and the wise men adore the Child lying in his Mother's arms.
Let us read and mark in Holy Scripture the tale of the loving purposes of God from the first days of our disobedience unto the glorious Redemption brought us by this Holy Child; and in company with the whole Church let us make this chapel, dedicated to his pure and lowly Mother, glad with our carols of praise, etc.
The Nine Lessons are powerful, because they underline the simple truth that the story of Christmas begins in the Old Testament. We understand the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ as Good News — the Gospel — only when we enter into the experience of those longsuffering Jews who had been waiting so many generations for their deliverer, when we hear the message of the angels as Mary heard it, as Zechariah and Elizabeth heard it, as the shepherds heard it.
When Christmas is untethered from the Old Testament, from the covenantal promises it fulfilled, is when it is most susceptible to the empty, romantic notions that typify the holiday celebration of not only our broader culture, but of far too many Christmas sermons. You know the list of themes that are comfortably conveyed in Christmas cards: Joy, Peace, Love. It is not enough to insist that Jesus is the reason for the season, if all he is merely a symbol of love, peace, and joy. Yet, in a day of great and growing biblical illiteracy, even in the church, this is what we are too often left with.
That the story of Christmas — the Gospel itself — begins in the Old Testament is abundantly clear from each of the Four Gospels, which each present the coming of the Son of God as the fulfillment of the Old Testament in their own, distinctive way.
John begins his story of the incarnation of the Word “in the beginning,” establishing his roots in the opening verses of Genesis.
Mark announces “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” by quoting the prophet Isaiah, and describing the ministry of John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord.
Matthew begins with a genealogy, which causes the eyes of many modern readers to glaze over with the likes of Amminadab, Nahshon, Jeconiah, Shealtiel, and Eliakim. But to the Jew, or the knowing Christian, this genealogy of the Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham conjures in a few quick penstrokes the entire sweep of Old Testament history, and more importantly, the tale of the loving purposes of God as expressed in the covenants made with Abraham, and David, and kept by the Lord through the exile, and through the many generations. Count them, three groups of fourteen, six sevens, with the seventh seven, the sabbath of sabbaths, coming in Christ.
And likewise, Luke, the researcher, the chronicler, the historian. A gentile convert, Luke’s Gospel leaves little doubt that he was catechized into a thorough understanding of the Old Testament, and that the Apostle Paul, with whom he traveled, proclaimed Jesus as the righteous seed, long ago promised to Abraham.
Luke’s telling of the birth of Christ is both more historical, and more narrative and lyrical. After his prologue, Luke’s opening verse sets the birth of Christ in its historical context, and then immediately introduces us to Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, and her husband Zachariah, a priest who we meet ministering before the altar in the temple of Jerusalem.
Both Elizabeth and Zechariah are of the priestly tribe of Aaron, and both of them, as well as the temple itself play a prominent role in the opening scenes of Luke’s Gospel — one thinks of the prophecy of Malachi, “and the Lord, whome you seek, will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant in whom you deligth, behold, he is coming, says the lord of hosts.”
Their names are not insignificant: Elizabeth means “God is an Oath,” and Zechariah means “Yahweh remembers.” Immediately upon being introduced to them, one wonders what it is that Yahweh remembers, what oath has been given that reveals god’s presence with his people. This name, Zechariah, is an extremely common one in the Old Testament, occurring 29 times, and reflecting the same reality we find in Matthew’s geneaology, that generation after generation had celebrated the Lord’s faithfulness to his covenant promises, and looked forward to the day of their fulfillment.
This post was taken from a sermon by Brian Lee, “Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord?”, originally preached on November 30, 2008.