Let All Together Praise Our God (song)

Today is both New Years Day and the eighth day of Christmas. Although part of me wishes New Years Day fell on the first Sunday of Advent, since Advent begins the new year in the Christian calendar, it is also fitting that New Years Day comes at the heart of the Christmas season because of the newness that God brought to the world in Christ and continues to create in Christ. Also, the the novelty of God's becoming a human in Jesus continues to surprise many people even ages after it happened.

I have a book that gives a hymn each week, and last week's hymn was the Christmas carol "Let All Together Praise Our God" by Nicolaus Hermann of Bohemia (c. 1480-1561). It plainly expresses the creative activity of the Incarnation:

Let all together praise our God
Upon his lofty throne;
For he uncloses heaven today
And gives to us his Son,
And gives to us his Son.

He lays aside his majesty
And seems as nothing worth,
And takes on him a servant's form,
Who made the heaven and earth,
Who made the heaven and earth.

Behold the wonderful exchange
Our Lord with us doth make!
Lo, he assumes our flesh and blood,
And we of heaven partake,
And we of heaven partake.

The glorious gates of paradise
The angel guards no more;
This day again those gates unfold.
With praise our God adore,
With praise our God adore! Amen.
(Tune: LOBT GOTT IHR CHRISTEN; MIDI)

Through this hymn, we can praise God, who reigns from far beyond our realm, for giving to us God's very self in becoming a human. Through the Incarnation, God "uncloses heaven"; in other words, God opens and reveals heaven to us, beginning to unite God's realm with ours.

Further, through Jesus, God "lays aside his majesty / And seems as nothing worth"; the one who created heaven and earth takes on "a servant's form." Many of us would expect God incarnate to be a mighty conqueror, unmoved by our pleas, impenetrable by weapons, temptations, and sin, but Jesus is the opposite: he is born among farm animals, he is moved with compassion by the people who follow him, and he is vulnerable, so vulnerable that he dies at human hands. But through this vulnerability, God empathizes with us, and through Jesus' death humanity is saved from death. Somehow, both Jesus' birth and death reconcile us with God. Perhaps it is Jesus' whole life which reconciles us with God. Because God becomes vulnerable in Christ, we can now "of heaven partake."

The final verse says that through the Incarnation, the gates of paradise, which God had barred after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, are now open for humanity's re-entry. The book of Revelation paints a slightly different picture: rather than restoring the Garden of Eden, God gives to the world the holy city, the new Jerusalem, which descends to earth. However, within that city is a kind of garden: flowing through the middle of the city is "the river of the water of life," and on either side of the river is "the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations" (Rev. 22:1-2). No matter the details, Hermann expresses that humanity's entrance into the holy city, the new realm, does not begin on a future day, but began on Christmas Day.

So New Years Day seems to come at a fitting time for Christians. If it came during Advent, we would be jumping the gun, celebrating newness before celebrating the birth of the one who is making all things new. If it came on Christmas Day, we might focus on the newness that Jesus brought when he was born and forget the novelty that he continues to make. Instead, New Years Day comes a week after Christmas, suggesting that newness is a consequence of Christ.

Further, our celebrating New Years Day in the middle of the Christmas season reflects the Incarnation. Just as, on this day, we celebrate two events at once, following two calendars at once, so too in Christ God celebrates both holiness and profanity, Holy Spirit and human flesh, creator and creation at once.

"So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us." 2 Corinthians 5:17-19

Thanks to God for reconciling all things in Christ! May we be open to God's new work in us, and have the courage and willingness to participate in God's reconciliation and work of making all things new.