This is a tale of two hymns. One, a traditional text written in Latin, popularly sung in many languages at Christmas around the world, including in our own churches: O Come, All Ye Faithful (LSB 379). The other, a modern-day adaptation called O Come All You Unfaithful.

The contrast between the original hymn and its contemporary riff is illustrative - especially given the accompanying videos.

First, the modern one: O Come, All You Unfaithful:

Here are the lyrics:

O come, all you unfaithful
Come, weak and unstable
Come, know you are not alone

O come, barren and waiting ones
Weary of praying, come
See what your God has done

Christ is born, Christ is born
Christ is born for you

O come, bitter and broken
Come with fears unspoken
Come, taste of His perfect love

O come, guilty and hiding ones
There is no need to run
See what your God has done

Christ is born, Christ is born
Christ is born for you

He's the Lamb who was given
Slain for our pardon
His promise is peace
For those who believe
He's the Lamb who was given
Slain for our pardon
His promise is peace
For those who believe

So come, though you have nothing
Come, He is the offering
Come, see what your God has done

Christ is born, Christ is born
Christ is born for you
Christ is born, Christ is born
Christ is born for you

The performance on this video isn’t just cloying from the first note, it also begins with the sound of a clap-board and “Take One,” showing us that the people in the video are actors acting. They begin looking very sad, with frowns all around.

The opening stanza equates being “unfaithful” with being “weak and unstable.” This is not what “unfaithful” means. To be unfaithful is to be disloyal, to be lacking in faith. This is not a matter of weakness or lack of stability (old age and infirmity often bring about both). And unfaithfulness is certainly not the cause of barrenness - which is what we read and hear at the beginning of stanza two. Imagine the Theology of Glory to tell a childless couple that they are “unfaithful.” Likewise, the bitter and the broken are not necessarily “unfaithful.” In fact, our universal brokenness: our sin and mortality - is why “Christ has come.” But again, that is not what unfaithfulness means.

I get what they are trying to do. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” But the point is that He came to make an exchange, to free us from the result of our weakness and to take away our ungodliness. And this transaction is done through faith, not through faithlessness. We are called to repent of our faithlessness, and to rejoice in what He has done for us by grace: to worship Him, not to continue to confess ourselves as “unfaithful.”

The strongest part of the song is the “Christ is born for you” chorus and the description of Jesus as the “Lamb slain for our pardon.” And at this point in the video, the actors begin to smile. The word “pardon” hints at the real problem: sin. And there is a confession of belief in the promise, but that’s as far as it goes. Unlike the original hymn, there is no invitation to worship Him, no identification and confession of Him as King and Lord, nothing joyful, and nothing triumphant. It is maudlin from start to finish.

And it is inexplicably weird that as the song goes on toward its climax, the actors resume their sad and downcast faces, and then they are obscured, frowning, in shadows at the end. What just happened? What is the confession here? That, combined with the whiny tone of the entire song seems to affirm the modern day cult of the victim: a wallowing in hopeless, joyless, dysfunction and sadness.

A few years ago, a bunch of young professionals were having a party next door from where I happened to be. Someone started a loud litany of her neuroses, and the others piled on in a game of one-upsmanship. Instead of seeing such things as private deficiencies to overcome, they were the source of bragging rights, and trotted out with a bizarre glee. It was a race to the bottom to see who was the most psychotic, anxious, and depressed.

What a betrayal of the original hymn and its joyous confession of our Almighty Lord who took flesh, to be our champion by smashing the serpent’s head and casting the vile dragon into hell - not so that we can flail about pathetically in our impotence, but rather so we can rejoice in His potentia: His omni-potence.

By contrast, here is a wonderful arrangement of the traditional hymn sung in the original Latin by a Brazilian singer named Dan Vasc. If you have not seen this, brace yourself. Turn it up loud. Prepare to hear something diametrically opposite from what you just had to endure if you watched the above. Consider it ear-bleach.

You’re welcome!

Did you watch it twice? Only twice? My only complaint is that it isn’t on iTunes.

Notice the facial expressions of unbridled joy for both singer and guitarist, and of the manly celebration of our Dominus, our Lord. We are “joyful and triumphant” (laeti triumphantes) in our worship, to which we are invited (venite, adoremus!). The glory is God’s in excelsis! And we revel in it, because Jesus is “highest, most holy, Light of Light eternal.” And yet, O Magnificent Mystery, “Born of a virgin, a mortal, He comes.” The text drips with Scripture, with the sublimity of John’s prologue virtually jumping off of the page, and Vasc’s interpretation gives musical life to the text.

Here are the words in both Latin and English. The author is not known for sure, though many believe the hymn was written by King John IV of Portugal (1604-1656) - which would be a felicitous coincidence for Dan Vasc, whose mother-tongue is Portuguese (and if you want to hear him sing Angels We Have Heard on High in Portuguese, German, and English, with the chorus (of course) in Latin, here you go). Keep in mind that our typical English rendition of O Come, All Ye Faithful includes only stanzas one through four, and in the video, Dan Vasc sings only stanzas one and five (the video includes the Latin text as it is sung).

(The traditional lyrics vary slightly from our LSB version):

English:

1. O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant!
O come ye, o come ye, to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him, born the King of angels;

Refrain

O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord!

2. God of God, Light of Light,
Lo! He abhors not the Virgin’s womb.
Very God, begotten not created; (refrain)

3. Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation!
Sing, all ye citizens of heaven above:
Glory to God, glory in the highest!

4. Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning,
Jesu, to Thee be glory given.
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing;

5. See how the shepherds, summoned to His cradle,
leaving their flocks, draw nigh to gaze.
We too will thither bend our hearts’ oblations;

6. There shall we see Him, His eternal Father’s
everlasting brightness now veiled under flesh.
God shall we find there, a Babe in infant clothing;

7. Child, for us sinners, poor and in the manger,
we would embrace Thee, with love and awe.
Who would not love Thee, loving us so dearly?

8. Lo! Star-led chieftains, Magi, Christ adoring,
offer Him frankincense, gold, and myrrh.
We to the Christ-child, bring our hearts oblations;

Latin:

1. Adeste Fideles laeti triumphantes,
Venite, venite in Bethlehem.
Natum videte, Regem Angelorum;

Refrain

Venite adoremus,
venite adoremus,
venite adoremus
Dominum!

2. Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine,
gestant puellae viscera.
Deum verum, genitum non factum; (refrain)

3. Cantet nunc io chorus Angelorum
cantet nunc aula caelestium:
Gloria in excelsis Deo!

4. Ergo qui natus, die hodierna,
Jesu, tibi sit gloria.
Patris aeterni Verbum caro factum;

5. En grege relicto, Humiles ad cunas,
vocati pastores approperant.
Et nos ovanti gradu festinemus;

6. Aeterni Parentis splendorem aeternum,
velatum sub carne videbimus.
Deum infantem, pannis involutum;

7. Pro nobis egenum et foeno cubantem,
piis foveamus amplexibus
Sic nos anamtem quis non redamaret?

8. Stella duce, Magi, Christum adorantes,
aurum, thus, et myrrham dant munera
Jesu infanti corda praebeamus;

Our LSB hymnal includes a translation into a modern dialect of Latin (Spanish). There is plenty of room on the page to have included the Latin words as well. But there’s no use complaining. That room on the page means we can just pencil it in!

If we were to translate Oh Come All You Unfaithful into Latin, the title would be Adeste Infideles. Imagine, calling those yearning for the Messiah “infidels.” Moreover, the unfaithful cannot come. As we confess in our catechism: “I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him.” Indeed, it is only by the Spirit’s call, by the gift of faith, that we, the faithful, can come to Jesus and believe in Him as our Lord, our Dominus.

The word “Lord” is missing from the “Unfaithful” variation. The dominion and power of Jesus go unmentioned, as the writer of the lyrics opted to wallow in sadness and misery. Thanks be to God that this weak sauce is not in our hymnal. Of course, neither arrangement of the above two videos is fit for use in the Divine Service. But the one in our hymnal is. And we can sing it with the same defiant joy, with the same triumphant attitude, as Dan Vasc (who I am told is a Christian, and either is, or was, a Lutheran. Maybe one of our readers can sleuth it out). For even though Vasc’s vocal prowess does justice to the hymn, it is the confession on the Incarnation embedded in the lyrics themselves that pack the real punch. The unabashedly powerful words of the confession of Jesus drives the performance

And notice the triumphalism of Vasc’s fist-pumping, powerful, manly vocal arrangement. This is driven by the subject matter: our Lord, our Dominus, and His manly dominion and militant domination over sin, death, and the devil. By contrast, in the effeminate, Unfaithful version, the “kingdom and the power and the glory” are absent. For when one is incurvatus in se, curved in on oneself, one is not looking to Jesus in adoration and worship, in joy and triumph, with gratitude and praise, in the confession of Him as Lord, as Dominus.

In the real story of spiritual warfare behind the fictional retelling as the novel and movie “The Exorcist,” the demon was finally dislodged when the word “Dominus” was used as a weapon against the unclean spirit. For that word “Dominus” is a reminder to friend and foe alike that Jesus is God in the flesh. And this is the entire point of Advent and Christmas: the Holy Incarnation and all of the mystery and all of the glory which it entails. Genesis 2 leads to John 1, which leads to Luke 2, which leads to Matthew 27, which leads to Mark 16, which brings us back to Genesis 3 and forward to Revelation 22 - which explains our unbridled and unbounded joy, our defiant, triumphalistic celebration and overflowing rejoicing over the mortal smashing of the serpent’s head. Christians need to relearn how to think eschatologically about the enfleshment of God, and the sure and certain hope of the casting of the devil and the demons - along with death and hell itself - into the Lake of Fire. There is no room for pity for the devil. We rejoice in our vindication, in the defeat of our hated enemy. We have forgotten what the word “triumph” means: a military parade celebrating victory over our enemies, who are paraded before us, defeated, and in chains. That is why we are laeti and triumphantes!

I find the nonverbal cues of these two performances interesting. Notice the contrast in body language - especially at the end. One day, we will all leave this world that Shakespeare compared to a stage. And we will be invited by the angels: “Adeste, fideles! Laeti triumphantes! Venite!” We will leave this world in triumph, and we will worship Him who delivered us by His Incarnation, death, resurrection, and coming again in glory - “now in flesh appearing” (caro factum)! By the grace of the Incarnate One, by His blood, by His grace and through faith, we will adopt the posture of vindication and eternal rejoicing, even as our Lord bids us to “straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” We will strut from this world and into eternity, victorious, laeti triumphantes. This is the promise hidden in the Christ Child, veiled under flesh (velatum sub carne) - but revealed to us by the angels, by the shepherds (pastores), by His Word, by His sacraments, and by the proclamation of the Good News. And as our Lord promised, “No one will take your joy from you!” Let no one take our joy from us in this time of year devoted to the mystery of the joyful Advent and Incarnation of our Lord!

So indeed, come, all ye faithful. “Come and behold Him.” For you are faithful by His grace! “Come let us adore Him: Dominum!”