Do You Hear What I Hear?

Do You Hear What I Hear?  A minor theme every Christmas in our modern era is how soon the Christmas carols will begin playing on the radio. Whether it is November 1st or 24th or December 1st or 24th makes no difference, as soon as I hear Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole, the Christmas season has begun. Next year, it might begin on October 1st or July 24th.

One backfire effect, however, with starting Christmas music early is that the sooner it starts the sooner it is over. Human ears seem able to handle a maximum of four weeks of Christmas. Suffice it to say, I’ve been done (audibly) with Christmas since about November 30th, which probably makes me a Scrooge, a Grinch, or a cotton-headed-ninny-muggins! 

Yet, there are still a few surprises out there in Christmas Carol territory, like the country classic by Skip Ewing, Christmas Carol, which I had never heard before yesterday. Or the rather bland carol, So This Is Christmas, which I had often heard but never associated with the post-Beatles John Lennon and Yoko Ono. “So this is Christmas. And what have you done? Another year over. And a new one just begun.” If nurses develop something called Alarm Deafness from hearing bed alarms too often during their shifts so that their brains cease registering alarms of any kind, then maybe Christmasers can develop Carol Deafness.

But this year, all joking aside, Christmas also coincides with the culmination of our 30-week preaching series on the parables of our Lord. Sprinkled into the parables about ten times is a phrase that speaks not of Carol Deafness but of Truth Deafness. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt. 11:15). This deafness to truth resides not in the ear, or even the brain, but in the spiritual heart. “For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them” (Matt. 13:15). Graciously, when someone hears the truth, there is no unhearing it. Tragically, when someone cannot (or will not) hear the truth, there is no human method to awaken that person’s spiritual heart to hear it. Opening the ear, physically and spiritually, is a characteristic that only Messiah possesses. “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matt. 11:5). For those who disbelieve, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day” (Rom. 11:8).

So then, this Christmastime, do you hear what I hear? Even tucked away in trite Christmas carols that celebrate the glitter but cannot discern the gospel, do you hear what I hear? Bands that might have become famous for their irreverence sometimes sing on their Christmas singles, “Hark the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the Newborn King.’” Jazz playing in the elevator might plunk down the melody, “This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing.” Little drummer boys lay down the beat that bring some to worship.