Advent Calendar 2024
I Saw Three Ships
I’m honestly not sure why I love the English Christmas Carol I Saw Three Ships. It is, on the whole, rather goofy. To the best of my knowledge, there are no ships present in the biblical stories of Jesus’ birth. In fact, the closest body of water to Bethlehem is the Dead Sea, about twenty miles away (which is too salty to host ships anyway). Some think the ships are metaphors for the camels the three magi rode to see the baby Jesus, as camels are sometimes called “the ships of the desert.” Others think the three ships refer to Good King Wenceslaus (from another favorite British carol) whose shield bore three galley ships. Maybe.
I tend to think the carol about ships carrying the baby Jesus and his mother on Christmas morning was simply a way for an island people to make the Christmas story their own. Which is what Christmas is all about – God coming down and becoming one of us. So in addition to recounting the shepherds and magi and angels and barnyard animals, why not throw in a couple of ships to boot and more easily imagine that this baby was born for you, too.
Sting’s 1997 version, recorded for A Very Special Christmas 3 (benefitting the Special Olympics), features the Celtic pennywhistle and bodhran (a very danceable hand drum) that, combined with Sting’s distinctly British lilt, make it a perennial favorite in our household.
– Pastor Lose
Away In A Manger
I have really enjoyed singing our version of Away in a Manger with harp and strings every year at the West Campus. The intimate feelings it invokes are a part of the Christmas season for me.
– Greg Dokken, bass, Sanctuary Choir, West Campus
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
O Come, O Come Emmanuel is hands down my favorite Advent hymn. It is a hymn inspired by my favorite passage in the Bible, the song of Zechariah in Luke 1:67-79. He sings this song after the birth of their son, John the Baptist. It has seven beautiful verses—or antiphons—all of which I sang at my ordination in August (it’s true!). These verses were historically sung in monasteries, one each night leading up to Christmas Eve. Each verse also uses a different Messianic title that was used to prophesy the coming of Jesus. They include Emmanuel, Key of David, Branch of Jesse, Wisdom, and others.
One of the reasons I love this hymn is because, as the days shorten during Advent, I also begin to feel the heaviness and weight of the world in which we live. During this time of year, the promise of the incarnation becomes even more important to me. Singing “O Come, O Come” feels like pleading to God to enter into the messiness of our lives and redeem it. When we sing it, we offer up the litany of sufferings in this world in hope that God will be with us in it.
Then, during every refrain, we sing “Rejoice! Rejoice!” a reminder that as we await the coming of our Lord, we praise God for seeing us, hearing our pleading hearts, and for the promise of Emmanuel, God with us. It is a hymn that puts to words the now-and-not-yet moment we emphasize during the Advent season—a time to celebrate that Jesus came to be with us in the flesh, but know that we still await the fullness of the kingdom to come.
– Pastor Olson Popp
For the second Sunday of Advent, Pastor Cieslik and Pastor Dixon look at the birth story of John the Baptist found in Luke 1:5-20, 57-64.
What big and perhaps distant story are you a part of that you might not recognize?
When has your life been interrupted by God’s power and presence? When has God surprised you with with blessing or wonder?
See you in Church!
O Come All Ye Faithful
O Come All Ye Faithful, arranged by Dan Forrest, has ushered in hundreds of singers at the beginning of the Mount Olivet Christmas Concert for several years, and for good reason. From the buoyant marching rhythm of the introduction, to the thrilling key change as the choirs belt out “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing,” to the exhilarating crescendo of the final statement, “O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!” this anthem never fails to lift my spirits and focus my attention on the reason we put in countless hours planning and preparing for the concert — to proclaim God’s boundless love for us in the birth of his son, Jesus.
– Amanda Jenkins, soprano, Sanctuary Choir, Mpls Campus
Breath of Heaven
My favorite Christmas song is Breath of Heaven by Chris Eaton and Amy Grant. From a young age, I have loved this piece. You see, each Christmas Eve, my family has a party after the Christmas services where we sing carols together. This melody has always been known to me because my mother would play it on the piano, but it wasn’t until Cathedral Choir’s early Christmas party that I learned the name!
Once we started the anthem and the music began playing, I knew each note! Looking further into the music, I found this was a popular melody called Mary’s Song. After Cathedral Choir that night, I asked my mom, and she told me it was the same song she played each year at our home! I love this song because it gives me a feeling of nostalgia.
Come to the Christmas Concert on December 15, at 3 or 5pm to hear this song sung by the Cathedral Choir!
– Sophia Ohnsorg, soprano, Cathedral Choir, Mpls Campus
E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come
My favorite Christmas Season anthem is E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come by Paul Manz. I love the way the music builds from a quiet intimacy to the fullness of humanity’s need for hope and light in the darkness. It’s an extremely effective musical setting of a simple yet powerful text that reminds us of what is at the core of the Christmas Season. I’m always happy when I get to sing this piece.
– Elena Stabile, soprano, Sanctuary Choir, Mpls Campus
“What Child is This?” is one of those treasured Christmas hymns that’s impossible to get through without a big lump forming in your throat, and the minute the lyrics ‘This, this is Christ the King’ come along, there’s no chance of singing because we’re crying. Even in the middle of summer when we sing it in that creaky old wooden chapel on Lake Caribou, it brings memories of home and love and faith. The baby Jesus.
Written by Englishman William Chatterton Dix, the hymn first appeared in Bramley’s and Stainer’s Christmas Carols Old and New in 1871. Dix, a marine insurance manager in Glasgow, Scotland, wrote hymns, devotionals, and religious instructional books in his free time. Inspired by the story of the three kings finding the baby Jesus, as told in Matthew 2:1-12, he so perfectly captured not just the awe and love felt by the wise men when they found the baby Jesus, but the anger and jealousy with which the power-hungry King Herod searched for the baby. The first verse focuses on the babe, sound asleep on his mother’s lap. The second verse shifts to the evil intentions of this sinful world that await him. The final verse reminds us that the sleeping baby is Christ, the King of kings, the One who saves the world from itself. His words, set to a haunting 16th century English ballad, help us to feel the pull between good and evil in the world.
So why does this hymn bring me so much joy? Because to me it’s home, it’s church, it’s Christmas Eve. And because when everything around them seemed so very bleak and hopeless-no room for a poor pregnant woman to lay her head, a paranoid power-hungry ruler looking to eliminate all threats to his power, even newborn babies-God had the final say. Love prevailed. “The King of kings salvation brings; let loving hearts enthrone him.”
– Pastor Hammersten
O Holy Night
The highlight of the Christmas season for me was the combined choir anthem, O Holy Night at the Christmas Concert last year. It was thrilling to hear voices from every part of the sanctuary coming together to sing this powerful anthem. We couldn’t ask for a better soloist than Justin Staebell. It was truly a pleasure to join him and the hundreds of choir members on this beautiful and cherished Christmas anthem.
– Brian Haase, bass, Sanctuary Choir, Mpls Campus
I Am So Glad Each Christmas Eve
Decades ago (1960’s), I first heard the song, “I Am So Glad Each Christmas Eve,” during a Mount Olivet Lutheran Church worship service. If memory serves correctly, we sang it right after the sermon on Christmas Eve. (Back then it felt a bit odd and refreshing that we would sing a “Norwegian” song at a “Swedish church.”
This song has become my favorite Christmas carol. Many of the words bring reassuring love and comfort about Jesus and His birth. Jesus came down from heaven above to help a world in need. The Son of God dwells again in heaven’s realm and still He loves His little ones and hears them when they pray.
– Pastor Kalland
Pastor Freeman and Pastor Lose continue our Advent series discussing the story of the angel Gabriel visiting Mary found in Luke 1:26-38.
When have you found yourself in a perplexing or scary life situation and God has assured you that God is with you?
When have you uttered: “God: help.” What does that do for you?
See you in Church!
Silent Night
My favorite moment during the Christmas Season at Mount Olivet is when we all sing Silent Night together with the choir disbursed among the congregation in the pews while we are holding candles. To hear all these voices coming together in such a sacred moment really fills me with joy. It’s a powerfully touching moment, and I look forward to experiencing it again this year!
– Matthew Valverde, tenor, Sanctuary Choir, Mpls Campus
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
In elementary school, Pastor Dixon’s sister, Andrea, and I sang in a Twin Cities girls’ choir together. During our carpool rides to and from rehearsal, we’d often listen to upcoming concert songs to commit the songs’ words to memory. One year, Hark the Herald Angels Sing was in the Christmas concert repertoire. Already a huge fan of Amy Grant, her 1983 “A Christmas Album” was the perfect inspiration to learn the words to Hark the Herald Angels Sing and never forget them. When I hear Hark! the Herald Angels Sing today, I think about the way Christ’s love transcends time and place. In the 1980s, I got to sing with girls throughout the metro area and in the 2020s I get to be a pastor at a church that spans the metro area, as well. In the 1980s, I got to sing in the same girls’ choir as Pastor Dixon’s sister and in the 2020s I get to serve at the same church as Pastor Dixon! God’s love keeps showing up, spanning time and place, and Hark the Herald Angels Sing reminds me of that great gift!
The third stanza, especially, resonates with me, speaking of the gentle, bright and life-giving power of Jesus, “Hail the heav’nborn Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of righteousness! Light and life to all he brings, ris’n with healing in his wings. Mild he lays his glory by, born that we no more may die, born to raise each child of earth, born to give us second birth. Hark the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn king!’”
– Pastor Freeman
Christians Be Joyful
I have two favorites to share! The first is of a special memory associated with an anthem that Sanctuary Choir performed on Christmas Eve, 2004, called Christians Be Joyful, from the Christmas Oratorio by J.S. Bach. I was pregnant at the time with my first child and felt her kick for the first time as we were performing this anthem! My second favorite is performing Peace, Peace at the end of every Christmas Concert, singing with my family; my husband, parents, and cousins in Sanctuary Choir; and my children in Chancel and Cathedral Choir. It is always a special Christmas moment!
– Shelley Ohnsorg, alto, Sanctuary Choir, Mpls Campus
Lo How Rose/The Rose
My name is Brooke Robinson, I am a senior at Southwest high school and attend the Minneapolis Campus. In my first year of the Cathedral choir, I remember singing the song Lo How Rose/The Rose by Craig Hella Johnson. I vividly remember the feeling of chills passing through my body while singing the lyrics “Some say love is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed”. I think of this song, specifically that line of lyrics when it comes to Christmas. I had never really understood why that particular line had stuck with me and why I frequently thought of the lyrics’ lingering presence in my mind. However, when my grandma fell sick these past years, the lyrics took on a new meaning for me. Christmas is a time of joy, community, and, most of all, love. I have been fortunate to experience love in so many different forms throughout my life and lots of love from my grandma. Christmas is the celebration of Jesus’ birth and the light that he brought into the world, but it also can serve as a reminder of the loss of light we have experienced. Mourning is much like this razor, leaving your soul to bleed. And although we cannot place a band-aid over our souls, the community we surround ourselves in can help make that bleeding bearable. Throughout my grandma’s time of being sick, I have turned to the Mount Olivet community. It has made the bleeding of my soul tremendously more bearable, and during this time of Christmas, when I am missing the warm sugar cookies of my grandma, I know I have others who are willing to bake with me.
– Brooke Robinson, soprano, Cathedral Choir, Mpls Campus
Once in Royal David’s City
Almost forty years ago in 1987, you could say I had some big questions about life and faith and I was looking to different people for some big answers. One of the books I read in a Book Club was a best seller entitled, “A Brief History of Time” by the physicist, Stephen Hawking. In this book, Hawking introduced a complicated theory that could describe all the forces of nature that govern everything from the dust of the ground to the sweep of the stars. At this same time I was meeting weekly with my Lutheran pastor and three other guys to discuss faith and its relevance to our lives and the world. I was also being “witnessed to” by a good friend with good intentions. It was during the fall of 1987 that I finally seemed to comprehend the theology of grace – the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God. After months of wrestling with many questions, I will never forget Christmas Eve, 1987. I was sitting in the church pew with my wife and my parents. It was the first time I had ever heard the hymn, “Once in Royal David’s City.” One of the verses hit me hard because I felt it was finally the answer to what and whom I had been seeking. I became so emotional I could hardly sing this verse through my misty eyes:
And our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love;
for that child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heav’n above;
and he leads his children on to the place where he is gone.
Into our troubled and embattled world, someone had come from God as the bringer of light, the source of all peace, and the hope of the world. I realized that every human life existed as part of God’s eternal, loving plan. Receiving some big answers that Christmas Eve was one of the best gifts I’ve ever received!
– Pastor MacLean
Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee
My favorite Christmas song is Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee. There are a couple of reasons why it is my favorite hymn. One, the lyrics do a good job of depicting the feeling of Christmas – to be joyful for Jesus’ birth and the hope and light He brings us.
The hymn resonates with me personally because it has been a part of many memorable times for my family. It was sung at my and my brother’s baptisms, my parents’ wedding, and my mom’s parents’ wedding. Whenever we hear the hymn at church, my mom always points it out to me. I started listening more closely to the lyrics, and I think they are powerful because they show the true spirit of Christmas—love, Joy, and the faith in Christ we share with others.
– Soren Joy, tenor, Cathedral Choir, Mpls Campus
Pastor Olson Popp and Pastor Lose read and discuss “Mary’s Magnificat,” found in Luke 1:39-56, as we approach the fourth Sunday of Advent.
Who are the people around you who affirm your calling in the world? Who are your Elizabeths?
What are the songs or scriptures that you hold onto in moments of lowliness or moments of joy? How have they met you in your life as this song met Mary in hers?
See you in Church for Christmas Communion Sunday!
Angels We Have Heard on High
While the glorias can feel a little strange when I sing by myself, they ring out in the company of others.
I loved singing this hymn in the liturgical procession at Augsburg’s Advent Vespers. The timpani ushered us into the sanctuary with chimes, banners, and candles signaling that we had reached the crescendo of the service and story, the longed for Messiah, had indeed been born, for us, for the world.
My favorite time singing this hymn was in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. Our family lived in Jerusalem for four years and we had the privilege of attending Christmas Eve services with the Lutherans in Bethlehem. Come to Bethlehem and see!
Our last Christmas in Bethlehem brought us through the gates and wall that separates Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The usually austere signs that warned of spikes and violence were covered with bright Christmas lights. And while the border patrol agents still carried large guns, they dressed in Santa’s clothes and handed out chocolates, offering season’s greetings.
We parked and then walked to church with little hands in ours and little feet beside us against the busy streets. Our journey to Bethlehem that night reminded me that Christmas is absurd. God being held within a young woman’s body, being born, vulnerable and needy, in a cave–for us.
It’s the absurdity of God that saves us, cracking our armor–and walls. God coming where and when we don’t expect–or prepare–but desperately need. This absurdity asks us: Could our enemies also be our friends? Could justice take root from uprooted trees? Would God be born in such a way? Could the fig tree bloom twice?
It did that year, the fig tree, that is. Surprising summer rains sewed a second harvest so that even at the cusp of winter, figs still ripen on the near leafless branch. We saw it that Christmas Eve, in the faint and darkened light of sunset.
If you can bend with the absurdity you might understand that there is a hope that is still alive, a faint echo carried from the walls of the cave all those years ago. That night, the five-year-old colored in her notebook, saying: “Jesus on the cross and the cave in which they laid him. Born in a cave. Laid in a cave.” Life where we would never expect. Gloria!
– Pastor Grangaard
Peace, Peace
My favorite piece of music that I have sung in the Mount Olivet Christmas Concert is definitely Peace, Peace. I love the symbolism of starting in darkness and lighting candles one by one. It always makes me think about how God works through each of us as individuals to spread love to one another. I tend to sneak a peek at the faces of the congregation members I can see while the choir is singing, and I am always struck by the tears and smiles. As a musician, it feels as if the choir is leading the congregation to join the Christmas spirit. Peace, Peace feels like the beginning of the Christmas season, and I treasure it every year.
– Christine Stargell, alto, Sanctuary Choir, Mpls Campus
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
Easter is about triumph––Christ’s triumph over sin and death. It is the finale of Christ’s long confrontation with the powers and principalities who despise grace. Christmas, on the other hand, is about hope. It is the small, hopeful beginning of this big salvation story. God has come to live among us. Peace will reign on earth. Wrongs will be put right…right? Christmas is the glimmering of one bright star in a vast, dark firmament.
I love this song for that reason. It captures the hopeful spirit of Christmas, which is to say it also grapples with the fear and uncertainty that comes with pinning our hopes on a baby born in squalor. “In despair I bowed my head. There is no peace on earth, I said. For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.” (By the way, listen to the Frank Sinatra version. He really puts his back into these lyrics.) And the Christmas story is so mockable, even laughable. So easily mocked by those who think they know what strength looks like.
In the face of that fear, Christmas stubbornly and persistently returns every year, like the echo of a far-off bell, to remind us that “God is not dead, nor doth he sleep. The wrong shall fail; the right prevail.” Peace will come to earth. This is only the beginning.
– Pastor Dixon
O Come All Ye Faithful
My name is Leah Nelson and I’m a junior at the West Campus. My favorite Christmas song is O Come All Ye Faithful. This song is so special to me because of the feelings I associate with it. To me it represents the joy and anticipation of Christmas. I look forward to Christmas every year. It’s my favorite holiday, and I especially love all of the traditions I have with Mount Olivet during the Christmas season. One of my favorite Christmas traditions through Mount Olivet is the annual Christmas Concert. I have been in the Christmas Concert more times than I can count, and when I was too young to actually be in it I would go watch it with my family every year! My absolute favorite part of the Christmas Concert is processing into the beautiful Minneapolis sanctuary while we’re singing this song. I just think the song is so powerful. I love hearing the men start their deep low part as all of us girls walk down the aisle as fast as we possibly can without running in order to get into the choir loft before we come in! Then, I love when the girls come in with our light voices. Different choirs and parts start coming in one by one until we’re all singing together and it’s strong, loud, and amazing. The best part of the song, and the part that gets me every time, is when everyone has come in together and sings, “Glory to God all Glory in the highest” really loud, and then we get really quiet and start repeating, “oh come let us adore him” getting a little louder every time until the the end of the song where we sing, “Oh come let us adore him Christ the Lord!” I can just feel the energy and the love that brings us all together during the Christmas season! It is so powerful every year, and the love and joy in the room coming off of all the singers, directors, pastors, and the congregation never ceases to amaze me.
– Leah Nelson, soprano, Cathedral Choir, West Campus
Nimrod
Adagio Nimrod is the ninth variation from Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, composed in 1899. It stands as one of the most celebrated and emotional sections of the work, often performed as a standalone piece. It was regularly one of the solo pieces that the St. Olaf Orchestra would play during St. Olaf’s Christmas Festival, of which I had the privilege to be a part of during my four years at St. Olaf.
Strictly speaking it’s not a Christmas or an Advent piece. It’s not even explicitly sacred. But one can’t help but feel a sense of holy anticipation as it begins slowly with a gentle, lyrical theme, that gradually builds in intensity and grandeur. It culminates in this incredible crescendo that calls to my mind that angel host appearing to shepherds. Then gradually subsiding into a peaceful quiet, reminiscent of the tender moments Mary surely had with the baby Jesus, as she “treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.”
I hope you can find a spot to turn this piece up and listen to this incredible orchestra bring this gorgeous piece to life.
– Pastor Cieslik