Week 2: Still Longing at Christmas

SERMONS

Dec 16

O Come, O Come Emmanuel is a translation of an anonymous latin hymn put together by Thomas Helmore in 1851. It flows with lyrics anticipating and longing for the advent of the promised messiah. It’s easy to forget that Christmas (the celebration of the birth of Christ, which is literally translated from the Hebrew word messiah, meaning savior) starts in the very beginning of the creation narrative. Our story starts in Genesis 3 at the fall.

The longing for Emmanuel, God with us, is a cry of the chosen people of God and an echo we cry still today. Though we stand on this side of the Christmas story and this side of the redemption offered through Christ defeating sin, death, and evil through his own perfect life, death, and resurrection, we still wait in anticipation. We still cry, O Come, Emmanuel. And so we wanted to spend this Advent Season exploring the rich biblical theology of this song and really see how “this refrain reaches down into our weak hearts and pulls us up, in faith, to see the certainty of the end.”