When I was in college we had a large chapel choir. It was large enough, in fact, that I could be a member without noticeably impairing the sound quality. I gained much of my appreciation of historical Christian music from my experience there and from the Hymnology class I took with the director of the choir (If your eyes are especially sharp you can even find my picture from those days in the video here at the site for his obituary).
One year for our Christmas concert we did Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. The words to one of the songs in that chorale have stayed with me ever since:
This little babe, so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake.
Though he himself for cold do shake,
For in this weak unarmèd wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.
With tears he fights and wins the field;
His naked breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns cold and need,
And feeble flesh his warrior’s steed.
His camp is pitchèd in a stall,
His bulwark but a broken wall,
The crib his trench, hay stalks his stakes,
Of shepherds he his muster makes;
And thus, as sure his foe to wound,
The angels’ trumps alarum sound.
My soul, with Christ join thou in fight;
Stick to the tents that he hath pight;
Within his crib is surest ward,
This little babe will be thy guard.
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,
Then flit not from this heavenly boy.
If you’ve ever heard Britten’s piece, you know it’s not easy. The words move very quickly and in the second and third stanzas the voice parts echo each other.
Britten didn’t write these words – he took them from a poem by Robert Southwell. Southwell was a Roman Catholic priest who died 1594 while still in his early 30s. He didn’t die peacefully, but by being hanged, drawn, and quartered by the regime of Queen Elizabeth. You might think that being a Protestant I’d be on the Queen’s side, but treating anyone (let alone a fellow Christian!) in such a manner is antithetical to the way of Jesus.
What Southwell has done with these words is cast the birth of Jesus in the frame of spiritual warfare. When we think about spiritual warfare images of mighty angels, swords, and clashing armies might come to mind. Southwell, however, is aligned with scripture seeing God’s entry into our broken and sinful world as a defenseless baby as the true reality. Our way of taking up that warfare, similarly, is not employing violence and coercion “in the name of Jesus,” as Christians have been tempted to do through the ages. Instead, we walk in the ways of Jesus (“Stick to the tents that he hath pight”) and live as joy-filled redeemed people in the face of any and all opposition.
Bandits No More 