December 09, 2007 Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley
O come, O come, Emmanuel, and with your captive children dwell.
Give comfort to all exiles here, and to the aching heart bid cheer.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come within as Love to dwell.
O come you Splendor ver bright, as joy that never yields to might.
O come, and turn all hearts to peace, that greed and war at last shall cease.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come with in as Truth to dwell.
O come, you Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by your presence here.
And dawn in every broken soul as vision that can see the whole.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come within as Light to dwell.
O come, you Wisdom from on high, from depths that hide within a sigh,
To temper knowledge with our care, to render every act a prayer.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come within as Hope to dwell.
Words: Latin c. 9th cent., trans. composite
based on John Mason Neale, 1818-1866, recast
Music: Adapt. By Thomas Helmore, harmony by
John Weaver
O Come, O Come Emmanuel is a song my heart can sing.
It’s a Christian hymn, but for me, its music, its words, feel Jewish,
a kind of link between Judaism and Christianity.
It touches a deep place, beyond the boundaries of any one religion.
The hymn is based on the Hebrew text from Isaiah.
The words from Isaiah announce that a birth is imminent.
And what is new born shall be called Emmanuel or God With Us.
The hymn has a mournful voice in a minor key.
It laments captive children, exiles, aching hearts,
greed and war, broken souls.
“O Come, O Come,” the song pleads.
Something deeply longed for is absent.
What is longed for, called for, waited for,
Emmanuel, is named in the song
as Splendor, Dayspring, Wisdom.
We sing, we pray,
“Come, Splendor.
Come, Dayspring.
Come, Wisdom.
Come, O, Come.
Dwell with captive children.
Comfort exiles.
Cheer aching hearts.
Come and turn our hearts to peace.
Dawn in every broken soul.”
The song makes clear what we know.
The comfort, the cheer, the dawn, the peace are not here yet.
Here is one way to tell our human story.
Some church members left Dover elementary school
in San Pablo, a neighboring community, a few miles from here,
where they volunteer in the Read Aloud program.
An hour later a bullet grazed a six year old girl.
The first grader was outside after lunch,
standing in line to come inside.
The bullet scraped her right hip.
She cried out.
The girl's teacher, Angela Lara, said,
“The look on her face just brought me to my knees.”
Another child found a 9 mm bullet
lying on the ground near the girl.
Trying to understand the situation, a boy said,
“They took that little girl to the hospital.”
The girl’s teacher cried.
“Being that this is my home,
this is where I was born and raised
and then have this happen to one of my students…”
Isn’t that just enough to break your heart?
There is all this anguish in the world, all this pain, all this loss.
The hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel laments all the torment, the trouble.
And then after each mournful verse, the chorus rises, the music lifts and we sing,
“Rejoice!” Rejoice right there in the midst of it all.
After this service, we’ll leave from this hill
and go down to the streets where the gun violence has been happening.
We will join with others to create a human chain of care.
We’ll hold hands across Richmond as people of all faiths
gather in an act of friendship to pray for peace.
In doing this we embody Christmas
which celebrates the power and possibilities of one individual, one child.
And we embody Hannukah
which celebrates what a people can do together.
Hannukah tells the story of a temporary victory of people
over the might of an oppressive government.
The miraculous light is people living their values.
Both traditions offer a vision of how life could be on earth.
Each of us individually,
all of us together,
doing what we can do to make possible comfort, peace and cheer.
We prepare the way for something good and loving and peaceful to be born.
Each of the stories as well as the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
relates to a real time and place,
real oppression, each with a truly captive people,
and their real hopes for escape, rescue, comfort and peace.
Yet the stories and the hymn also come to us from a time out of time,
a time that exists above time,
a time that lives beyond us and within our hearts.
Here’s another way to tell this same story.
This week Bill and I visited Lemar and Maureen Morrison.
This wreath was created by Jean and Bob Moore
who give it in honor of Lemar.
You might not know the Morrisons,
but what is going on for them could be going on for any of us.
Let me tell you about one way Lemar relates to this congregation.
For the last fourteen years, Lemar ordered, arranged and cared for
the bank of red poinsettia that filled this sanctuary during the winter holidays.
His children grew from toddlers to teens helping him with this labor of love.
Now Lemar has cancer and has begun receiving home hospice care.
If you never saw this space filled with red poinsettia, you can imagine it.
This year many remember all the red poinsettias.
For many people the sanctuary filled with red poinsettias will live forever in our hearts.
During our visit to their home, Maureen told Bill and me
that Lemar recently said he could feel his ego breaking down.
When I had my moments with Lemar, I repeated that.
I wondered if that meant he felt without boundary, boundless.
So much love comes from Lemar and so much is flowing toward him.
I imagine he is letting go into boundless love.
Lemar’s professional gardening career included responsibilities
for the Golden Gate Conservatory of Flowers.
When Bill went into the bedroom,
Lemar and he remembered flowers.
Lemar said, “Let’s walk in the park.”
In his soul, Lemar has pink rhododendron, yellow tulip, and bright red poinsettia.
Later in the kitchen, Maureen said that it’s heartbreaking to be losing Lemar.
But she said we haven’t lost him yet.
There are these moments
when he wakes out of the drowsiness of medicine and advancing disease,
to speak clearly.
Like when he was the gracious host to me, asking,
“Barbara, how are you doing with the upcoming holidays?”
Or like when he said to Bill, “I love you.”
Sometimes the fog clears away
and it’s like a light turns on
and the brightness from his blue eyes shines upon you.
Maureen says they are living in a time out of time.
And there are gifts beyond gifts, beyond measure.
They are receiving a bounty of food and cards and acts of friendship.
Maureen dreamed that her heart was opening
and out were flowing all these red poinsettias.
In our world, there’s all this sadness, all this pain.
Even when we are most lonely,
when we’re most hurting,
when the world is aching,
we pray there will be moments
when wonders light up our eyes and our hearts and lift our spirits.
The poet Denise Levertov writes,
The yellow tulip in the room’s warmth opens.
Can I say it, and not seem to taunt all who live in torment?
Believe it, yet remain aware of the world’s anguish?
But it is so: a caravan arrives constantly out of desert dust,
laden with gift beyond gift, beyond reason.
Item: a yellow tulip opens; at its center a star of greenish indigo,
a subtle wash of ink at the base of each of six large petals.
The black stamens are dotted with white.
At the core, the ovary, apple green fullness tapering to proffer-
shattered in the wide cup of primary yellow-
its, triune stigma, clove of green and gold.
That’s one, at nightfall of a day which brought a dozen treasures,
exotic surprises, landscapes, music, words, acts of friendship,
all of them wrapped in mysterious silk, each unique.
How is it possible?
The yellow tulip in the room’s warmth opens.
Denise Levertov, “A Yellow
Tulip” in Sands of the Well
The heart in love’s warmth opens.
“Can I say it, and not seem to taunt all who live in torment?
Believe it, yet remain aware of the world’s anguish.
But it is so.”
People of all faiths hold hands across Richmond,
a human garland of peace and hope.
“A caravan arrives constantly out of desert dust,
Laden with gift beyond gift, beyond reason.”
Brilliant red poinsettias fill the sanctuary,
flow out of your heart,
petals surrounding school children and teachers,
parents and grandparents, doctors and patients, neighbors.
“How is it possible?”
The heart in love’s warmth opens.
The hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel has a mournful verse
and then another and another and another.
Each time the chorus rises,
the music lifts and we sing, “Rejoice!”
Rejoice right there in the midst of it all. ♦