O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Change… in some ways, none of us like it. But in other ways, we do enjoy change. Change for the better is always good. And change that is part of a rhythm is especially welcomed by human body and soul. That’s what we have in the celebration of the church year—change in rhythm. We change from one season to the next, Advent to Christmas to Lent to Easter, but we also revisit the same seasons every year.

Our Gospel reading for today from Matthew 1:18-25 is all about change, change for the better. Listen for God’s word to you…

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
    and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

The birth of Jesus brought change to world history. It brought a change in our calendars. Now all events in history are dated according to BC (before Christ) or AD (in the year of our Lord). Some scholars have changed the method of dating to BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era), but Jesus is still the dividing point. What are the personal implications of Jesus’ birth? What changes will result in our lives if Jesus is born and growing in us?

First, I believe the birth of Jesus in our lives will mean a change in plans. Mary and Joseph had to change their plans dramatically because of the birth of Jesus.

Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph. This meant that the couple would be referred to as husband and wife, though they would not yet have come together to have any sexual relationship. They would not yet have been living together in the same house. In fact, Joseph may have been working at this time on building the house in which he and Mary would live.

Think of how Joseph and Mary’s plans must have been disrupted by the birth of Jesus. I am sure they must have been looking forward to time alone together before having children. Then suddenly Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant. The Scripture does not tell us how Joseph found out. Presumably Mary told him. Can you imagine how difficult that conversation must have been?

If Jesus is born and growing in our lives, in our souls, then there will be disruption for us as well. Once Jesus comes in we cannot go on with life as it has always been. All of us naturally want to control our own lives. We may have all our plans made for what we want to do. But then Jesus comes and asks to take control. And he deserves to do so, doesn’t he? After all, he is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Yet, even as Christians, we try to make Jesus conform to our plans rather than making our lives conform to his.

James Dittes once wrote…

For it is not easy for Christ to come to us, nor for us to serve him, when our lives are neat and stable. We try so hard to be strong men and undivided and to bind the Lord, his church, his ministry, in swaddling cloths, and to lay them in a stable place. But our full and ordered house shuts them out—just as the inn at Bethlehem. Perhaps it is just to a divided nation, a ruptured community, a torn family, a split self, a chaotic sense of vocation, an impossible church, that Christ and his call comes.

Secondly, if Jesus has been born in our lives there will also be a change in righteousness. Jesus’ conception caused Joseph to rethink his concept of righteousness.

If Mary had conceived a child by another man during betrothal, then it would have been adultery. Betrothal was a serious engagement. The only way it could be broken was by divorce. Years before this, Mary’s apparent act would have been punishable by stoning, but the Jewish law in this regard had been tempered by this time. So, Joseph had two conventional choices. Either he could expose Mary to the humiliation of a public trial, or he could divorce her quietly, with only two witnesses necessary.

Matthew says that Joseph was a righteous man. In other words, he sought to obey God’s law as best he could. According to Joseph’s concept of righteousness, he would have to divorce Mary, even though he loved her. There was no other way to resolve the matter according to the conventional wisdom of the time. Still, Joseph’s understanding of the law, as well as his own heart, dictated that he should be merciful.

All that changed after Joseph’s encounter with the angel. He was challenged to live out a kind of holiness deeper than this superficial, legalistic righteousness. Joseph was prompted by this messenger from God to do something radical. He was asked to take Mary as his wife. This act would, most likely, not be understood by Joseph’s family or friends. Why would any man, in that culture, take as his wife a woman who was with child by another man? It was unthinkable.

But once Joseph received the revelation from the angel about the true identity of the child in Mary’s womb, Joseph opted for radical righteousness. He simply did what the Lord told him to do, even though he knew no one, other than Mary, would understand or agree with his decision.

I believe God wants us to live out a similar radical righteousness. Being Christians does not mean that we are members of the Kingdom of Niceness. Our king calls us to do some radical things. But in real life, most of us prefer to play it safe.

Wilbur Rees once wrote…

I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.

What demonstration of radical righteousness might God be calling each of us to perform even this day or this week?

A third change that will be taking place in our lives if Jesus has been born in our hearts is a change of focus. The angel told Joseph that the child in Mary’s womb was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He also told Joseph that this child should be named “Jesus” because he would save his people from their sins.

The name “Jesus” means “Yahweh saves”. “Yahweh” is the personal name of God meaning “I am”. God is the self-existent One; he is not dependent on anyone or anything but himself. Thus, the name “Jesus” means “I am saves.”

Many Jewish children at the time of our Lord’s birth were named “Jesus”. “Jesus” is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name “Yeshua” or “Joshua”. So, the name of Mary’s child was not unusual. But when combined with the other things that the angel told Joseph about this child, it is clear that this child was to be one of a kind. He was given the name “Jesus” by an angel for a special purpose—because he would save his people from their sins.

What is sin? The Greek word means “to fall short of the mark”. God has set a certain mark for our lives, and we all fall short of it. Paul says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) Sin is basically self-centeredness. Sin has a big “I” in the center. God created us to be centered in him, to have him as our focal point. But we have all become self-centered, by heredity and by choice. The good news is that Jesus has come. And by his birth, life, death, resurrection and intercession at the right hand of the Father he enables us to return to a God-centered focus in life.

The story is told of an alcoholic who became so intoxicated one night that he stumbled through the open door of a stable. He woke up the next morning bewildered by his strange surroundings. Finally, it dawned on him where he was. He was very hungry and so tried to think of a neighbor who might give him a meal.

“No,” he muttered to himself, “I’m afraid they’d say I’ve fallen too low.”

Just then, he heard some bells ringing, and he realized it was Christmas day. “What was that story again? About shepherds, the manger, a child born in a stable and an angel’s message? I’m not the first one to sleep in a stable,” he thought. Recalling his childhood training in Christianity, he remembered that God had come into the world through Jesus to save his people from their sin. He wondered, “Had Jesus appeared in a stable to remind the world that the Lord could help a poor man like me?”

That alcoholic found God in a manger and we can too. The good news is that when God became human in Jesus of Nazareth, he went all the way down; he was born in a stable to rescue us out of the depths of our own self-centeredness and change our focus.

A fourth change that Jesus can bring to our lives is a change in companionship. Matthew correlates the event of Jesus’ birth with Isaiah 7:14 which says, “The virgin shall be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him ‘Immanuel’—which means, ‘God with us’.”

Jesus was born of a virgin, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is the “with us” God. That means we don’t have to “go it alone” anymore. One of the greatest needs of human beings is to find an answer to the problem of loneliness.

A schoolboy in London won first prize for an essay contest. One of the lines from his composition went like this: “I believe so many twins are born into the world today because little children are frightened of entering the world alone!”

The world is a frightening place. But we don’t have to go it alone anymore. God wants to walk with us through the struggles. That is why he became a human being in Jesus.

There was a woman who was having difficulties in her marriage. Finally, she could not take it anymore. She walked out on her husband and two children. But the husband came after her, picked her up, and brought her back home. After they reconciled, the wife had this to say about her husband’s previous protestations of love: “Before, they were just words… but then you came.”

Jesus took the word of God’s love and fleshed it out for us when he was born as a babe in Bethlehem. I imagine that before Jesus was born, God’s words did seem to some to be nothing more than words… but then he came… he came on to our earthly scene in person.

Finally, the birth of Jesus in our lives will lead to a change in lifestyle. It did for Joseph. He obeyed God’s revelation and took Mary home as his wife. He even went the extra mile and restrained himself from sexual relations with Mary until she gave birth to Jesus.

Now, why did Joseph do this? He didn’t have to. Perhaps he did it so that no one could ever say that Jesus was his son. Perhaps he wanted Jesus’ true identity to be as clear to others as it was to him.

What lifestyle change might God be calling you and me to today? What extra mile is he calling us to walk in order that Jesus might be made known to others through our lives?

Allow me to close with a few words about our carol for today…

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is, perhaps, the oldest song we sing during Advent. The words come to us from what is called the “O Antiphons”. An antiphon is a short chant in Christian ritual sung as a refrain. The O Antiphons, or The Great O’s, as they are sometimes called, are sung after the Magnificat during Vespers on the last seven days of Advent in the Western Christian tradition. These are called “The O Antiphons” because the title of each one begins with the vocative particle “O” followed by one of the names of Christ mentioned in Scripture. Thus, in order, the titles of the O Antiphons are as follows: 

• O Sapientia (O Wisdom)
• O Adonai (O Lord)
• O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)
• O Clavis David (O Key of David)
• O Oriens (O Dayspring or Morningstar)
• O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations)
• O Emmanuel (O God with us)

Each one of the O Antiphons is based upon Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming Messiah. We don’t know the exact origin of the Great O’s, but they are mentioned by the great Christian philosopher/theologian Boethius in the sixth century, so they are at least 1500 years old.

One of the fascinating things about the O Antiphons is that they never mention the name “Jesus”. A second intriguing thing to note is that the Benedictine monk or monks who arranged these antiphons, appeared to do so with a definite purpose. If one starts with the last title and takes the first letter of each one—

• Emmanuel
• Rex
• Oriens
• Clavis
• Radix
• Adonai
• Sapientia

—the Latin words “ero cras” are formed, meaning, “Tomorrow, I will come.” The Lord Jesus, whose coming we have prepared for in Advent, whom we have addressed in these seven Messianic titles, and whom we have asked seven times to come (“veni, veni, veni, veni, veni, veni, veni”), this same Jesus now speaks to us and says, “Tomorrow, I will come.”

John Mason Neale published a five-verse Latin version of the O Antiphons in 1851. And in that same year, he published the first documented English translation, beginning with “Draw nigh, draw nigh, Emmanuel”. Neale revised this version twice. His second revision, beginning with the initial line reading “O come, O come, Emmanuel,” would become the most popular in the English-speaking world.

The familiar tune called “Veni Emmanuel” was first linked with this hymn in 1851, when Thomas Helmore published it in the Hymnal Noted, paired with an early revision of Neale’s English translation of the text. The volume listed the tune as being “From a French Missal in the National Library, Lisbon.” However, Helmore provided no means by which to verify his source, leading to long-lasting doubts about its attribution. There was even speculation that Helmore might have composed the melody himself. The mystery was settled in 1966 by British musicologist Mary Berry who discovered a 15th-century manuscript containing the melody in the National Library of France.

However, it is in the words of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” that we are vocalizing something almost as old as Advent itself, a season of the church year whose first celebrations date to the fourth century.

As fascinating as this history is, it is not as important as the answer to this question: are we making the request of this ancient hymn our own? Despite our fears and because of the good change he can bring, are we saying to Jesus: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” come in today, come in to stay, come into my heart Lord Jesus?