O Come O Come Emmanuel

Chad has two favorite Christmas songs—assuming, of course, that “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” doesn’t count as a proper Christmas song. One of them is perfect for the first week of Advent: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”
 
Advent, of course, is not—I repeat, NOT—a synonym for “Christmas,” even if nobody in your church seems to know that. “Advent” means “coming” or “arrival,” and it is the season that immediately precedes Christmas on the Church calendar (officially, Christmas begins on Dec 25th on the Church calendar—again, even if no one in your church seems to know that, and even if half your congregation wants to “start Christmas” shortly after Halloween). Advent, then, is primarily a season of preparation (and we aren’t talking about Black Friday shopping or hanging lights on the house, to be clear). Advent is about preparation, anticipation, and hope.
 
Hope. Now there is a tricky concept. Hope doesn’t mean a whole lot unless it follows some sort of despair or desperation (or, as Harvey Dent taught us in the Batman saga, “The night is always darkest before the dawn”). The typical texts that we read on the first week of Advent include Isaiah 40, which is a text written to Israel in Exile. Israel is removed from its ancestral land. The Temple has been destroyed. They are oppressed by a foreign power, inundated with messages about pagan deities, and even left wondering if their God was killed or defeated by those deities. Desperation has set in—alone, abandoned, defeated. Israel is in desperate need of rescue. It is into that context that Isaiah 40 is spoken. The text is an oracle that promises deliverance. Rescue is coming, and this Exile will soon end. God is going to rescue the people and lead them back home, plowing a road right through the middle of the desert! Every valley will be raised up, and every mountain will be leveled. Rescue is coming! Hope is spoken into the darkness.
 
The hymn, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” captures this theme so well, and it is why it is my favorite Advent hymn. It is a hymn for “captive Israel”—it is a song of the Exile, a song of the desperate ones clinging to the hope of rescue. It is a prayer for God to come and “ransom captive Israel”—a prayer for rescue and redemption. And what is Captive Israel doing in this song? Not wrapping presents, stringing lights, and listening to Bing Crosby, that’s for sure! Israel is mourning—“that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appears.” It is a song that recognizes the despair and the need for rescue, ransom, and redemption. But the chorus sounds the note of hope: Rejoice! Emmanuel is coming!
 
I love this song because it does not race off to the joy of Christ coming into the world before it grapples with the desperate need for Christ to show up in the first place. Redemption doesn’t matter until I realize how much I need to be redeemed. The first week of Advent is the ideal time to grapple with both the desperation and the hope. And this is my favorite song to help take me there—placing me in Babylon with Captive Israel, waiting for rescue. I hope you get to sing that song reflectively this week.
 
But I still want a hippopotamus for Christmas. 

Editor's Note: Below is a lovely contemporary rendition of "O Come O Come Emmanuel," featuring people doing dangerous things like having lit candles on a piano and wearing baseball caps while singin' to Jesus.