O Oriens - The Rising Sun

The 'O Antiphons' are sung according to tradition, during the evening liturgy on the last days of Advent. Each one is a named attribute of The Christ, to whose coming the church looks forward with eager and in these latter days, heightened expectation

O Oriens

Sung by the Dominican student brothers of Blackfriars, Oxford

It is perhaps no co-incidence that we celebrate O Oriens, O Rising Sun on this day, the 21st of December - Solstice wherever we are - the day the sun stands still. Whether as here in the Southern hemisphere it stands as high in the sky as it will all year, or as in the Northern its height at midday marks the turn towards longer days, the sun's appearing is significant

One of the features of living nearer to the equator as I now do, is the relatively short length of both dawn and dusk. It is not long light here before sunrise and not long after sunset that darkness covers the earth. I know from short experience and wider reading that at or reasonably near the equator this experience is far sharper, the sun plunging close to vertically unto the Horizon and rising perpendicularly with dramatic effect, like the brightest light being switched on in the depths of darkness. And it is this Suddenness of the appearing that is hinted at in the other familiar name for this Antiphon, O Dayspring, remembering the words of Isaiah 

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. 

Listening this morning to some Advent reflections by the Fransican Priest, Richard Rohr, I was reminded of a word that seems to have slipped from popular Christian discourse. Perhaps it never was that popular but I am sure it once was more commonly used than in these days. Rohr was talking about how the increasingly and now staggeringly affluent church in the West had got Scripture back to front. We went to the Scriptures he said, for comfort. But that was the last thing we find there - not that it isn';t to be found,. but it is discovered last - the comfort is for those who are first Challenged by the Word, then (and here is the 'old-fashioned' word . . .) Converted by the Word. Those whose only hope is now in Him may find True comfort their, and only they.

Conversion is a word which we use less and less the more and more comfortable we become - we now talk much more readily about faith in terms we might employ of a holiday, or a retirement cruise - it ha become 'a journey of faith' and a very gradualist one at that. If we hear the word Conversion at all it is invariably prefaced by such words as 'Sudden!' or 'Dramatic!'. It is not Usual, or Normal.

Of course the church in the West situated as it is away from the equator is not a place of 'sudden light' and also it is a place where we tend to have insulated ourselves against the reality of the world. Central heating and Air conditioning mean we are never Hot or Cold, Electric light means we little heed the rising sun, or its setting - conditions are neither one thing nor the other. So comfortable are we with the lights we have made for ourselves, we may say that we are not at all far from the Kingdom of God and forget that those are words which we cannot say, for we cannot See - for in reality it is dark, very dark.

In Advent we await the coming of a Saviour, not a therapist

If we will for a moment cease from our remorseless talk, in the Silence we may hear voices from behind a large stone which up until that point we had not regarded. 

We may perhaps extinguish the lights we have made for ourselves to discover how dark things are. After a while it becomes obvious that our eyes will not adapt to this Pitch darkness. 

The voices behind the stone become louder, there is the sound of astonishment.

A voice of command

The Stone begins to move

A Light brighter than the Sun at noonday pours blindingly into our 'place of comfort', 

which is revealed for what it is . . .

A voice is heard, like the sound of many waters

Lazarus, Come Out!

Christ, whose glory fills the skies,
Christ, the true, the only light,
Sun of Righteousness, arise,
Triumph o'er the shades of night;
Dayspring from on high, be near;
Daystar, in my heart appear.

Dark and cheerless is the morn
Unaccompanied by thee;
Joyless is the day's return,
Till thy mercy's beams I see;
Till they inward light impart,
Glad my eyes and warm my heart.

Visit then this soul of mine;
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief;
Fill me, Radiancy divine,
Scatter all my unbelief;
More and more thyself display,
Shining to the perfect day.


O Dayspring,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. 
O Come, O Come Emmanuel

 

 

O Adonai - Your 'Lord' is too small . . .

The 'O Antiphons' are sung according to tradition, during the evening liturgy on the last days of Advent. Each one is a named attribute of The Christ, to whose coming the church looks forward with eager and in these latter days, heightened expectation




O Adonai
Sung by the Dominican student brothers from Blackfriars, Oxford

'Jesus Christ is LORD to the glory of God the Father'

This is the most succinct statement of Christian faith, all else flows from this confession. Yet for most if not all of us, the overwhelming majesty of this ascription is perhaps seldom experienced. Like 'The Christmas Story', the words 'Jesus Christ is Lord', seem to be so simple and obvious in their import that we miss this revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages. In the same way that water, essential to life is drunk without thinking, these words of LIFE tend to flow through us unregarded.

Over the past few months having moved from my homeland to live and work in New Zealand I have been reflecting on the significance of Roots. This reflection has taken many and varied forms for example, here. Over the last four Sundays I have been reflecting on the necessity of inhabiting the deep wellsprings of the Old Testament Scriptures, for a significantly richer apprehension of 'The Advent of the Lord'. That he comes first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, that Salvation is only understood in the light of their story.


Each of the Antiphons reminds us of one of the titles given to Christ. Of all of these, 'Lord' (Adonai) is without doubt the most significant and yet like so much at this season of the year, its very familiarity has deafened us to the true significance of the title.

In the early years of my faith, The Thing was a personal relationship with God in Christ Jesus. 'Jesus is Lord,' we were continually reminded, 'but is He Your Lord?' was the almost unvarying supplementary question - as if the former confession hung on the latter. 
I have no recollection of being led to consider that He could only be 'my Lord', by virtue of the far deeper truth that he was Lord of All. The Lordship of Christ was a box to be ticked through the 'simple' act of submission to Him in every part of my life - not a Revelation of The New Created Order, breaking in to time and space in the person of the crucified, risen and ascended Jesus of Nazareth, an order I was asked, nay compelled to enter into by faith.

That He who was in very nature God, descended, taking the form of a slave, was found in appearance as a man, and then humbled himself to death on a cross and descended to the dead, and then was raised from No Thing to the highest place, far above every rule, authority, power or dominion in this age or any other, that he might fill Every Thing in Every Way. The place where the only name that could be given was the name above every Name, LORD.

There is a world of difference I suggest between thinking of Jesus as My Lord - as a sort of heavenly boss with the emphasis seemingly without fail placed on our response to Him - and the breathtaking imagery these New Testament writers used, to describe the majesty of His Name.

We live in an age dominated by many lords, but few who read these words will have much apprehension of the overwhelming dominance of the lords of the time of Jesus, the Caesars, whose very word seemed to be no less than Life or Death. Choosing to Acknowledge Caesar as Lord was not a matter of personal choice or a matter of Will power, it didn't carry with it the remotest possibility for closet pride. Say No! to the lordship of Caesar?? You might as well throw yourself off a cliff. Whether that is because the lords of this age have a smiling face, or because they have a smiling mask, or because they serve Us well enough to see them as friends I cannot say, but 'Lord' does not have any such resonances for us. In a democratic age, even in England Lords have learned to be 'Jolly good fellows'.

Yet even those rulers could not remotely parallel the Lordship of Christ. 

Perhaps we are too well versed in the dualistic 'conflict between Christ and Caesar', we forget

'He that dwelleth in heaven laughs them to scorn, these Kings of the Earth who take counsel together against the LORD and his anointed are held in derision'. 

To remember what 'Jesus Christ is Lord' meant to those first Jewish believers we may not try and imagine Caesar and then notch things up a few degrees. 

To them Casar was as nothing, there was only One who was to be feared

To know the height and breadth and depth and sheer Glory of the title Adonai, we need once more to be reminded that we are only Christian by virtue of the faith of the Jewish people, that we are only grafted in, grafted into a people whose roots go back much further than first century Palestine.

We only may begin to dare to say He is my Lord because he is first of all Their LORD - a people formed by the Saving act of God and Sinai Covenant - the Strange God who chose to appear in a burning bush to Moses - and not long afterwards passed before him declaring His Name

. . . the one who fills every thing in every way - before Him all the world's 'Caesars' are as Nothing

He is LORD

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel, 

who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush

and gave him the law on Sinai: 

Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm. 

O Come, O Come Emmanuel