Fifty-two weeks ago I tore out a page from my church bulletin and put it in my Bible. I pulled it out this morning (as I have ten or twenty times this past year) to look at the beautiful words again. I believe that only the Bible is divinely inspired, but some poetry, even in translation, points us to the inspired Bible.

As we begin this Advent season, I’m pondering the second verse of “O Holy Night.” It is good theology and worth some reflection.

Truly He taught us to love one another.
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we.
Let all within us praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! O praise His name forever!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!

I believe we should preach sermons from the Bible, but one could certainly give a good theology lesson, if not a sermon, from this one verse of a nineteenth-century Christmas carol.

The author, a wine merchant, lawyer, and poet, wrote the hymn from reading Luke carefully. He begins the verse reflecting on love. We love one another, and the law (which Jesus fulfills) is love. This is good theology for Christmas because God is not just loving, but he is Love itself. He comes to earth out of love that we might learn to love God and love one another.

And his gospel is peace. This is the message of the angels in Luke 2:13-14: “peace on earth, goodwill towards all people.” And from Zechariah’s song we read, “shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace . . .” (Luke 1:79). Love and peace: two central themes of Advent.

The next line of the Christmas hymn comes right out of reading Scripture, but in the early nineteenth-century context. As Jesus declared that he came to “proclaim release to the captive” (Luke 4:18), the hymn writer, French poet Placide Cappeau (1808-1877)[1] wrote, “Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother.” Why this line? Because Cappeau was opposed to slavery, and slavery still existed in the United States, Brazil, and Cuba when he wrote this poem in 1847. But in Christ, the former enslaved people become our brother or sister. Again, the hymn reflects good theology. Jesus breaks barriers of class, race, gender, and age, and we become brothers and sisters in Christ, who is Lord of all.

We could go on about the good theology here, but what is just as interesting is to know more about the hymn itself. A local priest in the town of Roquemaure, France commissioned Cappeau to write a poem to celebrate the renovation of the local church. Cappeau was a friend of the priest, but Cappeau did not attend the church and, in fact, was an atheist with socialist leanings. However, he loved to write poetry and so to learn his subject well, he read the Gospel of Luke. The author then contacted a friend to write the music: a Jewish composer named Adolphe Adam, who wrote music for operas and ballets, accepted the commission! To add to the anomalies related to this beautiful hymn, the English translation was done by John Sullivan Dwight, an American Unitarian and Transcendentalist.

And yet, with an atheistic poet, Jewish composer, and Transcendentalist translator, the gospel message shines through.

Good theology can come from broken and even non-Christian vessels. We have many beautiful works of Christian art created by non-Christians and even fallen Christians. Some of the beautiful songs we sing were written by people who left the faith. Yet we know that God’s message to Pharoah came through a snake, and God’s message to the Israelites came through Moses’s staff, and the Persian Emperor Cyrus is identified as an anointed one (Isaiah 45:1). God’s message is more powerful and beautiful than the vessels he uses.

Just as we can look upon an icon of a holy image, we should look past or through the article or the hymn or the person to see instead the Lord who is behind them. No Christian leader should be seen as perfect or pure. And God can use tragedy to bring about beauty, betrayal to bring about redemption, and he can use suffering for his glory.

This is part of the complex and remarkable message of Advent.

God can even use me and you.

[1] An interesting side note: Cappeau had his right hand blown off by a friend’s gun when he was only eight years old. The boy’s father paid for fifty percent of Cappeau’s education.

Dr. Scott W. Sunquist, President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, is author of the “Attentiveness” blog. He welcomes comments, responses, and good ideas.