Bittersweet Nine Lessons and Carols

Bittersweet Christmas

Last night was a first for me.  At my church, I led our Advent/Christmas Nine Lessons and Carols service.

I’ve loved Nine Lessons and Carols liturgy as long as I’ve been Anglican, and even longer.  I am one of those for which the beginning of Christmas is the Nine Lessons service from King’s College Cambridge on Christmas Eve.  So to lead a Nine Lessons, even at my small (but well attended last night) Texas Anglican church was quite an occasion for me.

I will especially remember reading the Ninth Lesson, the Prologue from the Gospel of St. John.  I’ve read other lessons in many past years, but to get to read that final lesson is electric for me.  I consider it one of the most dramatic moments of the church year, and to get to lead it is wonderful.

But it was bittersweet occasion.  My Rector had a sore throat and had largely lost his voice.  So the email came in the morning for me to stand in as a Lay Reader.  Therefore the liturgy after the Ninth Lesson was Evening Prayer, which I am authorized as a Lay Reader to lead, rather than Holy Communion.

I don’t want to overstate matters.  He is not miserably sick and will probably be okay for Christmas Day.  But nobody wants their Rector sick, especially around Christmas.

Even before yesterday, I’ve been thinking back to previous Nine Lessons and Carols that contained joy intermingled with sadness.  Two stand out to me and are in my music library.

The first is the 2008 Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College.  It was recorded and released in a 2009 CD.

The Dean for that excellent service was Rev. Ian Thompson.  I had heard him preach in King’s at the beginning of the academic year in 2007.  I do not remember the subject of his sermon, but he preached well and with an excellent Scottish voice.  That voice rings through well in the 2009 CD.

But that 2008 service was his last.  Thompson committed suicide in September 2009.  He was under investigation for “historic” sexual offenses, i. e. alleged offenses of many years past.  I do not presume what they were or whether he committed them at all.  If he did commit such grave sin, it seems he repented and went on to gain a stellar reputation.  But available reports to this day withhold more than they reveal, and I just do not know.  Nonetheless, it remains beyond sad, and to this day listening to the excellent CD gives me a tinge of melancholy. 

The second CD is more well known, that of The Centenary Service in 2018.

The first Nine Lessons and Carols service at King’s College was in 1918 just after the end of World War I.  (I give some background to that beginning about 7:30 into this talk I gave just before Christmas 2018.)

2018’s was a service of particular moment also because Sir Stephen Cleobury, in weak health, had already announced his retirement.  This was to be the last Nine Lessons and Carols he would direct.

If one listens carefully to the CD, one can catch faint cracks in which the emotion of the occasion shows. One is when Cleobury reads the Seventh Lesson as he always did as the Director of Music. As I’ve met him on a number of occasions and appreciated the generosity of his time towards me and friends, it was emotional for me also.

It was to be his last Nine Lessons and Carols, even as a listener.  He died of cancer in York on November 22nd, 2019.  That is the Holy Day of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians.

Yet I listen to both CDs every year around Christmas even as they bring back these sad memories.  I love Christmas and get unbearably Christmasy every year.  But through the years I’ve come to realize, as I wrote some time back, that to fully appreciate the light of the birth of Christ, one must know that “the light shines in the darkness.”

Even as you may struggle with difficulties and losses past and present, may the light of the Holy Child bring you abiding joy this Christmas.

Happy Christmas.