All Glory, Laud and Honor

          Christians have been singing “All Glory, Laud and Honor” since 1861.  The words, though, go back to the ninth century, the 800s, to a period of literary and cultural renewal, a time alive with the sense that the Spirit was powerfully at work.  Look for the Spirit at work in our times, too.

          Laud?  Congratulations.  Recognition.  Praise.  Some hymns begin with the refrain, like the heart of the message.  “All Glory, Laud, and Honor” lifts highest praises to our Redeemer, our King.  I’ve spoken about this word Redeemer, this act, not just another word for salvation.  Our Redeemer wins us back, by paying for us.  How does Jesus redeem us, atone for us?  In seminary, the only certainty was that the old answer wouldn’t do.  Blood?  Substitution?  Divine Justice?  No, no.  Brutal, barbaric.  Where is the love?  Jesus on the cross?  That’s not what justice looks like.  That’s not what love looks like.  No, no.

          The Gospel accounts don’t mention children in that Palm Sunday procession; this hymn points us to them.  The sweet singing of children—joyful, free-spirited.  When did you last feel that way?  Do you believe that Jesus can help you feel that way, that he came to do all he did so that you can feel that way again?  It comes at a cost, for him and for you.  What sacrifice are you willing to make?

          Like many of the carols of Christmas, this hymn sings of angels.  We don’t tend to make much of angels, another part of the space left after jettisoning the trappings of Roman Catholicism.  Angels remind us of God’s creation of heaven and earth, a complete whole, linked in harmony.  Many regard the heavens as only empty, vast, deadly, cold.  Look up, child, take in the night sky, the heavenly host keeping watch, singing cosmic praises to God, Father, Son, and Spirit.

          These hymns of Palm Sunday affirm that what happened two thousand years ago has ongoing, enduring significance.  Incredible!  The people sang praise, expecting victory, liberation, purification, restoration; not expecting passion, not perceiving that the passion was the purification, the liberation, the victory. 

          All glory, laud, and honor, to thee, Redeemer, King, to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.

Hosanna, Loud Hosanna

          In hearing this word hosanna, we are hearing the very voices of the people that day.  It’s like saying hooray; only, the Hebrew at heart, at root, is a plea for help, for salvation: Save us, please!  Hosanna!

          Also from the second half of the nineteenth century, the words of this hymn were written by an Englishwoman, Jennette Threlfall, who had anything but a happy life.  Orphaned at a very young age, two terrible accidents badly crippled her, but not her soul.  She was described as “a gentle, loving, sympathetic” woman, always sharing a pleasant word and smile.  How?  What was the secret of her peace?

          She dedicated herself to writing sacred poems and hymns, including “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna.”  Threlfall also calls our attention to the children: energy, excitement, and joy, their voices echoing through all the monumental Temple.  How many churches lament the lack, the absence, of children!  I haven’t been in a church yet where people complained about the presence of children.  We sing of Jesus’ love for children: he blesses them, holds them close in that free and full hug only children seem able to give, and receive.  Their song, spontaneous, from the spirit, is “the simplest and the best.”  We must be very quiet when our children sing from their hearts, lest they catch us noticing, and stop.

          Jesus enters Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, Olivet.  A garden was there on the mountain, Gethsemane: place of betrayal, premeditated, for money.  How lightly some hold Jesus and how tightly the world’s miserable silver.

          The parading people hailed Jesus as special, important, a Godsend.  They marveled that he didn’t look like anything, anyone much: no crown or sword, no armor or magnificent clothing or imposing bearing: This is The Messiah, you say? “The Lord of earth and heaven rode on in lowly state”: humility, meekness.  The Lord of earth and heaven?  How was he supposed to come?  How was he supposed to enter our lives?

          Our Redeemer and our King.  Surely freedom means having no ruler above you, neither needing nor wanting one?  Yet every life is ruled.  Sometimes, we may even perceive what’s ruling the life of another.  What we see can leave us sad, confused.  Are people trapped?  Powerless?  Look at their kindness, their achievements, their sympathy, their wealth.  Shouldn’t all that count for something?  Don’t success or good hearts matter?

          This hymn calls us to praise as the unavoidable effect of knowing this Redeemer, praise “with heart and life and voice”: complete, total, excited and joyful as the voices of those children echoing among the white marble columns and incense-fragrant shadows, so long ago.  Praise now, praise forever.  Forever—exactly what Jesus offers us: the hope of abundant life with the Lord.

A Cheering, Chanting, Dizzy Crowd

          We’re never quite sure what to do about new hymns, though “A Cheering, Chanting, Dizzy Crowd” has been around for thirty-five years—but how can that compete with 135-year-old hymns?  Why bother?

          Cheering, chanting, dizzy—elation, caught in the moment, excited and a little out of balance, like at a rock concert, everyone in the energy, an experience of something so much bigger, losing yourself, letting go: let yourself go, a branch waving in a breeze.

          This hymn points out the people along the way, laying their jackets in the road.  What would cause you to take your jacket or sweater off and lay it on the ground for someone to ride over?  Someone extraordinary; an extraordinary occasion.  It’s one thing to lose yourself in the energy of the crowd, quite another to let go of your stuff for someone.

          They made “vows of lasting love” as they sang and danced: “Christ you know I love you”; “Jesus, I adore you, lay my life before you”; “Oh, how I love Jesus.”  He heard them.  They heard one another.  Then the day came to its close, like every day.  The crowd dwindled in the “deepening dark.”  We like bright celebrations.  Remember what the end of a wild party looks like, sounds like, feels like?

          The last thing we want during a group experience is for anyone to notice us, to cause our attention suddenly to come back to ourselves.  The group experience is about the feeling, the excitement, the surge, the not-noticing isolated anonymous strangers all together.  Jesus would stop in a crowd, looking for one person, talking to one person, touching one person.  God changes the focus of our attention as He focuses His attention upon us.

          God reminds us today that Jesus is going somewhere beyond Jerusalem, beyond the Temple.  The Palm Sunday event is genuine and deceptive: genuine celebrated from God’s point of view, deceptive celebrated from ours.  The lamb has come.  We’ve learned to look at the cross without considering the cross.  We look at a few of the words and actions of Jesus as though these were all we need of him, all we need to know.  Jesus is going elsewhere, beloved.

          The sound and noise and energy and excitement of this day all lead to the silence of a lonely, God-forsaken hill, of trembling, tear-wet hands washing and wrapping a bloody, tortured beloved body for burial, the awful stillness, the awful silence, of the tomb.

          But why think about any of that when we know Easter is almost here?

Ride On! Ride On in Majesty!

          In the middle of his life, English poet and educator Henry Hart Milman felt the call of God, powerfully; he turned to theology and ministry, and in 1827 wrote this hymn, though we only began singing it in 1862, about the same time as “All Glory, Laud and Honor.”

          Lowly pomp sounds like a contradiction.  Not for Christ, who carried his own majesty with him, in him; he was majesty in the flesh.  All this majesty came lowly, entered Jerusalem lowly, went out to Calvary lowly and died on the cross lowly and was buried lowly, as nothing and no one.

          “In lowly pomp, ride on to die”: our hymns sometimes have us sing strange things.  How are we supposed to feel, singing that?  Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes Lord—ride on, to die.  Peter told Jesus not to talk about dying or suffering or rejection.  Just don’t talk about those things.  We want to laugh.  Why doesn’t Jesus tell more jokes?  He should tell more jokes.  All along, Jesus has been telling us that he came to die.  So morbid!  What a downer.  “We ate the food, we drank the wine / Everybody having a good time / Except you / You were talking about the end of the world.”

          “O Christ, your triumphs now begin.”  Palm Sunday looks like the triumph; we know it’s not, so did Jesus.  The completion of triumph takes Jesus, and us, through very lonely, dark, and hard places of temptation, of hurt, sorrow, and death.  He went alone then so that we wouldn’t have to go alone.  Christ triumphs “over captive death and conquered sin.”  These lie prostrate at his feet.  With his hands open for us, he conducts us over them.  His triumph is our triumph.  Apart from him, we have no triumph.  Holding on to a choice selection of his words isn’t enough.  We must hold on to him.

          Milman visualizes “hosts of angels in the sky”—ten thousand angels, awaiting one word from Jesus, knowing it would not be spoken, amazed, that it would not.  They look on, in silenced, astounded wonder “to see the approaching sacrifice.”  Sacrifice.  Christ comes to offer himself, freely, willingly, as a sacrifice—his life for yours, for mine, for people who as yet do not know Jesus or care.  If there were any other way for us to live, why did he go to die?

          And how does Jesus feel, there on that donkey’s back, being acclaimed so loudly and excitedly, knowing this loud excitement will soon enough turn to loud condemnation: Crucify!  He will know the pain of betrayal: on Wednesday, Judas makes his arrangements, feels the weight of the bag of money; on Thursday, a matter of hours after that sacred meal of bread and wine with his blood brothers, Jesus will know the pain of abandonment, of scorn and derision, the pain of the scourge, abuse and insult; then, on Friday, the excruciating cross, heavy, rough, hard, hard to lift, hard to carry out to and up the hill.  “[B]ow your meek head to mortal pain”—the pain of being mortal, physical, emotional, spiritual, and the pains of death.  Jesus came that we need no longer fear death, and how afraid we remain!

          And after his death, after the dark, awful sky, the earthquake, the stone closing the tomb in final darkness, then grief and silence.  How we fear those silences when grief comes to call, not considering, in the pit of our fear and sorrow, that silence is also for readiness, preparation, for waiting, for listening.  Silence anticipates the power and glory of God.  Christ came to “bow his head to mortal pain”: he did, he died—to then take his power, and reign.  We live, experiencing and awaiting the power and glory of God.