Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Oh, come, our Wisdom from on high,
Who ordered all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

Oh, come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Oh, bid our sad divisions cease,
And be yourself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

-----------------------------------------

So: it's advent. The four weeks before Christmas when we wait and long and hope for the coming of the Christ--for something better. Above are my favorite three verses of a classic advent hymn. I went to two different (VERY different) churches yesterday, and we sang this song at both places.

At St. Joan of Arc, the very liberal Catholic church my dad and I visited, they said that the heart of advent is "finding the extraordinary in the ordinary". I like that. This song has been 'ordinary' for me my whole life, and I've never liked it all that much. A lot of times it sounds suspiciously like a funeral dirge, evoking feelings very different from hope and expectation. This week, though, I found something extraordinary in it. This song is sung from the perspective of the Jewish people (Israel) longing for the Messiah to come. These three verses express hope that the Messiah will "ransom" the enslaved people, show them wisdom and knowledge* and bind their hearts together in peace. Isn't that what we still want? freedom, wisdom, and peace are almost universally desired.

But freedom from what? For the Jews of Jesus' day, it was freedom from the Roman empire--in 70 AD there was an armed insurrection which was promptly squashed. In fact, Jesus' non-violent ethic is specifically designed to encourage the oppressed Jews to creatively reclaim their dignity from cruel Roman rule, not through violence but through love. When the song says "Ransom captive Israel" the reference is to the exile, when the Israelites were captured by the mighty Babylonian empire. Many Christians today would read "ransom captive Israel" as a plea to be freed from the shackles of sin. That's all well and good--I certainly believe that we, as flawed humans, are desperately in need of release from cycles of violence, greed, and hate. But it's important too to consider that millions of people the world over are still living in slavery or in exile. Can we plead on their behalf?

The verse about peace can be read with a similar lens. When we privileged people ask God for peace, we are often asking for some kind of personal mental or psychological relief. Many of us, of course, are suffering very acutely from grief, loss, or some other non-peaceful sensation. If that is the case, to pray for peace for oneself is certainly justified. In some ways, though, we, as privileged people, need to be uncomfortable. David Selvaraj, the director of the place I stayed in India, says his work is to "comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." Those of us with enough food, shelter, education, and dignity need to be disturbed by the fact that many people live without those rights. Can we sing this verse for them? Can we ask God to bind our hearts to theirs, so we too feel the pain of injustice?

The second verse says something to me about this Jesus fellow that we're always talking about. The path of knowledge that's asked for here could be wisdom to resolve an office squabble or successfully navigate relationship land mines (and don't get me wrong, those things are important!) but I think there's more to it than that. When I think about salvation, it's this wisdom that I turn to. Going to heaven is a great idea, and I won't deny that I'd like to end up there, but if that's all that salvation's about then Jesus doesn't mean that much to the world. I believe that salvation is really about Jesus' wisdom--about his social and ethical teachings on love, non-violence, and creative resistance to injustice. If we follow Jesus, really follow him, we can join with God in saving the world, in making it more like heaven here.

So it's advent. The time of hope, expectation, looking for something better. freedom, Wisdom, Peace... so I say, along with the world's poor and marginalized, Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel!

P.S. a little side-note: You know in the "wisdom" verse when it says "teach us in her ways to go"? The reason they use the feminine pronoun there is because in the book of Proverbs, 'Wisdom' is personified as a woman, Sophia. Even the ancient Israelites knew women were pretty rockin.