Tag: Hymns

Singing from the Same Hymnbook

Sometimes you write about topical things driven by events – like last week on Israel.  Sometimes you write about one of the texts of the week because there are good things in it, but it isn’t the sermon text.  Sometimes you write about a point of theology because from reading and meditation you have a handle on it.  And sometimes you write about purely local happenings.  There is an old phrase that “if you are explaining you are losing.”  It comes from politics and it is probably true. It is probably true because most people aren’t persuadable.  Explaining is attempting to persuade and if nobody is open to it, if you are doing it, you lose. Better off pandering even if badly. But while I might be that cynical about our body politic, I’m not ready to be that cynical about the church. I like to believe that the Holy Spirit still works.

So, I’m going to talk about “singing from the same hymnbook.” That is a phrase for a reason.  Institutions, like the church, used to form people.  You didn’t join something because you already agreed 100%.  You joined something, or honestly you were born into it, and how it behaved formed you over time.  Everyone grew together – like the body of Christ – into singing from the same hymnbook.  Now there are legitimate complaints about that, but we’ve heard all those complaints turned up to 11 for two generations.  To the point that I’m not sure how many hymnbooks are left. And what is the result of this? Weak institutions that can’t form anything and that nobody trusts. Is that really the world we want to inhabit?

How did we get into this place where we don’t even know our own hymnbook? From my observation there were two paths.  The first path is the one of decay.  The hymnbook – absolutely true – used to be called “the layman’s bible”. The most used religious book in any Lutheran household used to be the hymnbook.  The Anglicans called theirs The Book of Common Prayer.  And that is what the hymnbook used to be, a daily companion to personal and family prayer life. Part of the decay was the decay of personal and family prayer life.  As the hymnbook was less used in personal life, many pastors responded by shrinking the hymns used in worship.  Every congregation has a repertoire.  A healthy congregation should have at least 200 hymns in that repertoire. Many that I know of have about 50. The problem with this is that the overall service becomes non-sensical. For example, when the gospel reading is the Parable of the Wedding Banquet, it makes complete sense to sing a bog-standard Lutheran hymn LSB 514 “The Bridegroom Soon Will Call Us.” In a congregation that has decayed to 50 hymns, you sing Amazing Grace – a great hymn – once a month.  Even if Amazing Grace has nothing to do with the Wedding Feast which warns about our attitude toward that gift of grace. The second path was defection. There is something more popular over here.  Heck with the rest of the institution, I’m going to benefit personally at their expense by hopping on the bandwagon.  The result is churches theoretically with the same teaching pulling in separate ways.

Our hymnbook – Lutheran Service Book – along with those prayer and study supports and liturgies at in the start, has 635 hymns deemed appropriate to support a congregation’s spiritual life. They cover both church seasons – Advent to End Times – and topics – sacraments, sanctification, trust, praise and others. In 15 years at my prior congregation did we ever sing every one of those 635 hymns? No way. How many did we sing? Roughly 400. Ok, but how many yearly, or on a regular basis?  We sang roughly 200 hymns in a given year.  Say 4 per week for 52 weeks ignoring advent, lent and other occasional services. Now within those 200 there were probably 50 that were sang a couple times or more a year, think A Mighty Fortress or Jesus Sinners Doth Receive.  There were about 100 that would be sang at least yearly, think On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry or Stricken’ Smitten’ and Afflicted.  And there would be another 100 that would probably be 2 years out of the 3 year cycle of readings.  Out of that you form a congregational repertoire of about 200.   

Part of the job of the pastor is forming the faith.  I am not doing my job if I allow the faith to swim around in in a shallow pool.  Partly because that shallow pool might appeal to one section, but another truly hates it. And partly because life is ocean deep. And if all you have is Amazing Grace, and you don’t have I Walk in Danger All the Way, your faith might get eaten by leviathan.  So, my suggestion, if we sing a hymn you don’t know is take it home.  That is why we publish it with the melody line.  It will be coming back.  Use it for your personal piety during the week.  Let it form you for a week in your thoughts and words. Let us work toward being Christians who can swim in the deep.

One Thing’s Needful

I probably have to issue an apology for the hymn chosen as the office hymn.  It has a tricky rhythm change. And I can’t even really blame it on modernity. It is just my observation that modern hymns – and by modern I mean anything written after roughly 1960 – often fail not because they aren’t good in a doctrinal sense, but because you can’t sing them. They are set too high, they have large gaps in the melody or they use complex rhythms; all of which just mean they are meant for soloists or trained singers, not congregational singing which is supposed to include everyone. But “One Thing’s Needful” (LSB 536) is from a text in the 17th century, translated in the 19th century, paired with a tune from the 17th.  The Companion to the hymnal observes, “the unusual metrical structure of the text is representative of the more soloistic style of hymns found at the end of the 17th century.” So these things go in and out of style.  We are not alone.

So, why am I afflicting you with this hymn?  I’d like you to ponder the juxtaposition of the first verse of the two rhythm parts. The flowing 4/4 time is serene and restful and presents a doctrinal truth.  “One thing’s needful; Lord this treasure teach me highly to regard/All else though it first give pleasure is a yoke that presses hard.” The truth it communicates is something that most Christians would assent to mentally almost immediately.  Christ is our only true need.  We don’t acknowledge this enough.  Instead our hearts chase other gods.  All of them turn out to eat us alive, to place us under heavy yokes. And in our serene space of contemplation this is all very easy to accept.

But then the rhythm changes to 3/4 with its driving “bum-bum-bum, bum-bum-bum.” Gone is the serene time of contemplation.  We are in the very midst of life. “Beneath it the heart is still fretting and striving/No true lasting happiness ever deriving/this one thing is needful all others are vain/I count all but loss that I Christ man obtain.” Whatever our head says in contemplation, the heart often desires other things.  The heart, part of this flesh which Paul has been pondering in our Epistle lessons, has a problem with sin.  It is constantly fretting and striving.  Oh, I might lose this, including my life.  No, I’m going to claim that and get it, I don’t care who I have to kill to do it. And we are driven along “bum-bum-bum” by things we do not know or even stop to ponder.

Our only help in that midst of life is often the “Jesus Take the Wheel” prayer.  Jesus, I know there is no happiness in this way. I know that I need you. Save me.  And then the hymn returns us to that moment of contemplation. Our frantic prayers are turned into communion with God or the consolation of the Spirit.   And in those moments we start to learn the basics of wisdom.  “Wisdom’s highest, noblest treasure, Jesus, is revealed in you/Let me find in you my pleasure, and my wayward will subdue.” I know this, teach me your way so that I might follow it all my days.

All our days we are thrown back and forth.  Luther called the Christian life: “Prayer, Meditation and Trial.” (He of course used Latin – oratio, meditation, tentatio – snob.) And like Luther’s last recorded words, “We are all beggars”, we end in the trial of death. Our hope is completely outside of us. “Through all my life’s pilgrimage, guard and uphold me, in loving forgiveness O Jesus enfold me.” And we only find our rest in faith that “this one thing is needful, all others are vain, I count all but loss that I Christ may obtain.”

I’ve included it because I think it is a masterful work in both word and song of this current life and our one hope in the midst of it.  (If you do not have a hymnal at home, this particular hymn can be seen online here: https://hymnary.org/hymn/LSB2006/536 )