This past year we chose to do something different at Wooster Mennonite Church for our Christmas Eve service. Typically, we have scripture readings, traditional hymns, and dramatic readings, representing the various, important characters of the Christmas story. Many of these elements were present in our service this year. The different elements however came from the texts we selected for the dramatic readings. Instead of contemporary interpretations of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the wise men we examined the ancient Christmas poems and hymns from the Byzantine Christian tradition. Many of these texts can be found in the book Byzantine Daily Worship. The interesting aspect of using these texts is their exalted language and sensitivity to mystery. While many contemporary renderings of the Christmas story communicate the basic truths of the gospel message in an accessible way the ancient poems and hymns do so with a certain profound sense of awe and wonder. Sometimes contemporary nativity plays and skits seem to draw excessive attention to the audience and modern culture whereas their ancient counterparts seem fully focused on the centrality of Christ and the incarnation. This Christ-centeredness can be seen in the following selection of Byzantine hymnody, which imaginatively represents the thoughts of Mary: “The One Whom the universe cannot contain, how was He contained within my womb? He Who is in the Father’s bosom, how can He be carried in my arms?” Mary’s words represent the human longing for understanding of God’s mysterious gift in Christ, who is fully human and fully divine.
The worshipful reflections of the wise men is another of my favorite examples of Byzantine Christmas hymnody: “By means of a star, heaven has called and led us wise men, the first-fruits of the gentiles, to this little Child lying in a manger. Astounded, we beheld, not scepters and thrones, but extreme poverty. What indeed is lower than a cave? What is humbler than swaddling clothes? Yet the splendor of God shines forth in them resplendently.” In this passage we are confronted by the counterintuitive nature of the gospel: in human weakness God’s strength shines through. Though the baby Jesus seems poor and weak from His outward appearance, the glory and power of who He truly is cannot be hidden or overcome.
As I listened to these readings during our Christmas Eve service I enjoyed the feelings that they evoked in me. I felt that they were helpful in reflecting on the true meaning of Christmas. One challenging aspect about using them though was integrating their distinct language and rhythm into the broader service. It seems that if we were to use similar materials in the future we would have to think more intentionally about where to position them in the order of the service. They fit naturally into a liturgical context (they are Byzantine hymns after all coming from the liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox churches). A less liturgical church like our own may have to think of ways to adapt the texts or present them alongside some additional material to enable their true beauty to communicate most effectively to the people. I am happy to say though that we were able to draw on the rich Christmas traditions of another Christian community just like many of the traditional hymns that we sing are written by composers from various church backgrounds.
