CHRISTMAS EVE, 2025

Lessons and Carols with the Holy Eucharist

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R.I.

 

 

First, welcome to Saints Matthew and Mark on this most holy night. On behalf of us all, I want to thank the eight parishioners who accepted the invitation to read. And I want to thank Charlie and the choir for their hours and hours of rehearsal practice. Excellent job, everyone!

 

The rubrics require me to preach a sermon when Lessons and Carols is used as the Liturgy of the Word preceding the Holy Eucharist. But I’m going to keep it brief—partly to keep the length of our proceedings under control, and partly because the structure and sequence of readings that we’ve just heard tells a story that largely speaks for itself. So, rather than commenting on any of the readings, I want to say something about the service itself.

 

The custom of holding the Nine Lessons and Carols service on Christmas Eve dates back to 1880, when Bishop Edward White Benson introduced it at Truro Cathedral in Cornwall, England. Since 1927, it has gained enormous popularity through annual broadcasts, first on the radio and then on TV, from King's College at Cambridge University.

 

One detail always strikes me as unbelievably poignant. Lessons and Carols, as we now know it, begins with the "Bidding Prayer," composed in 1918 by Eric Milner-White, then the newly appointed Dean of King's College. Milner-White had just returned from serving as a chaplain on the Western Front in the First World War, where he had experienced its horrors. In this context, he wrote:

 

Lastly, let us remember before God ... all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude which no one can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom, in this Lord Jesus, we for evermore are one.

 

Those words must have spoken with incredible power in their original context. Many present in King's College Chapel that Christmas Eve of 1918 had lost fathers, sons, husbands, brothers, or close friends in the four years of carnage that had ended with the Armistice, little more than a month before, on November 11th.

 

Milner-White's point was very simple. In the midst of a darkened and sorrowing world, the coming of Christ brings light, comfort, and hope—even the hope of eternal fellowship with those whom we love. We continue to proclaim the joy of that hope this evening. The birth of the infant Jesus is God’s greatest gift to you and to me. So we rejoice in his arrival and recommit ourselves to his service.