Why I'm fond of the old gospel hymns

Every now and again, I get criticism for my fondness for old gospel hymns and songs.   We sang another one of them this past Sunday (Epiphany 3 ) , this one was Tidings,by James Walch , written in the Victorian era.   It is hymn 539 in the Episcopal hymnal, but appears under its first line “O Zion haste,” in many other hymnals.  

A few years ago, a very good friend of mine, one of the best church musicians I know, sniffed at me because I love this song.   Apparently it is not very good music, and he, at least, was somewhat critical of its romantic theology.   I remain unmoved; I love the song and could sing it until my dying breath.   (Perhaps that is what my musician friend had in mind.)  

And I know exactly why I like it.   Most people know that I came from California , born and raised in and around San Francisco , and that I have lived in many places in the United States .   It might be possible to assume a certain level of spiritual sophistication because of that kind of background.   But there is a lot of other stuff in my background and some of that makes it clear why these songs move me so powerfully.  

Before my family came to California , they were from Oklahoma , Texas and Tennessee .   They were from that part of the country during a time of grinding poverty and primitiveness of life which is hard to believe happened only 80 or 90 years ago.  

My grandmother gave birth to two babies while they were temporarily living in Arkansas , both died, and we don't even know where they were buried, what their names were, or what happened to them.   This sturdy woman, of good Midwestern, southern, and Cherokee stock, then went on to bury three more children as teenagers and young men.   My uncle Hal died when he was 14 in the influenza epidemic which swept the country after the First World War.   My uncle Henry died of blood poisoning which set in after an injury in a high school wrestling match.   He died, if you can believe this, because there was a rainstorm and the creek was so high that my grandfather could not get the wagon across it to get into the village where the doctor was.   My uncle Hardeway died of tuberculosis, which also nearly killed my Aunt Amalia .  

I don't have any definite record that my grandparents sang this song.   But I'll bet they did. And if they did not, they sang dozens of other hymns from the same musical genre—that genre being the intimate availability of a personal, saving God whose loved triumphed over things you and I will never have to face, but which were part and parcel of life in early 20 th century Oklahoma.   When my grandfather took the two tiny little white-wrapped bodies of his first-born babies out to bury—probably in the shade of a scrub oak near the river—he did it in the faith which trusted that God “in whom they live and move is love.”   When the hymnodist proclaims that God “stooped to save his lost creation,” my grandmother could hold up her arms to heaven because she knew what it meant to feel genuinely lost as she buried her teenaged son. Both of them knew, personally, that saviour who “died on earth that all might live above” and believe you me, they had some names in mind of those who had died horribly on earth in the hope of a life above.  

It is stimulating and exciting to read sophisticated theologians who speak of the incarnation and the paschal mystery, and the solidarity of the incarnate God with his creation led by Christ the New Adam.   These are great things, and I love to meditate upon them.   But at a more immediate level, my good grandparents did not have to stir themselves to deep places of mediation, they knew the personal power of a redeeming and loving God, and when it came time to talk about making their passage to God, they knew and loved many who made that trip on considerably less than a first-class ticket.  

Yep, these songs are great to sing.   And I remain unabashedly unashamed of my zeal for lots of them.   But my fondness for them is more than just a matter of taste. It has to do with the kind of blood which flows through my veins, and those who have preceded me in this life of faith.   They say that the apple does not fall far from the tree, and in this case, apparently, neither does the hymnal.  

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The Rev’d Lloyd Prator, Rector
Saint John’s in the Village Episcopal Church

New York City