“Till He Appeared”
(#2 in the Advent series, “A Thrill of Hope”)
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
(“O Holy Night,” lyrics by Placide Cappeau, 1847)
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea . . .
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
(Matthew 3:1, 3)
A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Second Sunday of Advent, December 4, 2016
(Volume 6 Number 19)
St. James United Methodist Church, 321 Pleasant Valley Drive, Little Rock, AR 72212
Till He Appeared is the second in my Advent series, A Thrill of Hope, overlaying each lectionary
reading of scripture with successive phrases which begin the lines of the 1st stanza of the
Christmas song, O Holy Night.
We’re not going to be hearing “O, Holy Night” in each service, but rather waiting in anticipation
for when we will hear it – in each of our four sanctuary services at Advent’s apogee, Christmas
Eve. Perhaps the wait is a good way to emphasize that Advent reminds us of the long wait for
the Messiah -- both in the Old Testament waiting for his First Advent in Bethlehem, and that of
our own wait for his Second Advent upon the Mount of Olives, the Christians’ Blessed Hope.
We are, even now, in Advent, and not merely liturgically as we remember pre-Bethlehem, but
actually, since ours is a posture of waiting for Christ.
So, in the spirit of waiting we will wait to hear O Holy Night. I can’t help it, though, if through
these messages an earworm burrows deep into your head, so that you unconsciously play O Holy
Night over and over in your mind. You will not need to hear it played, since without doubt it is
one of the most recognizable songs in the Church’s Christmas collection, and a benchmark for
aspiring soloists for whom the Holy Grail of vocal skill comes down to raising the rafters on the
“-vine” of “O, night di-vine.” (I’ve tried to reach that note myself in the shower and the car a
number of times this week. I think I nailed it!)
Not only have I sung it, I’ve listened to many recordings over the past month, each week
listening to a few more of the many recordings available online. Josh Groban’s video remains
my favorite, not only for his amazing voice, but for its imagery from the 2006 film, The Nativity
Story. Click on this link and listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zh-yR0pbmU
Since 1847, O Holy Night has brought Christmas inspiration to millions. That’s the year it was
written by Placide Cappeau, asked by the parish priest of his hometown of Roquemaure, France,
to write a poem about Christ’s birth to be recited at the dedication of the church’s renovated
organ. Cappeaua, a merchant of wines who was increasingly anti-church, was an outspoken
socialist who turned away from institutional, established religion. Still, he wrote the poem,
which he called "Minuit, Chrétiens" (Midnight, Christians), then asked his friend, the classical
music composer Adolphe Adam to compose the melody. Adam did that, calling it Cantique de
Noel (Song of Christmas).
The song’s immediately popularity, authored by one with a vocal disinterest in the church,
prompted a reaction by the French Catholic Church, which banned Cantique de Noel from use in
liturgy. The people, though, wouldn’t let it go, and it eventually made its way across the Atlantic
to America, where a Unitarian minister from Boston, co-founder of the Harvard Music Society,
heard it and loved it. His name was John Sullivan Dwight, a fervent abolitionist in the days
leading up to the Civil War, and in 1855 he translated it into English with the title, O Holy Night.
The last stanza touched his heart as he translated the French into these English words: “Truly he
taught us to love one another, his law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break for
the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease.”
My focus in this Advent series, however, will fall, not on that third stanza, but upon the first
stanza. It begins (Warning, prepare now for the Earworm’s Entrance!):
O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Savior's birth.
After those lines, I’ve taken as my titles/themes for the four Sundays of Advent the first words of
each of the next four lines:
Finally, my Christmas Eve message, O Night Divine, is drawn from the next lines:
Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
Last Sunday we focused on the line, “Long lay the world, in sin and error pining,” which
reminded us of the long wait for the messiah’s birth in Bethlehem, and our long wait for the
Second Advent of Christ. The lighting of the first Advent candle brought the first hint of light to
the darkness in which . . . Long Lay the World.
This morning we have two candles lit, so a pathway has been illuminated. From Point A to Point
B a straight path has been lighted. Having emerged last Sunday from the long darkness to a
single light, the second candle makes possible our progressing toward greater light. To walk this
path we need a guide to appear, and so we arrive at the next line of the song, “Till he appeared
and the soul felt its worth.” Today I want us to focus on the appearance of our guide, John the
Baptist, the voice crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” announcing the
appearance of Messiah.
When a monarch is coming to a much awaited event, preparation work must be done. When
the moment at last arrives, an announcement of the monarch’s arrival is expected and fitting.
So it is that the appearance of the long promised Messiah to Israel was to be announced by one
Isaiah called “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” Matthew, in today’s reading (3:1-12),
gives that role to Jesus’ first cousin, John the Baptist, our lectionary jumping ahead, not to
Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, but his appearance 30 years later as he embarked upon his ministry.
I’ve long loved this line of O Holy Night for what is, I think, one of the song’s most poetic and
powerful phrases describing what happened at the moment of Messiah’s appearing: The soul
felt its worth.
So, with this line of the song in one hand and my John the Baptist passage in the other, I
embarked upon my preparation, linking his appearance, on the one hand, to the Soul Feeling Its
Worth, on the other. Since John was announcing Messiah’s appearance, surely, as the people
heard John, they would be made to “feel their worth.” Right?
Wrong! I just couldn’t make this passage from Matthew 3 say anything close to that! His
appearance as announced by John leads to anything but The Soul Felt Its Worth! The opposite,
in fact. John seems set to make them sense just how unworthy they were!
The setting is the wilderness of Judea, John baptizing in the dry and dusty Jordan River valley
as it empties into the lowest point on the face of the planet, the Dead Sea. This was no Open
Doors, Open Minds, and Open Hearts passage. Were I to search for a text to offer a message
on that United Methodist slogan, I certainly would not go to Matthew 3! John’s message can
be summed up in a word . . . Repent! He brings his listeners as low as the Dead Sea.
And the messenger! John was anything but a respected figure from Jerusalem’s temple class.
He was a wilderness man! Perhaps he was connected to the anti-establishment reaction to
what was perceived as Jerusalem’s corrupt religious leadership, the nearby Essence community
known as Qumran, the place where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Behold, John the
Baptizer! In clothing strange. In diet stranger.
“Brood of vipers!” he said. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!” he said, “You
sons of Abraham,” he said, “Don’t flatter yourselves! God could raise up sons of Abraham
from these rocks.”
So, I thought, as I saturated myself in our lectionary reading, was ever a text and a tune more
ill-suited for one another? John the Baptist and his message is hardly a “Let me help your soul
to feel its worth” kind of moment, but rather the soul is made to feel dirty, stained, and ugly –
in need of washing, in need of redemption. So, I was nigh to scrap my plan, light a different
colored candle, find another path. And yet . . .
Something there is about this wilderness prophet. I don’t know how the people came to feel
the soul’s worth in such a hard message, but they did, and the evidence is . . . well, the
evidence is that they came. In droves they came -- from Jerusalem and the Jordan region.
“Why?” I want to ask. They must have Looked . . . Harder than I was looking. Did they sense
that something amiss? In their institutions? In their own hearts? And did they sense that -through John’s message of repentance -- God’s demanding of more signaled that they were
worth more? Had their liturgy lulled them into believing all was well, when all was not well?
So perhaps they Looked . . . Harder. If you love Disney’s 1994 Academy Award Winning
film, The Lion King, as do I, your recognition of the linking of those two words, Look . . .
Harder, will remind you of one of the most impactful scenes of the film when Rafiki -- a John
the Baptist-like, baboon priest and sage -- at last found Simba at “prepared the way” for his
appearing. Years before Simba had run in guilt and not lived up to his heritage as King
Mufasa’s son, heir to the Pride Lands. No, there was no Pride Land in Simba’s heart, and long
had lain Simba, pining deep within, for what he could not yet name. Rafiki knew that Simba
would feel himself unworthy – dirty, stained, and ugly.
Rafiki got Simba’s attention by knocking him on the head, saying, “I know who you are. You
are Mufasa’s son.” I think that’s what John the Baptist was telling the people. His message
was quite a knock on the head! “I know who you are. You are the king’s son, an heir of the
king. Act like it! Repent, for the Kingdom is at hand.” But Simba, as well as the people
coming to John for baptism, needed to see who they really were, and it was the stirring of the
waters that helped them to see. Rafiki draws Simba to the water with a promise to see his
father and says, “Look down there.” Excited, then disappointed, Simba says, “That’s not my
father. It’s just my reflection.”
And that’s when Rafiki stirs the waters and says, “No, Look . . . Harder.”
Simba looks and this time, in his reflection, he sees his father, King Mufasa, who says, “You
have forgotten who you are and so have forgotten me. Look inside yourself Simba. You are
more than what you
have become.”
You see, when Simba
Looked . . . Harder, he
was looking within,
and his soul felt its
worth. With renewed
vision of who he really
was, he set out afresh
on the path toward
light.
John the Baptist, I
think, was a Rafiki
figure, an odd
messenger indeed, bopping them over the head as a way to remind them of who they are, bidding
them to look at themselves and their God in the stirred waters of baptism.
In that baptism, the soul felt its worth.
Till he appears and the soul felt its worth!
Today is Holy Communion Sunday. Each time we gather around the table, in the bread and in
the wine, he appears. May it be that as we approach the table, and Christ appears in the bread
and the wine, your own soul will Feel Its Worth, that Jesus should die for you.
And, if you haven’t yet felt Holy Communion in that way, Look . . . Harder!