A benediction

1129 9th P. M. 87, 87, 87, 87.
The apostolic benediction.

MAY the grace of Christ our Saviour,
   And the Father’s boundless love,
   With the Holy Spirit’s favour,
   Rest upon us from above:
   Thus may we abide in union
   With each other and the Lord ;
   And possess, in sweet communion,
   Joys which earth cannot afford.
                         John Newton
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

It's a love game

But it would be a mistake to give the impression that the Christian doctrine of God is a matter of clever intellectual word games or mind games. For Christians it’s always a love game: God’s love for the world calling out an answering love from us, enabling us to discover that God not only happens to love us (as though this was simply one aspect of his character) but that he is love itself. That’s what many theological traditions have explored as the very heart of God’s own being, the love which passes continually between Father, Son, and Spirit. Indeed, some have suggested that one way of understanding the Spirit is to see the Spirit as the personal love which the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father. In that understanding, we are invited to share in this inner and loving life of God, by having the Spirit live within us.—N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, 139

Tozer for Tuesday

People go to a doctor and say, “Doctor, I feel all run down; what do you recommend?” One doctor says, ‘‘Well, straighten up, live right, eat the proper diet, get enough sleep and in six months’ time you won’t know yourself.” We shrug him off.

“Oh, doctor, that sounds old-fashioned. Don’t you have something I can take? I want to feel better tomorrow.” Therefore, he patiently gives us some pills we take and psychologically we think we are better, but we are not. Americans are impatient, and the same goes with American Christianity. Some people now want Christianity in the form of a pill, something that will work very quickly.

God says, “Don’t get so anxious, you’ve got eternity to live in. Just live it out. Just work it out, sweat it out, stay around, live right, let week follow week and month follow month, and keep right and keep praying, and you’ll win.”—A.W. Tozer, Living as a Christian, 138–39

A parting blessing

1124 C. M.
For a parting blessing.

NOW may the God of peace and love,
   Who from the’ impris’ning grave
   Restored the Shepherd of the sheep,
   Omnipotent to save ;—

2 Through the rich merits of that blood
   Which he on Calvary spilt,
   To make the’ eternal cov’nant sure,
   On which our hopes are built ;—

3 Perfect our souls in every grace,
   To accomplish all his will;
   And all that ’s pleasing in his sight
   Inspire us to fulfil.

4 For the great Mediator’s s sake
   We every blessing pray;
   With glory let his Name be crown’d,
   Through heaven’s eternal day.
                         Thomas Gibbons
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
Reading the biography on hymnary.org, I couldn't help but notice this, "He lacked 'the vision and faculty divine,' which gives life to hymns and renders them of permanent value." Ouch. Even if it is true, that wouldn't escape an editor's pen today!
</idle musing>

The kingdom way

If the kingdom of God is the goal of human action, then we have been given a number of criteria which have priority in ethics. The kingdom is the kingdom of God which saves the world. By that token every choice which is contemptuous of the earth is judged. In Jesus Christ God is a God of human beings. Therefore every choice which takes no account of human society is to be rejected. In Jesus Christ God is Lord over all; his salvation is intended for all. Therefore, every choice which advances the well-being of one group, nation, or social class, while leaving others behind on the road to salvation and wholeness, is wrong. Every choice which does not start with those who are farthest behind on the road to this wholeness is a wrong choice. Now human existence has many aspects: economic, social, psychological, political, etc. It may be that some are ahead in one dimension and others in another. One is rich in one thing, another in some other. Everyone will have to share his kind of riches with his neighbor, thus serving one another on the way to the righteousness of the kingdom. For that matter, wealth in only one dimension of life tends to break up and disorganize human existence. For not only the whole of humanity belongs to the kingdom, but also the whole man. A choice which only serves one's economic advantage at the expense of other aspects of human existence is as censurable as a choice which only serves the national interest and leaves other nations behind (as a rule, for that matter, these two choices go together). But the same is true for a choice which only serves the religious life.—A. van de Beek, Why? On Suffering, Guilt, and God, 336–37

<idle musing>
Roger Olson has been going through the book Why? On Suffering, Guilt, and God for a couple of months now. I've been reading along, usually behind him a week or so, but this last weekend I had a bit of time and caught up and actually read ahead, which he doesn't want us to do... Anyway, the above snippet is one of van de Beek's conclusions from the study.

I would be hard pressed to find a better description of how a Christian should participate in the public square. This ethic should be a guidepost; it is basically a summary of the social ethics of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.

So, how do your current political views line up with the kingdom ethic? If there are gaps, I would call upon you to repent (which means change your mind and walk in a different way). That might mean changing the way you shop, the way you vote, or some other change that only God will reveal to you.
</idle musing>

Blest be the uniting love

1121 C. M.
United,—though separated.

BLEST be the dear uniting love,
   That will not let us part:
   Our bodies may far off remove,
   We still are one in heart.

2 Join’d in one spirit to our Head,
   Where he appoints we go;
   And still in Jesus’ footsteps tread,
   And show his praise below.

3 O may we ever walk in him,
   And nothing know beside,—
   Nothing desire, nothing esteem,
   But Jesus crucified.

4 Closer and closer let us cleave
   To his beloved embrace;
   Expect his fulness to receive,
   And grace to answer grace.

5 Partakers of the Saviour’s grace,
   The same in mind and heart,
   Nor joy, nor grief, nor time, nor place,
   Nor life, nor death can part.

6 Then let us hasten to the day
   Which shall our flesh restore;
   When death shall all be done away,
   And bodies part no more.
                        Charles Wesley
                        Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

The voice of the archangel

1112 11th P. M. 76, 76, 77, 76.
— With the voice of the archangel.

JESUS, faithful to his word,
   Shall with a shout descend:
   All heaven’s host their glorious Lord
   Shall joyfully attend:
   Christ shall come with dreadful noise.
   Lightnings swift, and thunders loud;
   With the great archangel’s voice,
   And with the trump of God.

2 First the dead in Christ shall rise;
   Then we that yet remain
   Shall be caught up to the skies,
   And see our Lord again.
   We shall meet him in the air;
   All rapt, up to heaven shall be;
   Find, and love, and praise him there,
   To all eternity.

3 Who can tell the happiness
   This glorious hope affords?
   Joy unutter’d we possess
   In these reviving words:
   Happy while on earth we breathe;
   Mightier bliss ordain’d to know:
   Trampling down sin, hell, and death,
   To the third heaven we go.
                         Charles Wesley
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

Maranatha!

1111 8th P. M. 87, 87, 47.
Behold, He cometh!

LO! He comes, with clouds descending
   Once for favour’d sinners slain;
   Thousand thousand saints, attending,
   Swell the triumph of his train:
   Hallelujah!
   God appears on earth to reign.

2 Every eye shall now behold him
   Robed in dreadful majesty;
   Those Who set at naught and sold him,
   Pierced and nail’d him to the tree,
   Deeply wailing,
   Shall the true Messiah see.

3 All the tokens of his passion
   Still his dazzling body bears;
   Cause of endless exultation
   To his ransom’d worshippers;
   With What rapture
   Gaze we on those glorious scars.

4 Yea, Amen! let all adore thee,
   High on thine eternal throne;
   Saviour, take the power and glory;
   Make thy righteous sentence known:
   Jah-! Jehovah!
   Claim the kingdom for thine own.
                         Charles Wesley
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

By the power of the Holy Spirit alone

I have sometimes heard Christian people talk as though God, having done what he’s done in Jesus, now wants us to do our part by getting on with things under our own steam. But that is a tragic misunderstanding. It leads to arrogance, burnout, or both. Without God’s Spirit, there is nothing we can do that will count for God’s kingdom. Without God’s Spirit, the church simply can’t be the church.

I use the word “church” here with a somewhat heavy heart. I know that for many of my readers that very word will carry the overtones of large, dark buildings, pompous religious pronouncements, false solemnity, and rank hypocrisy. But there is no easy alternative. I, too, feel the weight of that negative image. I battle with it professionally all the time.—N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, 122–23

A hymn by an early follower of St. Francis of Assissi

1109 L. M.
The dreadful day.

THE day of wrath, that dreadful day,
   When heaven and earth shall pass away!
   What power shall be the sinner’s stay?
   How shall he meet that dreadful day—

2 When, shriv’ling like a parched scroll,
   The flaming heavens together roll;
   And, louder yet, and yet more dread,
   Swells the high trump that wakes the dead?

3 O, on that day, that wrathful day,
   When man to judgment wakes from clay,
   Be thou, O Christ, the sinner’s stay,
   Though heaven and earth shall pass away.
                         Thomas of Celano
                         Translated by Walter Scott
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

A waste? Or Surprise! I'm alive!

Nothin in all the history of paganism comes anywhere near this combinatlon of event, intention, and meaning. Nothing in Judaism had prepared for it, except in puzzling, shadowy prophecy. The death of Jesus of Nazareth as the king of the jews, the bearer of Israel’s destiny, the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people of old, is either the most stupid, senseless waste and misunderstanding the world has ever seen, or it is the fulcrum around which world history turns.

Christianity is based on the belief that it was and is the latter.—N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, 111

Fill us now with watchful care

1108 S. M.
The solemn midnight cry.

THOU Judge of quick and dead,
   Before whose bar severe,
   With holy joy or guilty dread,
   We all shall soon appear;
   Our caution’d souls prepare
   For that tremendous day,
   And fill us now with watchful care,
   And stir us up to pray:

2 To pray, and wait the hour,
   That awful hour unknown,
   When, robed in majesty and power,
   Thou shalt from heaven come down,
   The immortal Son of man,
   To judge the human race,
   With all thy Father’s dazzling train,
   With all thy glorious grace.

3 To damp our earthly joys,
   To’ increase our gracious fears,
   Forever let the archangel’s voice
   Be sounding in our ears
   The solemn midnight cry,—
   Ye dead, the Judge is come;
   Arise, and meet him in the sky,
   And meet your instant doom.

4 O may we all be found
   Obedient to thy word,
   Attentive to the trumpet’s sound,
   And looking for our Lord.
   O may we thus ensure
   A lot among the blest;
   And watch a moment to secure
   An everlasting rest.
                         Charles Wesley
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

Bringing the kingdom—to the "wrong people"!

The whole point of Jesus’s work was to bring heaven to earth and join them together forever, to bring God’s future into the present and make it stick there. But when heaven comes to earth and finds earth unready, when God’s future arrives in the present while people are still asleep, there will be explosions. And there were.

In particular, the people we would today call “the religious right,” led by a popular though unofficial pressure group called the “Pharisees,” objected strongly to Jesus’s teaching that God’s kingdom was coming in this way, through his own work. They were scandalized, not least by the way in which Jesus was celebrating God’s kingdom—another strong symbol, this—with all the wrong people: the poor, the outcasts, the hated tax-collectors—anyone in fact who wanted to join in. It was in response to this criticism that Jesus told some of his most poignant and powerful parables.—N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, 102 (emphasis original)

<idle musing>
Not a whole lot has changed, has it?
</idle musing>

It will all be made visible

1105 C. M.
Secrets of the heart made known.

AND must I be to judgment brought,
   And answer in that day
   For every vain and idle thought,
   And every word I say?

2 Yes, every secret of my heart
   Shall shortly be made known,
   And I receive my just desert
   For all that I have done.

3 How careful then ought I to live;
   With what religious fear;
   Who such a strict account must give
   For my behaviour here.

4 Thou awful Judge of quick and dead,
   The watchful power bestow;
   So shall I to my ways take heed,—
   To all I speak or do.

5 If now thou standest at the door,
   O let me feel thee near;
   And make my peace with God, before
   I at thy bar appear.
                         Charles Wesley
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

Tozer for Tuesday

The presence of an honest Christian living an upright life in the midst of the Gentiles is God’s most powerful instrument to condition men for the gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ.—A.W. Tozer, Living as a Christian, 136

Ashes to … Glory!

1095 C. M.
Awaking from the dust with shouts of praise.

THROUGH sorrow’s night, and danger’s path,
   Amid the deep’ning gloom,
   We, foll’wers of our suff’ring Lord,
   Are marching to the tomb.

2 There, when the turmoil is no more
   And all our powers decay,
   Our cold remains in solitude
   Shall sleep the years away.

3 Our labours done, securely laid
   In this our last retreat,
   Unheeded, o’er our silent dust,
   The storms of earth may beat.

4 Yet not thus buried, or extinct,
   The vital spark shall lie;
   For o’er life’s wreck that spark shall rise
   To seek its kindred sky.

5 These ashes, too, this little dust,
   Our Father’s care shall keep,
   Till the last angel rise and break
   The long and dreary sleep.
                         H. K. White
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

Rescue operation?

If this was a rescue operation, it was one with a difference. It wasn’t a matter of the God of Israel simply fighting off the wicked pagans and vindicating his own people. It was more devastating. It was about God judging not only the pagans but also Israel; about God acting in a new way in which nothing could be taken for granted; about God fulfilling his promises, but doing so in a way that nobody had expected or anticipated. God was issuing a fresh challenge to Israel, echoing back to his promises to Abraham: Israel is indeed the light of the world, but its present policies have been putting that light under a bucket. It’s time for drastic action. Instead of the usual military revolt, it was time to show the pagans what the true God was really like, not by fighting and violence but by loving one’s enemies, turning the other cheek, going the second mile. That is the challenge which Jesus issued in a series of teachings that we call the “sermon on the mount” (Matthew 5:1-7:29).—N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, 101

The hope of the resurrection

1094 C. M.
Certainty the resurrection dispels the gloom of the grave.

WHY do we mourn for dying friends,
   Or shake at death’s alarms?
   ’Tis but the voice that Jesus sends,
   To call them to his arms.

2 Are we not tending upward too,
   As fast as time can move?
   Nor should we wish the hours more slow,
   To keep us from our love.

3 Why should we tremble to convey
   Their bodies to the tomb?
   There once the flesh of Jesus lay,
   And left a long perfume.

4 The graves of all his saints he blest,
   And soften’d every bed:
   There should the dying members rest,
   But with their dying Head?

5 Thence he arose, ascending high,
   And show’d our feet the way:
   Up to the Lord our flesh shall fly,
   At the great rising day.

6 Then let the last, loud trumpet sound,
   And bid our kindred rise :—
   Awake, ye nations under ground;
   Ye saints, ascend the skies.
                         Isaac Watts
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

A hopeful rest

1091 L. M.
The grave shall restore its trust.

UNVEIL thy bosom, faithful tomb;
   Take this new treasure to thy trust;
   And give these sacred relics room
   To slumber in the silent dust.

2 Nor pain, nor grief, nor anxious fear
   Invade thy bounds: no mortal woes
   Can reach the peaceful sleeper here,
   While angels watch the soft repose.

3 So Jesus slept ;—
   God’s dying Son
   Pass’d through the grave, and blest the bed;
   Rest here, blest saint, till from his throne
   The morning break, and pierce the shade.

4 Break from his throne, illustrious morn;
   Attend, O earth! his sov’reign word,
   Restore thy trust—a glorious form—
   Call’d to ascend and meet the Lord.
                         Isaac Watts
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

Change to strains of cheerful praise / Our accents of distress

1084 C. M.
The death of a pastor.

TO thee, O God, when creatures fail,
   Thy flock, deserted, flies;
   And on the’ eternal Shepherd’s care,
   Our steadfast hope relies.

2 When o’er thy faithful servant’s dust
   Thy saints assembled mourn,
   In speedy tokens of thy grace,
   O Zion’s God, return!

3 The powers of nature all are thine,
   And thine the aids of grace;
   Thine arm has borne thy churches up,
   Through each succeeding race.

4 Exert thy sacred influence here,
   And here thy suppliants bless;
   And change to strains of cheerful praise
   Our accents of distress.
                         Philip Doddridge
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)