O Holy Night, Part One

Sometimes, I hear a particular song, and I  get a strong memory associated with it when I hear it again. 

In December of 2003, I was completing my semester of student teaching at Jefferson School in Minneapolis.  I was living with my parents in Saint Louis Park, and driving through uptown on Lake Street in my 1995 Chevy Cavalier, listening to Christmas music on Kool 108.  I was 22 years old, two weeks from college graduation.  I was student teaching in sixth grade math and language arts.  I knew that I loved Jesus, and cared about justice, but I did not know what I was going to do with my life after graduation.  Even as sixth graders some of my students were getting involved in gangs, one of my most brilliant students was HIV+ and homeless.  In a school that was primarily low-income black and latinx, we were close enough to Lake of the Isles and the Kenwood neighborhood to have some very affluent white families in the school, and I saw the achievement gap play out first hand every day.  Injustice and oppression were heavy on my heart. 

But here I was, on Lake Street, almost to school, when I heard a voice on the radio, “O, Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining.”  I was familiar with the song of course, but I heard a line for the first time that morning.  “Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother, and in His name, all oppression shall cease.”  As I turned on to Hennepin I was weeping in my car.  This Christmas song, that I had heard at least one hundred times before suddenly had new meaning.  It must have been written during the fight for abolition, and it promised that all oppression would cease in God’s name, in the name of this little baby born in Bethlehem.  This was a Christmas song that gave me hope for my students and their families.  It instantly became my favorite Christmas song. 

“O Holy Night,” was written in three steps.  In the 1840s in a village in France, the village priest asked Placide Cappeau to write a Christmas poem.  Cappeau was the local poet and wine merchant, and interestingly he was an atheist, someone who did not believe in God, but as a gift to this priest he wrote the beautiful poem.  The next year, Cappeau realized that his poem would be better if it were set to music, so he recruited a friend Adolphe Adam to write the musical score.  Adam interestingly was not a Christian either, but a Jew.  The song grew in popularity across French churches, until the church authorities realized that the song had been written by a Jew and an atheist and banned it from worship.  But the song continued to be popular.  So popular in fact that it made its way across the ocean to the United States in the 1850s.  John Dwight Sullivan heard the song and was touched by the lyrics.  Sullivan was active in the abolition movement and a minister.  But interestingly, he was not a Christian either.  He was a Unitarian.  And yet, these three men, from different faith traditions than my own have captured the hope that I find in a child born 2000 years ago. 

This Advent, the church I’m doing my internship at, Living Spirit UMC, has been exploring Christmas carols and scripture as protest songs.  O Holy Night is no exception.  

For Cappeau and Adam in France, only one percent of the population could vote, the price of food was skyrocketing, and government corruption would lead to the third revolution in France in a century the next year.  France had already abolished chattel slavery, but oppression remained strong.  For Sullivan, in the United States, the horrors of slavery were still a reality, and even years before the civil war began, deadly battles were being fought in the Kansas territory over the issue of slavery. 

The protest songs of Christmas are songs that look at the world as it is, but also look to the world we hope for.  Whether we sing the songs of Sullivan, Adam and Cappeau is a song that protests oppression in the world, but also offers a word of hope. 

Hope is nice, but there is a line in “O Holy Night,” that is so fascinating to me, “A THRILL of HOPE. The weary world rejoices.”  I understand a weary world.   You maybe do too.  But a thrill of hope? That’s more confusing.  Let me show you what I mean, I asked some friends this week what gives them a thrill.

• Eliza – waterslides
• Emily – amusement park rides with children
• Jen – a good thrill is the renaissance festival, a bad thrill is going on a ladder
• Pastor Iris – talking with strangers about religion or race
• Michelle – when you’ve had a long day at work, and you pick your baby up from daycare and she lights up and runs into your arms.
• Rachel – My husband thrills me sometimes, like every once in a while when I see him I just . . . kinda get all melty, like, “he’s my guy for life.” 
• Noel – when I look into my wife’s eyes and I can see the happiness she feels when we’re together . . . it’s a thrill to feel like I’m bringing love into someone’s life. 
• Mom – Spectacular scenery, a beautiful sunset, my husband
• Dad – Natural wonders (and then in a second message 2 minutes later) oh ya, and my wife. 

My sister sent two pictures of a mug she bought for her boyfriend:

What is a thrill of hope? 

According to The Bible Project Online, One of the Hebrew words for hope, “Is qavah, which also means “to wait.” It’s related to the Hebrew word qav, which means “cord.” When you pull a qav tight, you produce a state of tension until there’s release. That’s qavah: the feeling of tension and expectation while you wait for something to happen. . .

“Biblical hope is based on a person, which makes it different from optimism. Optimism is about choosing to see, in any situation, how circumstances could work out for the best, but biblical hope isn’t focused on circumstances. In fact, hopeful people in the Bible often recognize there’s no evidence things will get better, but you choose hope anyway . . . “

I confess that when I think about hope, I do not often feel a thrill.  Hope is hard.  But if our hope is in the person of God, rather than in optimism based on the evidence, maybe I can start to imagine what that feels like.  As I hope, I feel the tension between what is, and what God means for there to be, in Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, maybe I can start to feel a thrill.  And maybe if I start to feel that thrill, my protests can have a little more energy.  If I can feel that thrill with the rest of my community, thrilling in the hope of that baby born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, we can start to make waves in society.  If my hope is in the person of God the Father who created all that is, then I can feel a thrill of hope that some day all people made in God’s image will be treated with dignity and respect. 

The world is weary.  I am weary.  There are chains of oppression that keep us from the full brother and sisterhood of all of humanity.  But I will choose the thrill of hope, a hope in our wonderful counselor, a hope in the God of Israel who comes to set all people free. 

I am believing that “chains shall God break. . .”

            For the contemporary slave is my sister.  For the contemporary slave holder is my brother.

I am putting my hope in a God who will break chains of oppression, the chains of the opportunity gap in our schools.  A thrill of hope.

I am putting my hope in a God who will end the oppression caused by the housing crisis in the Twin Cities.  A thrill of hope

I am putting my hope in a God who will end the oppression of the people of Puerto Rico, American Citizens who are still waiting more than a year later for their communities to be rebuilt.  A thrill of hope. 

I am putting my hope in a God who is freeing people from the chains of low self-esteem, drug and alcohol abuse, and hopelessness.  A thrill of hope. 

I am putting my hope in a God who came to set All people free.  God’s law is love, and the gospel is peace.