“O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ran­som cap­tive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appears. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel”. (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, 12^th cen­tury Latin hymn)

We sang this haunt­ing carol in my church at the begin­ning of Advent. I reminded the con­gre­ga­tion that, though Israel is the sub­ject of the song, we share the rejoic­ing and long­ing con­veyed by its lyrics and melody. Because he came to us, we rejoice; because he left us here, we long for a future day. To sing about the return of Israel from exile is to echo our prayer for the King­dom of God to appear in all its full­ness. Our min­istry until He comes is an inter­play between the chords of hope and longing.

Exile

The melan­choly mood of the carol recalls the long­ing of Israel for the ful­fil­ment of God’s promise to make them a great nation. The golden days of a united Israel under King David and Solomon were a mil­len­nium in the past for Jews who lived at the time of Christ. The dark days of the exile were a more recent mem­ory. Psalm 137, pop­u­lar­ized in 1978 by the pop group Boney M, defines Israel’s despair: “By the rivers of Baby­lon we sat and wept when we remem­bered Zion” (v. 1). The bib­li­cal text tells us they hung their harps on the poplars, for “how can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a for­eign land?” (v. 4).

When the period of his­tory cov­ered in the Old Tes­ta­ment ends, the Per­sians reign over the land of promise. Due to their benev­o­lence, groups of Jews are allowed to return and rebuild the Tem­ple which was destroyed by the Baby­lo­ni­ans and to erect the walls of Jerusalem. (The Tem­ple and for­ti­fi­ca­tions were com­pleted in 516 BC and 444 BC respec­tively.) Soon there­after Israel had to con­tend with another mighty power. Alexan­der the Great began a grand cam­paign of mil­i­tary con­quest in 334 BC, sweep­ing away all oppo­si­tion in his path, includ­ing the Per­sians. Israel had to adjust to a new over­lord, who would rule them for the next cen­tury and a half. Fol­low­ing the period of Greek rule, Israel enjoyed a short inter­lude of self-​​rule (the Has­monean period) before the Roman gen­eral Pom­pey led his troops into Jerusalem in 63 BC. The Jews would not enjoy inde­pen­dent state­hood again until 1948 AD.

Hope

Through­out the cen­turies under Greek and Roman rule, the Jew­ish peo­ple never aban­doned their hope for deliv­er­ance, though the nature of it did shift its focus. Scrolls, cir­cu­lat­ing in the two cen­turies before Christ’s birth, fanned the flames of expec­ta­tion. These apoc­a­lyp­tic writ­ings, although dis­parate in their depic­tion of how the end would come, shared some com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics. The hope they expressed was now for the end of the world and that day was expected to come soon. This lit­er­a­ture con­veys a pes­simism about divine res­o­lu­tion within his­tory. Hav­ing expe­ri­enced the power of Greek might and the prowess of Roman rule, the vision of Israel’s ascen­dancy over their foes had grown dim.

Chris­tians believe the hope of Israel and all humankind is real­ized in Jesus. His com­ing inau­gu­rated the ful­fil­ment of the promise, the arrival of the King­dom of God. We will rejoice this Christ­mas because he is Immanuel, God with us. The source of our hope and long­ing is, how­ever, some­what dif­fer­ent than that found in the Hebrew Scrip­tures and the Jew­ish apoc­a­lyp­tic writ­ings. Jew­ish expec­ta­tion was anchored to promise and mem­ory: mem­ory of the golden years of King David and his son Solomon, when the promise of God had taken on national form. Surely God would restore those days. The Chris­t­ian hope stems from ful­fil­ment and par­tic­i­pa­tion: ful­fil­ment on account of Christ’s advent and our par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Kingdom.

Long­ing

As Paul describes it, our par­tic­i­pa­tion in the King­dom cre­ates long­ing, or as he says it in Romans 8, groan­ing. Because the King­dom is only par­tially man­i­fested, groan­ing is the com­mon response of cre­ation, humankind and the Spirit. In fact, the Spirit (the first­fruits of the King­dom) causes us to groan. By the pres­ence of the Spirit we enjoy the first taste of the King­dom har­vest, yet this par­tic­i­pa­tion has ruined our taste for every­thing else. Now that we know (in the bib­li­cal sense of know­ing, by expe­ri­ence) the pres­ence of God in Christ with us through the Spirit, it pro­duces a dis­sat­is­fac­tion in us that will only grow more acute the longer we remain in exile here.

What about Israel? Paul devotes an exten­sive dis­cus­sion to the future of his peo­ple in Romans 9–11. In a mov­ing finale, Paul describes his hope that the suc­cess of the Gen­tile mis­sion would spur his own peo­ple to jeal­ousy. Indeed, he says, the day is com­ing when not only a rem­nant will know Jesus, but all Israel will be saved (11.26).

What, then, about us? We min­is­ter in a world debil­i­tated by the effects of sin and death, yet we refuse to believe this is as good as it gets. We refuse to give in to the pes­simism that the world is going to hell in a hand­bas­ket (what­ever that means). We do the work the Mas­ter assigned us with hope, know­ing the King­dom is being made vis­i­ble as we coop­er­ate with the Spirit. Yet long­ing is a pri­mal emo­tion for us, which expresses itself in frus­tra­tion because we do not see more fruit. While we gather in our com­mu­ni­ties of wor­ship and rejoice with those who have entered the King­dom, hun­dreds of peo­ple are dri­ving by our build­ings. We see peo­ple healed and fam­i­lies restored, but not every­one and some­times not our own. We groan in exile. But not with­out hope, for hav­ing tasted of the King­dom, we know its power and believe what God has begun, he will finish.

On Christ­mas Eve, our con­gre­ga­tion will sing the words from Silent Night: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

Resources

• Bright, John.The King­dom of God: the Bib­li­cal Con­cept and its Mean­ing for the Church. New York : Abingdon-​​Cokesbury Press, 1953.
• Bright, John.A His­tory of Israel. Louisville, KY : West­min­ster J. Knox Press, 2000.
• Van­derKam, James C.An Intro­duc­tion to Early Judaism. Grand Rapids, MI : William B. Eerd­mans, 2001.
• Collins, John J.The Apoc­a­lyp­tic Imag­i­na­tion: an Intro­duc­tion to Jew­ish Apoc­a­lyp­tic Lit­er­a­ture. Grand Rapids, MI : William B. Eerd­mans, 1998.