“Joy to the World” – Not a Carol, but a Psalm?

Advent’s simple candles and starry nights temper December’s brisk pace. If we let them, they restore us to better rhythms of prayer.

The melancholy yet hopeful tones of traditional Advent hymns, especially “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” have prepared hearts for Christmas for centuries and they never fail to help my weary heart find that longing, waiting space.

The early sections of Handel’s Messiah have a similar effect on my soul. As we read Isaiah’s consoling, “Comfort my people,” I hear the tenor solo in my head: “Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem/That her warfare is accomplished/and her iniquity is pardoned.”

This joy-tinged, reflective season is a refuge from holiday din and discouragement. I won’t be sick of partying by the time Christmas rolls around because in Catholic tradition we fast before we feast, and when we feast at Christmas, we do it for twelve whole days.

Then the carols of Christmas make the heart truly soar, and I’ll be more than ready to belt out one of the most signal melodies of the season: the eight cascading notes famously announcing “Joy to the world, the Lord has come!”

So I was intrigued to learn last winter while reading Mars Hill Audio’s year-end appeal letter, that “Joy to the World” was not in fact written to commemorate the celebration of Christmas, but “was first published in 1719 in Isaac Watts’ Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, as a Christocentric reworking of Psalm 98 titled ‘To our Almighty Maker, God.'”

Robert J. Morgan, in Then Sings My Soul: 150 Christmas, Easter, and All-time Favorite Hymn Stories, offers some context, stating that until English Congregational minister Isaac Watts (1674-1758), most congregational singing in British churches was from the psalter. Watts is credited with “inventing” the English hymn; that is, breaking out of psalter-only singing and broadening the motifs of congregational song.

Watts’ Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament shows he did not forget the psalter, however. Instead, he studied the psalms in the light of Christ and formed his insights in this unique hymnal into “verses for singing.”

“Joy to the World” is thus a call to all people and all of creation–“fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains”–to acknowledge and celebrate the rule of Christ, taking our rightful place before the Lord every day of the year.

Myers, host and producer of Mars Hill Audio, notes in his letter that the hymn’s third stanza, mentioning as it does the uncomfortable “Curse, with its attendant sins, sorrows and thorns” is sometimes omitted from modern hymnals. Yet it is the fact of sin that makes Christ’s victory necessary, and without that victory, our Christmas joy is “arbitrary and fragile.” 

Our times are quite different from those of Isaac Watts. Myers points out that the welcome of anyone’s rule would hardly seem to evoke delight in a society that celebrates radical autonomy.

I can almost see the twinkle in his eye when he continues:

And the possibility that righteousness would be discovered to be glorious is also more than a bit out of synch with the Zeitgeist.

The good news is that God’s right reordering of the cosmos will outlast the spirit of these times.

This perspective on “Joy to the World” was a fresh reminder that I’d chosen “Peace” as my word for 2023. I realized that its connotation in today’s world would sound Pollyannish to many, but I defended my choice then as grounded in an insight gleaned from Bishop Robert Barron’s essay The Genesis Problem: peace is written into the order of creation. We are actually out of sync with reality whenever we move away from Christ’s peace. He is King of Kings indeed; he is also the Prince of Peace.

As 2023 nears its close I can say that if I learned one thing from taking peace as my guiding word, it was the truth of Isaiah’s words “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.”

I understood in a deeper way what St. Paul may have had in mind when he advises us to take every thought captive to obey Christ. I am to crush my spiteful resentment at its first showing, hauling it captive to the King of Kings: the only fair Judge, whose law is love and whose gospel is peace.

Without His rule my swords will never become ploughshares; they will joust and jab, wounding friends and enflaming enemies in futile, fruitless pride.

It is a fearful immolation to invite the Prince of Peace to rule in my heart. Yet when my warfare is accomplished and my iniquity is pardoned, I approach the meaning of “Comfort ye my People.”

He comes to make His blessings flow/Far as the Curse is found. Let earth receive her King.

Please share Sparrowfare, and if you enjoyed this post, join Sparrowfare’s list to receive notice of new content!

You might also enjoy How to Offer Hope in Advent’s Exile and Wander Into the Wardrobe: Reasons to Return to Narnia in December.

Yet another reason why Hallow Is my App: This year’s Advent Challenge is Pray 25 with C.S. Lewis, featuring The Chosen’s Jonathan Roumie and Liam Neeson as the voice of C.S. Lewis. These rich meditations, with time for silence, enhance Advent readiness in a very special way.

Even though I now know that “Joy to the World” was not written as a carol, it is one now! So the Advent hymns come first for me. “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” is an ancient Eastern chant of Eucharistic devotion based on a verse from the prophet Habakkuk, “Let all the earth keep silence before him.” The chant dates back to at least A.D. 275.

Photos by Marek Studzinski, Grant Whitty and Ava Tyler on Unsplash.