Hymn of the Week: August 7, 2023
O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
Glory to God: 610
Text: Charles Wesley 1739
Music: Carl Gotthelf Glaser 1828
O for a thousand tongues to sing
My dear Redeemer’s praise,
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of God's grace!
Jesus, the name that charms our fears,
That bids our sorrows cease;
’Tis music in the sinner’s ears,
’Tis life, and health, and peace.
Christ breaks the power of reigning sin,
And sets the prisoner free;
Christ's blood can make the sinful clean,
Christ's blood availed for me.
My gracious Master and my God,
Assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the earth abroad
The honors of Thy name.
To God all glory, praise and love
Be now and ever given
By saints below and saints above,
The church in earth and heaven
Two verses not found in Presbyterian Hymnal 1990 or 2014.
He speaks; - and – listening to his voice,
New life the dead receive,
The mournful broken hearts rejoice,
The humble poor believe.
Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Savior come;
And leap, ye lame, for joy!
Todays Devotion
Conversion. Part 2
This idea of Conversion has also played a more prominent role in our church services as this past week we have had the story of Saul who became Paul was converted from a man who hunted down members of the early church to a man who gave his life to Jesus and spread God’s message of love and freedom throughout the world.
Sunday’s Worship
On August 6th we listened to the story of Jonah living his life the way he wanted until God intervened with the sea monster (maybe a whale) and brought Jonah back to God and ultimately a life lived in freedom.
Eric Routley
Last week, we discussed the rhyme scheme and how even though it is usually once from ABAC in rhyme scheme, those verses have morphed over time into a kind of free verse that is now more natural to the 21st-century ear. Along with the various ways the hymn has been rhymed, we also discussed how one can see this as a hymn about Conversion. Using Eric Routley’s wonderful book; Hymns and the Faith, we began looking at the verses and even added a few that while not in our hymnal, are still relevant to this idea of Conversion.
Eric has much more to say on the subject and I think you will find his words fascinating concerning this word that is used by so many folks for their own spiritual purposes. Eric Routley asks us to look at how almost every line in the hymn takes us from darkness into light. ‘Jesus, the name that charms our fears; that bids our sorrows cease’ – anxieties are dispersed, sorrows and grievances evaporate. “Christ’s blood can make the sinful clean. (Some versions use the word “foulest” instead of sinful). The dirt and blurring tarnish of the ineffective and aimless life gives way to the fresh brightness and cleanness of a life filled with purpose. Further, the author insists that the results of the conversion are spectacular and demonstrative. The dumb (mute in this sense) men not only speak; they praise. The lame man not only walks, but he also leaps and capers about in public. The blind not only see; they see Jesus. The mournful are not only relieved of their sorrow but are taught the technique of joy.
In fact, (our author continues) the whole of the converted life can, on the evidence of this hymn, be summed up in a single word – freedom. This word is one of Wesley’s favorites. He rarely leaves it out of one of his texts. Freedom from sorrow, bondage, deafness, blindness. ‘Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation,’ says Psalm 51, ‘and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach thy way to the wrongdoers; and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Deliver me . . .’ This is the freedom, the fearlessness, the innocence that our Lord was pointing out in the child whom he held up as an example to his disciples.
To close this week’s thoughts on this amazing text, I want to share with you this great anecdote of Routley’s about his life as a kid in school. Routley discusses his early life and in particular, what he says is an embarrassing part of his schooling on the subject of Geometry. He says that he always found the subject to be unintelligible until a certain day that he still remembers years later. Up to his “conversion” moment, Routley would take the word of the book or teacher as gospel but be incapable of using his mind freely on the subject, of seeing the logical connection between this proposition and that, and of moving by the free discipline of logic into further deductions. On this particular morning, the teacher drew the diagram appropriate to the proposition that the angle in a semicircle is always a right angle. Up to that moment, this was nothing more than “Theorem 41’, just one more boring, unrelated, unpersuasive proposition.
But then, Routley threw up his hand and exclaimed, “Please sir, I see why that is!’ The master turned around and listened to young Routley’s explanation, and then said “Well! So, you have started at last!” So astounded was he that, as he recalls, he gave him about 5 times the appropriate number of marks. The point is that he had “started at last’ and had moved of his own free will from one proposition to another in the field of geometry. From that day, Routley felt more knowledgeable than he was before, not greatly advanced in his learning on the subject, but free of the subject.
We all have experiences like this. I can think of the time I started to understand how the rotation of the hand felt at the piano and how it freed my sound up, made playing my instrument so much easier and the sound more honest and freer. Routley reflects further about how this sense of conversion then becomes ours and we understand we can never go back. To continue Routley says; “I am no mathematician at all. I should have to turn back to the pages of the textbooks to remind myself and follow through on the arguments before I could recount them to others.” But he shall never again be as desperate and blind as he was before the revelation. Do I still have to go back and reteach myself passages and work through places where I may have gotten rusty before I can approach the technique found in a Beethoven Sonata? Yes, but because of this understanding of how the piano and my hands work, I now realize it will never be as though that freedom was never given to me and that I can reclaim it once again. Nor can the gift of the freedom of living be taken away.
A person may become rusty, and despised by his friends, but this remains, that he has been given the freedom to follow, and at any point take the life of freedom up again, even if they have to go back on that Jerusalem Road at a point several miles back from where they were. What has this to say to all of us ordinary Christians who might be put off by the idea of conversion? There are probably MANY Christians (me included) who can point to a time, a sermon, or a rough time in their lives when the idea of conversion came to mean something to them. Routley encourages the Christian to use the time to self-reflect. Not for the purposes of self-pity but to do it as a means of discerning the plan God has for us. The author warns us not to believe that since we’ve had that moment, we are good and now know all about life. Anyone who would claim that might be a little suspect. He encourages us to be content with discerning in our lives many moments which mark turning points in our “road to Damascus”; which can result in new and exciting vistas along the way. Our journey on this road after a conversion has often been labeled “sanctification” while the gift of a free life is called “justification.” If once we can agree that it is a real experience, and a common one, we shall also be able to agree on this as well: that this is nothing more than a gift from God and that nothing is more precious or more deserving of our cheerful gratitude.
