Sermons
December 1, 2024 (1st Sunday of Advent)
“The waiting is the hardest part.”[1]
Romans 8:18-25
There was always music in our house when my sister and I were growing up. The radio was on, or there would be a record playing, and when we moved out to Ohio Street we had a piano and took lessons.
Toward the end of the year all the Christmas records would come out—my folks and both sets of grandparents all had plenty of them. We had one that had Gene Autry singing about “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and somebody had Bing Crosby singing carols.[1]
But my favorite—still is to this day—was the one on which Harry Simeone and his chorale introduced his original composition, “The Little Drummer Boy.” The album includes 30 carols, mostly just a verse or two of each one, except “The Little Drummer Boy” and one or two others.[2] To have 30 carols on the album, there were several that I’ve discovered aren’t familiar to people who didn’t have that album, like a Spanish villancico and the spiritual “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow.”
Another less familiar carol from that album, a carol that has always been a favorite of mine, is “The Friendly Beasts.” When my sister and I were in junior high and high school, we and my mom were in charge of the opening singing in the kindergarten Sunday school class at our church. In those days we had a Christmas program that was quite a production. Each Sunday school class had to sing a song or two, or maybe read some Scriptures. So one year we decided to have our kindergarten class sing “The Friendly Beasts.”
They enjoyed it so much that after they learned it, any time we would ask them to pick a song to sing—even in the summer—someone would inevitably ask for it.
If you don’t know the song, it’s an old English carol based on a Latin one from the 1100s.[3] Various animals who might have been in the stable on the night Jeus was born tell of their part in the event. The donkey carried Mary to Bethlehem; the cow gave up her feed-trough to be the baby’s bed; a pair of doves in the rafters cooed the baby to sleep; a sheep gave his wool to make Jesus a blanket. Thus even the animals gave gifts to the baby who was called Immanuel.
(This isn’t in the song, but there is also an old legend wherein the baby Jesus was fussy, and a barn cat climbed into the manger and purred to calm him; and his exhausted mother was so glad for the relief that she patted the cat’s head and left her initial on its forehead—and all tabby cats to this day have that “M” above their eyes. I like to put a cat in my Nativity scenes because of that.)
“The Friendly Beasts” isn’t the only example of that old legend, either. One version shows up early in the first act of Hamlet:
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
and then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and gracious is the time.[4]
The “bird of dawning” is, of course, the rooster—and he’s not the only animal up making noise at midnight on Christmas morning.
It seems, according to legend, that all animals can talk at that hour. Turns out it’s not quite as sweet and pretty a notion as you’d think; in some versions of the story a dog and cat are talking about their owner, declaring her to be a miser and generally unpleasant all around, and predicting a violent death for her.
In 1970 the legend was made into a made-for-TV cartoon, in which the animals are thrilled at their newfound ability, and immediately begin to insult one another. By the time they realize they received the gift of speech for a much higher purpose, it’s too late because they’re starting to lose it.[5] That higher purpose, it turns out, is so they can share the news of Jesus’ birth.
But why does it matter to animals that our Savior has been born? Paul explains it in our Scripture reading for today; but like most of what Paul writes, it takes some unpacking, and we have to put it into the basic storyline of our faith in order to understand it fully.
Once upon a time, when God created the first humans and the first animals, we all lived together in harmony with God and with one another. We were given the task of taking care of creation and all that shares it with us. But something went wrong—sin entered the world and our relationships with one another, with God, and with this planet that is our home got all messed up.
Our human relationships are uneasy; sometimes we choose independence, if not isolation, over community; and often we do things to hurt one another, even those whom we say we love. We are afraid of the God who loves us beyond our ability to imagine, who used to walk with us as a friend in the cool of the evening.
And creation has suffered, too, as we assume it’s here for us to do with as we please, and as we discover that things we have done to make our own lives easier have unintended consequences for the world around us.
Creation suffers from more than just our bumbling efforts at taking care of it, though. So it’s not entirely surprising that a lot of the prophecies about the age to come include the prediction that predators and prey would be able to live together without anybody trying to kill and eat anyone else.
I came home for lunch one day several years back and found one of my cats had caught a half-grown baby rabbit and was in the process of tearing it apart for his lunch. The poor thing was still alive, but gravely hurt and doomed.[6]
It’s the way nature works as it stands now; so we can understand how the animals who are toward the bottom of the food chain might be eagerly longing for something different.
Thus it isn’t hard to imagine how a legend got started that animals were given the power of speech so they could proclaim the arrival of the Savior.
For the hope we have in Christ, that one day God’s kingdom will be fully realized here on earth as it already is in heaven, is a hope that is for all of creation—although right now it seems like it’s a long ways off, and oftentimes waiting for something good we know is coming is pretty darned difficult, as children know during the month of December, when they know Santa is on his way.
The Bible doesn’t say that we may continue to do as we please with the earth and all creatures with whom we share it, because at the end of time it’ll all be destroyed. No, it says that the whole creation will be redeemed and restored according to God’s will; the new heaven and new earth re-created out of the dilapidated, sin-battered old heaven and earth. There won’t be any sin, and there won’t be mourning or crying or pain—and if you think animals don’t mourn or experience pain, think again.
All of creation will be saved and redeemed. Therefore all of creation eagerly longs for that day, when every animal, every plant, every rock, every star will shout aloud with the good news of Jesus Christ.
[1] H/t to Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.
[2] I’m not, personally, a fan of Bing Crosby’s singing; he always seemed just a tad flat to me.
[3] There are a lot of people who don’t care for that song, but I find it to have a wonderful message about giving whatever gifts we have to Christ.
[4] The lyrics and history can be found at https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/friendly_beasts.htm.
[5] Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1, Marcellus speaking to Horatio and Bernardo, after seeing the Ghost. I also know an American carol that speaks of “chickens crowing for midnight,” recorded by Mike, Peggy, and Penny Seeger on their American Folk Songs for Christmas.
[6] See See http://mentalfloss.com/article/72843/how-talking-animals-became-christmas-legend.
[7] I didn’t exactly have much appetite for lunch after that spectacle. I tried to catch the wee bun so I could take it to the vet and have it put down humanely, but it got away.