A Message at Lessons and Carols: The Hope of Advent

 

Our choirmaster, Lee Escandon, recently reminded our youth choir that Lessons and Carols is not an ancient tradition; it is, in fact, quite recent. Yet it remains one of the most beloved.

The Rev. Eric Milner-White, an Anglican priest and chaplain of King’s College, Cambridge, created the service for Christmas Eve 1918. Like so many men of his generation, he returned from the trenches of World War One disillusioned and traumatized. In a season marked by loss and darkness, he sought a simple service that could speak Christian hope into a world depleted of it. And so Lessons and Carols was born.

We begin this morning’s service on the threshold of something new. The world of waiting that defined the Old Testament is giving way. The Angel Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary, likely a teenage girl in a small Judean hill town, and says:

“And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him
the throne of his father David.”

In those words Mary begins to see that everything her ancestors had longed for would come to fulfillment in the child she would bear. Jesus, as the prophets foretold, would be the great liberator from the line of David. The restless hearts of a weary people would find their rest in him. And so it is with us.

Our world, like the world of the prophets and of Saint Mary, is torn by strife. Many of us feel the uncertainty of these days—whether in global conflicts, economic instability, or the relentless churn of the news cycle. Some of us are anxious about the future. I know that I am. Yet the story we tell tonight bids us to hope.

Advent reminds us that even in the midst of hopelessness, God gives us something to hope for. Jesus—the child born to a young mother in Bethlehem in a hastily prepared shelter—is the source and object of all our hopes. Only he loves as we were meant to be loved. As the priest and poet Malcolm Guite writes:

“But the Advent hope – indeed, the Advent miracle – was that this unknowable, unnamable, utterly holy Lord chose out of his own free will and out of love for us to become known: to bear a name and meet us where we are.”

Because God became human, we can see what divine love looks like. It looks like the self-emptying love of Jesus, whose outstretched arms invite us to know him more deeply. In a world marked by uncertainty, one thing remains certain: God loves each and every one of us.

That is the story we tell tonight, and it is worth telling again and again. When Milner-White first introduced Lessons and Carols, the world was reeling from war, loss, and profound instability. In many ways, our own time feels much the same. Yet then—as now—the story of Jesus’ birth offered enduring hope.

As we hear the Scriptures and carols tonight, may that same hope break upon our hearts once more.