Come, Emmanuel!
This plea has become one of my almost instinctual prayers in these days of growing violence, hatred, and division in our nation and world. Come, Prince of Peace. Come, Love that will not let us go. Come, Reconciler of all people.
This entreaty—“Come, Emmanuel!”—is at its heart an Advent plea. Advent literally means “coming” (from the Latin adventus), and it is that four-week season leading up to the celebration of Christmas, where we wait, prepare, long, and hope for the coming of Christ. Medieval theologian Bernard of Clairvaux described it as a season of “three comings”: the first where we wait with the people of Israel in the shadows of Roman Empire for a messiah; the second where we wait for Christ coming in our midst wherever two or three are gathered; and the third where we await Christ’s coming to establish his future reign in its fullness.
Often we focus on the first or second of these comings, but the primary focus of the season of Advent is actually the third where we prepare and pray for Christ and his reign to come again on earth as it is in heaven. And when there is so much in our world that stands in stark opposition to the vision we are given of God’s reign—swords beaten into plowshares, the hungry filled and the rich sent away empty, the end of death, grief, and pain—Advent becomes all the more necessary as a countercultural sign of Christ’s reign and a beacon of hope in the shadows of despair. Advent is for such a time as this.
Yet our churches often follow the prevailing culture and treat December (if not November!) as an extension of the Christmas season. Rather than patiently waiting, we gratify our immediate desires; rather than fasting, we indulge; rather than letting ourselves grow accustomed to the dark, we festoon every surface with a string of lights.
My contention is that this refusal of Advent forms us into people who are likewise given to impatience and immediate gratification, gluttony and overindulgence—a “solar faith” (to quote Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark) that cannot brave the shadowed valleys or accompany others on their own dark nights of the soul.
In light of this tendency, below are practical liturgical starting points for how pastors and worship leaders can inhabit this season of Advent with their congregants:
- Sing Advent songs. As a season of waiting and hoping, there is something ironic about the push to sing Christmas songs as soon as the local Lite FM station decides to shift over to its 24-hour holiday barrage. If we cannot even wait to sing some Christmas carols, how are we to wait for the things that really matter? Instead, we can choose to be out of step with the conspicuous consumption and immediate gratification around us by singing these stranger, often minor key songs of longing and expectation.
There are songs of all styles and genres that fit the Advent themes of waiting and hoping, including
- Traditional hymns: “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” (#120, Covenant Hymnal), “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” (#127), “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” (#135), and “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” (#68)
- Folk: Rory Cooney’s “Canticle of the Turning,” Sandra McCracken’s “In Feast or Fallow,” and Wendell Kimbrough’s “Dawning Light of Our Salvation”
- Traditional and contemporary gospel: William Murphy’s “Everlasting God,” Andrae Crouch’s “Soon and Very Soon” (#750), and “Down by the Riverside”
- Contemporary worship music: Brenton Brown’s “All Who Are Thirsty,” Audrey Assad and Urban Doxology’s “Your Peace Will Make Us One,” and The Brilliance’s “Hope”
- Songs from the global South and East: Federico Pagura’s “Tenemos Esperanza/We Have Hope,” Kōn-yong Yi’s “Ososo/Come Now, O Prince of Peace,” and Charles Vos’s “Jyothi dho Prabhu/Give Us Light.”
You can find a full selection of sacred and secular Advent songs on my playlist.
For those congregations that are most intransigent, you can even sing Advent texts to Christmas tunes (a spoonful of sugar!). The Covenant Hymnal provides several such possibilities, including Charles Wesley’s “Jesus Comes with Clouds Descending” (#768; REGENT SQUARE – “Angels from the Realms of Glory”); Joy Patterson’s “Come, You People of the Promise” (#130; Y ZLOBIE LEZY – “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly”); or Fred Pratt Green’s “Long Ago, Prophets Knew” (#134; PERSONET HODIE – “On This Day Earth Shall Ring”).
Singing songs of waiting and hoping not only is a countercultural move, it is also pastoral; it gives many people who, for a variety of reasons, struggle with the holidays one place where they do not have to fake Christmas cheer and can sing honestly about the tension of promises yet unfulfilled.
- Embrace the darkness. Too often darkness is only seen as negative—what blinds humanity from God, the realm of sin and death, and that which the light of Christ vanquishes. There is indeed that strain within the biblical narrative, but there are others as well. Darkness is also a place that holds treasure (Isaiah 45:3), a space that allows for reflection and devotion (Mark 1:35; John 3:1–2), and even the dwelling for God (Exodus 19:16; 1 Kings 8:12).
Advent can be a time then when we allow people to enter into the darkness. Most literally, this can mean holding services in (relative) darkness, providing places of rest and reflection amid the holiday frenzy where candles can be lit, silence held, and tears shed. It could also mean holding Blue Christmas or Longest Night services that are specifically designed for people who may find the darkness of the season to be overwhelming. These services give them permission to bring all of themselves—especially those parts grieving and in pain—to God in worship.
- Practice lament. Part of learning to walk in the darkness and hope for that coming reign of God is lamenting the many places that stand in such stark opposition to the values of that reign. We cannot begin to imagine better ways of living in the light of Christ’s reign unless we are willing to see and name how far we still are from that beautiful vision.
I wrote the following lament that initially uses just the verses (i.e., not the “Rejoice!” refrain) of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” Feel free to use and adapt it if you would find it helpful in your congregation:
God of the light, God of the darkness,
we long for the coming of your kingdom in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
We lament before you the signs
That your reign has not yet come in its fullness.
We lament the broken relationships
that bring pain to ourselves and our loved ones.
[silence]
we lament those in physical and spiritual captivity
to unjust and oppressive powers.
[silence]
Sing v1 – O Come, O Come Emmanuel (without refrain)
We lament the clouds of hatred and fear
against the strangers and refugees in our midst.
[silence]
We lament the shadows of physical and emotional abuse
experienced by children and spouses in our homes.
[silence]
Sing v2 – O Come, O Come Emmanuel (without refrain)
We lament the chaos of natural disasters that kill indiscriminately;
[silence}
We lament the cruelty and ignorance of leaders
that leads to the harm of their people.
[silence]
Sing v3 – O Come, O Come Emmanuel (without refrain)
We lament violence between people and nations
that kills your beloved creatures who bear your image.
[silence]
We lament the violence that holds sway over our hearts and minds.
[silence]
Sing v4- O Come, O Come Emmanuel (without refrain)
And yet with courage borne of hope,
within the darkness and in a minor key,
we lift our song of praise to you:
Sing refrain – “Rejoice, rejoice…”
- Imagine God’s reign. Lament, though necessary, is not the end of the Christian story. As Old Testament professor emeritus Jim Bruckner asserts, “Lament is the seedbed of hope,” and hope is that expectation that God’s promises will be fulfilled, that Christ’s reign will come. In worship, then, we can begin to imagine what that coming kingdom will look like. This could include songs that envision the wonder of that upside-down kingdom (the aforementioned “Canticle of the Turning” and “Down by the Riverside” are good options), communion liturgies that point to the coming wedding feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9), or congregational testimonies from people who have tried to walk in the light of the values of God’s reign now.
- Connect Advent liturgy to Advent life. Though this strays a bit from the worship service itself, we also need to make better connections between the waiting, hoping, and preparing we do in our services and the way we embody that waiting, hoping, and preparing in the rest of our lives. By feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, visiting the prisoner, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, advocating for peace, and speaking against injustice, we serve as a foretaste of that kingdom; we attempt to be Christ’s hands and feet—the very presence of Christ—even as we cry, “Come, Emmanuel!”
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