So, the herald was probably scarier than this one and a lot less cute!
Many of us will take some time today to go to church and sing our hearts out in joy and hope, sorrow and longing, as we celebrate again that Christ has come and will come again. Here’s an excerpt of a longer article I wrote about one of my favorites I will sing tonight:
Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”
Though the first line of “Hark the Herald” (as it so frequently is shortened) isn’t the most fascinating from a theological standpoint, it’s worth mentioning the punctuation and the meaning of the line. “Hark!” is a call for us to listen. Why should we listen? Because the “herald angels sing!” Heralds are messengers, and in Luke 2, where this story begins, the heralds are no English newsboys shouting ‘read all about it,’ but terrifying angels appearing to the most unlikely of recipients – shepherds, that society’s equivalent of a check-out lady at Wal-mart.
The angel heralds proclaim odd news – a baby King has been born. Peace on earth I understand, but “mercy mild”? God’s mercy mild? Intense, passionate, astounding, stunning, but mild? Did Charles Wesley, the great hymnwriter, resort to the word for its alliterative value? I went to the dictionary to discover an obsolete dialectial definition of the word mild to get this one. In Wesley’s day, that word meant “kind or gracious.” Now that makes more sense – we are talking about God’s ‘hesed’ and ‘hen,’ the two key Old Testament words describing God’s covenantal love and gracious favor. This understanding also comes in handy in the otherwise puzzling sentence several verses later, “Mild he lays his glory by.” “Graciously, he set aside his glory to become flesh.” Indeed, God’s mild mercy draws him to mildly lay his glory by and become flesh in order that God and sinners may be reconciled!
