Advent Art: Creator Sets Free

A lesser-known carol and a new name for Jesus

Welcome to "Advent Art," a special series exploring the intersection of faith and creativity. Each week in December, we'll delve into a work of art, exploring the biblical texts and spiritual themes that inspire these artistic expressions as they illuminate the path to Christmas.¹ You can also listen to this essay in podcast form here.

Of the Father’s love begotten

ere the worlds began to be,

he is Alpha and Omega,

he the Source, the Ending he,

of the things that are, that have been,

and that future years shall see,

evermore and evermore!

O that birth forever blessed,

when the Virgin, full of grace,

by the Holy Ghost conceiving,

bore the Savior of our race;

and the babe, the world’s Redeemer,

first revealed his sacred face,

evermore and evermore!

This is he whom heav’n-taught singers

sang of old with one accord,

whom the Scriptures of the prophets

promised in their faithful word;

now he shines, the long-expected;

let creation praise its Lord,

evermore and evermore!

O ye heights of heav’n, adore him;

angel hosts, his praises sing:

all dominions, bow before him

and extol our God and King;

let no tongue on earth be silent,

ev’ry voice in concert ring,

evermore and evermore!

Christ, to thee, with God the Father,

and, O Holy Ghost, to thee,

hymn and chant and high thanksgiving

and unwearied praises be,

honor, glory, and dominion

and eternal victory,

evermore and evermore!

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“Long ago, in the time before all the days, before the creation of all things, the one who is known as the Word was there face to face with the Great Spirit. This Word fully represents Creator and shows us who he is and what he is like. He has always been there from the beginning, for the Word and Creator are one and the same. Through the Word all things came into being, and not one thing exists that he did not create.

Creator’s life shined out from the Word, giving light to all human beings. This is the true Light that comes to all the peoples of the world and shines on everyone. The Light shines into the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it or put it out.

Creator’s Word became a flesh-and-blood human being and pitched his sacred tent among us, living as one of us.

Drawn from the Water (Moses) gave us our tribal laws, but the gift of great kindness and truth came from Creator Sets Free (Jesus), the Chosen One.”

—The Gospel of John, 1: 1-5, 14, 17, First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament

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I had not planned on marrying a pastor. My comparatively serene days as a professional musician and college professor left me woefully underprepared for this chaotic (albeit joyful) life with my favorite Presbyterian.

What has surprised me most about this life is how simultaneously beautiful and harrowing it is to have a front-row seat to the human experience.

After nearly ten years at Edwin’s side, I feel this phrase—the human experience—deep in my bones. I think about the couples he’s wed, their babies he’s baptized a year later. I think about that time the call came during date night, and we turned from the restaurant towards the hospital. When the air in the room hung sterile and silent, save beeping machines, as Edwin asked the estranged family members to hold hands and pray. I think about the time my chest tightened as I sat in the back of the drafty church at the service for the young woman who died of an “overdose” (Edwin always says that word is a misnomer because there is no “correct dose” of heroin). I think about how he’s appeared at retirement receptions, interventions, and even court on behalf of “parishioners.” I use quotes because that word feels wrong. What do you call strangers you attempt to love with your life?

Most of us live these major transitions—the weddings and funerals, the births and deaths—only a few times with our own beloved ones. But it is the gift—and sometimes, simultaneously, the burden—of the pastor to approach these crossroads, the immediacy of the human experience, with bewildering regularity.

As I’ve watched “my person” withstand the whiplash of joy and pain, of malignancy and miracle, Frederick Buechner’s oft-quoted words have become a gentle mantra: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.”

Today, in the light of Advent, they strike me as not unlike a Christmas angel’s message, a proclamation to all who wait here outside of heaven, the brutal truth, a consolation, and a call to courage.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Of the things that are, that have been

One beautiful thing did happen a couple of weeks back. We were heading out to eat breakfast together, just the two of us, after Edwin had led a Veterans Day prayer service at an assisted living facility (on a morning off, mind you—the human experience does not observe Sabbath), when a church member grabbed him by the arm and said, “Katherine² has asked for a visit if you can spare a moment before you go.” I hung back, smiling politely and discreetly reaching into my purse to see if I’d brought a book to read while I waited. But Edwin grabbed my hand, and we were on our way to Katherine’s room.

“She was born in 1925,” the church member whispered in the hall. “Turns 100 next December.” Her slight frame lay atop the reclining hospital bed like a flower dropped from a bouquet. Her hair shone a crystalline, gleaming white. Her arthritic fingers boasted multiple rings and soft pink polish. Around her neck rested a golden chain with a simple charm that looked like it was from another century. There was a light in her eyes, clear and gracious, a little sad, perhaps, but completely alert, entirely present. Here it was again, the human experience.

I thought of all the things those eyes had seen. I thought of how it must feel to have outlived almost everyone you’d ever known as a young person, to watch them all go. Every surface of her room was lined with pictures of children and teenagers, of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I assumed. Did they visit? Was she terribly lonely here in the twilight of her life?

But it quickly became clear that Katherine hadn’t asked us there to chat; she had business with my husband, her pastor: she was ready to receive her next mission, to move on from this world, to let go. What strikes me, though, as I remember this sacred moment, is how joyful she seemed. She asked questions about whom she should have her daughter call when she passed; she told Edwin she wanted “The Lord Is My Shepherd” read and “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” sung at the service. Her tone was smooth, her voice even. She talked as if she were planning a party, her anticipation undampened by the reality that she would not be attending, at least not in the traditional sense.

When logistics were settled, we asked her how she was feeling, what else she needed in the meantime.

That’s when it happened. She said she felt “quite alright for now, thank you” and reached across a small table that floated above her bed to grab a large book. “I have my stories.”

She gestured to her bookshelf, where I noticed thick, large-print novels by authors I didn’t recognize. She pulled something out from under the thin white sheet: her Kindle. “I’ve got more in here,” she said, the corner of her lip turning up slightly in a wry smile. She looked into my eyes, and I felt like we had somehow met before.

Did she somehow know I was an author? That I was struggling to believe my words had purpose, that all this work, this labor to bring my next book into the world, would be worth it?

Before we left, we held her hands—frail, nobbly, and bejeweled—and recited Psalm 23 in the King James, just like my own grandmother had taught me. Tears welled in my eyes as we made our way out to the car.

Later, back at my computer, as I write, I think of Katherine’s Kindle, the dozen titles on her Murphy bed’s shelves, how much comfort she seemed to glean from them. I wish I could remember the names of the authors. I want so much to tell them about the 99-year-old woman, standing at the outer edge of the human experience, waiting “to let go and let God”—tell them that their words were keeping her company. That their creation was a small mercy on that beautiful-terrible Monday in November in that woman’s near century of beautiful-terrible days. That perhaps she felt a little less alone because of something they created.

In that moment of tender connection, I saw her books as love letters from God, reminding me—even though I’d never read a word between their binding—that created things have the power to meet us along the road of human experience, to walk us home, to sing a spiritual song of unspoken connection. To make us feel a little less afraid in this beautiful-terrible world.

Photo by Drew Coffman on Unsplash

Let no tongue on earth be silent

The first time I read The First Nations Translation of the New Testament³, it sang to something deep within me. One of the many things I loved about this new translation, written by Native North Americans from over twenty-five tribes, was the poignant names used for the familiar personas of scripture, translated in the traditional style of storytellers from the Native oral culture. Each name is meant to articulate the essence of the person. God becomes “The Great Spirit,” “Giver of Breath,” and dozens more. Mary, Mother of God, is called “Bitter Tears,” and Moses, “Drawn from the Water.” Jesus is “Creator Sets Free.”

When I first heard that name, Creator Sets Free, I was confused and intrigued. What did it mean?

Seeing God as a creator, as an artist, is something I’ve been writing about more and more, something, I dare say, I am starting to grasp as I do more research for my new book. I’ve long known with my head, thanks to the opening of John’s Gospel, that Jesus was not a mere bystander in creation but one with the Creator from the beginning. But calling Jesus “Creator Sets Free” names this as part of his identity, as something ongoing and essential.

Creating is the most loving thing the Giver of Breath does. (It is right there in the name!) And it is from this same love that Jesus is begotten or born. Christmas, then, that moment when the Creator becomes also, somehow, the created, means that Jesus, Creator Sets Free, embodies, understands, and redeems the human experience.

Photo by Cofohint Esin on Unsplash

The text “O the Father’s Love Begotten,” a lesser-known Christmas carol, was written by Spanish poet Prudentius (350-413 AD) and set to the 13th century Gregorian chant “Divinum Mysterium." When this song came on my Choral Christmas playlist, a few days after reading Jesus’ new-to-me indigenous name, I realized it is the only Christmas carol I know that even attempts to sing of these mysteries:

“Of the Father’s love begotten

ere the worlds began to be,

he is Alpha and Omega,

he the Source, the Ending he,

of the things that are, that have been,

and that future years shall see,

evermore and evermore!”

Christmas means we have a Creator who knows firsthand the terrible beauty of being human. Intimately, he knew the empty chairs at dining tables, broken relationships, betrayal. He set the stars in the sky, and he wept with love for his friend when he died. He separated the heavens from the earth and also knows end-of-workday weariness. Like Katherine, he watched those he loved die, and he knew what it was to see death coming for him. He felt his mortality deep in his bones, in all its beauty and terror.

Christmas means we need not be afraid because Jesus, a fellow artist, was born into the beautiful and terrible human experience, and in doing so, he named it as good, named us as good. He loved us with his life, and in doing so, he sets us free.

This season, I like thinking about Jesus as a wild, creative force set free in the world, not coming to condemn us like I feared he would when I was a child, but meeting the raw materials of this broken human experience with joy and patiently shaping them into something more beautiful than terrible. Unafraid to get his hands dirty, he mixes an artisanal mud concoction to heal a blind man and leans right into the filthy, calloused feet of his disciples. A storyteller through and through, his parables (a word from the Greek that means to “come alongside”), like every great work of art, transcend his time and place and leave us with more questions than answers. The master of the cosmic cliffhanger, he wrote himself into this play because he loved it, because he loved us, so much.

Jesus’ creative work, then, is healing, wholeness. Isn’t that true for every artist? We are a poem, and he is still writing.

Corregio’s “Holy Night”

The babe, the world’s Redeemer

When Katherine and I locked eyes, I felt like she grabbed onto a part of me I’d been afraid to release. I hadn’t realized how I was white-knuckling the artist life (yet again) until that moment. The angels during Advent say to everyone they meet, “Do not be afraid!” And when I stood before Katherine, I heard that command as one specific to me for this moment. I realized I have been giving in to fear, letting it get the best of me: the fear that couldn’t do it, write the book I dreamt of writing, make the music I long to make.

I wonder if that’s part of what Jesus sets us free from—our fear, from living in slavery to it. I want to create with abandon—this next book, but also this life. I want to write and play and live from a place of unrestrained love, the kind that drives out fear and replaces it with joy.

Jesus sets us free from the lies we have come to believe about ourselves, from other people’s stories that we are living. He redeems us from that false sense of ego that tells us we need to be self-sufficient or that success can only be measured in material terms, the fear that there is not enough—time, talent, energy, resources.

This Christmas, I desperately want, with an artist’s eye toward beauty, toward wholeness, to let Jesus redeem the human experience once and for all.

And so maybe a better question is, what does he set us free for?

Photo by Katarzyna Dutkowska on Unsplash

Let creation praise its Lord

If you find yourself on Christmas’ doorstep like me, weary and wary, cautiously hopeful with a thread of faith as thin as tinsel, if you’ve let fear keep you from creating the things you’ve always meant to make (this year or evermore), even if aren’t sure about this Baby Jesus (by that or any other name), I hope you’ll accept this invitation—one I realize I am saying mostly for myself:

Do not be afraid.

Instead, this Christmas, may we name each book read from a hospital bed a love letter, each carol sung through tears, a lullaby. Every created thing glows with a recognition of God’s creative power made most powerfully manifest that first Christmas. Let us trust that everything made before and since vibrates with the same Love, even the imperfect offerings that come from our very human hands.

Perhaps that is what we are set free for, to trust, to create in love, and to invite others to do the same.

What is creation, what is art, if not the work of setting free? Of being set free? Of overcoming the terror of the world by daring to create beauty anyway?

May it be so. Evermore and evermore.

1. This week is our final installment of Advent Art for now. If you enjoyed this series, let me know in the comments!

2. Name changed for privacy reasons.

3. Published in 2021, I first learned about from author

Sarah Bessey

on her amazing Substack, Field Notes