The Second Week of Advent 2025
Advent Meditation for the Eighth Day of Advent: Sunday, December 7, 2025
“Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates”
TEXT written by Georg Weissel (1590-1635) based on Psalm 24
TUNE: TRURO from Psalmodia Evangelica (1789)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/-V-6GopZyhs
Christian hymnody covers a wide spectrum of human emotions and spiritual sensitivities, from rejoicing to reflection, celebration to confession. The season of Advent has inspired a number of compositions that touch upon each of these themes as it focuses our attention on how we might prepare to receive God’s incarnation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Psalm 24 seems to have been in the mind of Georg Weissel when he composed “Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates”. It clearly describes a celebrative moment in the yearly rituals of the Jerusalem Temple, likely the annual New Year festival of Rosh Hashanah when the Lord was symbolically enthroned in the Temple to reign over the people for another year. Advent, being the “new year” in which the liturgical calendar begins again for Christians, gives us a historically grounded opportunity to stand with our biblical ancestors in welcoming—or more truthfully—re-affirming God’s enthronement in our hearts so powerfully symbolized in the birth of Jesus.
The Psalmist asks several questions in this important Advent scripture that may give us pause: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place?” (vs. 3) The scriptural answers may leave us dumbfounded. Only those whose hands are clean and hearts are pure? Only those with no false pretenses or deceit? Our 21st-century ears are no longer accustomed to hearing such exclusionary language from our pulpits, making us wince, cower or put hands over our ears in disbelief. It is a litmus test for righteousness that is far too rigorous and inflexible for our tastes. Yet there it is in the Bible, and put in rather blunt language, reminding us of the tension that once did and still does prevail between grace and justice, sinfulness and perfection among those seeking the favor of God.
Fortunately for most of us, Weissel’s text to this Advent hymn did not include these condemning verses of the psalm. Instead the composer took the psalmist’s imagery of a triumphant kingly arrival that easily fits the mood of a Palm Sunday processional. He then steered away from the judgment of God that is so jarring to our ears in Psalm 24, focusing instead on the glorification of the King of Glory whose power and unrivaled sovereignty are lifted up and extolled. Perhaps it is for this reason that this hymn fits so well during Advent, especially in its identification of the King with terms we find more in keeping with what Jesus has come to mean to so many of us: our savior, redeemer, and revealer of God’s grace and love.
While the psalm in its original form was a dedicatory anthem on behalf of the Temple in Jerusalem, in this hymn setting that ancient edifice of stone serves not as an end in itself but as a metaphor for the inner dispositions of the human heart. It is that inner temple—our spiritual temple if you will— whose “portals” we are encouraged to fling open. And if we should happen to so open ourselves to God’s presence, we will set ourselves apart from the earthly priorities that so use up our time and energies. Advent invites me to believe that, in such a moment if spiritual receptivity, we will find the grace and love of our redeemer revealed in us transforming who we are and those whose lives we touch.
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Advent Meditation for the Ninth Day of Advent: Monday, December 8, 2025
“Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent”
TEXT: 4th century Liturgy of St. James,
translated by Gerard Moultrie (1829-1885) from Isaiah 6 and Revelation
TUNE: PICARDY, French carol melody harmony from The English Hymnal, 1906
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/MZYPT1YXh5Y
Have you ever imagined what it might be like to stand before the presence of God? The seer we know as John of Patmos has given us quite a vivid picture of how he imagined it to be in his heavenly visions from the Book of Revelation (ch. 4ff). His description of thrones and elders, multi-winged creatures with all—seeing eyes standing in perpetual, protective vigil have inspired a host of creative renderings in art, literature and film. While the descriptions he used in telling of his heavenly translation into God’s throne room may seem the stuff of surrealistic art and mythic fiction, it leaves clues as to the scriptural antecedents he saw while “in the spirit.”
We may not know which of the several men named John wrote the final book of our Bible, but we can recognize and appreciate how thoroughly he knew and referenced the scriptures of the Old Testament, alluding to it or quoting it directly more than 600 times. In fact, his description of God’s throne room bears a striking resemblance to that which was described by Isaiah when he felt himself commissioned to speak as God’s prophet through the purification of his lips by one of the six-winged seraphs that guarded the Ark in the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem Temple. Unlike John who was carried away in an ecstatic translation into heaven, Isaiah quite possibly had a more down-t0-earth encounter with God. His description in Chapter 6 of the book bearing his name gives us an eye-witness recollection of what he experienced while serving as the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. We can safely infer when this spiritually-charged encounter with God took place, because this was the only time during the entire year when anyone was granted access to the inner sanctum of the Temple. Comparing John with Isaiah, and throwing in a dose of Daniel (especially ch. 7) we can see how the writer of Revelation was able to conceive of what it must be like to be in the very presence of God sitting on His throne in heaven.
I find it both fascinating and confounding whenever I try to wade through biblical texts like Revelation, what with its fantastic images, terrifying beasts and sequences of numbers like seven and 666. In the aftermath of such exegetical excursions, I find myself certain of only one thing: whether or not we think we understand it, we can be confident that it made some sense to those Christians who first wrote it and circulated it among those 2nd century Mediterranean congregations. To us Revelation may seem little more than an enigmatic puzzle that remains rather tangential to our normal religious preoccupations. Perhaps John’s apocalypse is best appreciated like some great works of art which we can only be understood, not in staring at its’ minute details, but by standing back and seeing it within our wider gaze. For it is when viewed from such a wholistic vantage point that Revelation conveys something which I believe is captured rather faithfully in the music we sing to the hymn, “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.”
If the adjectives “mysterious” and “ethereal” can be applied to any music found in our hymnals, this traditional French tune adapted by the English composer Gustav Holst fits the bill more than any others. When paired with the Liturgy of St. James from the Fourth Century, it joins us in spirit with John, Isaiah and Daniel, who, in trying to fathom the presence of such perfect holiness and transcendent truth are rendered speechless In such a state we can only stand, as did they, in fear and trembling, awestruck in the company of the heavenly host, such that even the six-winged seraphs and cherubim with sleepless eye veil their faces to the presence of the Almighty. No wonder our only response can be, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Lord most high!
Some may wonder why I have included this hymn in a collection of Advent songs. More often than not it will be found among hymns devoted to the Lord’s Supper, especially given the lyric “Lord of lords, in human vesture, in the body and the blood, He will give to all the faithful His own self for heavenly food”. Yet I have imagined it in another moment of heavenly translation, but this time on a treeless hillside near Bethlehem, where dozing shepherds were awakened by angels on high who calmed their fears with words that the heavens yet proclaim: “For with blessing in his hand, Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.”
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Advent Meditation for the Tenth Day of Advent: Tuesday, December 9, 2025
“Wake, Awake, for Night is Flying”
TEXT written by Philip Nicolai (1599) based on Revelation 1:7, Romans 13:11-12 and Matthew 25:1-13
TUNE: WACHET AUF by Philip Nicolai, harmonized by J. S. Bach (1731)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/l2zregoN0Gs
Among the hymns that derive most closely from a scriptural texts is this one that is a rather close paraphrase of Jesus’ parable of the bridegrooms in Matthew 25. It is a teaching both about the times in which we live and the way we should remain prepared and ready to face what tomorrow may bring. The symbolism of brides awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom is one with meaningful significance for those who live in expectation of a messianic age to come. Therefore the dominant theme that resonates in this scripture is preparation, or as the Nicolai text makes very evident, of being awake and watchful given the lateness of the hour in which we live.
Those who see in this scripture-based hymn a call for vigilance in the “end-times” days before Jesus’ second-coming will likely find it in two meaningful messages. One is that the hour of Jesus’ return to finish what he began in his earthly life two millennia ago can occur at any time, putting us perpetually in an "eleventh hour” state of readiness. Many an evangelist has seized upon this "it could happen at any moment” sense of urgency, filling his alter rails with those who have come forward, convinced that the hour—their hour to surrender all to Christ—was at hand. But why would this compel so many to be like wise, rather than foolish or careless bridesmaids? Because, as the parable makes quite clear, those who are not prepared for the arrival of the groom, i.e., the messiah, will be left out in the cold, unwelcomed and even unknown by the Lord of the banquet.
Others who would catalogue this among Advent songs witness a confidence in placing their faith, not in Christ’s imminent return as conquering judge, but in the incarnation of Jesus as God’s once-and-forever Word that, to them, is the essence of the Christmas gospel. For such Christians the fear factor of being left out or left behind cannot be reconciled with a God whom they believe, in Jesus, to have revealed a grace that has no bounds nor expiration dates. They trust more that God speaks in and through Jesus when he promised a dying thief that, “today you shall be with me in paradise.” Such an offer would not be made by a messianic bridegroom who would shut the door on those who fell short of righteous perfection or who were unprepared for his arrival.
Christians have never been of one mind on anything, and when it comes to the essence of this parable, those differences in what we expect God to do for us or to us in the future say more about us and our faith than they do about God and His will. That is why I sense that the enduring lesson of this parable and the song which it inspired is in how it urges us to make a decision about how we go about preparing for God’s coming into our lives. We can be like those wise bridesmaid and align our values, our priorities, our time and our aspirations in service to God. Or we can be like those who were foolish in giving lip-service to the Lord while serving our own, self-absorbed agendas.
There is an urgency about this song that is underscored by its recurring command for us to “Wake Up!” But is this alarm meant to forewarn us of some future day of reckoning in which many of us risk eternal rejection by the God we have been taught to believe is the very definition and perfection of Love? Or is our wake up call a summons for us to realize and accept what has been true from the beginning of time and which, "in the fullness of time” has been revealed to us as “Grace” in the person and work of Jesus Christ? Singing this great hymn at Advent makes this a clear and easy question to answer. For in the birth of Jesus, Zion’s "star is risen, her Light is come…God’s own beloved Son: Alleluia!”
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Advent Meditation for the Eleventh Day of Advent: Wednesday, December 10, 202
“Lord Christ, When First Thou Camest”
TEXT written by Walter Russell Bowie (1928)
TUNE: MIT FREUDEN ZART, from Bohemian Brethren’s Kirkengesange (1566)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/ugSX45bqRJ8
The placement of this hymn among those intended for worship in Advent seems largely to rest on its title, “Lord Christ, When First Thou Camest”. Such an obvious reference to Christmas may find us surprised when the text reads more like a meditation on the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross. In fact, three of the four verses would fit quite well within the section of our hymnals reserved for the music of Lent, Good Friday in particular. The sentiments that Walter Bowie tries to evoke have a way of tugging at our heart strings, both in their portrayal of Jesus’ agonies on the cross and in the composer’s assertions of the guilt that each of us shares as part of a sinful human race that abandoned and ultimately murdered God’s Son.
But then we come to the third verse, seeming to interrupt and divert us from Calvary’s cruelty to lift up a sentiment clearly at home in the anticipations of the Advent season. More forward-looking then many of the other hymns that make the nativity their focal point, this one clearly asks us to consider how we would respond when Christ returns. And it lays on all of us in this present moment both a challenge and a warning:
“New advent of the love of Christ, shall we again refuse thee,
Till in the night of hate and war we perish as we lose thee?
From old unfaith our souls release to seek the kingdom of thy peace,
By which alone we choose thee.”
The first sentence of the verse jabs us with an explicit or implied question that might, or perhaps should make us a bit uneasy. If Christ returned on our watch, would we be receptive or skeptical? Would we be found among those who would reorient our priorities and follow Him, or would we refuse his invitation, scoffing at his gospel of love and forgiveness? Would we be among the many who would refuse the bearer of God’s grace just as folks like us did when Jesus taught and healed in Galilee? Mr. Bowie paints a stark picture of our fate if we, once again, lose Christ in the darkness of this hateful and violent night in which we would certainly perish.
And then the author follows this dire prediction by taking a swipe at the religious traditions he found wanting in twentieth-century America. But his criticisms did not come from a place of anti-Christian antagonism. Ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church, the Rev. Dr. Bowie dedicated much of his life to reforming the very Church he helped lead, as a preacher, writer, hymns and theological school professor. When he calls for our souls to be released from “old unfaith” I can well imagine what this social gospel activist had in mind. For I sense in the tone of this hymn his own personal sadness at the tragedy of our rejection of Christ that made him skeptical as to whether our traditional, institutional forms of religion might ever be able to fully recognize and receive the God they work so hard to proclaim.
I don’t think I’ve ever sung this hymn in any church service, neither at Advent or any other season of the year. Perhaps the somber and accusatory emphasis of the text is more than congregations want to include in worship services we now commonly conceive as celebrations. And it doesn’t appear to be a staple of many of the hymnals I’ve examined, it even being dropped from the worship music between the 1964 and 1989 editions of the Book of Hymns of the United Methodist Church in which I have been a life-long member. These disclaimers aside, I have discovered in this hymn a poetic jewel that contrasts the incarnation of God in the birth of Christ with the tragedy of life as we know it in this world so wracked with hate and war. And for that insight, so well expressed in verse 3, I have come to treasure this lesser-known but prophetically-charged Advent hymn. Perhaps it will speak to you as well.
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Advent Meditation for the Twelfth Day of Advent: Thursday, December 11, 2025
“To a Maid Engaged to Joseph”
TEXT written by Gracia Grindal and Rusty Edwards (1983) from Luke 1:26-38
TUNE: ANNUNCIATION by Rusty Edwards (1983)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/CxRHmKchJAY
I have included this somewhat newer and less familiar hymn among these Advent reflections as it is clearly devoted to the preparatory and anticipatory days leading up to Christmas. This one tells a story, not with Jesus’ birth as the focal point but with attention devoted to his mother, Mary. It’s six short verses give us a rather literal and childlike rendering of the Lukan account of Mary’s visit by the angel Gabriel, alerting her to God’s miraculous act in choosing her to bear His son. Unlike many poetic and musical texts that offer theological nuance and symbolism in their words, this one is much more a paraphrase of the biblical story, one that seeks nothing more than a reverent acceptance and trusting appreciation of the text.
In reading over Gracia Grindal’s words I’m struck by how the composer tried to weave together both the emotional responses and rational complications of Luke’s mythic narrative. An angel speaking to a yet-to-be married girl with forecasts of her impending pregnancy; her “troubled” response to such news, suggesting not only its seeming impossibility but the difficulties such news would cause to her intended spouse, Joseph; and her acquiescence to this unexpected circumstance in which she would accept her role as the Lord’s handmaid—each of these challenges our modern sensibilities about normal human reproduction and the way God is generally understood to interact with this world and the people within it.
When we read such accounts that portray amu miraculous intervention of God through supernatural means, we are challenged to believe them on faith alone, or to understand them as mythic presentations of deeper truths whose meanings lie in spiritual, not historical realities. I suspect at Christmas we take a “both/and” interpretative approach to hearing and reading such accounts of angel visitants, be they in the guise of a lone messenger like Gabriel or when witnessed as an army (the literally meaning of heavenly hosts) of angels summoning flummoxed shepherds to go and worship a babe born in a cave sheltering livestock. While we wouldn’t argue for their scientific facticity, we would defend the truth they continue to reveal about God’s working through history in joining us, in the flesh, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. To each his own, I imagine, which is part of the mystery of faith that the Advent/Christmas season invites us to ponder, much like Mary, in wondering, “what does all of this mean?”
I note that the Rusty Edwards tune which carries the verses of this song is written in a minor key, its harmonic structure inspiring notes of wonderment, puzzlement, and even grief. That, to me, speaks volumes about the spiritual message that Grindal and Edwards were intending to convey in this hymn. Yes, it is about the miraculous conception and birthing of Jesus. And Yes, it captures the surprise, perhaps ambivalence, of the bearer of the angelic message. But the somber, even mournful tone of its music seems to anticipate what all of us now singing it know so well: the joy of Christmas will and must inevitable lead to the anguish of Calvary. And that reality of “God with us” is one that none of our holiday festivities should ever fully obscure or forget.
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Advent Meditation for the Thirteenth Day of Advent: Friday, December 12, 2025
“Savior of the Nations, Come”
TEXT: vs. 1, 2, written by Martin Luther (1523) and vs. 3-5 written by Martin Seltz (1969)
TUNE: NUN KOMM, DER HEIDEN HEILAND from Enchiridion Oder Handbuchlein (1524), harmonized by J. S. Bach
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/4rtrS9Etzh4
The songs we sing in our churches during Advent all have a forward-looking orientation toward the coming of the Lord Jesus. Among the fifteen to twenty anticipatory hymns listed as Advent hymns found in most hymnals and songbooks used by Christian denominations are those whose verses look in backward glance to his birth two millennia ago in Bethlehem, as well as those looking forward to his hoped for return—a second coming if you will—at the “end of days”.
Using the terminology of biblical scholars we would characterize the hymnody of Advent as eschatological, a technical term derived from the Greek word for “endings,” eschaton. For nearly all of us eschatology piques our interest to a degree, especially as we contemplate that great unknown that awaits us when we’ve lived out our days and breathed our last. And the futuristic oracles of the biblical prophets that describe the longed-for “Day of the Lord” expected to come at history’s decisive conclusion have inspired and confounded people of faith with eschatological imagery for more than two millennia.
Martin Luther stands within a long tradition of writers whose poetic thoughts have provided us with a theological interpretation of the birth we lift up in memory and celebration each Christmas. His was a realized eschatology (in comparison to a futuristic eschatology) in that he regarded the birth of Christ as the spiritual and theological culmination of God’s providential act in redeeming the human race. For him, the end had already come, and this sentiment can be clearly discerned in the two verses that he has contributed to today’s Advent hymn:
Savior of the nations, come; Virgin’s Son, here made our home! Marvel now, O heaven and earth, that the Lord chose such a birth.
Not by human flesh and blood; by the Spirit of our God was the Word of God made flesh, woman’s offspring, pure and fresh.
Luther’s verse captures what for so many remain essential articles of of the Christian faith: Jesus the savior, Mary the virgin mother from whom God entered human form and flesh. While we may debate the mystery of such a proclamation, Luther’s words continue to leave us with the most fitting of all responses: “marvel.” His telling of God’s ultimate eschatological act has been enhanced by three additional stanzas written by a poet from our own time, Martin Seltz. Like Luther he is captured by the definitive Word that God has spoken to all of us in faith’s defining moment, adding theological amplification in such phrases as “human and divine in one,” and “back to God he runs his course.” I find his final thought the most compelling for my own reflection:
Now thy manger’s halo bright hallows night with newborn light; let no night this light subdue, let our faith shine ever new.’
I find it remarkable that this hymn of Advent, given its two very different composers, was actually 400 years in the writing. And what a testimony this is to the endurance of a faith that continues to open the eyes of the blind to the light of God, and the hearts of those longing to be embraced by a love that will not let them go. While the Body of Christ may experience surges of interest and periods of decline over the course of human history, the truth of God’s grace that was revealed in Christ’s incarnation is, like its author, eternally undiminished: the Light that no depth of darkness can ever put out.
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Advent Meditation for the Fourteenth Day of Advent: Saturday, December 13, 2025
“Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus”
TEXT written by Charles Wesley (1744)
TUNE: HYFRYDOL by Rowland Prichard (1830)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/AIDUJVuLoIg
When the Wesley brothers unleashed their reforming energies and disciplines on the 18th Century Anglican Church, it was as if they were pouring new wine into old wineskins. The ruptures it caused transformed both the mother church they sought to spiritualize and the host of new congregations, most of them in the fertile fields of the New World, who caught fire in a wave of methodist revivals. While the older brother John took on the role of organizer and theological interpreter, brother Charles devoted himself to spreading the word via that form of expression, music, that set in motion a culture of singing that has marked Protestantism ever since. Wesley’s more than 6500 hymns served as a powerful medium through which God’s promise of salvation appealed to both the hearts and minds of those who were “won” to Christ through conversion.
One of Wesley’s most beloved songs fits well within the canon of Advent hymnody. It’s two verses at first glance appear to be looking ahead in time to the future eschaton of Jesus’s return to earth in glory. Yet upon closer look we see that, like so many of the other songs of this season of expectation, Wesley’s appeal is for each of us to bid the Lord to “come” into our lives in the present moment of our spiritual need. For it is in Christ’s presence that we may find relief and remedy for what most ails us at the deepest levels of our being.
Many of the songs we sing in church are meant to elevate our spirits in confidence and courage, either through rousing shouts of praise and thanksgiving or in retold biblical narratives that join us in admiration and emulation of heroes of the past. Wesley’s Advent verse speaks more directly to the inner wrestlings of the heart, a prayerful supplication if you will, that each of us can apply directly to the burdens that we may be carrying, perhaps more than usual, during this supposedly most wonderful time of the year.
“Come,” is the plea Wesley has us make to God, echoing the last words of the book of Revelation which brings our Christian bibles to a close. “Maranatha,” roughly translated from the Aramaic, “Come, Lord” is the invitation for Jesus to be present in our world and our lives. For it is in only in our willingness to receive the transformational grace of the Lord that we can be set free, free from our fears and the terminal stain of our sinfulness. To Wesley, Jesus is nothing less than the deepest, and dearest desire of all of the world’s nations, their strength, hope and consolation. What a lofty expression of the writer’s belief that for this world to ever become what it was meant to be, God must be at its center.
The second verse ties together the saving purpose of Jesus’ long-ago birth as deliverer and king, urging us in our present-day condition to offer these two petitions that the salvation of God become real to us and in us:
By thin own eternal spirit rule in our hearts alone; By thine all sufficient merit, raise us to they glorious throne.
My eyes rest on the two actions the writer seeks from God. First he asks God to “rule” our hearts, which for Wesley would be an all-encompassing surrender to God’s will in shaping and motivating all we think, do, say and intend. But for this to happen Wesley knew that we would first need to be “raised” above our normal instincts and ambitions, which, to the writer, was completely due to Christ’s merit, Christ’s forgiveness, and not to any spiritual effort or excellence we might claim as securing our salvation.
The tune HYFRYDOL derives from Welsh folk melodies set into hymn form by Rowland Pritchard. True to its original meaning, HYFRYDOL evokes that which is beautiful, pleasant, fair, pleasing and melodious, which I find quite in keeping with the sense of peace and trust that Wesley’s text inspires. That may be why “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” stands apart from many of the other Advent songs that, in their minor keys, convey more of a sense of dread and uncertainty not found in this hymn. This hymn lifts up both our voices and our vision from the world as it is, to the world as it—in God’s keeping—may ultimately become.