For a very long time, perhaps since 1995, I’ve had a visceral reaction to “Lessons and Carols.” I can attribute that to having been at Sewanee for five years. When we arrived; no, perhaps it was already during our interview, we heard about the Lessons and Carols extravaganza at Sewanee. When we came to Sewanee, Lessons and Carols provided us with several of our quintessential moments. One was the year we received tickets to the “special performance.” It wasn’t called that, but it was the Saturday performance at which prominent donors, and busloads of Episcopal Church groups came from far and wide. It was a warm day in December, perhaps in the 70s.  As Corrie and I walked to the reception in Convocation Hall, we passed a frat house on the heart of campus, where the guys were enjoying the weather, and their alcohol. Then we saw a group of folk, assembled behind a seminarian clad in cassock and surplice, and carrying a crucifix. We attended the reception, then made our way to the service. The music was beautiful of course, but what made the greatest impression on me was the myriad of Southern Anglican matrons in attendance, wearing their minks, in unseasonably warm weather.

I’ve always thought that any Lessons and Carols service, apart from that at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, was manipulative  and contrived, designed more to attract donations than to create a worshipful experience. Still worse, I’ve thought, was the Festival of Advent Lessons and Carols. At least that was liturgically correct, unlike Sewanee’s or Furman’s, which are clearly Christmas services, taking place during the Season of Advent.

Today was the second Lessons and Carols over which I’ve presided at Grace (I succeeded in doing away with it at my previous parish, but I note its return since my departure). I rarely expect, when presiding, to experience God’s presence outside of the celebration of the Eucharist, or to worship. But that happened today. The music was profound; our soloists were perfect; the musical selections transported us out of the mundane into the heavenly presence.

Thanks to all who participated. Berkley Guse and Greg Upward, music director and organist, Will Raymer, whose composition “Come/We wait” captured the Advent experience; and especially the performance of Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium, in memory of Jerry Shannon.

Our processional hymn at the conclusion of the service was Lo! he comes, with clouds descending, text by Charles Wesley. The words are transporting, taking us from first Advent to Second:

Those dear tokens of his passion
still his dazzling body bears,
cause of endless exultation
to his ransomed worshipers;
with what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture
gaze we on those glorious scars!