Sunday is going to be a great day at LPC. It’s the Sunday of our Christmas Cantata, A Celebration of Carols. Nearly sixty voices will join in bringing a message of Scripture lessons and carols traditional and new. Holly Waterson and her team have a great present for us. Please don’t miss it! And bring a friend!
In fact, I count fifty-seven choir voices listed in the bulletin plus two narrators. As I said, almost sixty voices to tell the story in lessons and carols. I am delighted that my voice gets to be one of those almost sixty. But don’t worry. Before you start changing your Sunday plans, let me assure you that I am not among the fifty-seven choir voices. I join Lynn Domasinsky as one of the two narrators.
Christmas is a singing time. The carols we sing love to talk about singing. We hear of angels sweetly singing o’er the plains and of herald angels singing “Hark!” and “glory to the newborn King.” Choirs of angels and the citizens of heaven above sing. They sing on a midnight clear. In the great Christmas hymn, “Joy to the World,” Isaac Watts has all of heaven and nature singing.
One of the many things I like about this year’s cantata is the opportunity it gives the congregation to join the choir in singing at several points during the program. We’ll add our voices to “O Come All Ye Faithful” (sing choirs of angels), “O Little Town of Bethlehem” (morning stars together praises sing to God the King), “Angels We Have Heard on High” (sweetly singing o’er the plains), and we will join heaven and nature singing in “Joy to the World” and those herald angels singing “Hark!”
With the exception of the opening and closing comments, every word Lynn and I read will be Holy Scripture. Come to the Cantata on Sunday!
So, I can hardly wait for Sunday morning. I’m coming to read and listen, to sing and rejoice! But what about that disparaging comment about not worrying you with the prospect of my singing? If you’ve ever been with us on one of those Sundays when something goes wrong and my microphone is not muted during times of congregational singing, you know what I am talking about. Holding pitch and carrying tunes are not concepts I’ve ever really understood. And even if I understood them, it doesn’t mean I could pull them off. Just because I understand the concept of running 1,500 meters in under three and a half minutes, doesn’t mean I am able to do so.
No, you don’t want to be in the room when I’m singing near a live microphone. But I am going to sing. I love to sing. I love to sing Christmas carols especially. There will be at least fifty-seven good singers in the chancel on Sunday and as long as I avoid the live microphones, it’s going to be wonderful. I’ll be surrounded with great singers whose melodious voices will easily drown out my sometimes less than melodious voice.
Let’s make it that way in the pews, too. You singers, please help those who are less able. After all, the fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains are going to be repeating the sounding joy. We tone deaf want to join the party!
Singers of every sort, see you on Sunday – just maybe not near the microphones.