Hark! the Herald Angels Sing

During this Advent season I will be preaching from four traditional hymns that anticipate and celebrate the incarnation. This is the third of four blog entries about these songs.

Hark! the Herald Angels Sing is my favorite Advent/Christmas hymn. In fact, thanks to Charles Wesley's insightful and meaningful words, this may be simply one of our best English-language worship songs, period. Wesley wrote his original version in 1739, but he had some help along the way. For example, "Hark the herald angels sing" was originally "Hark, how all the welkin rings." (Thanks to George Whitefield for that significant alteration in 1753.)

Charles Wesley

Like many hymns of that vintage, the pairing of the tune and text is a more recent development. In the beginning these words were sung to the hymn tune that we now sing as Christ the Lord is Risen Today. In wasn't until 1878 that the current tune, known as MENDELSSOHN, appeared in a hymnal in its present form. The renown composer Felix Mendelssohn had composed this tune for a cantata in 1840 which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's moveable-type printing press. Mendelssohn's tune, like Wesley's words, underwent some modifications from its original setting. Mendelssohn composed this piece for male voices and brass, so it took the work of others to get us the current hymn setting for all four voice parts.

The tune by Mendelssohn is wonderful, but it is Wesley's profound theology of the incarnation that makes this hymn so rich and enduring. The reference to angels makes us think of the scene in the shepherds' fields from Luke 2:8-14. But Wesley's description of the incarnation--that is, how God became a human being--seems to borrow more from John 1:1-14. Stanza three contains my favorite phrase, which is straight from John 1:4: "Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings." The idea that God became one of us is by itself too wonderful to comprehend. But the truth that this was done for our benefit, so that death itself could be defeated, is almost more than I can handle. A baby born so that we could be re-born: "born that we may no more may die." I can't do anything but sing when confronted with this profound realization. This hymn provides the best way I know of to do just that.

Here's one of the best performances ever: