"O Come O Come, Emmanuel"

Reflections on childhood, Christmas, and the Divine rescue we need most right now

“O Come O Come
Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
Who mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear”

“O Come O Come Emmanuel” has always been one of my two most favorite Christmas songs*, and the first time I can remember hearing it was back in my father’s church as a boy in Kirbyville, Texas. It was Christmas Eve, I think, because the lights were low and we all held burning candles, the kind with those flimsy paper disks meant to keep the wax from burning your hand. I loved the way the flames lit our faces from below, and the shadows filled the room and made it quiet.

All the other Christmas songs I had ever heard sounded cheerful and bright, but this one surprised me because it wasn’t like that at all. Both its lyrics and melody are weighted with sorrow. Even the word “Rejoice!” in the refrain strikes me more as a defiant declaration than a proclamation of victory, a bulwark of faith pressing back against the oppressive darkness of the night.

“Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel
Shall come to thee
O Israel”

As it turns out, the melody is a dirge, originally composed for use in funeral processions back in the 1600s. The lyrics date back much farther, to the 8th or 9th Century, when monks would sing it in their monasteries in anticipation of Christmas. The song was part of a liturgy of “antiphons” (ritual chants or songs) sung over the last seven days of Advent leading up to Christmas Eve. “Emmanuel” was the seventh antiphon in the series, sung on the night before Christmas Eve … which, as it happens, is the very day I’m posting this reflection.

As a boy holding my candle that Christmas Eve all those years ago, staring at the flame, I didn’t know anything about the history of the song, that it had been around for over 1200 years, that thousands of other souls, all now long dead, had sung it before me in sacred places like this, at this sacred time of year.

But I cried when I heard it. That’s why I remember the night so clearly. I was embarrassed by my tears — Texas boys don’t cry, after all — and I didn’t know why they were happening. The song plucked at something deep in my young heart, some part of me that already knew that I, too, needed to be rescued, that all was not well in my home, that I was not safe there, that there was no where I could go to get away, and no one I could turn to. Like Israel of old, I needed a Divine rescue. 

O Come O Come
Emmanuel
And ransom captive Michael
Who mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

A few Sundays later, I found the song in the old Baptist Hymnal the church kept in the sanctuary pews. I swiped a copy and took it home so I could learn all the verses. I used to sing them to myself whenever I felt sad.

“O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer,
Our Spirits by Thine Advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight.”

The days are darkening over the world. We all sense it, like the coming of a winter full of storms. The human race currently faces so many critical challenges we haven’t even figured out how to talk about together, much less overcome. The sheer size of them overwhelms us, triggering us into repeating cycles of fight, flight, or freeze, where no truly creative innovation can happen. All is not well in our shared home. We are no longer safe here, because we have made it unsafe, and there is no where we can go to get away from ourselves. And, despite our rhetoric, deep down we know that no amount of finger pointing or killing the bad guys will make any difference because as long as some of us are left alive, we’ll bring the darkness with us, and the whole mad cycle will start over again.

“O come, Desire of nations, bind
All peoples in one heart and mind;
Bid envy, strife and quarrels cease;
Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.”

I believe we are in desperate need of a Divine rescue. But, contrary to what the doomsday preppers, the end times isolationists, or the apocalypse accelerationists may preach, the rescue we need is not some technological savior, or a vengeful militia fighting an asymmetrical war against its own government, or a moment of rapture where the good people are whisked away to paradise to watch the rest of the world burn. No. The Divine rescue our world needs now is the same one it has always needed, the same kind of rescue that generations before us have prayed for on this day for over a thousand years, and in their time received, the same rescue that boy in East Texas needed when he first heard this song, and wondered why it made him cry.

He got his prayer answered, too.

We need a fresh revelation of God’s Divine love. Agape love. Transformative love. We need an outpouring of that love upon our minds, to change the way we think about one another. We need an upwelling of that love within our hearts, to change the way we feel about one another. We need an anointing of that love upon our hands and feet, to change the way we treat one another, and upon our lips, to change the way we speak to one another, and about one another.

It is not the evil in the world that we need to fear in these days, but the lack of love in our hearts … the kind of love that rises up within each of us to say, “I refuse to think of you as my enemy. I refuse to hate you, or judge you, or condemn you, for we are one, though we are not the same. We must carry each other now, or we will perish alone.”

“Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel
Will come to thee O Israel”

Emmanuel means “God with us,” and, as the Christian scriptures elsewhere declare, “God is love.” So to pray “O Come O Come Emmanuel” is to likewise pray “O Come O Come, Great Love of God, and abide with us!”

That is my Christmas prayer this year. Maybe you’ve made it yours as well. If so, thank you. We have it in us to change the story of the coming years on planet Earth, but only if enough of us — and it doesn’t have to be that many, just a remnant, just enough yeast to leaven the dough — surrender ourselves wholeheartedly to love. We can light the way through the dark of Winter into an unexpected Spring of renewal and fresh possibility. 

Love is like that. It can change everything in the blink of an eye.

As you sing this ancient song today, and through this Christmas season, I hope you’ll join with me in making it a prayer for Divine rescue — for you, for me, for all people everywhere — a revelation of love rising up in our hearts to show us the way forward together.

*My other most favorite Christmas song is “Little Drummer Boy.” And yes, it too, comes with a story. I hope to share it with you someday.