The Fourth Week of Advent 2025
Advent Meditation for the Twenty-second Day of Advent: Sunday December 21, 2025
“E’'en so Lord Jesus Quickly Come”
TEXT and MUSIC written by Paul and Ruth Manz (1953) inspired by Revelation Ch. 22.
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/HRei4RUONUc?si=012XDiSsajqxfE62
Each of us has a favorite song or several songs that we keep in that special place in our hearts reserved for what we most treasure in life. I’m not quite sure why we lock onto certain musical selections more than others, but I sense that all of us do. Maybe it is our affinity for a poetic text or lyric that resonates with us at some very deep level of our being. Or perhaps it is that we associate a particular song with a very special person whose path crossed our own in a most significant way. Sometimes songs become "ours” because they remind us of a moment in time that shaped us or filled our emotional storehouse with deep feelings of joy or love, sadness or loneliness. The choral anthem I’m featuring today holds such a place for me, and for all of these reasons.
I first heard, and sang this Paul Manz composition while I was a member of the Seminary Singers at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D. C. in the mid 1970s. Although written almost twenty years before I stumbled upon it, it was new to my ears, exciting something in me far greater than what I felt when singing so many of the other hymns and carols in our church’s Advent playlist. From the first rehearsal I fell in love with its melody and five part vocal harmony, so wonderfully giving voice to those scriptural verses from the Apostle Paul and John’s Apocalypse. My initial feelings for this piece only grew over the next five decades in which I had the opportunity to sing it, and even conduct it in those churches where I had the good fortune to direct the choir. Admittedly, this is not an Advent “hymn” that many, if any congregations could pick up and easily sing during Sunday morning worship. But since its composition in 1953 it has graced many programs of Christmas choral music thanks to the quality of its writing and its moving scriptural allusions to Revelation 22.
Following the musical structure of a fugue, the text is carried by melodic lines shared by each of the vocal parts. There is a spiritual mood to this anthem that suggests both a prayer of invocation as we might find in one of the Pauline epistles (“Peace be to you and grace from him who freed us from our sins…”) as well as a benediction in which the hope upon which this song is built is clearly expressed (“E’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come.”). In four short stanzas the composers included theological affirmations that fit a high christological view of God’s redemptive incarnation in Jesus Christ…
“Who loved us all and shed his blood that we might saved be…
“Sing holy, holy to our Lord, The Lord, Almighty God, who was and is and is to come…
“Rejoice in heaven…rejoice on earth…For Christ is coming, is coming soon!
For me these scriptural allusions have taken on a greater meaning as I have learned that Paul and Ruth Manz composed this anthem during a time when their three year old son struggled with a life-threatening illness. Knowing this, I’m moved even more by a text that spoke so personally to their worries and fears about their child, reminding me of our shared spiritual dependence on God’s grace, especially in those moments when we face the uncertainties of death and a future in which despair and grief seem inevitable. The strength of their faith and the trust they put in God shines through the words of their final line, a heart-felt, hope-filled prayer:
“E’en so Lord Jesus, quickly come, and night shall be no more; They need no light nor lamp nor sun, for Christ will be their All!”
If I could add a very personal coda to these reflections on this anthem it would be in telling you that, three years ago, on the first Sunday in Advent, my wife and I began attending Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church in Denver. That decision for me was sealed when “Peace be to you…” floated from the choir loft, lifting my spirits through the beauty of this musical gift. Feeling fully embraced by God’s welcoming and comforting presence, I knew that I had, after months of searching, finally come home.
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Advent Meditation for the Twenty-third Day of Advent: Monday December 22, 2025
“What Child Is This?”
TEXT written by William C. Dix (1865) inspired by Luke 2 and Matthew 2
TUNE: GREENSLEVES, a 16th century English melody
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/UF2jfc4FhWY?si=OMtYy5Y9_acK3ORv
Advent is a season in which we are tested in so many ways. Our patience is tested in shopping lines or while awaiting mail or package deliveries. And with children absorbing so much of the hype of the seasonal commercial market, not to mention the effects of the sugar overload they ingest thanks to Christmas cookies and candy canes—most parents exhaust their patience long before Jolly Old St. Nicholas comes a bounding down their chimneys. For many Christians this season of hope and optimism also has a way of testing our faith too. I’m not talking about faith as a calculation of how much we can suspend our normal rationality in believing in angels and nativity miracles. Rather I see faith tested in how much trust we really put in accepting God’s incarnation in this world as being real or true. Emmanuel is a comforting thought, but where and how is God actually with us?
I realize that by saying such a thing I’m putting putting myself out on that proverbial limb upon which many a heretic has ventured ever since the followers of the crucified Jesus proclaimed his resurrection and divinity. Yet admitting that Christmas entails some intellectual and emotional leaps of mind and heart is neither novel nor shocking. Any honest appraisal of what makes our world tick these days, what values and priorities hold most of us in thrall—motivatating what we do and say—and any reckoning of how we spend our wealth, would force us to admit that Jesus is neither the primary driver of this world, nor, as the cliche puts it, is he “the reason for the season.” I don’t say this easily or with cynical smugness. It is, I am sorry to say, a reality that gives me much grief and clouds my optimism about our future.
Among the hymns we sing at Christmas is one that hints at some of my misgivings, not so much in what it proclaims as in what it asks of us who sing it. In fact, this particular song stands apart from all the other songs of the season in that it offers us less of an acclamation of praise than it poses a question, in fact two questions, that, upon greater reflection, cut to the core of what it means to be a Christian.
“What child is this?” and “Why lies he in such mean estate? “
I’m not sure many of us dwell on either of these questions that introduce verses 1 and 3. I suspect we sing them while on mental auto-pilot, our attention steering us to land on those safe runways of nativity stories that continue to capture our imaginations just as they did when we were children. You know, the angels greeting him, the shepherds solemnly watching, the ox and ass contentedly feeding in the manger where Jesus was born, and those gifts reverently laid before him in proper homage to royalty—lyrics we know so well and that animate our voices and brighten our smiles. But in singing this carol I am struck by how the familiar tune that carries these words sounds distinctively minor, brooding chords while we voice the composer’s two questions, brightening only on the recurring refrain when it affirms that this helpless, innocent babe is none other than Christ the King. How do we who sing this song today, or answer these faith-challenging question for ourselves and our times?
What child is this Jesus? What is he to you, to me, to this world so eager to anoint heroes and celebrities and saviors? Who is the Jesus we meet in the gospels, whose words both comfort and afflict us, and who asks us to bear a cross with him? Is this the child we are actually looking for at Christmas, the one whom we really want to be God’s Word-bearer? And if he is, what difference has that made, or will that make, in those choices and priorities that we claim to own by calling Jesus our Emmanuel?
Why lies he in such mean estate? We would have expected a more impressive incarnation, and a more incontrovertible appearing to prove God’s point and drive away any doubts we might have about this son of a carpenter. We would have wanted a definitive revelation to spare us a life of spiritual wrestling. We would have preferred to have been shown signs and wonders that would have driven away any question as to the real identity of this Christ child. But when we come to terms with this Son of God in the person of a migrant’s child who could only find shelter among beasts and social pariahs—these are hardly the credentials we’d expect in one we’d normally choose to listen to, emulate or follow.
I’m not sure whether such spiritual ambiguity was in William Dix’s mind when he wrote the three verses that we now sing to the old English folk song, GREENSLEVES. Being a rather well-known secular tune does make me wonder if there really is some subliminal mixed message being conveyed whenever we sing it. Borrowing images from both of the New Testament’s nativity narratives in Matthew in Luke, the composer seems to have wanted to emphatically answer his initial questions about the identity of this child Jesus with a triumphant acclamation: “This, this is Christ the King!” Neither a pastor nor theologian by vocation, Mr. Dix’s words suggest to me that he put into this poem those questionings of his own heart that bear witness to his own walk of faith along that fine and often troubling line between conviction and uncertainty, belief and doubt.
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Advent Meditation for the Twenty-fourth Day of Advent: Tuesday December 23, 2025
“Love Came Down at Christmas”
TEXT: Christiana G. Rosetti (1885)
TUNE: GARTAN, Traditional Irish melody, harmonized by David Evans (1927)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/HLws2WvdXdM
This is the second of the two Christiana Rosetti texts that is commonly sung in churches during Advent and Christmas. “In the Bleak Midwinter” about which I wrote on Sunday, December 14, shares the poet’s sensitivity to the meaning behind the story that we so need to hear, both in anticipating and in celebrating the birth of Christ. This hymn, however, goes right to the heart of the Christmas gospel, not in descriptive paraphrase from Luke or Matthew, but in a deeply spiritualized theology that could have been woven into the uplifting love passages we so easily and idealistically quote from John’s epistles. In doing so Ms. Rosetti is generous in sprinkling “love” eleven times in the space of three short stanzas of just 62 carefully chosen words.
A not-too-detailed examination of the text of this hymn reveals that the composer may have been following an outline based on several questions that must have been on her mind:
What really happened at Christmas that so transformed the world? Love happened. In a child-like understanding of the cosmic relationship between heaven and earth, we are told that love “came down” to us, revealing the divine nature of God as humanity never before could fully grasp. Witnessed and confirmed by star and angels, this divine love was born in human vesture in the baby Jesus, a sign to all who witnessed, all who told the story, and most importantly, to all of us—centuries and continents distant from that night—that God would never be perceived and worshiped in the same way after Jesus was born.
How does this change what we believe about God? The Deity we once misunderstood in our fear and suspicions of cruel judgment was now revealed in true nature as being the completeness and fullness of love. Incarnate in a human as never before recognized, Jesus became the tangible expression of God’s love that we, in response, must look to in worship and adoration.
How can we worship God revealed so perfectly in Jesus? Centuries before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Micah asked the people of Judah: “What does the Lord require?” His answer cut through religious doctrine and ritual that in words we still lift up as the essence of genuine spirituality: “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” I sense that in verse three of this hymn the composer is telling us something as compelling as anything that Micah or any of the prophets could have uttered: “Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine; love to God and neighbor, love, for plea, and gift and sign.”
Is that a description of the spirit we bring with us to church, or in the way we bear witness to God in our interactions with friends and strangers at home, in our work, or even when we indulge in any of our many playful pastimes? Do we worship God by fulfilling in word and deed the commandment Jesus lived and taught by loving our neighbors as ourselves? Can the love we ask of others, give to others, and represent to others actually serve as token and sign of God being with us?
When the Beatles once told us that "All You Need is Love” they were not only preaching to the passionate moods and hopes of teenagers. They were echoing a profound spiritual reality known, not just by romantics and 19th Century poets writing about the meaning of Christmas. They were joining their voices in a refrain that we see in Jesus: the full realization of a love that is not ours alone to conjure or conceive. It is the very presence of God that, when genuinely visible in us, is both sign and gift of Emmanuel.
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Advent Meditation for the Twenty-fifth Day of Advent: Wednesday December 24, 2025
Joy to the World”
TEXT written by Isaac Watts (1719) inspired by Psalm 98:4-9
TUNE: ANTIOCH arranged from G. F. Handel (1741) by Lowell Mason (1848)
ONLINE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/1e25Ag0NNAU?si=wMt4MA79QI9gM8rE
No gathering of hymns, for this or any liturgical season, would be complete without at least one composed by the the great Isaac Watts. Widely considered the Father of English Hymnody, he put his tireless spiritual energy to work in writing poetic paraphrases of each of the Bible’s 150 psalms. By religious affiliation he would have been considered a Dissenter and Congregationalist in his time, navigating that stream of free thinking belief that parted company with both Catholic and Church of England orthodoxies and practices. Though most of his verses may no longer resonate with modern readers and church goers, more than 30 of his poems yet appear in the hymnals used by congregations some four hundred years after he poured out his faith through his compositional creativity.
A brief sampling of some of Mr. Watt’s most beloved hymns offers ready confirmation of his place in the music and beliefs of the Christianity that yet thrives and inspires believers today. Who among us hasn’t felt uplifted while singing a rousing processional such as “The Spacious Firmament on High” or “Our God our help in Ages Past,” at a Thanksgiving or Memorial Day Service? And would Lent, especially Holy Week, be complete without our joining our voices as we gaze ahead to Calvary through the verses of “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.?” Whether we’re talking about songs that tug at the heart or elevate our ability to grasp the presence of God within the human spirit or across human history, the words of Isaac Watts provide us with both the imagery and the theological context to give what we, ourselves, often find inexpressible.
As you would expect, Isaac Watts has left a most powerful faith testimony in verses that have moved and energized the music of Christmas. Taking his cue from Psalm 98 (“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth…:) Mr. Watts gave us one of the “must sing” carols that both Christians and the secular culture have embraced and readily perform each December. In the spirit of the psalm he built into his stanzas the universal acclamation of God that resounds from heaven and earth and among all who dwell therein. Most of you reading this can recall the verses by heart:
Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King; let every heart prepare him room…
Joy to the world, the Savior reigns! Let all their songs employ; while fields and floods, rocks hills and plains repeat the sounding joy…
After these declaration of utter joy, Watts turns a bit more didactic in expressing his deepest wishes for the future of this world that Christ has entered:
No more let sins and sorrows grow or thorns infest the ground; he comes to make his blessings flow…
He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness…
Each verse concludes with lines repeated three times, ideally sung with men’s voices echoing the text, adding a touch of musical sophistication absent in most other hymns. For that we can thank G. F. Handel whose creative imprint was further enhanced by none other than Lowell Mason, American music educator and arranger of quite a few beloved songs still widely sung in churches today. As a bass I enjoy the call and answer polyphony of each refrain, especially when included in Christmas candle-light services. With an abundance of choral and congregational voices predictably on hand, churches resound with the volume and energy to impressively drive home Watt’s affirmative declarations:
“and heaven and nature sing…repeat the sounding joy…far as the curse is found… and wonders of his love…”
I don’t know if Isaac Watts realized in taking a stab at recasting Psalm 98 that his words would have such a long-lasting and spirit-elevating impact on Christianity. Musically it is ear-catching, and textually it is spirit-affirming in its joyful confidence and certainty. When compared to the other songs of Advent and Christmas upon which I have offered commentary, "Joy to the World” stands apart in passing the test of time and in surviving the changes in the popular tastes of congregations and musicians alike. As we come to the final day of this year’s Advent season, there may be no better way to welcome the birth of the Christ child into our present-day reality than by reading and singing the uplifting and faith-bolstering words that this inspired poet of a bygone era has left us to enjoy, and take to heart.