“Long lay the world, in sin and error pining
Till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth” –O Holy Night, c. 1847
Sometimes, my appreciation for grammar rewards itself.
‘O Holy Night’, of course, is a standard holiday song heard, sang, and overplayed on many a radio station committed to syrupy and overproduced renditions of Christmas classics. But no matter. To paraphrase a former professor of mine, abuse of a song doesn’t negate proper use, or its lyrical prowess. It’s still a good song.
It’s this line quoted above that has long jangled a deep chord of truth within me. It both recognizes that the world is, to put it mildly, a mess and it always has been (Ecc. 7:10). And yet … the world being a mess is never the end of the story. The next line of the hymn is "Till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth."
In this line, it would have been so easy to have the ‘its’ instead be a ‘His’ – as in, when Jesus was born, people’s souls were able to understand the worth of Jesus. “… and the soul felt His worth” – this sounds churchy, proper and altogether plausible, doesn’t it?
But that is not how the hymn is, thankfully so.
What the hymn actually states is what we know in our gut to be true about our world today; we live in a world drenched in sin, of people misusing one another, misusing God’s creation, and not loving their neighbors as themselves. We experience this reality locally in our city. We see and hear this play out in the news that we consume and in the news that consumes us. We taste the bitterness of it as it touches our lives, or the lives of those we know and love. The way of the world.
This was as true in Jesus’ time as it is now. Soon after Jesus was born, his parents would have to quickly become refugees in another country (Egypt) – their hometown was no longer a safe place to be. They sought shelter as strangers in a strange land.
Stop me if any of this sounds familiar. This is regrettably the way of the world right now.
And yet … Scripture treats the historical birth of Jesus Christ as an event foretold in the Old Testament; the fulcrum upon which creation turns. It’s what Oxford University fellow and Christian apologist CS Lewis referred to in Mere Christianity: “Enemy-occupied territory-that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
And by great campaign of sabotage, Lewis means that the birth of Christ is the firstfruits of this ‘way of the world’ (sin, violent misuse of one another and of creation) being interrupted. It's the firstfruits of us and all of creation starting to be set right by God through Christ’s love for us, justice for victims and the oppressed, of being saved from the sin that ensnares us, both in ways we have misused others and in ways we have been misused by others.
When Christ appeared, it was God’s way of showing us what we are worth. Words can only, at best, describe some of the depth, breadth and expanse of God’s love for us.
"Till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth."
Till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth” –O Holy Night, c. 1847
Sometimes, my appreciation for grammar rewards itself.
‘O Holy Night’, of course, is a standard holiday song heard, sang, and overplayed on many a radio station committed to syrupy and overproduced renditions of Christmas classics. But no matter. To paraphrase a former professor of mine, abuse of a song doesn’t negate proper use, or its lyrical prowess. It’s still a good song.
It’s this line quoted above that has long jangled a deep chord of truth within me. It both recognizes that the world is, to put it mildly, a mess and it always has been (Ecc. 7:10). And yet … the world being a mess is never the end of the story. The next line of the hymn is "Till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth."
In this line, it would have been so easy to have the ‘its’ instead be a ‘His’ – as in, when Jesus was born, people’s souls were able to understand the worth of Jesus. “… and the soul felt His worth” – this sounds churchy, proper and altogether plausible, doesn’t it?
But that is not how the hymn is, thankfully so.
What the hymn actually states is what we know in our gut to be true about our world today; we live in a world drenched in sin, of people misusing one another, misusing God’s creation, and not loving their neighbors as themselves. We experience this reality locally in our city. We see and hear this play out in the news that we consume and in the news that consumes us. We taste the bitterness of it as it touches our lives, or the lives of those we know and love. The way of the world.
This was as true in Jesus’ time as it is now. Soon after Jesus was born, his parents would have to quickly become refugees in another country (Egypt) – their hometown was no longer a safe place to be. They sought shelter as strangers in a strange land.
Stop me if any of this sounds familiar. This is regrettably the way of the world right now.
And yet … Scripture treats the historical birth of Jesus Christ as an event foretold in the Old Testament; the fulcrum upon which creation turns. It’s what Oxford University fellow and Christian apologist CS Lewis referred to in Mere Christianity: “Enemy-occupied territory-that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
And by great campaign of sabotage, Lewis means that the birth of Christ is the firstfruits of this ‘way of the world’ (sin, violent misuse of one another and of creation) being interrupted. It's the firstfruits of us and all of creation starting to be set right by God through Christ’s love for us, justice for victims and the oppressed, of being saved from the sin that ensnares us, both in ways we have misused others and in ways we have been misused by others.
When Christ appeared, it was God’s way of showing us what we are worth. Words can only, at best, describe some of the depth, breadth and expanse of God’s love for us.
"Till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth."
Sometimes, grammar and pronouns convey so much.
My hope and prayer for you this holiday season is that you would, in ways familiar and new, get to experience and know in the deepest parts of your being that you are loved by God beyond compare.
Jim Roach is the Campus Minister in Reinert Hall.
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