O Come, O Come, Emmanuel Verse 2

O Come, Thou Wisdom from on high

Who ord'rest all things mightily

To us the path of knowledge show

And teach us in her ways to go.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel is come to thee, O Israel.

 This verse is particularly strange to read after spending far too much of Thanksgiving break re-watching The Tudors (thank you, otherwise excellent The Creation of Anne Boleyn book, for making me newly curious about that television show).

The fictional (and to all appearances the real) King Henry VIII is forever telling everyone that the natural order is, essentially, that he will be a tyrant and they will like it.  Rebellion, he tells the subjects who protest his shutting of the abbeys, is a sin against God and nature.  To question the king, he tells his court, or God-forbid (literally) insult him!  That is against the natural order and to defy the Word of God.

Oh the things we've done in the name of "preserving God's order".  The things we are still doing.

But when Jesus really did show up and "to us the path of knowledge show and teach us in your ways to go", His message was very different than the natural order set up by any government.  No, Jesus was undoubtedly a radical who recommended an indifference to power, a generosity of wealth, and a sharing of human spirit that look very foreign to the politics currently done in his name.

In fact, these two parts of the verse seem in deeply ironic conflict with one another.  Jesus came down to show us the true way, the path of knowledge and true goodness, and that way was in direct contrast to the established order.  I imagine, especially from the perspective of eternity, Jesus is far more likely to agree with Mosca Mye than any current politician:

The heart of being a radical isn't about knowing all the right books; it's not about kings over the sea or the Parliament in the capital.  It's...looking at the things around you and seeing the things that make you sick to your stomach with anger.  The things there's no point fussing about because that's just the way the world is and always was and always will be.  And then it means getting good and angry about it anyway, and kickin' up a hurricane.  Because nothing is writ across the sky to say the world must be this way.  A tree can grow two hundred years, and look like it'll last a thousand more -- but when lightning strikes at last, it burns, Mr. Appleton.

Nothing is writ across the sky to say that current order is sacred.  That's us doing that.  Those of us with too much of a stake (even if we haven't the ultimate stake) in the status quo making our own insecurities sacred.

Perhaps the hardest lesson Jesus gave us was that the status quo is not our god.  Not the things that it is unthinkable to truly question.  And not always in revolutionary ways.  Sometimes in dismissing them.  After all, it was accepted Jewish belief that God would send a prophet to deliver them from Rome, but instead Jesus said to deliver unto Caesar what is Caesar's.  Nothing is writ across the skies to say that Jerusalem needed to be a political entity.

The Pharisees are condemned, because nothing is writ across the skies to say that they only can lead the people to greater faith.

Rich men are told to sell all they own, because nothing is writ across the skies to say that we must pursue wealth and power or that they are a determinant of good.

The order of the world isn't writ across the skies by heaven's almighty hand.  We did that.  We forget...because we so seldom have the courage to renegotiate the terms we laid out.  The path of knowledge often runs contrary to the "natural order" -- especially when it exposes that there is no such thing.  And that we must combat the world's ways.

If something about the way the world has always been stands in the way of doing good -- burn down the tree.  The order is ours, not God's, that makes his laws more precious than ours.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

I'm back!

This advent, I want to focus on verses of Christmas and Advent carols. I'll be starting this week with "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," which may well be my favorite of the entire lot.  I don't pretend to know much of the history of the carols, although my friend Clara Biesel does.  I'll try to ask her each week for at least a little on that week's carol.  But I want to get closer to Christmas and Advent both this year, and music was what once drew me more than anything else.

O come, O come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

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

This time of year, my family thinks and talks a lot about my father Judge Tom Mulvaney.  And I often wonder why I don't connect more with a motto of his that should be right up my alley: "The purpose of life on Earth is to make one's self ready for eternal life with God."  Perhaps it's just the formality of his words.  Even on the bench, he seemed much more natural.

But stories of exile are all about longing to return home, are they not?  About being alone.  Ex-patriot stories are different.  Full of adventure and finding of the self.  About claiming a new country and birthright or finding that the foibles and terrors of your culture are not a universal part of human nature but a choice that can be un-chosen.

I've written a novel about the ultimate exile -- sleeping beauty removed from her home by time.  Completely beyond the hope of repeal of her sentence and being reunited with her home and her family.  So I suppose it's no surprise that that is the phrase that connects.

We remember no life but this one.  We build homes and families and ties to this world.  But we are born exiles.  We are born away from our true home.  We are born in a world where we do not fully fit, always aching for pardon and return home even as we build lives here.

We do not belong here.  We are aching for home.

In an otherwise troublesome book, Till We Have Faces, a brand new queen makes her first act on the throne the freeing of her beloved tutor (and true father figure) from his slavery.  She is then dismayed and shocked that the other men of her confidence immediately start congratulating him and offering to help him pack for his trip home.  He later tells her that he has passed the test, and that he will stay to help her out of love rather than stumbling home.

In Winter's Tale, a servant named Camillo who was forced to flee his country in order to avoid the king's order to kill his friend and the king of a neighboring kingdom is willing to cause all kinds of fuss and misunderstandings simply on the hope that he will have to return home to settle the matter later.  He receives his wish and comes home to joyful and magic reunions.

We all connect with this emotion, somewhere deep down.  It is not one that requires a great leap of empathy or the assistance of mighty words to comprehend.  It is the call of our souls.  We are in lonely exile here on Earth.  Trying to build as best a life we can.  Trying to do the best we can.

But ready in a moment to be called home.  Eager for when we will all be there together again.

How much more remarkable to find that Jesus instead came to us.  And that He will come again -- to us here.  That this place will one day not be a place of exile but a home in its own right.

That's why what we do here matters so much -- and why perhaps I struggle with my father's motto.  The Kingdom of God is now and here, I've said many times before in earlier years on this blog.  This feels like a place that is not our home and thus beneath our true interest.  But it's not.  It will be God's home truly and fully someday.  We will make this our home.

So we need to build a Kingdom of which God could be proud -- as well as we can.  We may be in lonely exile, but we are meant to do work while we are there, as Camillo did.  The same worthy service that maneuvered him into a position to do the good work that won him passage home at last.  To be fair, the same worthy service that kept him in exile working hard for the good of an earthly realm -- but that very work also made him fit for heaven.

So yes, the purpose is returning Home.  But it's important to remember that this land will not be abandoned.  So it's just as important to build a home here that we can imagine God choosing to dwell in.