During the time of confession in yesterday’s service, in which God tunes the heart of his people through confession of their sin and unworthiness, our worship leader (who also happens to be my brother-in-law) quoted one of my favorite “spooky” Christmas songs. This makes it the second time Sufjan Stevens has been read from our church’s pulpit (the first being here).

Sing a carol to your mom
‘Cause she knows what’s goin’ on
And she knows if you’ve been bad or good
If you get what you deserve
To be graded on a curve
Oh you’ve got a lot of nerve

la la la la la la la la etc.

Sufjan’s It’s Christmas! Let’s Be Glad! will not win any awards for poetic beauty, but what you cannot see by reading the lyrics is the way in which the words are sung. While we sinners willingly admit that we deserve death, we often take God’s grace for granted and expect “to be graded on a curve.” Then we plug our ears and sing the chorus as if to say, “I can’t hear you! La la la la la …!”

And so as we prayed I was reminded of the following scripture …

If we way we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
– 1 John 1:8-10

… which in turn revealed how utterly addicted I am to my own glory, my own righteousness and my own special rules and regulations (that are, of course, looser than everyone else’s). Praise be to the God whose tuning fork shows things as they exist, silencing the “La la la’s” of my hardened heart and replacing my fiction with the fact that he will never turn away a sinner who comes to him in truth (cf Spurgeon).