In seminary in 2011, I was compiling a list of hymns that could accompany a reading of Isaiah 40. I was also struggling with how many of my favorite Advent and Christmas hymns had, intentionally or not, engraved supercessionism or even antisemitism into my musical muscle memory. “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” for example, used “captive Israel” as its opening line and “Israel” as its chorus; every time a new verse was sung, we repeated the connection to Israel. Was it meant mainly as a rhyme to Emmanuel? Perhaps — but it did so at the expense of Jewish people today, the very children of Israel. It is easy, especially for American Christians so far divorced from encounters with modern Judaism and/or any holistic understanding of Israel/Palestine, to maintain a belief that the Jewish faith was a failure until it was perfected by the coming of Emmanuel/Jesus (and thus, Judaism today is also “lesser”). I didn’t want that tie in a beloved Advent hymn, and yet didn’t want to remove the beauty of the song from my church’s or my internal repertoire. So here is my seminary rewrite, basing the verses on Isaiah 40.
O comforter, speak tenderly of peace;
Cry words of promise and release.
You level hills and make valleys plain:
Reveal your glory, end our pain.
Rejoice! rejoice! Take heart and do not fear;
God’s chosen one, Emmanuel, draws near.
Our broken faith we doubly bear as shame.
Come be our Word, a saving Name.
All words that wound will cease to stand
When you lift your almighty hand.
Rejoice! rejoice! Take heart and do not fear;
God’s chosen one, Emmanuel, draws near.
Our troubled hearts can wander far,
Forgetting how you make us who we are.
Now lift us up and hold us fast–
Our future liberated from our past.
Rejoice! rejoice! Take heart and do not fear;
God’s chosen one, Emmanuel, draws near.
Veni Emmanuel (ELW 257)