Calling Emmanuel
My teacher-friend is telling me about the encounter at her Christian school the other day... how the song leader at chapel-time felt prompted to sing the old carol, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." She continues how she found herself in shock that so few knew the ancient song when it is one of the most played Christmas songs ever. Here, in a church school of all places where one would expect the tune would've been played most, the students hardly knew a word. She was floored... and grieved. And so, when she got back to her classroom and had their attention, she began to sing it out loud to them and teach them... one little line at a time. She for whom English is a second language and America a second country, sitting there with the young ones and showing them the art of longing for the coming closer of the One who came the farthest for us all.
I can't help but think in this moment, as I'm listening to her share this moving story, of a greater concern in play here than just simply a forgotten Christmas carol. Perhaps the bigger problem is that we've neglected the age-old practice of lament - of learning how to sit with our longings and unmet desires and ask for the One in whom all our needs are met to draw nearer and make us feel His constant presence in the dark. In an attempt to present a victorious Savior to the world, maybe we've also left behind the reality of the Suffering Savior, too. Maybe we've become so focused on the God of Revelation that the God who already revealed Himself to us in Jesus - whose very name is Emmanuel: a reminder of His with-ness... the God who broke all barriers and went to the greatest lengths to show His love for us, to cry human tears with us, to break real bread in real life with us, to heal what is broken in us... maybe we've withheld something very meaningful from people in not presenting this God to them as well.
Fail to know He is a God who comes close, and you'll fail to call on Him in tough times to come closer still.
In past years, I've gone through many an Advent season with a heavy heart, finding more meaning in the carols of longing than in the songs of joy. Discovering more hope in the silence than in the merriment of yore. And one of the songs that carried me through was this very carol. Written with roots in the Middle Ages, it speaks of not only a desire for redemption but a desire for justice and peace and light in dark places. Many are familiar with the first verse or the chorus but what about the prayer for wisdom in the second verse? or the call for safety on the heavenly road in the fourth? And then there's the forgotten last verse in which the words cry out for "envy, strife, and quarrels" to cease and the earth to be "filled with Heaven's peace"?
This is no ordinary hymn. And this really isn't even one to be relegated only to the holiday time. This is a year-round expression of our ongoing desire for hope that generations going back to the 1200s have been singing aloud. While some may find the minor key to be a bit out-of-tune with the typical jingles of Christmastide, I find it a refreshing change because it invites us into deeper contemplation. It asks us to verbalize our need for the Christ to move ever closer to us in our pains and sorrows and to hold us near when so much feels so very wrong. It is, in reality, the promise of the Gospel. It is the hope we place in a Servant-King who laid aside His glory-crown to breathe our air and walk our earth so that we could be made right with the God.
While I have no issues with us telling the world about our glorious, overcoming Lord and the greatest story ever told ending in eternal victory, I do think we also need to invite others to see Him as the weary Son in the garden, pleading with His Father for there to be any other way. Him who already knew the way and who understood the sacrificial mission still asked if there was a way out of the suffering way. The human-form Jesus identifying with us in our anxieties and pressures and hurts and expression for us the innate desire to avoid the broken road. And yet... He chose the way through because that was ultimately the way through to the triumph.
There is no resurrection without a burial and a waiting and I often think of how much of our life is played out in that buried, waiting period. We don't often get to see the renewal on this side of our journey. Many things are left unresolved. Yet, amid all the uncertainty, there is this constant presence of the One who said He'd never leave us alone and even when He returned in victory to His Father, He sent us a Comforter in the Spirit who would remain with us so we would know His with-ness always. "God with us" is always with us, even when we feel or think Him most distant.
So if this is you this Advent, and you're feeling as though God has forgotten you, abandoned you, rejected you like so many others, may you know that He is so much closer to you than you realize. The very One who left it all so He could be among us because He loved us still finds a way to come after you, also. Even though the pain has torn your soul in two, He is right here, holding all the pieces of it with gentle hands and promising you that He can and will make a way through this, too. He can be trusted. And so together, we call on Emmanuel to come even nearer in our sadness, in our confusion, in our restlessness and telling us that it'll all be alright. Not because all things are always all-right on this side of Heaven, but because He gives us Himself in the midst and that alone makes it all alright. All is well because we are safe with Him, and there is nothing be afraid of.
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