Break, day of God, O break!

504 Darwall. 6. 6. 6. 6. 8. 8.

1 Break, day of God, O break!
   The night has lingered long,
   our hearts with sighing wake;
   we weep for sin and wrong:
   O bright and Morning star, draw near;
   O Sun of Righteousness, appear.

2 Break, day of God, O break!
   The earth with strife is worn;
   the hills with thunder shake,
   hearts of the people mourn:
   break, day of God, sweet day of peace,
   and bid the shout of warriors cease.

3 Break, day of God, O break,
   like to the days above!
   Let purity awake,
   and faith, and hope, and love.
   But lo! We see the brightening sky;
   the golden morn is drawing nigh.
                         Henry Burton
                         The Methodist Hymnal 1939 edition

<idle musing>
And I thought yesterday's was relatively unknown! Today's only occurs in a paltry six hymnals. the author wrote quite a number of hymns, but none of them reached any level of popularity. And once again, I don't recall ever singing this one. Maybe tomorrow's hymn will be better known!
</idle musing>

O holy city, seen of John

474 Ford Cottage. 8. 6. 8. 6. 8. 6.

1 O holy city, seen of John,
   where Christ, the Lamb, doth reign,
   within whose foursquare walls shall come
   no night, nor need, nor pain,
   and where the tears are wiped from eyes
   that shall not weep again.

2 Hark, how from men whose lives are held
   more cheap than merchandise,
   from women struggling sore for bread,
   from little children's cries,
   there swells the sobbing human plaint
   that bids thy walls arise.

3 O shame to us who rest content
   while lust and greed for gain
   in street and shop and tenement
   wring gold from human pain,
   and bitter lips in blind despair
   cry “Christ hath died in vain!”

4 Give us, O God, the strength to build
   the city that hath stood
   too long a dream, whose laws are love,
   whose crown is servanthood,
   and where the sun that shineth is
   God’s grace for human good.

5 Already in the mind of God
   that city riseth fair:
   lo, how its splendor challenges
   the souls that greatly dare;
   yea, bids us seize the whole of life
   and build its glory there.
                         Walter Russell Bowie
                         The Methodist Hymnal 1939 edition

King of the city splendid

473 Beloit. L. M.

1 King of the city splendid,
   Eternal in the height,
   May all our country's cities
   Be holy in Thy sight:
   Cleansed from the deeds of darkness
   Cities of light.

2 Inspire the sons of labour,
   That honest toil may be
   Their token, in life's hardness,
   Of loyalty to Thee.
   That Thou mayst in their hand-work
   Love's heart-work see.

3 Teach love to gladden children
   Who know not childhood's mirth,
   Wronged of their rights no beauty
   In their scant reach of earth:
   To hope's large sunshine give them
   A second birth.

4 Lord, end the spell of passion,
   Break Thou the drunkard's lure:
   Thou art the one Physician
   The human heart to cure;
   The wavering will to strengthen,
   Foul life make pure.

5 Soon may our country's cities
   Thy robe of glory wear:
   Each place of toil a temple,
   Each house a home of prayer:
   Each city's name of beauty
   The Lord is There!
                         George T. Konster
                         The Methodist Hymnal 1939 edition

<idle musing>
Well, I sure know how to pick them! This one only occurs in nine hymnals! I don't recall ever singing it, and it definitely has a pre-Holocaust/WW II feel to it with the hope of millennialism (the author passed away in 1912, so pre-WW I, which was the death of many premillennial hopes). Nonetheless, I think of it as a prayer that God will bring about his kingdom.
</idle musing>

The bridegroom cometh!

1050 3d P. M. 4 6s & 2 8s.
The Bridegroom cometh.

YE virgin souls, arise;
   With all the dead, awake;
   Unto salvation wise,
   Oil in your vessels take:
   Upstarting at the midnight cry—
   Behold the heavenly Bridegroom nigh!

2 He comes, he comes, to call
   The nations to his bar,
   And take to glory all
   Who meet for glory are:
   Made ready for your full reward;
   Go forth with joy to meet your Lord.

3 Go, meet him in the sky,
   Your everlasting Friend;
   Your Head to glorify,
   With all his saints ascend:
   Ye pure in heart, obtain the grace
   To see, without a veil, his face.

4 The everlasting doors
   Shall soon the saints receive,
   With seraphs, thrones, and powers,
   In glorious joy to live;
   Far from a world of grief and sin,
   With God eternally shut in.

5 Then let us wait to hear
   The trumpet’s welcome sound:
   To see our Lord appear,
   May we be watching found:
   And when thou dost the heavens bow,
   Be found—as, Lord, thou find’st us now.
                         Charles Wesley
                        Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

The song of Jubilee

1004 7th P. M. 8 lines 73.
The song of jubilee.

HARK! the song of jubilee;
   Loud as mighty thunders roar,
   Or the fulness of the sea,
   When it breaks upon the shore:
   Hallelujah! for the Lord
   God omnipotent shall reign;
   Hallelujah! let the Word
   Echo round the earth and main.

2 Hallelujah!—hark! the sound,
   From the centre to the skies,
   Wakes above, beneath, around,
   All creation’s harmonies:
   See Jehovah’s banners furl’d ;
   Sheath’d his sword: he speaks—’tis done,
   And the kingdoms of this world
   Are the kingdoms of his Son.

3 He shall reign from pole to pole
   With illimitable sway;
   He shall reign, when, like a scroll,
   Yonder heavens have pass’d away:
   Then the end ;—beneath his rod,
   Man’s last enemy shall fall;
   Hallelujah! Christ in God,
   God in Christ, is all in all.
                         James Montgomery
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

More on the kingdom of God

Now it is a mistake, often committed by those who take this line in theology, to maintain that in the theory of the Two Realms—that is, in their distinction between the Gospel and the Law—the Reformers proclaimed that the world, and above all the State, is “autonomous”. This could only be the case if they did not declare the law of God to be binding on the State; Luther certainly never said this; at the most, the only people who might have said something of this kind would be neo-Lutheran romantics and nationalists. On the other hand, these “Christological” theologians would only be justified in their reproach, if they believed in a State which could be governed by the Gospel of Grace, and not by means of compulsory law—which would be pure fanaticism, or if they gave up saying that the real Kingdom of Christ is only achieved through the Word. For the State will never, never be governed by the Word—in the sense of the Gospel—but exclusively by the word of the Law, quite simply by the Decalogue, which is not the actual “Word", of Christ.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 318

Christians and the State

The nature of the State is in opposition to the nature of the Agape of Jesus. Where there are police, whose duty it is to arrest criminals, and armies, arsenals Of weapons of war, penitentiaries, etc;——and where would a State be without these necessary aids to its rule?—evidently Jesus Christ is not “ruling”, save in the hearts of individual persons, who as believing Christians, want to serve Christ within this State. The existence of the State as an institution is itself a Sign of the fact that Christ’s rule over men is not yet realized. We human beings need an order of the State, with police, soldiers, and compulsory laws, precisely because, and in so far as Christ does not rule over us. For the true rule of Christ is identical with free and generous love, free obedience to God, while the necessity for the dominion of the State always and everywhere points to the fact that men do not willingly do what is necessary for the well-being of all. The true dominion of Christ, and what we call the State, are fundamentally opposed.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 302

<idle musing>
This is something that the so-called christian nationalists need to learn. You can't establish the kingdom of God on earth by force. It must well up from each heart. And I personally believe that can't happen until Christ comes again to establish his kingdom.

Of course, that doesn't mean we should just sit back and do nothing! We need to strive to establish justice and deliverance for the captive, but we also need to know that it is all partial—and fully by the power of God.
</idle musing>

Kingdom obedience

Only one who knows that he needs forgiveness is capable of taking part in the Kingdom. For only in this does man show himself as one who knows that he lives solely on the gift of God. And through forgiveness he has a share in this gift. But the forgiveness which Jesus offers combines inseparably the gift and the task (Gabe und Aufgabe). Only one who himself forgives preserves the forgiveness which has been given to him; he who does not forgive loses it. The Kingdom of God comes from God alone; but he alone receives a share in it who “seeks first the Kingdom of God”, who is ready give up everything for it. There is no reception of the divine gift which is not at the same time, to the highest degree, an act of personal surrender to God, and an act of obedience.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 279

It's not us vs. them

I do not seek to pontificate about what particular issues Christians should support or oppose today in the so-called culture wars. In fact, I want to do precisely the opposite. We need to extricate ourselves from these wars, which are predicated on an oppositional dualism of “us versus them” (or “in-group versus out-group”), since this dualism is antithetical to the gospel of the kingdom. The Christian gospel understands the true antithesis between good and evil (between the kingdom of God and the powers of destruction) to run not between groups, but rather through every human heart. Therefore, as an antidote to unthinking involvement in the culture wars, Christians need to have their imaginations grasped by the radically holistic vision of redemption that the Bible teaches, and to engage their world, at individual and communal levels, with daily acts of courage and love on behalf of those in need, even if—especially if—they are different from us.—J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth, 280–81

Not yet, but getting there…

The fact that John died in prison should warn us of the difference between a biblical understanding of the kingdom and the triumphalistic assumptions of much that goes under the name of the “health—and-wealth gospel” or the “prosperity gospel.” Jesus himself endured rejection and death before resurrection, thus paralleling Israel’s experience of bondage in Egypt before deliverance and their exile in Babylon before return to the land. Paul himself says that we must suffer with Christ in order to attain to the resurrection (Phil. 3:10–11). Indeed, all creation is groaning in its bondage, awaiting liberation (Rom. 8:18–25). In other words, while resurrection, healing, and holistic restoration constitute the appropriate Christian hope——and there is substantial healing and restoration possible in the present—“hope” means that we trust in what is coming but is not yet with us in its fullness. We live between the times, after the inauguration of the kingdom but before its final consummation.—J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth, 272 n. 11

But you are starting with the wrong assumptions!

The trouble is that many contemporary Christians understand eternal life primarily as a reference to life after death (often connected to the idea of dwelling in heaven forever) and then use this un-biblical concept to interpret the kingdom of God. But this puts matters precisely the wrong way around.—J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth, 246

What is the gospel?

The Gospel: An Outline

Jesus the king

1. preexisted with the Father,
2. took on human flesh, fulfilling God’s promises to David,
3. died for sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
4. was buried,
5. was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
6. appeared to many,
7. is seated at the right hand of God as Lord, and
8. will come again as judge.—Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 74

<idle musing>
Straight out of 1 Cor 15. It's usually called the kerygma, a Greek word meaning announcement. Unfortunately, most people truncate the gospel to items 3 through 5, possibly including 6 as an afterthought. They totally neglect the other ones, which are what frame the gospel and make it Good News.
</idle musing>

Much more than sin

Yes, many humans, though not all, are deeply aware of problems in their own lives, of pains and fears and sorrows and deep—rooted puzzles, and that may well bring them to the foot of the cross. But the message ought never to be simply about me and my salvation. It ought to be about God and God’s kingdom. That’s what Jesus announced, and so should we. The full good news is that in Jesus, and through his death and resurrection, God has become king of the world. We look out at the world and see it in a terrible mess, and we are aware in our bones that we want to do something about it. But our own sin, our greed, our pride, our arrogance get in the way, and we rush off and try to do it in our own strength and (worse) our own way, like Moses trying to liberate Israel from Egypt by Egyptian means. He first needed liberating himself. We humans know in our bones that we are called to bring God’s wise order into the world. That is our Adamic inheritance, just as much as the entail of evil. But for that to become a reality we need, ourselves, to be rescued from the same problem that afflicts the rest of the world. We are rescued by the blood of the Lamb in order to be a royal priesthood; and the way in which that works, according to the New Testament, is the same way it worked for Jesus: taking up the cross, a suffering but joyful witness. That, too, is part of Paul’s picture of the redeemed Adam: we suffer with him, that we may (in line, remember, with Psalm 8) also share his glory. The distortions Western theology has introduced into Paul’s Adam-theology are cognate with the distortions, or the downright ignoring, that have happened in relation to the kingdom of God. They belong together; and together they may give us a sense of how to talk wisely both about salvation and about origins.—The Lost World of Adam and Eve, p. 180