Sunday 22 December 2024 is the Fourth Sunday of Advent.

Today, Rev. Geoff McKee leads a Service of Nine Lessons and Carols.

Why a Service of Nine Lessons and Carols?

It is a service of Christian worship traditionally celebrated on or about Christmas Eve.

In terms of Biblical content, we get a reminder of some of the main points in the journey through the Old Testament to the New Testament – up to and beyond the Birth of Jesus Christ:

• the story of the “fall” of humanity (i.e. how we “fell” from the position of having a truly intimate relationship with God),
  
• the promise of the coming of the Messiah (i.e. predictions from Old Testament prophets who foretold that God would send someone to finally put right the relationship between God and humanity once and for all), and
  
• the birth of Jesus and his significance for the World.

As you can see from the Order of Service for today, we have nine Bible readings (or “lessons”) from:

• Genesis (i.e. from the Old Testament – from the very first Book of the Bible – beginning with Adam and Eve and “The Fall”),
  
• the Prophets (i.e. here, from the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament), and
  
• the Gospels (i.e. here, from the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John, among the first Books in the New Testament).

These Bible readings are interspersed with the singing of various well-known Christmas carols.

Interesting facts about the 9 Lessons and Carols format

The first such service was conducted by the Right Rev. Edward White Benson, Bishop of Truro, on Christmas Eve 1880. Apparently, he was concerned at what he considered to be the excessive consumption of alcohol in Cornish pubs during the festive season. He hoped this would be a good way of attracting revellers out of the pubs and into church by offering a bite-sized (no Sermon!) religious celebration of Christmas.

Probably the most famous version of this service format is tha annual Carols from King’s, broadcast by the BBC. The first Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, was held on Christmas Eve, 1918. During World War I – which had just ended – the dean, Eric Milner-White, had served as an army chaplain. He was concerned that the distress of the “Great War” had hardened attitudes to religion.

Traditionally, the King’s service has Once in Royal David’s City as its first carol and Hark the Herald Angels Sing as its concluding hymn.

The Bible readings from King’s are taken from the King James’ Version of the Bible published in 1611.

Our Service does not follow the King’s carol list exactly and our readings are from the New International Version of the Bible.

Below, you will find the Order of Service for today, followed by the video recording of the Service. Below that, for illustration purposes, we give the King James’ version of the first Genesis reading and then the same text from The (modern) translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson known as The Message (and then all the others from The Message too).

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Sunday 15 December 2024 is the Third Sunday of Advent.

So far, during this Season of Advent, we have lit the candles of Hope, Peace and, today, Joy. These elements stand individually but are, crucially, stronger together.

This is how the Church works too. God knows and loves us all individually but the Church is a collective.

Rev. Christine McWhirter discusses this across today’s service and touches on the theme in both her All-Age address and the sermon.

Video recording of today’s service

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