This Sunday, our service will be a Festival of Lessons and Carols. The nine scriptures can be found here.
On Christmas Eve of 1918, the world had just gone through four years of World War I. Nearly a generation of people were wiped out due to war and disease. Unfortunately, the world was in the throes of the flu pandemic as well. However, at the chapel of King’s College in Cambridge, a service that had been created thirty-eight years earlier by the Anglican Bishop of Truro, England, E. W. Benson, was adapted to fit this service. Nine scripture readings are then followed by a carol either sung by the choir or the congregation.
These nine scriptures from Genesis, Isaiah, Luke, Matthew, and John trace the Love Story that describes humanity’s banishment from paradise, a promise to a barren couple, the promise of peace, the promise of a Savior, the birth of the Savior, and the Word Made Flesh who was present at the beginning before the world was created. This Festival of Lessons and Carols proclaim that God would do anything to reconcile our relationship with God including sending us Jesus Christ: God Made Flesh.
May you be blessed by the Word proclaimed in music and in speech.
Christ’s Peace,
Pastor T. Wes Moore