Sabbath Devotional :: Music of Christmas

Music inspired this weekend’s Sabbath devotional. How I love the music of the Christmas season!

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here.
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

December 6th marks the second Sunday of Advent for those of you familiar with a broadly Christian liturgical calendar. Advent is a time of longing and expectation that Christ may soon come to redeem His people.

Our family has its own Advent tradition involving scripture reading, singing, and lighting candles in an Advent wreath — a cherished holdover from the Scandinavian and German traditions in our heritage.

A Google search (and family background) shares that there are different iterations of Advent wreaths. Some include five candles. In order are the Prophets Candle (Hope); the Bethlehem Candle (Peace); the Shepherds Candle (Joy); the Angels Candle (Love); and on Christmas day — the Christ Candle (the long-heralded arrival of the Savior). Other wreaths have four candles, combining the forth Sunday with Christmas Day itself.[1]

One of the hymns associated with Advent — and particularly the second Sunday of Advent (this weekend) is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (Veni, Veni, Emmanuel). The tune is predominantly in a minor key matching the lyrics which are haunting, anxious, grieving, mysterious, — and then (moving to major) beseeching and hopeful in anticipation and joy. Documents show the words and music together first appeared in 1710, though its roots are ancient and Latin.

Haunting, anxious, grieving, mysterious. Those adjectives for me — and likely for many of us involved with MWEG — seem like particularly apt descriptors of our loads. We seek light. We nourish hope. We seek God’s presence in our lives. At the same time, we deal with record number of Covid cases and deaths, fractures in our government and society, something far less than a “peaceful transfer of power,” sabotaged schooling, and overall social and civic disruption.

As many of us hashtagged the planet with #GiveThanks and #LighttheWorld we gave our gratitude and humility impulses a robust work out. One thing I personally am grateful for is the optimism that resolves the minor chords in this particular hymn: “Rejoice, Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!” Hope is a thing with muscles as well as feathers.

It’s a season of rejoicing indeed! But it’s still a season of hard work especially during unique challenges we face with the pandemic as a worrisome glaze over all our more entrenched struggles.

I include a link ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMja9I5lXSU) to a version of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel performed by “Kara & Josh” that particularly moves me. I had never heard of the duo before, but I am impressed. The lyrics are lushly expressed with precision and eloquent harmonies. (You might want to listen with your eyes closed the first time around.) But what a challenge they created for themselves! They keep the profound message of the hymn breathing in and out of them while they also focus on what their hands and fingers are doing.

I find their version an inspiration to me to keep breathing in and out the Good News while I remain at work with my own hands and obligations. As I continue to tend to MWEG efforts to promote peace, ethics and healthy governing, I remind myself that Christ did come, and Christ is with me now.

I doubt I’ll keep my timing and syncopation as precisely and gracefully as Kara and Josh do, but I’ll rejoice while I’m trying.

Besides, our work isn’t acapella. We are not without accompaniment:

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

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[1] https ://www.learnreligions.com/what-is-the-advent-wreath…