The First Week of Advent 2025
Meditation for the First Day of Advent: Sunday, November 30, 2025:
“O Come, O Come Emmanuel”
TEXT: 9th century antiphon with translations by John M. Neale (1851) and Henry Sloan Coffin (196)
TUNE: Veni Emmanuel, 12th century Plainsong
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/7X4pJ4Q_Q-4
If there be any truth in the expression, “one who sings prays twice,” then we should enter the season of Advent braced to do a “heap” of praying. The music of Christian worship during the four weeks leading up to Christmas puts a song in the air that can touch the heart of the most incorrigible Scrooge. So inspiring is this aspect of Christian spirituality that I have decided to base my Advent meditations this year—including one on Christmas Day—on the music of the season.
And why not? The Word (logos) of God, which both Genesis and John affirm to have been with us from the beginning, can never be fully contained within or restricted by human language alone. God’s logos reaches into our lives through the marvelous gifts of hearing, sight, smell and touch through which we are blessed to experience the miracle of life. Advent provides us with that rare opportunity to fully embrace the promise of Emmanuel (God being with us) through the richness of those musical tidings of comfort and joy that we will enjoy singing in church and hearing each day on radio stations, television specials, and treasured recordings.
There may be no more familiar and evocative setting of Advent’s anticipatory call for God to be present in our world than “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”. Its’ medieval text, carried on the plainsong melody from that bygone era of monastic chant, is a near-perfect wedding of word and sound. In hearing and singing it we find ourselves caught up in a timeless processional cadence, which in my imagination seems to float in the acoustical echo chamber of some imposing Gothic cathedral. Within that ethereal space I find myself drawn into the mysterium of its hauntingly simple melodic line, that compels me to look heavenward in search of…
God’s Wisdom to reveal itself that our chaotic world might be restored to order and sanity…
God’s Dayspring to usher in an age of peace and love to cheer us and strengthen our spirits…
God’s Word to transform our national Desires to bind all peoples in one heart and mind.
What more could we ask in these waning days of another year? What less can we afford to seek as we await, not the birthday of a commercial icon, but the awakening in our hearts of the very presence of God that, alone, can transform our lives, our nations, and our world for good. And if, even for an instant, we might so fully and perfectly receive God, then the promise of Emmanuel would change everything we have ever known or might ever hope for. For it would be in that moment that…
…the path of knowledge would be shown to us, causing us in her ways to go…
the gloomiest clouds of night would disperse, putting to flight death’s dark shadow.
On this first day of Advent I pray that this very old yet very relevant song may be both the prayer of our hearts and the song on our lips, as we join in chorus:.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel
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Meditation for the Second Day of Advent: Monday, December 1, 2025:
Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming
TEXT is 15th century German, translated by Theodore Baker, 1894
TUNE (Es Ist Ein Ros) harmonized by Michael Praetorius, 1609
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/-sNuXNcNdnM?si=1CMMXOAwbeqAo2nr
I was first drawn to this hymn when I was quite young. But it wasn’t from hearing it in church. Rather it caught my ear on one of those Sunday mornings in December when my father enjoyed playing his favorite records while my sister and I amused ourselves in our small apartment in Syracuse, NY. To be honest I’m not sure why I even listened. It wasn’t a jaunty romp like Jingle Bells, nor did it draw me into a Rudolf or Frosty winter fantasy. In fact, it had no words at all, but washed over my ears thanks to the sumptuous strings of Percy Faith’s orchestra. Many a home back then enjoyed this classic 1950s album, The Music of Christmas, and this particular song grabbed me like few others. Even its Rockwellian album cover, depicting a child asleep on her father’s lap, gave me a warm feeling of innocence and family that I still treasure. Mr. Faith’s setting of “Lo, How a Rose,” preserved the wonderful harmonies in which Michael Praetorius had embedded its medieval German text. I still marvel that these sounds—floating through our cultural air for four centuries—could inspire such feelings of reverence in a young boy otherwise quite preoccupied in his anticipations of St. Nick granting his wish for a bounty of Christmas toys.
In a way that I’m only now beginning to understand, my exposure to “Lo, How a Rose,” may have been one of my first awakenings to the power of sound to convey deeply felt spiritual meanings to the human heart. Some years later I was exposed to this same song while singing in Advent worship. What an unexpected joy it was to realize that this song I had treasured since childhood actually had words, words drawn from the very biblical texts that I was hearing read from the pulpit as part of the Advent lectionary cycle
Isaiah ‘twas foretold it, the Rose I have in mind; with Mary we behold it, the Virgin Mother kind.
To show God’s love a-right, she bore to us a Savior, when half-spent was the night.
Whenever music finds a perfect coupling with a lyric, that union amplifies the inspirational power of both. The two verses of “Lo, How a Rose…” reflect a traditional exegesis of the Prophet Isaiah, his oracles seen by many Christians as predictive of the birth of Jesus some 500 years down the road. The metaphorical “Rose” links us to the messianic hope that once longed for the restoration of Judah’s royal family, a lineage traced back to Jesse, King David’s father. Mary’s virginity reflects the medieval Church’s veneration of her purity. And the floweret blooming on a cold winter’s night reveals more of the experiences of Europeans celebrating a December nativity than the ordeals of Galilean sojourners sheltering in a Judean cave.
Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung! Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as those of old have sung. It came a floweret bright, a-mid the cold of winter, when half-spent was the night.
Christmas is unavoidably upon us and all around us, we can’t help but see and hear it. But will this Christmas, like so many others, just overwhelm us with the noise and stress of our age, or will it touch our lives like a small and fragrant rose, whose beauty and innocence make us smile? Will our preparations for this Christmas shift our priorities from what we annually must endure, to what we eternally need to treasure? Perhaps what we see and hear this Advent will speak to our hearts in such a way that God’s love will be shown a-right, shown as it really is and always has been. For isn’t that really what the birth of Christ is all about, that in receiving Bethlehem’s babe we may, in fact, receive God as God really is…to us, for us, and in us?
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Meditation for the Third Day of Advent: Tuesday, December 2, 2025
Watchman, Tell Us of the Night
TEXT written by John Bowring (1792-1872) based on Isaiah 21:11-12
TUNE: ABERYSTWYTH and Joseph Parry (1841-1903)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/eiuV8w_lX6o
The noted religion scholar Mircea Eliade is credited with formulating the concept of the myth of the eternal return in describing the cyclical nature of the stories in which our ancestors tried to make sense of the passage of time. The saying, “what goes around comes around,” may be one of the ways we connect to this myth, capturing as it does our tendency to perceive repetitions in both everyday events and those which make it into the evening news. Lending an almost sacred-element to the myth of the eternal return is our penchant for replaying annual festivals that mark the ebb and flow of each of our year, taking us from seasons of growth and renewal (Easter’s resurrection) to harvest and death (Halloween giving way to All-Saints Day) after which follow periods of dormancy concealing latent rebirth. And at the darkest moment of the year, coincident with the winter solstice, we welcome the ever growing light of the sun which Christ’s nativity so wonderfully symbolizes.
Isaiah the prophet lived in Jerusalem during the dire moments of Judah’s 6th century BCE decline and vulnerability. Yet his oracles contain some of scripture’s most vivid and timeless expectations of deliverance and endurance. “Watchman,” he cried, tell us the news we long to hear on this night of our despair. Have the Assyrian armies ceased their assault on our homeland? Will the news of Babylon’s demise ring true, offering us hope for a future without military siege and battlefield slaughter? Messages meant to bolster courage in one age have a way of inspiring those living in equally daunting circumstances years, even centuries later.
The author of today’s Advent hymn, John Bowring, was a well-traveled and articulate statesman in service to the British Empire. He adapted the prophet’s millennium-old inquiry to speak to his own times and through the lens of his Christian faith. Published in 1825 it reflected his own weariness of the miseries inflicted on his country in the Napoleonic wars. Like Isaiah he looked for some hopeful sign that some good news was about to be received, news that offered relief to the poor and a cessation of those hostilities that had kept his nation in a perpetual state of war and uncertainty.
Watchman, tell us of the night…what its signs of promise are:
that glory beaming star…that higher yet ascends
will its beams alone gild the spot that gave them birth?
Watchman, tell us of the night…the morning seems to dawn,
Darkness takes to flight, doubt and terror are withdrawn
Traveler, lo, the Prince of Peace, Lo, the Son of God is come!
These verses reflect the way Bowring seems to have channeled Isaiah in seeing the birth of Jesus as that promise fulfilled, an epiphany of wonder to those star-crossed travelers who held their gifts not for the Herodian ruler of their era, but for that long-awaited Prince, that Son, in whom God was pleased to dwell.
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Meditation for the Fourth Day of Advent: Wednesday, December 3, 2025:
“Of the Father’s Love Begotten”
TEXT written by Aurellius Clemens Prudentius (c. 348-413 CE), translated by John Mason Neale (1851) and Henry W. Baker (1859)
TUNE: DIVINUM MYSTERIUM (11th Cen. Plainsong)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/Vulv2sFBIaY?si=DwOgXaCEp5kdSirw
One can find great variations in the hymns sung by different Protestant Denominations, reflecting the unique theological leanings and singing preferences across the spectrum of churches that trace some lineage to the Reformation. Liturgical texts that were once sung, or more accurately, chanted in Latin gave way to poetic verse set to melodies, often blended in four-part harmony that added perhaps the most unique contribution that Protestants brought to Christianity. An explosion of new songs, many inspired by scripture and others expressing the many moods of the spirit, from praise to introspection to sentimentality, marked the distinctive flavor of the denominational energy that swept through Europe and echoed in churches and tent meetings across the New World.
Today’s advent song, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” while a staple of many hymnals which are at home in what used to be called “high church” communions, seems a fish out of water when attempted by congregations more accustomed to the vocal textures of multi-voiced harmonic hymnody. Its melodic line seems best suited for a soloist—perhaps intoned by a monk or priest—rather than a choral ensemble. The rhythm is irregular, and its pitches rise and fall along the scale with no pretense to vocal blend nor syncopation. I best imagine it being sung by a candle bearing acolyte moving down the center aisle of a cathedral with vaulted ceiling, light flickering off the arched buttresses, a wonder-filled invocation or benediction to open, or close a solemn celebration of lessons and carols.
The text may be among the oldest in Christian hymnody, preserving hints of a 1st or 2nd Century confession that calls to mind both the opening poem of the Fourth Gospel and the lofty Alpha and Omega ascription for God in the Apocalypse. These are expressions of faith that boldly reflect the new unity of the Church universal in the wake of Rome’s legalization and adoption of Christianity in the 4th Century. Reading or singing this text takes us back to those eras when the nature of Christ was up for grabs in the turmoil of theological debates and condemnations that marked our first several centuries as the Body of Christ.
From the intimations of the preexistence of God’s love in begetting a Son (“Ere the worlds began to be”) to the repeated affirmation of God’s unending presence (“evermore and evermore.”) this hymn transports us from our 21st Century churches to those eras and places where Moses knelt before God on Sinai and Isaiah bowed in awe before the cherubim in the Lord’s Temple. It carries us to a mountain in Galilee with Peter, James and John trying to fathom what their moment of transfigured holiness might mean for them and those who heard their testimony.
Advent urges us to look beyond today into a tomorrow wherein God has the last word. This hymn elevates our gaze that we might receive and affirm God’s presence in our present moment, no matter how dark and foreboding the “now” of our existence may be.
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Meditation for the Fifth Day of Advent: Thursday, December 4, 2025:
“Hail to the Lord’s Anointed”
TEXT written by James Montgomery (1821) based on Psalm 72
TUNE: ELLACOMBE (Gesangbuch der H. W, Hofkapelle, 1784)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/Y_CzUGoKYKU?si=tLB11aF2PYZT7ZmD
Often the songs we sing in the anticipation of Christmas contain a clear or implied foreshadowing of events we will encounter in all of their force during Lent. When we speak of Jesus Christ, or more properly as Jesus the Christ we are affirming that we regard the carpenter of Nazareth as the anointed one of God. But what exactly does this term mean to us, and to the multitudes who have confessed their faith in the one called the Christ?
Christ in English derives from the Greek Christos which is a translation of the Hebrew mashiach that we Anglicize as Messiah. While most of us realize this was not the familial last name of Jesus, we are not always aware of what describing Jesus as the Messiah or the Christ actually meant to those first believers who used it in affirming their allegiance to him. In the biblical age it served as a very recognizable title given to any number of people upon whom authority was conferred through the public ritual of anointing with oil, making any and all messiahs “anointed ones.”
Israelite and Judahite kings were anointed with oil, beginning with Saul and David, a confirmatory ritual performed by a respected religious figure such as the prophet Samuel. Each of these monarchs was considered a messiah or even the messiah for the specific age in which they held office. Kings weren’t the only ones to be so set apart. The high priest serving in the Jerusalem temple was also a messiah by virtue of his anointment, and in at least one case, the prophet Elisha, was so ordained. Regardless of the means by which authority was conferred, the messianic title was a public proclamation of leadership and, more importantly, of the favor of God. With the accession to the throne of David’s son Solomon, a dynasty was set in motion, one which became linked to the belief in an unconditional relationship of protection and blessing between God and the current king, who came to be regarded as the very “son” of God on earth.
“Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,” is an Advent hymn inspired by the acclamations found in Psalm 72, which seems to have been written at the installation of one of those messiahs—possibly even Solomon—upon his accession to the throne. But it is more than the exaltation of a political pep rally. This new king is praised for those qualities which Christians would later identify with Jesus: righteousness, justice, and peace, particularly directed on behalf of the poor. It is upon these broad themes of the anticipated Kingdom of God that James Montgomery directed his words in writing this hymn. This prolific poet composed more hymns that we continue to sing than any writers except for Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts, including Angels From the Realms of Glory, In the Hour of Trial, and Go to Dark Gethsemane.
Montgomery’s four stanza hymn is equally at home being sung during Advent or on Palm Sunday. For this long awaited anointed one has ushered in the day of God’s Kingdom, a reign in which He will break oppression, set the captive free, help the poor and needy and rule in equity. The closing lines of the last stanza provide us a benediction that pulls together not only the hopefulness that stirs us in the birth of Jesus, but the ultimate essence of the very nature of God that the anointed one of Bethlehem revealed to us in His life and death.
“The tide of time shall never His covenant remove;
His name shall stand forever; That name to us is love.”
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Advent Meditation for the Sixth Day of Advent: Friday, December 5, 2025
“The People That In Darkness Sat”
TEXT written by John Morison (1781) based on Isaiah 9:2-8
TUNE: LOBT GOTT, IHR CHRISTEN. Tune: Nikolaus Herman (1480-1561) harm. Johann S. Bach, c. 1738, in Cantata 151
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/vXj85GDSWqg
Have you read the book of Isaiah lately, all 66 chapters? I’m guessing not. Even among the most qualified biblical scholars there is no consensus on who wrote it or when and how it was finally composed in the form of one book under one prophetic name that occupies such a central place in the Old Testament. Given the number of passages and oracles we traditionally read from it during Advent, this may pose a number of questions, if not dilemmas, for us as 21st century Christians.
To those at home reading the Bible through a fundamentalist interpretive lens, Isaiah is the unified work of one prophet, the self-identified son of Amoz (not Amos) which he spoke and wrote during the troubled reigns of four Jerusalem kings (Uzziah, Jothan, Ahaz and Hezekiah), each of whom faced serious military threats from an Assyrian Empire that all but destroyed what was left of the once great kingdom of David and Solomon. Much of this very large prophetic book can be traced back to this High Priest who advised these four successive rulers. But many scholars recognize that many of the words in this book, especially those after chapter 40, appear to be focused on a time much later than that of Isaiah the priest/prophet of Jerusalem. They describe events that took place years later, well after Isaiah’s death, when the people of Judah had been defeated in battle and led into Exile. So either Isaiah was clairvoyant in looking into the future with uncanny accuracy, or the book bearing his name is a work in which one or more pseudo-Isaiah’s added their decades-later perspectives to bring closure to his original prophecies.
I tend to lean in that direction in making sense of how God seems to inspire people, living in different times and places, to perceive the thread of His Word speaking to us in our need. The passage most of us will hear read during Advent finds the prophet advising one of the kings, likely Ahaz, to not tremble in fear over the encroaching threats of the Assyrians. For in the recent birth of a child, likely the king’s very own son Hezekiah, the prophet saw the hand of God planting the seed of hope in a leader who would not only withstand whatever military force his enemy could muster against Jerusalem, but who would emerge as the long-awaited sovereign to rule with wisdom, justice, and in the fear of the Lord. To Isaiah this age of “darkness” in which he was living was about to be illuminated by the promise of God’s steadfast commitment to Judah that the birth of this new heir to David’s throne was promising.
As it turned out Isaiah did exert a powerful influence in guiding the young Hezekiah and strengthening him as he faced, and overcame, the Assyrian invasion and seige of Jerusalem. Centuries later the people of Galilee recognized in the ominous era of their subjection to Rome and its Herodian surrogates a replaying of those desperate hours in which Isaiah was looking to God for strength and direction. To them, the itinerant teacher and healer of Galilee seemed to fulfill in their time what Isaiah had once expected the son of a king to deliver in his moment of darkness And it was their faith that this Jesus of Nazareth was, in fact, the Prince of Peace that Isaiah had once hoped would be revealed in their First-Centruy moment of desperation.
There is much darkness all around us as we move through these days anticipating the birth of the Christ child. Yet our hope, unlike Isaiah’s, does not rest on kings or politicians to deliver us from what threatens to undo our world and shatter our hopes for peace. For we have seen a great light, and to the degree that we permit that light of Christ to shine forth in our lives, God’s wisdom and justice will prevail, no matter how ominous the darkness or threatening the powers of this world may be.
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Advent Meditation for the Seventh Day of Advent: Saturday, December 6, 2025
“There’s a Voice in the Wilderness Crying”
TEXT written by James L. Milligan (1925) based on Isaiah 40
TUNE: HEREFORD by Francis D. Heins (1878-1949)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/sb_QJwDrxJY
There are few musical masterpieces that are held in higher regard than The Messiah, that monumental oratorio written by G. F. Handel in 1741. Aside from the miraculous nature of its composition in just 24 days, we hold it to be one of the finest examples of scriptural texts set to music, one that still commands the attention and respect of the finest musicians the world over. Following the instrumental overture our ears are summoned by the call of a tenor soloist who, in a short recitative, gives voice to Isaiah’s assuring call for the people of God to be comforted by the news he was about to proclaim: that the days of Judah’s bondage in Babylon were over, and God was preparing a way for them to return to their homeland.
To those who left home and families to become part of the Way that Jesus of Nazareth set in motion, this prophecy was not about a bygone era when their ancestors were liberated by the Persians. Rather this was about them and their moment of deliverance from their subjection to Roman and Herodian rule. And the herald of this restoration was none other than that unusual prophet who called them to repentance in advance of God’s coming kingdom, John the Baptist. Even though he met an untimely and violent death at the hands of the king, this John was, for them, that voice crying in the wilderness to call the faithful back to their Lord.
Isaiah’s prophecies had a powerful affect on the self-understanding of the first-century Church, helping them to not only find spiritual comfort and meaning in Jesus’s suffering on a cross, but giving them the eyes of faith to discern a pre-ordained connection between him and his predecessor, John. To them John was, both literally and spiritually, that voice crying in the wilderness that served notice that God was moving powerfully in Judea through the person and world of the carpenter from Nazareth.
“There’s a Voice in the Wilderness Crying” suggests to me at Advent not so much a declarative statement about an Old Testament prophet or even John the Baptist. Rather it puts to me, and perhaps to you, a question for our time. What voices, or more to the point, whose voices are we listening to in the wilderness in which we may find ourselves today. Are we attuned to the ubiquitous cacophony of voices delivered to us at every turn in this AI riddled world we now inhabit? Our phones, our emails, our televisions bombard us with more stations peddling more must have things we should order, immersing us in floods of frivolous entertainments than we can ever follow or appreciate, and jolting us with more breaking news than we can possibly digest or find a reason to care about. Even if we could take in all of this, and stay up on all that is must see or must hear , would we or should we really want to?
The voice that Isaiah and the followers of Jesus wanted most to hear was that of God speaking to them in the assuring words of hope and faithfulness. For it is attending to this voice, God’s voice, that our courage may be bolstered against all fears, and our perspective may be sharpened in distinguishing what is true and abiding from the barrage of noise and emptiness that so compels our attention and allegiance today. Yes, there is a voice in the wilderness crying, a voice that yet speaks even to us no matter what wilderness of fear, despair or existential angst in which now holds us captive. May we, can we, will we attend to that voice, God’s enduring voice, that can never be stilled? Perhaps this Christmas we will hear that voice, God’s voice making straight all the crooked places in our lives that the Lord our God may—and will—go with us.