It's Tuesday and here's the picture of the day:
Rain is predicted to fall here in about four hours. I find it hard to believe myself. seeing just this lonely little cloud all by himself (a nice visual metaphor for the drought). But if you look over to the west (where weather comes from) there is something brewing... still it doesn't look like much yet.
At this time last week I was leaving my dentist having just gotten my new, porcelain "false tooth" after root canal.
As I got off the elevator in the lobby, a young woman and the security guard gave me funny looks, and I realized I was unconsciously singing this this song:
Yeah,yeah, yeah. It's a REALLY stupid pun [I got a gold and porcelain CROWN on my tooth...], but I swear I did NOT know I was singing it. I really hope this is the only crown I ever need and that I will not need "many." Root canal is not a fun procedure.
If you're a heathen, it's one of the more standard tunes sung in mainline Protestant churches where they have not converted to singing folk rock songs. It comes from the mid 19th century before the Civil War so it has this "church militant" kind of sound to it. To me, it's musically a march. A lot of hymns from this time sound really rousing and triumphant and you can easily imagine snare drums and trumpets belting this out. "Amazing Grace" it's NOT.
This hymn is pretty significant as a document of where 19th century belief was at the time because it is basically a recitation of the names of God, repeated saying "Crown him (Jesus) the ____ of _____." Ask yourself what would fill in the blanks today? Here's what the original hymnist Matthew Bridges came up with:
The primary statements of God's identity in the first line of each verse:
The Virgin's son
The Lord of love
The Lord of peace
The Lord of years
The Lord of Heaven
Supporting statements of God's identity in subsequent lines within verses:
The Lamb upon His throne
The Matchless King
The God incarnate born
The Potentate of time
The Shiloh long foretold
The Branch of Jesse's stem
The Shepherd King of Israel's fold
The Babe of Bethlehem
Creator of the rolling spheres
Bridges was a Catholic who slid away from Catholicism but eventually went back. A Protestant thinker thought there was too much Catholic thought in this hymn and asked Godfrey Thring to come up with some new verses for the Church of England hymnbook. Here' what Thring came up with:
Primary statements:
The Son of God
The Lord of life
The Lord of Heaven
Secondary statements:
The King to whom is given the wondrous name of Love
The Son of Man
King of all
I think the Catholic names are much more imaginative myself ...
Ahem, why is this important? When you name and define your god, you put boundaries on that god. These are very expansive statements, and yet by using language we have set a limiter. Is this right? The Jews would say no, because they'll tell you their god has no name. Muslims kind of do a similar thing by disallowing religious images not only of God, but of their prophet as well.
This makes Christians different. Does God have boundaries? Well, kinda yes and no, but I don't wanna talk about that today, but what is clear that God put boundaries on himself when he took the form of Jesus on earth.
If we can start to put our heads around that idea, it makes sense that we'd come up with hymns like the above and put pictures of Jesus, an old-man-father God, and Spirit-doves on things. This has its drawbacks of course, but we don't have problems with relating faith easily into our personal lives.
The name of God that always hits my funny bone when I sing that song is "The Potentate of Time." I cannot finish the song once that comes out of my mouth, cuz I'm laughing too hard. I'm sure the writer was quoting 1 Timothy 6:15
"Which in his times he shall shew,
who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords;"
Back in King James' day, "potentate" was a serious word--a ruler or totalitarian despot with absolute power unchecked by a legislature or parliament.
Why is it so funny and corny to me? I think it's because of these guys.
The only persons holding the title Potentate today are Shriners. And then of course, if your head moves toward Shriners, you eventually wind up here with the ironic version of what is already a fun-filled, light-hearted irony of the freemasons. Would Jesus be a Shriner? Or a member of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes? "The Grand Poo-bah of Time!"
Well, sure. I think Jesus must have had a sense of humor to put up with the constant misguided antics, selfishness, and one-ups-manship of the 12 disciples--and he did have a soft spot for helping out crippled people like the Shriners do, especially kids.
So...
Crown Him the Lord of years,
The Potentate of time,
Creator of the rolling spheres,
Ineffably sublime;
All hail! Redeemer hail!
For Thou hast died for me;
Thy praise shall never, never fail,
Throughout eternity.
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