This Little Babe

Today I just want to pass along something I received from John Stonestreet’s ministry at the Colson Center. He shared this week a Christmas carol I had never heard called, The Little Babe. Here are the first three stanzas:

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, haystacks his stakes; of shepherds he his muster makes;
And thus, as sure his foe to wound, the angels' trumps alarum sound.

But what captures my attention at the end of a very divisive year, is the history of this little carol. As John Stonestreet shares in his article, the song was written by Benjamin Britten, a man of questionable Christian character and Britain’s most important composer of the 20th century. He wrote it as part of a ten song collection called “Ceremony of Carols” while he was making a daring cross Atlantic journey in 1942—think of the current movie Greyhound to appreciate the setting.

On his journey from North America to England, Britten stopped at Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he picked up a book, The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, which contained poems by a man named Robert Southwell. Southwell was a Catholic Priest who dared to work as an underground missionary in England in 1586. After six years there “he was arrested and tortured, and spent three years as a prisoner in the Tower of London. In 1595, at the age of around 35, Robert Southwell was tried and convicted on charges of treason, and was hanged, drawn, and quartered.” (https://www.wqxr.org/story/my-favorite-christmas-carol-year)

His writings were very popular for several decades, and are said to have influenced Shakespeare and Donne.  The text of This Little Babe, comes from the second half of one of Southwell’s poems, “Newe Heaven, Newe Warre.” I find the lyrics fascinating and stirring. As the author of the WQXR article shares, “Southwell portrays the story of Jesus’s birth as a sneak attack on the forces of evil.”

But reflect a moment on all the events that brought about this little carol: Protestants and Catholics warring in the 1600s, Luther’s Germany at war with the world in 1942, a talented British man at war with his own soul—captivated by the life of Christ, but known for sexual proclivity.

The walk of faith that we celebrate with the birth of a babe in a manger, is not sterile and neat. It is often tumultuous, confusing, difficult, even seemingly broken. And if it is, as Robert Southwell portrays, a war... should that be a surprise?

And maybe that’s why 2020 came as such a disruption to us. Maybe we were not expecting war.  Maybe as we move into 2021 we need to embrace the last stanza of this song:

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.

My our Lord Jesus Christ, this heavenly boy, go with us into 2021.