The Holy PG-13 Sensuality of John Donne

Parental guidance is suggested; some content not suitable for children under the age of 13.

I've been a fan of John Donne since college days when Dr. W. Lindsay Hislop taught my English literature classes in the 1980s. Dr. Hislop instilled a love for the English language and its ancient history in his students, wherein I became a lover of the works of John Donne, Ben Jonson, and George Herbert.

What creative thinkers, these expressive Anglo-catholic philosophers, these witty writers of verse! Works like George Herbert's "The Altar" and "Easter Wings" are so inventive, it boggles the modern mind. Ben Jonson's "Hymn to God the Father" is not unlike Herbert's "Altar."

But Donne is my favorite of these three. His own "Hymn to God the Father" shows his ineffable wit in the use of innuendo and pun (which happens to rhyme with "done" and "Donne," and plays on the idea of the "Son" being metaphoric of the "sun"). Called "the father of Metaphysical poetry," Donne wrote his philosophy in religious passion to His Creator. He's my kind of guy. Like King David, he didn't do things half-baked what he intended for religious devotion to his God (see 2 Samuel 24:24, in context).

My favorite of Donne's works is his Italian (iambic pentameter) Holy Sonnet XIV, in which he goes beyond innuendo to double entendre. It's a provocatively earthy piece, not unlike St. Paul, in his epistle to the Ephesians, referring to marriage as reflective of Christ's relationship to the Church. Donne is more explicit:

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearley I love you, and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish mee.

Donne correlates the perilous passion of the desperately deceitful human heart to the mystery of Christ and His bride, for whom He laid down His holy life and pure heart in violent Passion. Indeed, God has a human heart subject to breaking. His Spirit can be deeply grieved.

St. Paul wrote about this seeming dichotomy of flesh and spirit in his letter to the Romans (chapter 7), wherein he explains that the war is resolved in the peaceful union of flesh and spirit by Christ Himself, Who in His incarnation, became flesh for our sake (chapter 8). The dichotomy between flesh and spirit is not real. Indeed, the spirit may now rule over the passions of the flesh because Christ came "in the likeness of sinful flesh, for sin: condemning sin in the flesh." In Christ, our flesh is filled with His Spirit, and "we are freed from the law of sin and death... into the glorious liberty of the children of God... in hope."

I was reminded of this poem tonight by means of a letter from a friend, a member of my wife's family. She reminded me that God heals the brokenhearted. Indeed, it is when I "rip" my heart and "lay it bear" before the Creator, Who "made Man in His own image — male and female, He created them" — that we may be truly restored to our original purpose as His image-bearers. What is ugly and thorny from the haughtiness of the human heart — when broken — can be molded and formed into a fleshy, gentle, loveable, and beautifully human altar upon which the hot flame of holy passion consumes the sin we offer to Him.

Christ our Hope

Lost now are the last vestiges of Christmases past. For each year Christmas comes and goes, but we may soon forget the impact of what we have experienced. We put away the ornaments and take down the wreaths and the tree. We want to get on with life, but we may leave Life behind.

The lights come down, but then the days begin to lengthen. Lent will come once more. Darkness will give way to the longer light of day. We have hope, because even in darkness there is the shimmering ray of hope. That is the essence of Christmas. Spring is coming not too far away. Light will overcome the long night of winter. It is the message of hope for the world.

So let us remember these three things that Christmas should teach us. These should stay with us throughout the whole year long. Ponder what Christmas means... what the incarnation of God means for you, if you are in Christ.

Christ is with you. His name is Immanuel, "God with us." God became one of us, like us in every way. Born of a woman, loved by his mother, circumcised, raised by a working man and taught the hard ways of life and the loving ways of God His Father. The writer of Hebrews tells us, "He learned obedience through the things He suffered." John writes in his Gospel, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us..." Jesus Christ knows our every sorrow and bears our every sin, because while He was without sin, yet He became "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." He is with us in our human condition, so that the human condition can become divine, restored to our original purpose.

Christ is for you. "If God did not spare His own Son, how shall He not freely give us all things?" St. Paul asked the Romans. "If God is for you, who can be against you?" Christ is for you... He gave up His life for you. If He will give you all things, what are you waiting for? Receive Him who is for you.

Christ is in you. This is a most amazing thing! God, who became Man, takes up residence in His people by His Spirit. The Father and the Son come to dwell within each person who loves Him. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life... Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him." (John 6:35-68) You can't get more in this life than to have the Living God living within you. When we receive the Lord in the communion of His body and blood, we receive Christ in us. St. Paul wrote that "Christ in you is the hope of glory." If He is in us, we have nothing to lose in this life and everything to gain, life eternal.

Epiphany, The Festival of Lights

Long lost to the secular celebration of Christmas, even by many Christians, still there remain some churches in America who still honor the traditional twelve-day feast of our Lord's nativity. Yesterday ended the almost two-week remembrance of God's incarnate birth at Bethlehem, followed by the Feast of the Epiphany today. The ancient Church, in her wisdom, preserves for us the best way to keep Christmas.

Eastern Orthodox Christians mark the day as the celebration of Christ's baptism by St. John the Baptist. John was His relative who had leapt in his mother Elizabeth's womb when Christ, an embryo just conceived in the womb of the holy Virgin Mary, came into his presence for the first time. Perhaps we could say that John himself was baptized at that moment in the watery sac in utero, for indeed, he was at that moment filled with the Holy Spirit. While it may have been painful for the elderly woman, Elizabeth rejoiced when John kicked and jumped within her. She was as excited as he was in the presence of the Queen Mother bearing the King of the Universe incarnate in His "throne-womb." (Yes, you can laugh. That is a pun.)

Epiphany is from the Greek word for "manifestation" or "appearance." When we say someone's had an epiphany, we see the cartoon light bulb above their head, if we have any imagination. While to Eastern Christians it represents the manifestation of the Holy Trinity (a theophany of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) at Jesus' baptism by John, to Western Christians it is a remembrance of the manifestation of Christ as "a light to lighten the Gentiles." For it commemorates when the pagan magicians from the East followed the light of the Star and came to adore Him.

They were likely Zoroastrian astronomers from Persia, who had the writings of Daniel the Prophet—and perhaps other Hebrew scriptures—while he had exiled there. In Daniel's prophecies, they found that enlightenment accompanied true wisdom (see 2:20-22; 5:10-16, and 12:3). It seems these descendants of the astrologers of Daniel's time had come to accept and learn the wisdom of Daniel. They were no fools, but as scientists of the stars and of current events had interpreted the signs of the times (the seventy weeks of years—490, of which the Babylonian exile was sign) which Daniel foretold, and they were expecting the coming of the Son of Man (Daniel 7).

In our church we celebrate the Epiphany feast as "The Festival of Lights" for this reason. We do it in festive style with a chili feast after the beautiful candlelight service. It is perhaps from this latter ancient custom that many Protestant evangelical churches get their Christmas Eve candlelight services, but package it all into one night, giving only lip service to Epiphany. I prefer the traditionally longer Christmas, consummated by Epiphany. It makes a fitting end to the whole joyous season. Tonight, in fact, I brought some desserts: leftover Christmas cookies and three of the four pies I'd baked that didn't get eaten at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. (Yes, I had frozen the pies and thawed them!)

Many years ago, my friend David Austin, a song-writer who has written music to some of my hymns, introduced me to an old, beautiful Christmas hymn "Brightest and Best" on one of his early albums of music for the season. (Here's a plug: his CD "Journey in Faith" has my hymn "Let Never Ending Praises Ring.") But I just found out today "Brightest and Best" is really an Epiphany hymn, as two of the old tunes written for it are named "Epiphany," and its author had written it for this holy day. (My favorite tune to this, however, I cannot find a name. But listen for it on an old Glen Campbell Christmas album apparently, if you can find it. (And Kathy Mattea did it on her "Good News" album). I discovered on a Country Christmas CD performed by the A-Strings, featuring Glen Campbell. Campbell only sings three of the verses I've found below. One of his verses doesn't even appear at Cyberhymnal.)

Reginald Heber (1783-1826) was an early 19th c. Anglican rector, who eventually and reluctantly became the bishop of Calcutta, India. He wrote one of the most famous of Western hymns, "Holy, Holy, Holy," and the missionary hymn, "From Greenland's Icy Mountain, From India's coral strand," among forty-some others. Here are the words to his Christmas/Epiphany hymn "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning" (1811), introduced to me by my old friend David. ("Sons of the morning" is reference from Job, where it is unclear if the meaning is the stars or the angels, or both. The mystery is appropriately awesome to ponder.)

Hail, blessed morn! See the great Mediator
Down from the regions of glory descend!
Shepherds, go worship the Babe in a manger
Lo! For a god the bright angels attend.

Refrain: Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness and lend us Thine aid;
Star of the East, the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.

Cold on His cradle the dewdrops are shining;
Low lies His head with the beasts of the stall;
Angels adore Him in slumbers reclining,
Maker and Monarch and Savior of all!
(Campbell sings this alternate last line:
"Wisemen and shepherds before Him do fall.")

Say, shall we yield Him, in costly devotion,
Odors of Edom and offerings divine?
Gems of the mountain and pearls of the ocean,
Myrrh from the forest, or gold from the mine?

Vainly we offer each ample oblation,
Vainly with gifts would His favor secure;
Richer by far is the heart’s adoration,
Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor.

As Rev. Heber died of a brain hemorrhage in India at the young age of 43, posthumously did the first hymnal to publish it honor the memory of his God-inspired song.

Fear Not (Be Not Afraid)

It is a human characteristic: fear of death. We seem to be programmed to fear anything that threatens our lives, even if the threat is not real, but imagined. We lash out when we feel our safety threatened. And it causes all kinds of problems in our world. It's like an endless chain of self-destruction of the human race: sin and death, and the fear of death that keeps the cycle going.

How can we end the cycle? Or can we break it? If we cannot on our own, can God? "With man it is impossible, but not with God," Jesus said. "With God all things are possible."

He should know. That is how He entered our world. That is how He was introduced to humanity: by casting out fear. For, as the angel Gabriel concluded in his words to the holy Virgin, "Nothing will be impossible with God."

In the Gospel accounts of the Nativity of our Lord, or the Birth Narratives, Luke and Matthew both commence angelic annunciations with the words, "Fear not." When Gabriel appeared to Zechariah the priest while he burned incense and offered prayers in the temple, the angel introduced himself with the words, "Fear not..." Zechariah, naturally was troubled and fear fell upon him, anyway. Even though he lacked faith, John the messenger who would prepare the way for the Lord, would be born to his wife Elizabeth.

Six months later, Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to announce she would be the Mother of our Lord. He could not keep from exclaiming her greatness among the human race: "Rejoice, you who are full of grace; the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women." But she, too, was troubled, naturally, and to this the angel said, "Fear not..."

Mary was betrothed (legally married) to Joseph, the carpenter of the line of David. Thinking Mary had been unfaithful to him, he sought to divorce her secretly, because he was a just man. It took an angelic visitation to convince him otherwise. The same message, "Fear not," accompanied his angelic dream: "Joseph... do not be afraid to take to you Mary as your wife."

About nine months after Mary conceived the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, the clash of kingdoms (human vs. divine political systems) came to bear on the lowliest of people. God was turning the order of things upside down. His Son was Virgin-born of a woman, and women were belittled in that time and culture as they have been throughout history. Christianity has helped to change that. Shepherds were the lowest on the economic strata in 1st century Judea, but they were the first people to hear of the birth of the Son of God. When the angel appeared to them while they were in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night, the angel of the Lord said to them, as well, "Fear not!"

So the message of Christmas to us all is "Fear not... be not afraid" because God has come to dwell with humankind, and has restored all things through His Son, even reversing the curse of death so that its sting is not forever. We now have the promise of life eternal and abundant, full and free. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews seems to say it best:

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.

Who orders "all things"?

This sermon was delivered by the Rev. Donald Armstrong at St. George's Anglican Church on Christmas Eve 2009.

'In the Name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Have you all heard about the snappy sermon starter delivered by Father Tim Jones of York, England? He told his congregation last Sunday: "My advice as a priest this Christmas season is to shoplift,"

“In these days of economic distress”, said Father Tim, “this is sometimes the best option for poor people trying to make ends meet.”

Well, I understand his desperation to say something new and clever. Yesterday I reread 17 of my previous Christmas sermons… I stopped there because I simply couldn’t take it any more… it is a wonder we have a congregation left. The problem seemed to be with the introductory material… it all seemed to be such a cliché… setting up cultural straw dogs… contrasting good and evil, light and darkness… naming corrupt and disordered principalities and powers.

Telling everyone it is alright to stuff your pockets at Wal-mart seems, on one level, to be a refreshing change…

Well, the truth is that I was under orders anyway to clean up my Christmas sermon subject matter. Jessie pleaded with me this year to spare us all my typical gloomy social analysis… to stop making political comparisons. "Besides," she said, "Alan and Eric have already covered all that this advent." But the tough part for preachers is that… the story of the birth of Christ is precisely a story of the collision of two worlds… and it has everything to do with the gloomy political, social, and economic condition in which we find ourselves… as we live in transition between a world under our own management and the world under God’s reign.

The announcement of Christmas is precisely:

• That in the birth of this Jesus a new world order has broken in upon us.
• It is a world no longer destined to be marred and marked by our failures.
• But a world redeemed and restored under God’s most gracious rule.

But this reordering requires our recognition, submission, and obedience to take effect. It simply contravenes God’s most gracious reign if we insist on living under a different set of priorities, principles, and rules.

But I’m preaching to the choir… not literally, but because we all know this... I believe that all of us here are committed to a worldview in which we live as God’s creatures in God’s creation on God’s terms.

But we hold these truths as a struggling minority in world more and more offended by this perspective… in a world committed to getting and possessing and controlling and dominating and winning… so, it really is about all these straw dogs of cultural, political, economic misconduct

• it really is about challenging heresies that promote a massage instead of a message… the magic of the season instead of the miracle of Christmas
• it really is about taking on the powerful who are taking advantage of the powerless
• it really is about our purposeful attempt to reset the hearts and minds of God’s creatures to their original factory default settings

This is precisely the point St. Luke was making in reporting that “in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” The question this census raised was then and still is "who’s world is it anyway… God’s or Caesar’s?"

This is why St. Luke reported this particular fact… He was making the point that the birth of Jesus was an answer to precisely this question. Not only whose world is it… God’s world… but what typifies God’s rule: compared to those principalities and powers that claimed for themselves a kingship that is now revealed to be God’s alone.

Whose world is it anyway?

That is the question the world must answer, both intellectually and behaviorally. This is now and always has been a disconcerting, rather combative, and unpopular point to make because in fact what we really want to hear and preach is something gentle and appealing, a privately practiced personal religion; the warmth and comfort of the Christmas songs we all love to hear; something much sweeter than revolution; something that doesn’t require so much of us; something that doesn’t make people mad at us for upsetting life on their terms.

But in the birth of Jesus the hope and expectation raised by the prophets was that it is indeed God’s world… The religion of Christmas is much more than a sweet story of a birth in the manger.

• It is a whole new understanding of the world and how it operates.
• It requires much more of us than seasonal good moods and generosity
• It rattles our whole view of the structures in which we live
• It requires a commitment to an entirely new and complete understanding of the world

And that can be a challenge to our very existence. The message of Christmas requires us to live life on completely new terms, under new conditions, with new priorities. The unpleasantness of this message is that we would rather think this to be our world and life is to be lived on our terms our way.

But our world is at odds with God’s order: in a nut shell, we are about getting and having. When God in Christ is about giving and sharing.

Perhaps our children reveal these instincts as they rush the Christmas tree. Are they more excited about giving or getting? Have we taught them that giving is better than getting? Because that is precisely the difference between man’s rule and God’s reign. Getting and taking vs. giving and sacrificing.

Do we spend our lives extending our holdings and our control? Or are our blessings really a blessing to others?

Is our world effectively without God and thus dominated by self-will and self-expression? Or is Jesus at the center of our lives and our world marked by self-giving and self-offering?

We can all do this self-examination easily ourselves… Knowing this congregation as I do I would imagine we have all already taken such a spiritual inventory and we are all striving to reflect more and more the generosity and self-giving of God.

So our issue is not adjusting to a shattering new worldview. Our issue is the struggle to reflect more completely the image of Christ our Lord; because we ourselves are clear that this life in Christ offers the greatest peace and joy, and we want to share this good news.

It is the one explanation of our human condition that offers both understanding and solution… relief and hope; and we want the whole world to live in and with this hope and expectation.

And thankfully the message of Christmas is also a word to us about the Lord’s help in this undertaking: Because the Savior who comes to us tonight is not only with us, but for us!

So as much as the birth of Jesus confronts us with a challenge, it also offers us the solution. That we are profoundly changed and reshaped by what we witness, as we journey to the manger… as we reflect on this tableau tonight…

It holds within it the promise of our own transformation into the image and likeness of Christ.

Think about the shepherds and the wise men, and the upside down world to which their situation is a witness: The shepherds in those days were not allowed to give evidence in a court of law; but yet they were the first witnesses to the manger of Jesus. They were at the very bottom of the intellectual ladder, but yet they were the first to spot the Kingship of Christ.

The wise men, the three kings, came to worship the Christ, bowing in obedience and submission. This is the message of Christmas: Like the wise men, we need to understand that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

And as the Shepherds, we need to recognize Jesus is the Christ: he fills our empty hearts and weak minds with his complete and dependable love.

There is something far more here than a sort of seasonal good cheer:

There is the revelation that under this new management announced right in the face of an enrollment census that marked the rule and power of Caesar, that in Christ and not under Caesar, kingship is expressed in loving service. Authority develops out of obedience to God. Life comes through death.

As I grow older, I sometimes wonder if there is a future in the future. But this is precisely what God puts right… We are moved in Him from the despair of no future to the reality of an eternal destiny. Christ calls all people to the knowledge and love of God. He comes to restore and put right what went wrong in the garden. And that is our source of eternal hope in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

But more than that… Once we see clearly the full significance of this manger birth, we are called to reflect its wondrous light & truth. The image of the true and living God revealed in all its glory in the birth of Jesus, is to be reflected into all the world; that by us "all the peoples of the world will be blessed."

Our mission and the mission of the church is to reflect God’s glory. As we ourselves see the glory of the Lord, it is God’s purpose that this glory be reflected off us. We need to be clear that we are not little pieces of God’s glory, but that in our faithful living we reflect God’s Glory, and that reflection is our world-changing work and witness. That is the tall order: it requires a total reordering of our lives; it requires life turned right-side out. It requires faith practiced not just in church, but in our lives outside these walls. We are to be a different people—our instincts and our reactions—are to be wholly other than the getting world has come to expect, reflecting instead our life giving and sacrificing God.

Tonight is not only about our expectancy of God, but the revelation of God’s expectations of us. And that’s the new world order we’re talking about. Don’t be taken in by anything else or anything less. That’s the message of Christmas… that the king has come to bring his kingdom… and the king requires our allegiance and citizenship.

Let us rejoice and be glad in the good fruits, the new life, and the certain hope this news brings to all the corners of the world…

Amen."

All things for the good of those who love Christ

Yet it seems not that way. Life seems like hell for us when we suffer. We do not understand why we go through the things we do. Take, for instance, Patriarch Bartholemew and the Orthodox Christians of Istanbul. While the Holy Land was the place where Jesus was born, walked among humankind, and died, and where after His resurrection He birthed His Church, Istanbul (ancient Byzantium, christened Constantinople, or "New Rome" in A.D. 324) and Nicomedia in Anatolia, both in modern Turkey, are really the center and cradle of the universal Christian faith, believe it or not, because of early Christians fleeing Roman persecutions and Jewish Wars in the Holy Land. So it seems unlikely the importance of this place to modern Westerners, because of the fact that 99% of its population are Muslim, and the "secular" state of Turkey denies rights to its Christian citizenry, despite its claim to religious tolerance.

The Ecumenical Patriarch teaches us that even though life is hard, even though death—the thing we all fear the most—looms over the human condition, and while it is not pleasant to suffer for Christ's name, in the end "it's all good," because those who suffer with Him will also be glorified with Him in the resurrection. Greek Christians greet one another during the feast of the Lord's Resurrection, "Christos Anesti!" (Christ is risen!) Hope is in the most unlikely of places and at the most unlikely of times.

At this time of year, we remember that this is how God works most things for good... through suffering: He sent His Son to be born of a single woman (a shame in those days), among a persecuted sect (religious Jews were second-class citizens of the pagan Roman Empire), at a time of hardship (traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census only to find no place to stay), in a most unlikely of places (a feeding trough for cattle in a stinky barn built into a cave).

Watch this "60 Minutes" coverage of the suffering Christians in Turkey, courtesy of CBS News. (With apologies for the ED commercial...)

Something new every Christmas

Today I learned something new. Christmas is like that. It is almost like being a child all over again and learning things you didn't know before. And since there is so much Christmas music, I don't get a chance to hear or sing all the songs each Advent or Christmastime. But rarely do I find there is more than meets the eye to an old song I've known all my life like this one. I found out in Church today that there are two more verses to the traditionally sung three verses of Rev. Charles Wesley's hymn "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." I didn't even know they existed. (Well, maybe I wondered about it when Amy Grant alluded to one of them a number of years ago in her first Christmas album, but not to the extent Wesley wrote them.)

I love this Christmas carol about as much as I love Paul Gerhardt's "All My Heart This Night Rejoices." Wesley was a man of a deep, orthodox, and evangelical Christian theology; a bold man of real faith in the living God. He loved the Scriptures and he loved the Gospel especially, because He loved the One revealed in it to his soul. It really is good news. Wesley's knowledge of the Old and New Testaments and his application of that wealth to memorable music about Christ his Saviour are astounding by today's standards. It seems nobody writes songs with this kind of depth anymore. I've tried. Campfire choruses just don't do it for me like these old babies do, and there are some hymns that just don't approach the depth or height of many of Wesley's hundreds of hymns. (That guy was really productive!)

Since we take these things for granted, hearing but not listening to the meaning sometimes, let me reiterate what the hymn, so familiar to our ears, speaks to our hearts if we listen. In verse one, Wesley recites the familiar song of the angels who appeared to the shepherds out in the fields near Bethlehem (from St. Luke's Gospel). Then he goes a bit further in evangelical zeal to almost quote Psalm 100:

Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies,
With th'angelic host proclaim
"Christ is born in Bethlehem!"

Then verse two is a beautiful echo of St. Paul's words to the Colossians about Christ's pre-eminence over all things (as I wrote about recently), and yet His humility in taking up human nature, (alluding to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and to Isaiah's prophecy fulfilled in St. Matthew's birth narrative):

Late in time, behold Him come,
Offspring of the Virgin's womb,
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail, th'incarnate Deity,
Pleased as Man with men to dwell,
Jesus, Our Immanuel.

Then in verse three, Wesley speaks of Jesus' unique nature, the union of God (eternally begotten of the Father) and Man (Who for us men and our salvation came down from the heavens and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary). Christ was twice born: eternally begotten and born of the Virgin so that we may be twice born (of the womb and "of water and the Spirit"):

Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness...
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that Man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

Now, for the verses that were totally new to me (except for these first two lines Amy Grant included in her version that I mentioned):

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display Thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to Thine.

Starting with Haggai's prophetic name for Christ, the "Desire of nations," Wesley then makes an obvious reference to the prehistoric promise to the mother of our race in Genesis 3:15 just after our first parents fell into sin. (See also Romans 16:20.) Our nature was ruined by that Fall. But not beyond hope. Nothing is impossible with God.

There is still more here: the good news. In Christ's coming for our race's redemption, our "ruined nature" is "now restored." The blessedness of redeemed humanity is not simply that we are saved from our sin and its penalty, but that we enjoy union with God, partaking of the divine nature, just as St. Peter wrote. God is gracious not simply because he forgives our sins (for in that He is merciful), but graces us in that He became one with our nature (our flesh, blood, and bone) in Christ and we thereby become one with His divinity. That is the teaching of the New Testament and of the orthodox faith. There is no room in the Christian belief for Gnostic dualism that separates between flesh and spirit, between physical and spiritual. No! Christ redeems all things. (But, as I said, I've already written about that.)

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.
Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the Life, the inner man:
O, to all Thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.

The old Adam, the old man, the corrupted nature by which we all came into this world, because we are descendants of the first Adam, is replaced with the original nature of humanity before the Fall, and it is Christ the Heaven-born and Virgin-born who restores us into the image and after the likeness of God, as we were intended to be. For those who are in Christ, as many as have received Him, the Incarnate Word—God who is from the beginning, Light and Life—the living God is now our inner man and fills our spirit with His spirit, breathing into us the breath of life. Christ in us, the hope of glory.

Glory to the Newborn King!