Rev Paul Smith
Bishop, Lutheran Church of
Australia and New Zealand
‘Joy, O joy, beyond all gladness!’ These are astounding and inspiring words from the rarely sung chorus of the Christmas hymn in our Lutheran Hymnal and Supplement (LHS) 32, written by 17th-century hymnwriter Christian Keymann.
The good news of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ is deeper and lasting beyond simply happy feelings. The angel told the Bethlehem shepherds, ‘I bring you good news of great joy!’ The telling of the nativity story is great joy. God has become enfleshed and dwelt among us out of great love for all humankind.
This story began with God’s promise at the dawn of time, to send a saviour to ‘strike the head’ of the serpent. At Christmastime, we remind each other that the promise unfolds in the story of the manger and the cross. God will bring about that exchange of our sin for the righteousness of the sinless Son of God so that we would have peace with God. This is the good news of great joy!
The chorus of Keymann’s hymn continues, ‘Christ has done away with sadness. Hence, all sorrow and repining, for the sun of grace is shining’.
This does not mean Christians are free from feelings of sadness, sorrow or struggle. Rather, this ‘good news of great joy’ of the coming of Christ means that, whatever we experience or whatever comes our way, we walk as people of grace in the light of the gospel. Because of the manger and the cross, we know God is with us. Because of Christ Jesus, we know God is for us.
With this sure promise of grace over us, before us and within us, we come to God with complete confidence with all our weariness and heaviness. We join with the psalmist, praying: ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.’
The hymn’s image of the ‘sun of grace shining’ draws on another biblical promise spoken by the prophet Malachi where, in chapter 4, we read of the ‘sun of righteousness’ rising ‘with healing in its wings’. This image is also sung in the well-loved carol, ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’ (LHS 33).
As people of grace, the people of our Lutheran Church have been walking as sisters and brothers in Christ in the light of the ‘sun of grace’. We have travelled through 2024, during which our General Pastors’ Conference and Convention of General Synod met, and we resolved to remove our prohibition that required the ordination of only men as pastors in our church. We also resolved to continue as one church in which both the ordination of men only and the ordination of both women and men are received as faithful understandings of the word of God.
As we work through these things together as sisters and brothers in Christ, the words of Keymann remind us of the sure promises of God in all circumstances. We are people of the gospel who are given hope in what our Lord Christ Jesus has done for us: ‘Joy, O Joy beyond all gladness, Christ has done away with sadness.’
As we prepare for Christmas festivities, we know that around us are people who do not know or have forgotten the joy of salvation. As the shepherds left their flocks to ‘make known’ what had been ‘told them about the child’, may the Lord give us the opportunity to give a good account to family, friends and neighbours of the Christmas hope and joy within us.
Keymann’s hymn ends with a beautiful and hopeful prayer:
‘Jesus, guard and guide Thy members,
Fill Thy brethren with Thy grace,
Hear their prayers in every place,
Quicken now life’s faintest embers;
Grant all Christians, far and near,
Holy peace, a glad new year.
Joy, O joy, beyond all gladness!
Christ has done away with sadness.
Hence, all sorrow and repining,
For the sun of grace is shining.’
Praise the Lord!
In Christ,
Paul
‘Lord Jesus, we belong to you,
you live in us, we live in you;
we live and work for you –
because we bear your name’
