Onward Christian soldiers

(originally written before going away for a week)

Twice now in a month I've run up against a serious problem with the hymns in church.

In general, I think hymns are some of our greatest theological stuff. Written on the cover page of my prayer book/hymnal is this quotation from one of my seminary professors: "in thirty years of ministry, I've never once heard the congregation walk out the door of the church humming the sermon."

Part of the stealth evangelism of hymns is that we don't memorize them, and they're complicated, and so we find ourselves carried along by the music, not paying particularly careful attention to the words.

But I do sit down and pay careful attention. If I'm going to lead the congregation in worship, that includes singing. I've got a big voice, and I love to pray while singing. But, for the pre-written parts of the order of worship, I want to know ahead of time what prayers I'm leading, and I study them in advance of Sunday.

At St. Thomas, in July, we're basically taking requests from the congregation. We put voting cards in the pew sheet one day, and the music director tallied up the votes. The end result has been fun, since we've been able to sing a bunch of old favorites. It's also been funny at times...we did Christmas hymns, Easter hymns, lenten hymns... and only occasionally would they directly correlate to the lectionary texts for the week. That's okay. It's been fun.

Until this morning.

This morning, the congregational choices were hymns 561 and 562.

stand up, stand up for Jesus, the trumpet call obey
forth to the mighty conflict in this his glorious day
ye that are his now serve him against unnumbered foes
let courage rise with danger, and strength to strength oppose.

and this:

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!

Like a mighty army moves the church of God;
Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod.
We are not divided, all one body we,
One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.

um...yes, acually, we are divided. And it's doctrine we're divided about.

This morning, before we got up to go gather as the church, the nation of Israel (funded and supplied by the United States) dropped bombs on Qana, killing 54 people, including 19 children. And it's at least in part a religious war. A war we're participating in, secondhand. More about that later.


I've always been able to justify the words to "Onward Christian Soldiers" this way:
the first verse clearly describes a liturgical procession. And that makes the theological statement a reversal of worldly values, i.e., the only kind of war Christians wage is in church, by opening the doors to anyone who would come in, by proclaiming the gospel of the one who said to turn the other cheek. It's an anti-battle.

But this morning, it was too much. The words to the hymns seemed to say "we're going to come kick your butt in the name of Jesus."


Instead of singing, I hung my head and walked in and out of the church in silence.

and wept, just a little, even though I tried not to.