Two gripes following a Carol Service that I attended just before Christmas…
Firstly the violence being done to some of our greatest
hymns in the name of accessibility.
Changing ‘thee’, ‘thou’ and ‘ye’ into ‘you’, for example, is basically dumbing
down – it implies that the people singing the carols don’t understand what the
words mean, which is both wrong and patronising.
Worse is the changing of phrases such as, for example, ‘sing
choirs of angels’ into ‘sing all the angels’ (you’ll know the carol). This changes the meaning to an extent – if the
words are ‘sing all the angels’, to how many angels we are referring? Three, four? More than this? But ‘choirs of angels’ implies tens or
hundreds, much more impressive. Everyone
knows what a choir is, why change the word?
Secondly, and more importantly, we were about 30 seconds
into a lengthy sermon when the subject changed from nativity to
crucifixion. Now I fully acknowledge the
centrality of the atonement in the Christian faith (and will be posting a full
blog item early in the New Year), but Christmas is about the wonder of the
incarnation. I think the problem here stems
from Paul’s statement that he was determined to “preach nothing but Christ, and
him crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23 and 1 Corinthians 2:2). In my experience, many Evangelical preachers
have taken this to mean that they should only ever preach on the crucifixion
and nothing else. So it is my common experience
to find every sermon, whatever the text, contrives to reach this topic as soon
as possible. Brian McLaren has noted the
problem that many preachers jump straight from the beginning of the Gospel to
the end, missing out everything in between. (I’m sorry I don’t have the
reference).
But for those who come to church maybe once a year for the
carols this approach has missed out on ‘who He is’ (the incarnation), so what
He has done becomes much less relevant - and a lengthy sermon, when carols were
expected, is a missed opportunity to say something short, meaningful, and
really engaging.
