The Christmas hymns and carols being among the most lovely, sing-able, and familiar, are also among the most richly doctrinal. I know of no other time of the year where so many Evangelical and Protestant congregations (from all sections of the worship-style spectrum) are singing and meditating on such explicitly creedal confessions of the church and Scripture with such frequency and regularity.

I realize that there is a spectrum of opinion and conviction amongst the readership of Ref21. There are those in the Reformed orbit who are entirely opposed to singing hymns in corporate worship, to say nothing of any sort of acknowledgment of anything even vaguely approximating the liturgical calendar! Those convictions are certainly respected and respectable, but (fair warning) for adherents of such a position, the following article will probably serve only as an irritant.
However, for those within the Reformed communion who do not hold to the aforementioned convictions, I suspect many of you might be like me: I serve in a Reformed Christian tradition where large segments of our denomination do not observe a church calendar or liturgical year. A few congregations do, a few more have a quasi-Advent observance during the month of December. But really for the majority of congregations, it’s simply the weekly cycle of Lord’s Day Morning worship and Lord’s Day Evening worship each and every Sunday.
There are a whole host of reasons for this reality and the aim here is not to debate the merits or detractions of a liturgical calendar, but simply to point out that (in American Protestantism at least) regardless of how high-church or low-church an individual congregation may be, almost every congregation I know of gives some sort of head-nod to the two predominant “festival” days of the year: Easter and Christmas.
We can argue another day about whether this should be. There is a venerable tradition of its custom, particularly coming out of the Continental Reformed Tradition.[1] But I digress.
No, the point of this article (assuming the reality of Christmas and the hymns that accompany it) is to give some attention to the theologically rich and particularly creedal congregational singing that comes ‘round at Christmastime.
In addition to the Christmas hymns and carols being among the most lovely, sing-able, and familiar, are also among the most richly doctrinal. I know of no other time of the year where so many Evangelical and Protestant congregations (from all sections of the worship-style spectrum) are singing and meditating on such explicitly creedal confessions of the church and Scripture with such frequency and regularity.
Perhaps it is lamentable that this is a phenomenon that does not happen more often. But the national worship scene being what it is, it is worth celebrating the fact that such singing is happening and that our Christian worship as is the more blessed and enriched because of it.
If you will indulge me a few examples and comparisons, I think you will see why such creedal hymnody encourages me and moves me to consider that the state of Christian worship in this nation may not yet be totally forgone and forsaken.
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Notes
[1] Do with this information what you will. Much of it was born out of compromise and as a result of tensions between ecclesiastical leaders and various civil magistrates. As historians, we must acknowledge the historical reality and subsequent traditions that followed:
Synod of Dordt Church Order: “Article 67 – The Churches shall observe, in addition to Sunday, also Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, with the following day, and whereas in most of the cities and provinces of the Netherlands the day of Circumcision and of Ascension of Christ are also observed, Ministers in every place where this is not yet done shall take steps with the Government to have them conform to the others.”

Tough times can make us better. If we lament well, if we process pain effectively, if we opt for thorough wrestling instead of shallow dismissals, we can be transformed into more compassionate, more trusting, more mature disciples of the One who chose to endure the ultimate suffering “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2).

As I begin writing this article, reports come in like a tsunami about the horrors between Israel and Gaza. Meanwhile, American college students protest with slogans that oversimplify amazingly complex issues. In Washington, our political leaders seem more interested in their own fame than in the well-being of our country or the world. It’s enough to make you throw your hands up in the air and run for distractions you find most consuming.
I’ll let others more qualified and informed than myself offer political and military strategies. And I’ll save my comments about theological perspectives about Israel for other writings. I will say, as a follower of the One who called himself “the truth,” it is deeply disturbing that we live in a time of a famine for the truth. Some so-called “news” agencies seem incapable of presenting the facts without bias and many people seem to have no difficulty blatantly lying to advance sympathy from others. This drought of truthfulness may do more harm than the missiles flying over the Israel/Gaza border.
Regardless of what transpires militarily or diplomatically over the next few months, Christians are called to “love our neighbors.” And one of the most important ways (perhaps the most important way) is through prayer. But how can we pray to advance the Kingdom of God while not feeling dragged down in despair. I confess I find this a great challenge.
The greatest help for me, and therefore the one I am commending in this article, is to follow the templates of Lament that we find dozens of times in the Book of Psalms. Lamenting (as starkly contrasted with griping, complaining, moping, or despairing) is a rarely practiced but remarkably powerful spiritual discipline for trying times such as these. If we can develop the spiritual muscle memory of praying prayers of lament, we will grow stronger during difficult times rather than being discouraged by them.
If you were to categorize the Psalms, as many have done, you’d find groupings such as Thanksgiving Psalms, Royal Psalms, Messianic Psalms, and others including Lament Psalms. You’d also find that there are more lament Psalms than any other category. Apparently, God wants us to learn how to cry out to him during the darkest of moments.
Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke, with a lifelong focus on the psalms, comments, “We may wonder how lament or complaint can coexist with faith, so it is worth recalling well that over a third of the Psalms are laments. This observation by itself informs us that lament and faith are not incompatible. Certainly, it is sinful to complain in unbelief, but lament need not be untrusting of God’s providential care.”[i]
Lament Psalms include common ingredients­­­: cries of lament, reminders of God’s character, pleas for deliverance, and statements of hope. These prayers flow from honest lament to confident trust. They don’t always follow the same sequence but all but one land in a place of strength.
Psalm 88, the outlier, ends with these seemingly hopeless words, “Darkness is my closest friend.” I used to think this was a totally despairing Psalm that never turned the corner. I took ironic encouragement that, sometimes, life does seem as dark as that. But a closer reading of Psalm 88 won’t allow for such a lopsided perspective. Note how the psalmist begins: he cries out to “the God who saves me.” In other words, he began in the place of hope. The very fact that he chose to pray at all expresses a faith we need to find during the darkest of days.
Psalm 13, a beautiful and brief lament can serve as an instructive guide to all the other lament Psalms. Consider its emotional honesty, its theological depth, and its profound expression of trust.
How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?How long will you hide your face from me?How long must I wrestle with my thoughtsand day after day have sorrow in my heart?How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, LORD my God.Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in deathand my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;my heart rejoices in your salvation.I will sing to LORD ‘s praise,for he has been good to me.
We begin to lament well by recounting to God our pain. Notice how the psalm begins with four statements that start, “How long?” This is not a calmed, cool, “I’m just asking a question” sequence of inquiries. The psalmist is wailing. He feels like God has forgotten him and turned his face away. Pause there for a second. Have you ever felt like God has forgotten you or that he’s ignoring you? Do you feel the pain behind such a blatant contradiction to what we (and this psalmist as well!) know to be true? Our God never forgets anything. He knows everything. And the greatest blessing you can offer someone is for God to “make his face shine upon you.” (see Numbers 6:25). So, to cry out to God the way this psalmist does is not a quiet sobbing in the corner. The volume is turned up high.
Note also that the psalmist looks inward and outward. He wrestles with his thoughts and looks at his enemies. He fears that his foes will take credit for his demise. The Bible talks about our enemies quite often. For most of us, we can think of few human beings who hate us. So, we (rightly!) turn our attention to the greatest enemy of our souls, the devil himself. True enough. But we should not be naive enough to think we don’t have people who hate us. We follow the One who was hated and scorned—enough that they nailed him to a cross. If we haven’t experienced persecution because of our faith yet, we shouldn’t be surprised if that changes sooner than we’d like.
Some of us, depending on our personality or culture, resist this terribly. We think the psalmist was sinning when he uttered the first four verses of this psalm. Or we rush to a theological resolution like, “Well…that’s just his flesh talking. He gets straightened out when he remembers that ‘greater is he who is you than he who is in the world.’” To be sure, I John 4:4 is true. But we rush too quickly to resolutions that don’t really resolve if we skim past the lengthy laments in these psalms. We should also remember the many honest expressions of pain in Job, the Prophets, the entire book of Lamentations, and Jesus’s intense prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. God doesn’t tell us to shut up or get ahold of ourselves when we cry out to him in our pain. He listens. And his word encourages us to keep talking—to him and to ourselves—until we see the fullest picture possible.
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God doesn’t exempt his people from his standards. An “us and them” mentality that’s quick to condemn the world and slow to examine our own hearts and see and confess and repent of our own sins invites God’s judgment.  God is a holy God, he judges all.  We need to examine ourselves and check we don’t fall into that. But secondly an “us and them” attitude misses the missional heart of God.  God’s longing is for the sinner to be saved; he’s slow to anger, rich in love, compassionate and gracious. 

Us and them.  That’s how we divide society.  Those who are like us and those who aren’t.  The good guys and the bad guys.  Those who are for us and those who are against us.  Those who think and live like us and those who don’t.  Us and them.  It’s true of sport, of the playground, of the staffroom, of the family, of the neighbourhood, of the country, of the world. The ‘us’ is always right and defines itself against the ‘them’ who is always wrong.  The ‘us’ is good or better, the ‘them’ is bad or lesser.
Have you got some of your ‘us and them’s’ in your head?  The ways you’ve divided society, family, community, and the world.
Amos speaks God’s word into an us and them culture.  ‘Us’ is Israel, they’re God’s people surrounded by nations who are not.  There’s Judah just to the south, the nation they split from, and there’s a different division there, though it’s still an us and them division.  But Israel ‘us’ leads them to be are proud of being God’s people; God is on their side, as opposed to the other nations.  Yet the irony is that Israel is just as riddled with injustice and idolatry; just as riven by ‘us and them’, haves and have nots, oppressor and oppressed as the nations around them.
And so God sends a ‘them’, an outsider, to Israel with his word.  Amos isn’t a priest or a prophet, (1)he’s a shepherd farmer.  He isn’t even from Israel; he’s from Tekoa in Judah their brotherly rival.  Not only is the messenger a shock but so is the message,
“The LORD roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem”
and what’s the result of that?
“the pastures of the shepherds dry up, and the top of Carmel withers.”
God’s not tame!  God’s not indifferent!  God’s not weak and anaemic and unable to act!  God sees and like a lion coming out to hunt he roars judgment against his people.
One of the dangers for the church, and for us as disciples, is ‘us and them’ thinking.  It’s looking at the world and condemning it’s sin and missing our own.  We can be like the man Jesus talks of who sees the speck in his friend’s eye and misses the plank in his own.  We look at the world and see all it’s godlessness and idolatry and sin and then look at ourselves and think we’re not too bad.  And we settle for being a nicer shade of good rather than being what God calls us to be, which is his holy people, totally set apart for him with a completely renewed way of thinking and acting.
It’s so easy to slip into that ‘us and them’ way of thinking.  We can even do it within church as we’re listening to a sermon.
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