It aint all there yet and it's a rough draft but it's what I have at 7:01 on Saturday night. I love you and miss you and thank you for singing your song next to me, helping me listen to the song of God.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
Third Week in Advent 2012
St. Edwards King and Martyr
In more ways than one we are waiting in darkness. Isaiah prophesied Jesus’ birth by saying, “the people in darkness have seen a great light”. Darkness is a reality and the biblical witness seems to be clear that it is a reality that we live within, it won’t disappear. It never is fully uprooted or routed this side of eternity. But the gospel speaks of another reality and offers us something which is more subtle and helpful: “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it, master it, put it out (Jn 1). This is the circumstance of our existence, this tension of light and darkness is the paradox of our life, the mystery of faith that we all live into. (RR 12/12/12)
There is an aching and a longing that is expressed today in these Antiphon’s that echo in us a longing that is ancient and aged. An expression that uncovers our hidden longings - longings that we learn to mute, suppress and manage as children early on, longings that get socially formed to become more acceptable and less ‘needy‘. But in these songs that we sing this morning, in the Antiphons and particularly in Malcolm’s poems (as I have lived with them this season) - the human stuff of desire, frustration, resolve, longing, fear, desperation and prayer are held together, within a harmony of our humanity. I sat in this very sanctuary alone this week and maybe it was my imagination that I let roam, but I swear to you I could hear 800 years of people gathered in this site under this roof - protestant and catholic, monks and tanners, intellectuals and alcoholics (some of them occupying the same category no doubt), workers and homeless, emigrants and royalty whispering, chantings, singing this central refrain, not only of this season, but of all humanity that comes out of the darkness: O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Come.
This is a song for a people with their backs against the wall, who have run out of options who are powerless and position-less. Who have used up their resources, who have had resources taken. O come o come emmanuel. It is the cry of the victim who longs for a restored innocence and a different future, it is the cry of the perpetrator who cannot unweave the heartache and misery of the past. It is a cry that emerges from the streets of Syria, in front of the wailing wall and behind the wall in Gaza. It can be heard in alleys and corners where addicts buy their vials before slipping into oblivion and in the boardrooms of multinationals strategizing how to balance their future - all of our futures- on the head of an ethical mirage called the ‘letter of the law’. It is the cry of the spouse who cannot turn back time, the prisoner serving a sentence where all he has is time. It is the cry of the destitute, anxious and afraid who feel the powers of the State pressed against the soft neck of the oppressed. It is seen within faces of children on every continent who need food, who are conscripted for war, whose groans are “too deep for words”. It is the unspeakable mourning that that comes from NewTown Connecticut. It is a for a people with their backs against the wall. O come o come Emmanuel.
And the cry to this one called “emmanuel” is a breath prayer to the one who “makes a womb of all this wounded world” who creates a “tiny hope within our hopelessness”( and sometimes that is all you need is a tiny bit of hope to tie a knot around your rope). It is the cry of the withered and rootless who long for life to be rooted within. And Emmanuel is the name we give the movement of God, when God is present where we least expect him but most need him most. This cosmic movement that includes into the life of God every dark alley, every tenebrous night, every god-forsaken experience. This light that the darkness cannot master. This God who is love all the way down, down into the depth of humanities darkness, down into our frailty, our broken systems and institutions. When we are reduced to a pool of tears and our fears like black birds circle overhead. It is this God, who put on flesh and moved into the darkness. Emmanuel, God with us, God for us, God not abandoning us.
And in this movement, it is the very voice of God who takes up this song and begins to sing it back to his creation, like the call and response in an african-american church. We sing O come, O come Emmanuel and the life of God answers back to us, O come o come. The life of God answers back: Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, all you who are vulnerable, who mourn the loss of all that the earth has snatched away, all you who are broken down, disheartened, humiliated and overwhelmed Come unto me and I will give you rest.
Come, if there is anyone here this morning who cannot see the "Wisdom" of it all, someone who is unable to make sense of his situation, some Willy Loman who cries, "The trouble with Willy is that he does not know who he is," someone who understands many things a little but nothing enough to live on, someone for whom "the most High" is so high as to be out of reach. Come.
Come you who feel trapped, captive to some slavish Egypt who is afraid of the desolation that is ahead, the sea of obligation that threatens to overwhelm, who sees no one to lead you through the barren debacle of your circumstances. Desert everywhere. Someone who wonders if they are delusional or stupid to keep facing the way of faith. Come.
Come, the Spirit of God might say, to the one for whom this hectic life is a killing pace, someone who is left sighing, “I am just dead”, or “I feel like the devil, or I feel like hell”-- and for whom these are not mere figures of speech, but the very symptoms of Satan's tyranny, the depths of hell and the grave. One for whom anxiety, desperation and compulsion feels like a dark and constant companion. Come.
Come to those who feel outcast and for whom all the doors to home have seemed to close, someone who has lost the key to life, who feels on the outside looking in. Come.
O Come those whose shadows compel them to practice their pleasure only under the cover of darkness - who themselves feel dark and desolate through and through. Those whose foundations have been shaken, or cannot find a firm footing because of a broken home or a failed opportunity or frail mental health, if there is someone who longs for something more solid than her own feet of clay, Come the spirit of God would say.
This God who is love all the way down, has come near and in this place we can bring our inconsolable longings, these memories we cannot make sense of, redeem or use to push ourselves into a preferred future. To this one born of blood, this fellow-sufferer who has descended to our depths. Come.
Advent holds a deep paradox for us. It holds the paradox of the One coming - not yet fully here - and yet with us from the beginning of time. And this call and response into the life of God and the life of God back to us is to produce something other than a depressed or ‘weak-kneed’ Christianity. We are to take Luke seriously when he says “lift up your heads” “raise your heads” because Advent creates new men and women. We who are exposed and defenseless, we who grieve into the fathomless depths are to look up, positions ourselves and our songs of lament towards the one who sings over, in through and with humanity. Could this be how reconciliation begins? Does it begin in fathomless grief and longing, with our backs against the wall ? Do our actions to bring justice to the nations, to not shout or break a bruised reed, to not snuff out a smoldering wick, to not grow discouraged until we establish justice, to hold Gods hand and be God’s promise, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness (Is. 42), do these actions constitute the raising of our heads, do they embody the very song we sing today.
O Come O Come Emmanuel
This is the paradox of advent - this call and response, this tension that is held within our humanity made possible by His. And the reality that we are Christ’s coming now, this advent and again and again and again and again beyond time’s end. Amen.
