Penultimate Things

Meditation on In the Bleak Midwinter
Approximately forty-six years ago I learned this Christmas carol. I was eight years old, and my brothers and I sang in my home congregation's junior choir. Thus I have had many years and several life phases to think about the hymn's imagery. In the Bleak Midwinter, was written by Christina Georgina Rossetti, and her poem appeared in the January 1872 edition of Scribner's.
In 1906, Gustav Holst put the poem to music with the tune, Cranham.
Holst had a difficult task. The poems irregular syllables made creating a melody quite difficult. (I can remember our choir director giving very specific instruction as to which syllables went with the correct notes.) Perhaps it is fitting that a carol that says, "Our God, Heaven cannot hold him, Nor earth sustain..." cannot be so easily put to music.
I have contempated these particular words many times. What does it mean that Heaven cannot hold him? The Prophets and St. John (writing in the Book of Revelation) have shared with us marvelous visions of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Prophets are at times stunned into silence it seems, and John's vocabulary is tested to the limit has he seeks to describe heaven's wonders. Here is the place where Angels, Cherubim, Seraphim and Saints offer up their continuous praise. Yet, heaven cannot hold Jesus Christ. It is as if the measure of Jesus' grace, love and mercy cannot be contained even within the wide portals of heaven, and as a result, the incarnation is a divine necessity. Jesus must be poured out upon the earth.
"Nor earth sustain..." The creation cannot sustain the Creator. Jesus Christ came to Bethlehem, his ancestral home, and the reaction of the powers and prinicpalities (Herod) was to destroy him. St. John's gospel tells us that he came to his own people and they did not receive him. Jesus, the first and greatest gift of Christmas, is the gift we sought to return. We sought first to deny him a place in which to be born, and tried to return him by way of Calvary. However, if heaven cannot hold him nor earth sustain him, certainly the grave can make no claim upon him. Thus it is that the grace, mercy and love poured out from heaven upon the creation is the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth as the book of Revelation promises. Indeed, "heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign." Gone are the former things, there shall be nor more grief or crying our pain. The One who cannot be held back, the one creation cannot sustain, is the one who restores and sustains all things. Alleluia!