Open Hymnal Part 2

 

Great, living God, never fully known, joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, everlasting home; Hail and Hosanna, great living God!  Brian Wren, “Bring Many Names,” (#11 New Century Hymnal)

Our hymnals are not only prayer books, they are theological textbooks. Make a list of the hymns you love.

Go ahead. I’ll wait!

Now, try to make a list of sermons you remember and love.

My hunch is one list is a lot longer than the other! My grandmother didn’t quote sermons when she was baking bread, she hummed hymns. And given this reality, we take the next logical, linear step which is to say that when we are singing, we are learning about who God is, why Jesus came, and the calling of the church. Hymns teach and tell us a lot about faith and prayer and life.

Every hymnal I have ever held in my hands has organizing structure. Maybe it is the liturgical year, where the hymnal starts with Advent to Christmas to Epiphany to Lent to Easter. Or maybe the hymnal starts off by trying to help us define and describe musically our faith. Our New Century hymnal starts with section on God (39 hymns); and then moves on to Jesus (15 hymns); and next to the Holy Spirit (9 hymns). Two conclusions from just this quick glance: one, the Holy Spirit really needs a few more hymns; second, that is sixty-four hymns about how we as humans encounter and experience the holy hovering/hanging around our lives.

Look back at your list of favorite hymns. How many are about God? Jesus? The Holy Spirit? What if we spent time studying and discussing about the images, the words of these hymns? What might we uncover and discover in such a dialogue? So often, our discussion of hymns starts and stops with our favorites. That’s often it. But we can do more. Consider this, if every Sunday we sing three hymns that means over the course of a year you are singing over a thousand hymns. Plus, you hear anthems. And we haven’t even talked about what you are playing on your headphones when you go out for a bicycle ride in the morning!

This is why I am trying to encourage and invite you to pay attention to the music and the meaning it is inviting. I love that Brian Wren, in the hymn quoted above, invites us to “Bring Many Names” for the holy in our lives. I love that Wren uses male/female and the whole age spectrum to describe who God is. I love that Wren’s theology (talk about God) is expansive and evolving. You get done reading this hymn and there is the unsung/unwritten eighth verse where you offer the name for God you bring. This is the power of hymns to teach and tells us about the holy.

I pray today you might randomly open your hymn to a page, slowly read the words, and pay attention to response/reaction what you encounter, what the words do to your soul.

Prayer: God of melody that bring forth meaning, open our hearts, imaginations, and whole lives to the ways hymn-writes have shaped our faith.  Amen.