Dec. 23
O E m m a n u e l
(Oh
Emmanuel)
(Oh
God-with-Us)
Introduction
O Antiphons
Those of us who were
practically raised in seminaries, monasteries and convents remember how
solemnly we used to celebrate the novena of Christmas which begins on the 17th
of December. In those days we used sing the O Antiphons at vespers just
before and after the singing of the Magnificat. They are called O Antiphons because
they always begin with an “O.” “ Oh “is
what you cry out when you are lost for words.
These ancient Latin
antiphons, seven in number, seem to have originated in Rome back in the 8th
century. By the 12th century
five of them had been put together to form the verses of a single hymn which
has become an Advent favorite: “O come, O come, Emmanuel.” The antiphons enjoyed great popularity
during the Middle Ages, especially in monasteries and cathedral chapters where
various church dignitaries took turns
intoning the antiphons at solemn vespers.[1]
Each antiphon sings out a
messianic title to the infant to be born of Mary. On the 17th , it’s
“Oh Wisdom,” (O Sapientia), on the 18th “Oh Adonai” (the Jew’s
substitute name for God), on 19th “Oh Root of Jesse" (O Radix
Jesse), on 20th “Oh Key of
David” (O Clavis David), on 21st
“Oh Rising Sun” (O Oriens), on 22nd “Oh King of the Gentiles” (O Rex Gentium), and finally on the 23rd
(today) “Oh Emmanuel” -- the warmest title of all. That’s the name the prophet
Isaiah gives to the one to be born of the virgin: “Behold the virgin shall
conceive and bring forth a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel” (Is
10:7-14). And the gospel translates the
name for us: “which mean `God is with us’” (Mt 1: 23). This last O antiphon reads:
Oh Emmanuel,
our
King and Law-bearer,
expectation
of the Gentiles
and
their Savior,
come and save us
oh
Lord, our God.
The humanity of God
When the Mary thinks her
conception of a son is impossible because she does not know man, an angel
stands before her (Lk 1:26-38). When
Zechariah thinks that pregnancy for his wife Elizabeth is impossible because
she is both sterile and advanced in age, an angel stands before him (Lk
1:5-19). The name of the announcing angel standing before these two impossibilities is Gabriel ("the Power of God"). And he announces two possibilities:
fruitful virginity for Mary and productive old age for Elizabeth and Zechariah,
because "Nothing is impossible with God" (Lk 1:37). But Christmas
announces a third and even greater possibility: the possibility of God
being God-with-us, the possibility of God being Emmanuel. The Angel Gabriel announces that "nothing is impossible with God," not even humanity; not even becoming flesh.
Reacting to the
theological liberalism of his day, in 1918 Karl Barth wrote his famous essay
entitled Epistle to the Romans. It
fell like a bomb in the Protestant camp. In the essay, the concept of a God,
“way up there,” lofty and distant, “completely other” (“totaliter aliter”), fascinated him. But fifty years later,
realizing his lofty and distant God looked more like the God of the
philosophers than of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Barth apologized for “his
mistake.” He wrote The Humanity of God.
In it he
declared, “We were wrong exactly where we were right.” God’s Deity, God’s
Almightiness, he declared, doesn’t mean
that God is locked up in Divine Aloneness, and can only be God-with-Self and
cannot also be God-with-us. On the
contrary, Barth maintained, God’s Almightiness includes God’s freedom and power
to be also God-with-us, Emmanuel. The God “up there” alone, he maintained, has the power to be also the
God “down here” with us. God’s Almightiness includes God’s freedom and power to
“go slumming,” to be:
not only in the heights but also in the
depths,
not only heavenly king but also earthly
brother,
not only tall but also small,
not only exalted but also exhausted,
not only almighty but also almighty mercy,
not only
"God-with-self" but also "God-with-us."
In a word, God’s Deity includes God’s power to be
human.
The humanity of humans
Christmas is about the
humanity of God. It’s also about the
humanity of human beings. In Christ
the divine became human so that we humans, in Christ, might become what
we were created to be: human beings being human. That’s the centerpiece of Jesus morality:
“Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with thy whole heart, whole soul, whole
mind, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. In this is summarized the whole Law and all the prophets”(Mt 22:
34-40. It’s all very crisp and clear, and quite simple, yet we often get sidetracked
from it.
Human beings being human
-- that’s the gem in Jesus’ parable: “Once
upon a time, a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell in with
robbers who left him half-dead. Along came a Levite who saw the poor man, and
passed him by. Along came a Jewish priest who saw the poor man, and passed him.
Then along came a Samaritan who stopped, poured the oil of compassion into the
poor man’s wounds, then hoisted him upon his beast of burden, and hurried him
off to the nearest inn, where he dug deep into his pocket to pay for the poor
man’s care” (Lk 10: 25-37). It’s all very crisp and clear, and quite simple,
yet we often get sidetracked from it.
In the parable of The
Good Samaritan, “neighbor “ is spelled out as one who is in need my humanity. But the very first beneficiary of our
humanity is ourselves. We’re
the very first to profit from it. That’s what makes us be what
we were created to be: human
beings. Likewise, the very first victim
of our inhumanity is ourselves. That’s what makes us be what we were not
created to be: monsters, i.e. non-human or sub-human or inhuman.
In the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, monsters decimated 2300 innocent human beings. In the Holocaust, monsters incinerated six
million innocent human beings. In the sneak attack on the Twin Towers in the
World Trade Center, monsters (religious fanatics) buried 3500 innocent human
beings alive in the nation’s largest unmarked grave. There is only one tragedy
worse than that of September 11th, and that is to be conceived and
born of a human womb but to come forth as monster, i.e. as non-human or
sub-human or inhuman.
The
“Oh Emmanuel” antiphon for the 23rd cries out in petition, “Oh Emmanuel, come and save us!“ Save us from our inhumanity toward
each other. Nothing in all human
history so challenges the humanity of God as does the inhumanity
of us humans. Nothing so challenges
the “Emmanuel claim” of God, the claim to
be God with us, as does our inhumanity toward each other. Out of WW I and
II, out of the GULAG and the Holocaust, out of all our school massacres, out of
the mountainous debris at Ground Zero with its smoldering smoke rising skyward
for three months, there rises also a very stark question; it no longer bothers
to ask whether God is Emmanuel, whether God is really with us or not?
This question asks whether God really is at all! Think of the immense
gnawing doubt about “Emmanuel” in the hearts and souls of thousands for whom the bells of Christmas not only
ring but now also toll. [i]
Oh Emmanuel, come and
save us not only from our inhumanity but save us also for
our humanity, i.e. come and help us to be the human beings we were created
to be, like that Samaritan on the road to Jericho, who made a difference on the
highway of life. Why just the other day I was on that highway to Jericho and
stumbled upon one such Good Samaritan. It made my day. I say “stumbled” because
you come upon great acts of humanity in a moment you least suspect, and in a
scenario you least imagine. I‘m in my car getting close to home, and here is
this mailman getting out of his truck and a black cat comes running towards
him. Now for my neighborhood that’s strange indeed. When cats and dogs see you coming they run for dear life, because
they know how inhumane life can be. This black cat instead runs up to the
mailman who goes back to his truck, pulls out a big bag of cat food, pours a
good pile on the sidewalk, and the grateful cat (I could almost hear its purr),
digs in.
Such insignificant acts
of humanity are earth shattering and have worldwide rippling effects. I knew immediately that here, in this
mailman, was a human being who had become truly human. I knew immediately he
was good to his wife and his kids. I knew too that he was the first to profit
from his humanity; you could see it written all over his face. Our humanity,
just like our inhumanity, gets written all over our countenances. Dickens says
of old Scrooge’s inhumanity that it “nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his
cheek, and made his eyes red and his thin lips blue.” This man’s countenance was radiant.
Rightly or wrongly, I
gather all that from this one little insignificant act of humanity. Now I might
be wrong; maybe after feeding the cat he went home and beat up his wife,
but I doubt that very much. Life is a
seamless robe. As our friend from
Estonia once wrote me, ”In Germany the Nazi’s treated the Jews like dogs, and
if they had know how to treat dogs (and cats) they would have know how to treat
Jews.” At any rate, before this
earth-shattering act of humanity, I slowed down the car, and the horn that
you’re supposed to honk if you love Jesus – that I honked for the mailman and
then gave him thumbs up. He looked at me and smiled as though he knew that I
wasn’t crazy, and it seemed that he knew what I was trying to say.
Conclusion
God jumping up and down
When
the ghost of old Jacob Marley appears to him on Christmas eve, old Scrooge
exclaims, "Oh but Jacob, you were
such a good man of business!" With
deepest regret the ghost responds,
"Business!
Humanity was my business.
The common welfare was my business:
charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence
were all my business.
The dealings of my trade
were but a drop of water
in the comprehensive ocean of my
business."
(Dickens, A
Christmas Carol)
Yes,
indeed, humanity was old Marley's
business, but it was his humanity
that was first and foremost his business.
Jacob Marley needed his own humanity more than all the poor people in
London Town. Just as Scrooge needed his
own humanity even more than Bob Crachit or crippled Tiny Tim. Just as the priest and Levite on the road to
Jericho needed their own humanity more than the poor man waylaid by
robbers. Just as the mailman needs his
humanity even more than the inner city cat.
With
becoming what we were created to be, there comes great rejoicing. When the
curtain goes up on A Christmas Carol,
old Scrooge is grouching "Bah
humbug," is boiling people in their own pudding, and piercing their hearts
with stakes of holly. But as the
curtain comes down, the old Scrooge has now become fully human in the new
Scrooge. And that sets him jumping up and down, and with tears in his eyes he
shouts out to the whole world, "I
will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all year round." As
the curtain comes down, even God is
jumping up and down for joy, because “a
human being become fully human is the glory of God.”