All carols and no scripture

Every year we have two or three charity carol services with celebrity readers and an excellent visiting choir. We also have carol services for law firms, livery companies and Barts Hospital, in addition to our own traditional services. And there are some carol concerts. "Services" have clergy present and offiating and sanctuary and altar candles are lit. "Concerts" have neither clergy nor sanctuary candles. Some concerts, however, have a reading or two, often inclkuding scripture, so the boundaries are malleable.

Gradually, however, at the charity services the biblical narrative has shifted from the readings to the music. So the story is told through the items sung by the choir and the hymns or carols sung by the congregation. As these include "Good King Wenceslas" there is a gap between biblical truth and creative fiction. This year's readings included Dr Seuss, Dickens and C.S. Lewis but not a single biblical reading. This is, I think, a step too far. For next year I shall need to define "a carol service" as having at least one, maybe two, biblical readings.

More on hymns

We had a lovely Advent carol service last Sunday evening. Towards the end the organ thundered out the chorale "Wachet auf" The choir sang "Wake, O wake! with tidings thrilling" and we all looked forward to the second verse sung by choir and congregation. Alas, there was a line missing in the text and, while we didn't lose it altogether,it rather diminished the impact of this great hymn.

Over mulled wine in the Cloister a lady said that she would like to meet the person who had left the line out. I didn't get a strong impression of what she would do to them when she met them but I guessed it might not be pleasant. "It was me," I said. At first she didn't understand me. I repeated it. "It was me. I left the line out." I explained that we switched from the AMR version to the CP version and when I copied the text I omitted the line "see her Friend from heaven descending". I nearly explained that copyists often do things like that and biblical manuscripts are littered with scribal errors, but I thought my "Mea culpa" was probably sufficient. I couldn't really believe that I had done it.
I must say that I am torn between the Frances Cox and F.C. Burkitt versions and I think, on reflection, that I prefer the Cox (the AMR version). I love the conclusion of the first stanza:

Come forth, ye virgins wise;
The Bridegrom comes, arise!
Alleluia!
Each lamp be bright
With ready light
To grace the marriage feast tonight.

I'm good

The story of Jesus and someone who came to him with a question is a significant one. In one version this young man comes speeding round to the house where Jesus is staying — indeed, the Lord is at the doorstep, bidding farewell to his host, when the young man grabs hold of him, preventing his departure, so urgent is his question or does it perhaps tell us about his own self importance? In Matthew’s version of the story the young man asks about good deeds. Jesus, surprisingly, responds by saying “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.” We need to note that.

Jesus has no time for the modern answer to the question “How are you?” “I’m good.” No you are not. None of us has the right to claim to be good. There is only one who is good. To say “I’m good” is to make a claim to godlike perfection; at the very least it is to make a claim about one’s moral or ethical standing. And if you object, as you might, that I am deliberately misconstruing the significance of an innocuous phrase, and positive version of our more usual English understatement “Not bad, thanks” then I would alert you to semantic shift! Perfectly good words abused in this way lose their original meaning. A guidebook to this church published forty years ago describes our founder, a minstrel at the court of Henry I, as a gay cleric and many a novel tells of gay parties in the 1930s, 40s and 50s — but we have sadly lost the ordinary descriptive use of the word. We must not take such a cavalier approach to goodness.