This Sunday is Advent 1. I personally love the season of Advent — to me it’s a time of warm invitation into our life of faith. It’s that quiet, hushed, anticipatory waiting for a tiny baby born to be our Saviour. 

 

I confess I also really like the glitter and lights of the North American Christmas. I enjoy the gift-giving and the sense of celebration. I don’t much care for many aspects of what our social Christmas can become — the stress, the materialism, the weight of expectations in fractured families. But maybe that’s part of the whole of who we are: a mixture of hushed faithful waiting for humility and vulnerability, and a glittery bravado that says strength is found in power, in “stuff.” 

 

We are whole people. We’re called into a way of being that sees Wholeness and Holiness in all aspects of life — even when it’s only a small glimmer of light shining in the darkness. 

 

This week, as I was preparing for Sunday worship, I turned to my usual spate of Advent hymns. The first one — the one I’ve used many times before — was, of course, the hymn at the top of our hymnbook: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” I was about to drop it into the bulletin when I paused at that second line: 

 

“And ransom captive Israel …” 

 

And I winced. 

 

Because the more I reflect, especially in light of recent grief and horror in our world, the more I realize the “Israel” the hymn refers to — the “captive Israel” longing for redemption — is not the same as the modern political entity we call Israel today. 

 

As many theologians and recent writers have argued: 

 

• The “Israel” of Scripture refers either to the ancient covenant people — descendants of Jacob (renamed Israel), whose twelve sons formed the tribes — or, in Christian theology, to a spiritual people, renewed in faith through Christ.  

• That covenant-people was connected to a particular land and to God’s promises, but also to a particular way of being — under covenant, under God’s law, as a holy people.  

• The modern State of Israel, by contrast, established in 1948, is a secular nation-state, shaped by contemporary geopolitics, laws, democracies, etc. It is not the same entity as the ancient covenant-people under Mosaic or divine rule.  

• From a Christian perspective, many argue that the covenant promises find their fulfillment not in a geopolitical state, but in the work of Christ — that “true Israel” today is the community of believers (Jew and Gentile) united by faith.  

 

So when I sing “ransom captive Israel,” I absolutely can’t in good conscience treat that phrase as a rallying cry for modern politics, or treat the modern nation–state as though it automatically occupies the same theological identity as the “captive Israel” of the hymn. 

 

That “Israel” of the hymn is rooted in longing for deliverance from exile — spiritual and communal — a longing fulfilled in humility, in the birth of the Messiah, in the life of faith, not by political might or territorial claims. 

 

And so I pause. I won’t delete the hymn — its words still speak truth about our spiritual condition and our hope. But I can’t separate faith from conscience: this Advent, I sense a deeper need to mourn, to lament, to hope — not for a political victory — but for justice, for peace, for real redemption; not for domination, but for healing. 

 

Maybe that’s why Advent feels even more important now. It calls us to remember that God’s light comes into “darkness visible,” not with military might or a power-play, but in vulnerability, in humility, in love. 

 

Let’s see this week if we can live in that tension – that place where we are trying hard to be little glimmers of hope in a world that seems so horribly fractured.  Lets see if we can wait in anticipation for vulnerability and sacrifice instead of power and materialism.   

 

O Come, Emmanuel. 

 

Blessings today, and remember you are Loved, 

~Rev Lynne