A Note from Your Clergy about Our Opening Hymn, December 2024
This week we sing a beloved and powerful hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Its origins lie in “the O Antiphons,” a series of Latin antiphons used around the Magnificat at Evening Prayer for the seven days right before Christmas. We know they were used in the 800s, and scholars think they existed already in the 500s.
Our hymn in English comes from much later. It was written as a metrical hymn in Latin in the 1100s, and then was translated into English by John Mason Neale in 1851. (You can find more of his work by looking in the index in the back of our blue hymnal.)
This year, you will notice a difference in how we sing the first verse and the refrain of this hymn. Instead of asking God to “ransom captive Israel,” we will ask God to dwell with God’s people always. And in the refrain, we will exclaim, “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come again and with us ever dwell.” These small changes were written by Philip Cunningham and Ken Meltz.
Rev. Megan and I were prompted to make this specific change this year because of our required diocesan education day this past spring, led by the Rev. Dr. Dan Josly-Siemiatkostki. In the excellent presentation about Christian antisemitism and anti-Judaism, Rev. Dan highlighted this hymn in particular, and he and our bishop encouraged congregations to find a way to adapt it.
This may seem strange, as so many of us instinctively identify with “the people Israel” named in the hymn—we are the ones who are captive, we are the ones who need to be ransomed or redeemed. But unfortunately, this imagery has a long and violent history in the Church, deeply connected to the image of the people Israel or the Synagoga being willfully held in captivity. This was a predominant Christian (and therefore social, legal, cultural) image for Jews in the 1100s and onward, when the metrical Latin hymn was written. It was part of the theology and imagery that made it not just easy but also “just” and “good” for Christians to oppress, control, and harm the Jewish people.
The older O Antiphons do not use this language or imagery, and indeed our new choice moves us slightly closer to the original O Antiphon at the root of the hymn:
O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.
As many of you know, the sin of antisemitism and anti-Judaism has been a concern of mine for many years. In the past year I’ve gotten to work with Rev. Dan on an audit / toolkit for Christian congregations wishing to address this. (I’m one of the unnamed “clergy from two congregations in Lexington,” along with the Rev. Reebee Girash.) We hope this toolkit will be completed and public by the end of January.
Some of the work is very obvious, but much of it, like this hymn verse, is more subtle. As a member of our Worship Committee said, "You might not notice it, but once you notice it you want to change it."
So for now, these are the changes we're making, but it doesn't mean that we lose the more traditional lyrics, that they are verboten, or that we may never return to them. It depends on where we are (as a parish, as Christians in America in 2024, etc). Like steps taken in antiracism, not everyone committed to this concern will agree on the steps to take, but we agree that small changes can be powerful.
I hope in the spring we might have time for more Adult Forums on this topic, and Rev. Megan and I welcome your suggestions on particular angles or issues to lift up. If you would like a deeper dive into this topic, we encourage you to read the Church of England’s God’s Unfailing Word: Theological and Practical Perspectives on Christian–Jewish Relations (2019).
Mtr. Emily and Rev. Megan