Marsh Chapel Celebrates Christmas with Its Annual Service of Lessons & Carols
Beloved, time-honored event returns this weekend, featuring liturgical readings and popular carols, hymns, and anthems
Marsh Chapel Celebrates Christmas with Its Annual Service of Lessons & Carols
Marsh Chapel Celebrates Christmas with Its Annual Service of Lessons & Carols
One of Boston University’s most popular and beloved events returns this weekend when Marsh Chapel hosts its annual Service of Lessons & Carols. The liturgy, being held Friday, December 9, at 6 pm, and Sunday, December 11, at 11 am, takes as its model the famous 104-year-old Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols held each year on Christmas Eve at Cambridge University’s King’s College. The event is free and open to the public.
The service comprises nine short Bible readings, interspersed with popular carols and hymns. Scott Allen Jarrett (CFA’99,’08), Marsh Chapel’s director of music, will lead the Marsh choir and the School of Theology’s Seminary Singers, who will be accompanied by the Majestic Brass Quintet and organist Justin Blackwell (STH’07, CFA’09). The nine lessons will be read by Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer, Andrea Taylor (COM’68), senior diversity officer, Sujin Pak, dean of the School of Theology, Clark Warner (STH’16), a Questrom School of Business lecturer, Marsh Chapel chaplains and congregants, and Robert Allan Hill, dean of Marsh Chapel.
“This service, first held at BU in 1973, is one of the most beautiful and meaningful of the year for me, due to the reverence of the congregation, the comfort of the readings, and the power and joy of the music,” Hill says. “I would like to think that John Wesley, an Anglican priest, whose statue stands above the Chapel front door, and the founder of Methodism, which religious tradition gave birth to Boston University in 1839, would smile and find the service moving, especially since it prominently concludes with his brother Charles’ majestic carol, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”
Marsh Chapel’s Service of Lessons & Carols is Friday, December 9, from 6 to 7:30 pm in the Marsh Chapel sanctuary, 735 Commonwealth Ave. The service is free and open to the public and will be livestreamed for those unable to attend in person. An abbreviated version of the liturgy will also be held during Marsh Chapel’s regular Sunday interdenominational service at 11 am on Sunday, December 11.
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