Ben Camino's Ironic Advent Meditation #7:
The Great Advent Hymn Bake Off, Part Ah (that's A in German)
Dear reader. If you know Advent, you know that Advent hymns and songs (I don't want to argue about what is and isn't a hymn, thus my waffle) are a very rich treasure in Christian tradition and in the cultures influenced by Christianity. You need not actually be a Christian to be moved by the minor key, the ache of longing, and the incredible imagery expressed in ancient words and melody of songs like "O Come O Come, Emmanuel." It is obviously much loved and rightly so. That "ache" of longing (and perhaps doubt) is, of course, what Ben Camino argues sets Advent off from "the Christmas season."
And there are many other lovely Advent songs. One some of us sang last night as part of a Vespers service (by Zoom). "Creator of the Stars of Night" or "Conditor Alme Siderum" as it was known in the seventh century and sung to the same tune since the ninth.
Anyway(s), I have tried to come up with the right image for an Advent hymn contest. Death-match seemed a bit much. And I didn't want to waste too much time thinking about it, so I settled on Bake Off. I really just mean contest. And, in truth, it's not a contest. I already have a winner. So just think of this as Ben Camino trying to make up for all his gloom and doom meditations with a reminder that Advent is also a time of music and singing (although usually in a minor key).
An Advent hymn, like Advent, has to feature the ironic double (or triple?) Advent time scheme, and I'm not talking about the beat. I mean Advent starts, on the first Sunday with the future, a vision of the end of all things for which we need to be prepared, the future in which all things will change.
But it also asks us to think of the past, long ago by our standards (not just "Last Christmas"). And it also, somehow, foretells and points forward towards . . . that past event (right?). If we give ourselves to the story, I think we can't help but be disoriented like the Messiah's original audience for whom he was the coming King until he wasn't. Things got messy, certainly less than glorious, place called "the skull," and . . . what exactly were all those songs about?
This is going to sound like heresy I guess in terms of the
Christmas liturgy, but I’m going to say it anyway. In a small font,
though. You can’t really be looking forward to the birth of baby Jesus. If anyone appreciates the irony, I do, so you can rest assured
that I’m going to keep singing the songs and pretending to look forward to what has already happened, but unless we are chewing on the past in Advent and trying to figure
out what all that means for us, we might as well
just turn the whole thing over to Amazon.com.
The more I chew on my bitter roots this Advent (as I do every year), the more I’m seeing
a story of ironic love and redemption, and, believe me, it’s not one that
anyone would choose ahead of time, especially if I were in that Robert Frost
poem and had other choices. The gaps in my life and the cracks in my story (and
yours, dear reader) are nasty and brutal and worthy of some kind of
Divine sympathy if there is any. While we are waiting on that, though (trying to figure out if it's already arrived or is still coming or both or neither) let’s share some
of the human kind. That's maybe how we are supposed to get ready for the other if there is the
other. Well, in truth, I don't think it's maybe. Our ancient friends, dead and unfortunately too oft forgotten would just say, of course, that's just almsgiving, the deeds of mercy. The one "Christian discipline" the grownup Christmas baby said will separate the sheep from the goats.
Which brings us to Paul Gerhardt’s lovely hymn “Wie Soll Ich Dich Empfangen?" (“How Shall I Receive Thee”), one that Bonhoeffer references several times in his Prison Letters (which I've written about elsewhere, and I'm sure you can find it with a little google, dear reader). This hymn may not be as ancient as the first two I mentioned, but it is helped out in the competition (it's not really a competition) by the two famous tunes to which it is sung -- one by J. S. Bach and an earlier one from Johann Crüger.
In this moving hymn, it is exactly this world-weariness and disappointment in the life of the first-person narrator that the sympathetic savior comes, now (a fraught word in Advent time, as we have established), to heal. The most popular English translation of this hymn, by Catherine Winkworth, misses the passionate intentionality of this love by translating the great expression of the kenosis thus: “Love caused Thy incarnation, Love brought Thee down to me . . . .” Lovely and deeply meaningful, but not precisely, I think, as radical as what Gerhardt was expressing.
A more faithful translation is something like: “Nothing, nothing, could drive you from your heavenly home (tent, actually) but your love above love . . . .” Perhaps, meta-love? An earlier, more literal though still problematic and heavily-condensed translation renders the key “incarnational” verses of the hymn like this.
If we didn't have the Epistle to the Philippians, Chapter 2, with it's great hymn to the mystery of Christ's self-emptying love, we would, at least, have Gerhardt's. Thank God, Paul, and this second Paul, that we have both. Like the fallen (into both sin and gloom) Edmund in C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, we don't know the depth of the gloom, of the darkness, of what Hopkinds called "worldsorrow." We know it's bad, but we don't know how bad it is. Nor do we understand how great the love which undertakes to save us.
In a far deeper way than the Colonel Nathan Jessup character (yes, yes, Jack Nicholson) meant in the military drama A Few Good Men, "we can't handle the truth." Well, I don't really have much more to say about that first stanza unless I wrote about it for another twenty pages. Just read it over for a few weeks. Memorize it. Learn German just for the chance to savor it more fully.
In short. Our situation is worse than we could ever know. The solution is a deeper love than we could ever understand. The sorrow, the woe, the grief, the darkness are not only real but almost (I said almost) infinite. To minimize that side of the reality is to minimize the other side, the unaccountable embrace of His strange (absurd?) and blessed love.
Notice that Gerhardt is careful to remind us, something which Bonhoeffer points to several times, that this door is one we can’t open for ourselves. One does not just walk into Mordor. Oops, sorry. One does not just use positive thinking, or a new counselor, or better diet to conquer the darkness (although all of these have their places).
In fact, on the strength of reading the gospels and the prophets, I believe that one way we must do Advent, that is, get ready for the Bridegroom, the baby in the manger, the Coming King, the Lord of the Universe, the great healer of our souls, all the things, is by doing what we can to comfort as many others as we can in the little time we have. Perhaps it's by writing a song as lovely as Paul Gerhardt's, in which the speaker serves as a loving, caring connector to his two audiences in the two stanzas quoted above -- one divine and one human. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the prisoner are beautiful songs as well.
And perhaps, we will show love and care, too, for those who also suffered through the gloom, fought the good fight, and have now gone on ahead. Like Paul Gerhardt. Tending (and, I think, attending) to the dead of course, is another of those works of mercy, as defined by the Christian tradition. As with all almsgiving, being good to him (in this case by attending to his well-wrought faithful lyrics) will be good for us.
Here's a link to the Bach version of the song (in German of course).
Bach version clickable link.
No comments:
Post a Comment