Dare we ask it?
What should we sing now that Advent has brought us to, and past, Christmas? What songs should be on our lips once God’s incarnation in Jesus has been duly noted, feted, and tucked away with the other trappings of the holidays? In slowly withdrawing from my binge listening of favorite carols and songs of “the season,” I have discovered that one of those Advent anthems just won’t give up its place on my mental playlist. Could it be that its spiritual plea for God to come into our world—or for us to recognize how much God has always been here—demands of us an acknowledgement of some kind, or at least a reply to bring some closure or perhaps even some fulfillment to that season of expectation that has primed us to receive God afresh in our lives?
It is in that spirit of unfinished business that I offer an alternate, post-Christmas, version of this hymn that so captured us musically and spiritually for those 25 days in which we went through the motions of making room in our hearts for God. Best sung to the plainchant melody of VENI EMMANUEL, (follow this link to hear it) it invites you to sing along or, more importantly, to think along with its message.
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How come, how come, Emmanuel, that angel songs ne’er with us seem to dwell?
No promises of peace long survive, good will a dream we scarce can keep alive.
REFRAIN: We rage, we boast, Emmanuel, our words betraying what the truth might tell.
How come Your wisdom seems beyond our grasp, disorder and despair is what we clasp?
No paths of knowledge shield our alarm, or ease our burden when we suffer harm.
REFRAIN: We grieve, we mourn, Emmanuel, still longing for a loving place to dwell.
How come, how come, this root of Jesse’s tree, has stood apart for all eternity?
Its’ kingly savior sent from above, but will peace ever turn our hearts to love.
REFRAIN: We dream, we trust, Emmanuel, that You will somehow save us from ourselves.
How come, thou Dayspring of all hope and cheer, we look to You to solve our problems here?
Our choices wound the lands of our birth, our lust for power scarring the earth.
REFRAIN: We curse, we kill, Emmanuel, and blame You for the sounding of death’s knell.
How come, how come, our fractious nations strive, their will to rule a threat that few survive?
From dust we were created to live, yet to that life we have but grief to give.
REFRAIN: We seek, we pray, Emmanuel, but from Your will we ever yet rebel.
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My that was a downer, wasn’t it? Why would I write something like this? And why would anyone care to sing it unless enshrouded in sarcasm’s darkest cloak? In paraphrasing such well-known and beloved verses I was hoping to expose the veneer of false optimism upon which so much religion seems to take refuge. For in writing such an obvious parody I have forced myself to confront several compelling questions that Christmas, and the faith that it set in motion, seems unable to satisfactorily answer.
One that has long troubled the minds of thoughtful people—both believers and unbelievers—is the nature of God’s sovereignty over this world in which all of us have come to life. It is the vexing question of “Why”, or to put it in my lyrical phrasing, “How Come?” If God is really with us , as the Emmanuel assertion about Jesus clearly makes, then why don’t we find ourselves—after more than two millennia of spiritual devotion and prayer—living in a better world than the one in which he was born, the one in which we find ourselves today? Why aren’t the prospects of universal peace and good will little more than mythic slogans we trot out each Christmas or the idealistic propaganda our would-be-leaders proclaim when running for office?
In asking “How Come” I’m doubtless opening a theological door that every religious tradition finds a bit unsettling. And in doing so I invariably come face to face with even more questions that can be faith-rattling and soul-shaking. Is there really a God who has as much control over all things as many of us want to believe? And if not, wherein lies our faith? Is it in a deity whose schizophrenic actions and inactions defy any measure of consistency that any of us would dare to call reasonable, fair or just? Must we choose between believing that "ours is not to reason why, ours is but…” in serving such a God, or looking upon the universe as a spontaneous and haphazard place whose meaning can only be explained by accident and chance? I’d prefer to think otherwise, but God’s silence and apparent absence in this world makes me think that God—or more accurately our conceptions of God—may be more the problem than is the persistence of doubt that provokes us to confront God and blurt out, “How come?”
In trying to answer this seemingly unanswerable question, I find myself falling back on this observation. When looking for God to come into our world as Emmanuel—for God to truly be with us—it seems to me that we are missing or distorting a most important aspect of faith. For in claiming that God is with us, are we not essentially enshrining our beliefs, our values and our agendas in a very particular theology in which God is conceived and crafted in our image? I fully understand why we do it—why I do it. We want God’s blessing and favor so much that we innocently and naturally see the hand of God working through every one of our victories, close calls, lucky breaks and triumphant brushes with death. And whenever life doesn’t work as we’d like, go our way, or save the innocent from suffering and death, God with us sounds in our ears like an empty hope or cruel curse.
Isn’t it more honest to admit that, when we declare that God is with us, we are, in fact, treating the Almighty as we would a good-luck charm and talisman. That seems to me more a magical than faithful response to God, and unwittingly it leads us to regard the Divine as something that belongs to us, something we can manipulate in service to our ever-changing needs and aspirations? Therein lies my greatest fear and worry whenever I start believing that God is with me. For in making such a claim I can’t help but cross that blurry line that separates genuine faith from idolatry.
Rather than wishing and proclaiming that God is with us, should we not, instead, be making petition that we might be with God? You may ask, aren’t they the same profession of faith, just turned around? Deeper reflection shows us how different they really are, at least in one very critical way. Whenever we claim that God IS with us we give voice to our deepest need to possess, contain and control the particular idea and substance of God—on our terms. But in singing or saying that we are—or more precisely, we hope to be—with God—we openly admit that we have never and can never fully understand, speak for, or act on God’s behalf in pure and uncompromised witness. God with us is a wishful affirmation of our pretense of certainty; Us with God a prayerfully humble confession of our need and dependency upon the transcendent “Other” in which the metaphor of God is but a symbolic expression
Whenever I sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel…” I do so accepting as a fact that God has already come into this world, long before my thought and speech could acknowledge God’s cosmic and eternal reality. It is this assurance of God’s BEING that allows me to step out on the limb of faith in praying that I might, in each conscious moment, become aware of and awakened to God as God really is. For God can never be reduced to my or anyone’s religion, culture or imagination, such that I would ever dare claim that God was with me or any us with whom I currently identify. That is why the verses of “How Come, How Come Emmanuel…” were not composed as a challenge to a silent God whom I seemed to implicate in my complaints. Rather it was a question written for me to answer, for all the “How Come…” moments when I have failed to be with God. In that spirit I have written these lyrics to serve as a critique of the way our religious stories and theological explanations too often misrepresent and miscast God. For to me God’s abiding reality is captured not in my professions of religious certainty, but in those glimmers of spiritual insight that are reflected in the order and chaos, beauty and ugliness of nature, and that speak through the ideas and doubts, wonders and shortcomings of the human race.
I trust in reading the verses of “How Come, How Come, Emmanuel,” you will join me in finding each refrain a prayer that may sustain all of us in the days we may be favored with life in the coming year.
Oh God of all that is: May our rage and boasting, our grief and mourning, our dreams and trusting, our curses and killing, our seeking and praying no longer inspire us to claim and possess YOU as our own. But may these passions and convictions turn our hearts and minds that we may become aware of YOU, awakened to YOU, and present with YOU in each moment of time that lies ahead of us. Amen.