Caution: Hymn lyrics sometimes can teach misguided theology

One of my close friends cries almost every time our congregation sings a hymn. Clearly, music moves him. Sacred music especially. Who knew architects could be such softies?

I was thinking about him as I read this RNS story about how modern musicians have just updated what's known as the world's oldest Christian hymn, which a pair of British archaeologists dug up in an ancient rubbish heap at the edge of the ruins of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, in the 1890s. It's known as "P.Oxy. 1786 or the Oxyrhynchus Hymn — a reference to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri collection," the RNS story says. (The story contains a link to a video so you can watch and hear the updated hymn performed.)

I'm well aware of the magnificent ways that music speaks to us in all kinds of varieties. Almost all the music talent in my family of origin went to my oldest sister, who got her pipe organ degree from Juilliard and spent a long career as a church organist and teacher. And is still, on occasion, at it.

But there's something about hymns that is both enlightening and dangerous.

For instance, hymns can teach a lot of theology. But it's important to pay attention to what kind of theology is being offered. For instance, there's a hymn that many Christians sing on or around Good Friday. It has a wonderful title, "What Wondrous Love Is This?"

But what are we to make of this line:

"What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul"?

Just who put a "dreadful curse" on (or for) my soul? Is this a hymn that turns the God of endless love into a wrathful, spiteful being who curses what he or she creates from the beginning? Is this about "Original Sin?" And if all of our souls bear a dreadful curse that require "the Lord of bliss" to bear it for us, what about all the millions of people who died before Jesus was nailed to the cross?

In this Presbyterian Outlook column I wrote a few years ago, I mentioned a famous Christmas hymn, “Away in a Manger,” and then wrote this: "What does it ask Jesus to do? To 'fit us for heaven to live with Thee there.' But is fitting us for heaven what Christianity is all about? Wasn’t Jesus more focused on his ministry-opening message: 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand'? And doesn’t that mean living today with compassion, mercy, justice and love?"

Is Christianity merely about getting a ticket to heaven? Is that what we want our children to learn by singing this famous hymn?

In that Outlook column, I also wrote this:

Sometimes hymns can send a dreadful message. One is the popular “I Danced in the Morning,” (or "Lord of the Dance.") As New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt Divinity School tells me, “It was written as an antiestablishment piece in the 1960s, but in more recent times it not only signals a negative view of ‘the holy people’ — it charges them with killing Jesus” in this verse: “I danced on the sabbath and I cured the lame; The holy people said it was a shame. They whipped and they stripped and they hung Me high, And left Me there on a cross to die.”

In The Misunderstood Jew, Levine notes, “Congregants and the choir will not think that the ‘holy people’ refers to the Romans,” but to Jews. And she adds: “There is no need to reintroduce the idea that Jews are Christ killers in a major key.”

I've written a few hymns, one of which, "In the Chill of Sunday Morning," my congregation sang the Sunday after Easter recently. Well, sort of sang. The words were not printed out on paper for congregants but were, rather, to be projected on the front wall of the sanctuary. And they were, except that the projected words started with the second of four verses, not the first. So the choir, which had the words printed on paper, sang the first verse while the congregation sang the second at the same time.

Puzzlement ensued.

If you were there that morning and wonder what words you missed singing, here's the first verse, sung to the tune of “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”:

In the chill of Sunday morning

Women walked to where he lay;

Hearts were broken, spirits anxious

But at least they knew the way.

There they planned an ancient ritual,

Signs of love for one who’d died,

Yet a shock: the tomb was empty,

So, confused, they stood and cried.

The congregation's questioning attitude that resulted from that missing-verse error, I think, is exactly the attitude that we should have when we approach any hymn. What is the theology behind the words we're singing? Is it theology my church actually teaches? Try that next time you sing a hymn in church.

[In the RNS story to which I've linked you, the image at the top here carries this credit line: "Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia/Creative Commons)]

* * *

LISTEN CAREFULLY WHEN LEADERS OBJECT TO 'ANTISEMITISM'

As we approach the start of the conclave in Rome to elect a new pope, we're seeing lots of remembrances of Pope Francis and lots of commentaries honoring one aspect of his papacy or another. Here, for instance, is one by a rabbi praising him for the work he did to counter modern antisemitism, which in many ways grew out of centuries of Christian-based anti-Judaism.

And this work against antisemitism was nothing new for Francis. As Rabbi Joshua Stanton writes, "Francis began his dialogue with Jewish leaders decades before he was elected to the papacy. In Argentina, where he served as a priest, bishop, archbishop and cardinal, he became a dear friend of the Chief Rabbi Abraham Skorka. They maintained each other’s confidences on life and leadership, and co-authored a pathbreaking book, “On Heaven and Earth,” about the nature of their beliefs and practices. They modeled how Jewish-Catholic friendship can both be of personal significance and transformational to our respective approaches to God, community and practice."

It's important to draw a distinction between how Francis understood antisemitism and what President Donald Trump seems to mean by it. Trump, by contrast to Francis, seems to focus on campus protests that seek to back and protect the Palestinians who have suffered in the Hamas-Israel war and who have become a target of Trump's efforts to deport various kinds of people. Trump's position seems almost entirely political and has little or nothing to do with the kind of bigotry Jews have suffered across history. That position is way too narrow. The efforts of Francis have been much broader and have reflected his knowledge of the church's failure to stop preaching anti-Jewish nonsense until publication of the Nostra Aetate document in 1965.

* * *

P.S.: Religion News Service is offering a free webinar at noon (Central) on Tuesday, May 6, on "The Papal Conclave: What Happens Now?" You have to register, and can do that here.