Song at Midnight for the New Year

[PHOTO: On New Year's Eve, Brandy and I are sheltering from tornado warnings in my newly refurbished basement. Here's a photo from October of the two of us in that same space.]

During 12 days of Christmas, to the puzzlement of my dog Brandy, this Episcopalian is singing a different Christmas hymn every day with the Morning Prayer service. This, the sixth day, I turned to one of the most familiar ones, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear." I've known the first verse for more than 50 years; the other verses were new to me. The message struck me as a good one for a new year.

I wonder how many of us know what "it" is? It's not the baby Jesus, but the song of the angels who proclaim peace and goodwill:

It came upon the midnight clear,
that glorious song of old,
from angels bending near the earth
to touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, good will to men,
from heaven's all-gracious King."
The World in solemn stillness lay
to hear the angels sing.

The words are by Edmund H. Sears (1810-1876) a Unitarian pastor, author, and abolitionist in Massachusetts. The tune familiar to most Americans is by Richard Storrs Willis (1819-1900); the other tune is by Sir Arthur Sullivan of H.M.S. Pinafore fame.

The second verse tells us that the song still floats o'er the weary world, though we're too engrossed in our Babel sounds of conflict to hear it.

Verse three laments that the world has suffered long during two thousand years of wrong. He implores us, O hush your noise and cease the strife / and hear the angels sing.

He takes comfort from Scripture that the Lord will return and make everything right at last:

For, lo! The days are hastening on
by prophets seen of old
when with the ever-circling years
shall come the time foretold
when peace shall over all the earth
its ancient splendors fling

That's a pretty far-fetched image, of "peace" having to "fling" its "ancient splendors" -- did we have peace in ancient times? Nope. He continues

and all the world [shall] give back the song
which now the angels sing.

That is, one day, we'll all be in the same hymnal on the same page (which would be #89).

I've been reading work by theologian Verna Dozier and poet Christian Wiman who both pooh-pooh the idea that some day things'll be bad enough that God will just step in and make everything right. It's a pleasing idea, but Dozier would say, and Wiman, probably, would agree, "Naah, it's up to us."

It's an election year. It's a time of revised expectations because of the COVID "omicron" variant. I'm reading a biography of Grant, identifying with the feelings he had when family and friends were vicious in their divisions over slavery, partisanship, and secession.

My comfort comes from assurances in the Bible, such as this evening's appointed Psalm 90, and the knowledge that we've been here before, and somehow the people born in that time got through it and recreated the world I was born into.

Forget about "Happy New Year." I'll settle for a year of taking deep breaths and backing off.