Take this hymn and shove it!
2008 November 18
I have no patience for hymns that have nothing Christian about them. Take this stinker from LSB (#789) by Albert F. Bayly:
Praise and thanksgiving, Father, we offer For all things living, Created good: Harvest of sown fields, Fruits of the orchard, Hay from the mown fields, Blossom and wood. .Bless, Lord, the labor We bring to serve You That with our neighbor We may be fed. Sowing or tilling, We would work with You, Harvesting, milling For daily bread. .
Father, providing Food for Your children, By Your wise guiding Teach us to share One with another, So that, rejoicing With us, all others May know Your care. .
Seriously, what prevents a Muslim, a Jew, or a Unitarian from singing that? We will never sing it at Immanuel! Never, I tell you.
There. I got it out of my system.
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11 Responses
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Heh…nice. Do you feel better now that you got that out of your system?
Although the hymn speaks about Creation, it fails to even note the corruption that plagues us and creation, or the newness and life brought by Christ. At a minimum, one must say that the hymn is structured fully outside the confessional Lutheran understanding. How sad.
I don’t know about that legend, but the hymn sounds like a “Divine Providence” sermon from Concordia Pulpit in the 50’s.
I personally love the camp song they tried to force John and me to sing at Luwisomo.
I guess the question is how do you teach creation and our use of it?
Never criticize a hymn for what it doesn't say. By that standard lots of great hymns would go by the wayside. It's your comments that constitute a "stinker". Why some people are put off by hymns that speak with ordinary vocabulary and somehow touch bases with the real world is beyond me.
Mr. Otte,
Do you really mean that we should never criticize a hymn for what it doesn't say? Because the problem here is that it is to an ambiguous god. I firmly believe that for a hymn to be great – or even acceptable – it must be to the one true God, the Holy Trinity. If that is not evident, than it is not Christian. My criticism has nothing to do with "ordinary vocabulary" or that it "touch[es] bases with the real world." It is that it is not a hymn to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
If we don't have that as our standard, then we have lost the Faith altogether, and we may as well become Unitarians.
Mr. Otte,
Do you really mean that we should never criticize a hymn for what it doesn't say? Because the problem here is that it doesn't say which god we are singing to! It is to an ambiguous god. I firmly believe that for a hymn to be great – or even acceptable – it must be to the one true God, the Holy Trinity. If that is not evident, than it is not Christian. My criticism has nothing to do with "ordinary vocabulary" or that it "touch[es] bases with the real world." It is that it is not a hymn to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
If we don't have that as our standard, then we have lost the Faith altogether, and we may as well become Unitarians.
Having no particular affection for this hymn, I think that it, and other hymns lacking Christological depth (pehaps depth of any sort), can serve a place within the context of the Divine Service. A hymn is one component of the DS and, arguably, the DS is a whole — what I mean is, the strength and depth of the DS as a whole actually provides the context within which to understand this hymn. Could you do better? Of course, but I don't necessarily think that this hymn needs to be stricken. There is an appropriate place for praise and thanksgiving in the DS, particularly following the Supper.
Jon,
I think what you suggest is possible. Certainly good, dead orthodox people "supply" the needed Christology.
What worries me, however, are those who don't have the proper catechesis to do so. Also, hymns are sometimes sung in other contexts; for example, we have a program for families of our school children every year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and hymns and songs are sung there (including this one in previous years). In this scenario, it's downright dangerous.
As the sainted Robert Preus said, "The Gospel assumed is the Gospel denied." If that's true for sermons, it's true for hymns, too. So, one of my rules for hymns is, "No Jesus, no sing."
My mentor called this The cannibal hymn: "That with out neighbor we may be fed". How did they miss that God is still "Father" in this one, anyway?
This hymn obviously leaves much unsaid. On the positive side, it calls God "Father", it affirms God as creator and creation as good ("The earth's is the Lord's and the fullness thereof"), it reminds us of man's responsibility to act as God's viceroy over creation and his responsibility to care for his neighbour. So, a lot that is good and biblical is affirmed. What is missing is anything about the Fall and the need for redemption. The present world left to itself is winding down. It needs restoration and renewal and an 'new creation'.(Romans 8, Rev. 21).
I once was at a lecture where the lecturer was taken to task by a woman in the audience (during the Q & A) for have spoken of faith without saying enough about repentance. His answer: "Madam, one can not say everything every time." Perhaps, in charity, we could say the same about this hymn.