Let Every Heart Sing Part 2

John Rutter's Christmas Lullaby

Last Friday’s episode of Washington Week on PBS featured a discussion of evangelical leaders who continue to support Donald Trump. They showed a clip of Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, proclaiming that eight years ago, this country was in a death spiral, straying away from the truth of God’s word, and then came Donald Trump down that escalator to turn this country around. When Tim Alberta, a writer for The Atlantic asked him about the contradiction between Donald Trump’s behavior and the teachings of Jesus, Jeffress said we are not electing a Sunday school teacher. Christians in America are under siege, and we need the toughest, meanest SOB we can find to save it.

As churches go, I feel fortunate that my home church is on the mild end of the Christian Nationalism continuum. There is not an American flag on the altar, and church leadership stays out of politics. They have never endorsed a candidate, or invited a political candidate to speak. But it troubled me when on the weekend of Veteran’s Day, a pastor invited all veterans and those currently serving in the military to stand. The pastor prayed over them and the church applauded them. After the service, they were invited to a special breakfast. It is not that I don’t respect those who have served in the military. My maternal grandfather served in World War II on the Pacific front. I just don’t think the church should be in the business of honoring them, as the church’s job is to point people toward Christ, the Prince of Peace.

In his book Rethinking Life, Shane Claiborne, founder of Red Letter Christians lays out how the early church had a consistent prolife ethic, which meant that any Roman citizens whose occupations did not honor life, such as facilitators of gladiator games, had to find a new line of work once they were baptized. In the United States, and in the Roman Empire, the military served many roles that did not involve combat or killing. In the Roman empire for example, the military built roads, and in the United States, the Coast Guard rescues civilians who get into boating accidents. But it was understood in the early church that once a Roman soldier was baptized, they had to commit not to take human life, at home or abroad. But my church did not make any such distinction, choosing to honor all military service. In her book Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Kobes Du Mez explains how at the turn of the 20^th century, some felt that Christian men faced a masculinity crisis as the country was transitioning from an agrarian to an industrial economy, and the mythical west was disappearing. Unfortunately, use of the sword to spread Christianity can be traced back to Constantine, and the European explorers who “discovered” and colonized America believed their murder and exploitation of Native Americans was ordained by God. But Kristin Kobes Du Mez traces the modern evangelical militarism to Theodore Roosevelt who started the precedent of the United States displaying Christian masculinity on the “new frontier of empire” (Page 16). It troubled me to realize that even our church, staffed by wonderful pastors whose Bible teaching is so nourishing every week, was influenced by this unbiblical Christian Nationalism.

In light of these examples of rampant Christian Nationalism, John Rutter’s Christmas Lullaby has brought a tear to my eye every Christmas season since I first sang it in choir in 2018, in the way it so beautifully reminds us, in its words and its soothing melody, that Jesus offers a better way. The song begins with the statement “clear in the darkness, a light shines in Bethlehem, evoking the literal darkness of nighttime when Jesus was born, but also the dark state of our world before Christ. I think the subtext behind the rest of the first verse is that despite studying Scripture and being intellectually aware that the Messiah would enter the world as a vulnerable baby born to a poor mother in a stable, seeing this mother and baby firsthand still took the wise men by surprise as it is so counterintuitive to worldly ideas for how we imagine a Messiah would enter the world. The humility and countercultural way of our Messiah is the theme of verse 2 when the men sing “Where are his courtiers, and who are his people? Why does he bear neither scepter nor crown?” and the women respond “shepherds his courtiers, the poor for his people, with peace as his scepter and love for his crown.”

You almost cannot fault the people living in Jesus’s day for not being able to comprehend God’s redemptive plan. Our god is a god of progressive revelation, so despite meticulous study of Scripture foretelling the coming of Christ, even the most educated Jewish rabbis couldn’t fully comprehend God’s plan, not only Christ’s humble entrance into our world, but also the fact that he would allow himself to be crucified, the most shameful form of execution during the Roman empire, when they imagined their messiah would overthrow the Roman government and reign as an earthly king. But we have access to the full story. It should break our hearts that people in positions of power—politicians and pastors—do not seem to understand that God sent his son to bless the whole world, not just the United States of America, and that Christianity will endure no matter which political party is in power. Furthermore, they say they live by the Bible, yet choose the opposite path: the wealthy as their courtiers (attendants and advisors) and the people they serve, the sword to project strength around the world, and disdain for people of other nationalities, religious beliefs, or lifestyles. Our hearts should break for them, as they are relentlessly pursuing earthly treasure which is temporary and destined to fail, over heavenly treasure which will endure for eternity. And our hearts should break for the people these politicians and influential pastors have led astray, both those who have bought into these views that are the antithesis of Christ, and those who have been so wounded by these views that they no longer want to call themselves Christians. I pray that one adherent to the ugly views of Christian Nationalism might hear this lullaby and feel moved to repent and return to the true Jesus, or that they might accept Christ for the first time if they realize that all their lives, they have been Christian in heritage only. And I pray that people who have been wounded in the name of Christianity might hear this song and be comforted and moved to give Christianity another chance.