Glorious Songs, Gloriously Sung

We don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about what or how we sing. God’s people are called to sing glorious songs to a glorious God (especially when it seems like they shouldn’t).

Ghostly Words

I’ve been in the habit recently of remembering random parts of hymns which I sung as a schoolboy. I wasn’t a Christian when I first sung them and so I usually had little idea what was truly going on at the time. Every now and then, though, a short line from of one of them suddenly reappears in my mind again, somewhat like a ghost. This often brings a moving sense of nostalgia. It is a nostalgia tinged with both gratitude and loss for a time that existed not all that long ago when profound theological words were sung daily by hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren across Britain.

The epic sense of divine
purpose which those
half-understood words
had the power to evoke
is not easily replicable…
entirely unmatched by
the relative banality of
agnostic materialism
which engulfs the lives
of most westerners today

These words roused us with exotic ideas and beings and lands and battles and victories and joys which seemed so wonderfully alien to the dull monotony of the playground or classroom. Most people today who ever did sing such songs have now put them far away from their minds. And yet I believe many such people still ache for something half-remembered too.

The epic sense of divine purpose which those half-understood words had the power to evoke is not easily replicable. It remains entirely unmatched by the relative banality of agnostic materialism which engulfs the lives of most westerners today, without them even realising. Even apparent “success” within such lives often just distracts from the ultimately tragic drift from the things they’ve forgotten they once sung.

The Glorious Songs of Zion

The latest ghostly fragment to return to me was ‘None but Zion’s children know,’ a strange phrase I couldn’t fully recollect. It was from John Newton’s Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken. I hadn’t sung that hymn since school assembly. I’ve since introduced the hymn to my young children, and taught them to sing it with gusto! The words of that hymn are well-suited to our tumultuous times. Such tumults are only likely to increase for my children when they grow up. Wherever such times lead, I want my children to have glorious songs to sing. I think God does too. That’s probably why the Book of Psalms exists.

Glorious songs, however, are not always sung in glorious times. This is shown most famously in Psalm 137:

By the waters of Babylon,
    there we sat down and wept,
    when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
    we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
    required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the Lord’s song
    in a foreign land?
(Psalm 137:1-4)

For Israel to sing of Zion (that is, Jerusalem) at a time when they were captive in Babylon, was torture. Not least when they were required to do so, mockingly.

The words of that hymn
are well-suited to our
tumultuous times. Such
tumults are only likely to
increase for my children
when they grow up.
Wherever such times lead,
I want my children to have
glorious songs to sing.
I think God does too.

Yet this lament is a song. It is a song expressing the heartache of a people who long for their present situation to match the glories for which they are destined. The rhetorical question of whether God’s people should sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land is precisely that: rhetorical. They did sing of Zion in a ‘foreign land’, as did Paul and Silas in prison (Acts 16:25), as should we.

Glorious Assurance

There are different songs for different times, of course. Newton’s hymn is especially appropriate for us today because of its unabashed confidence in truths which anchor us amidst the storms. Its beautifully uplifting words project a fortifying theological assurance for members of God’s kingdom. This is the security of a rescued people, safe in God’s formidable city, built on the most unshakeable of solid ground, God Himself: ‘On the rock of ages founded / What can shake thy sure repose?’ A fair question.

Such security stands in glaring contrast to the imagined security offered by the ever-shakable ground in the world. The incessant storms of recent times – political, cultural, medical, economic – have shown how quickly such worldly securities can crumble. Such storms provide a perfect opportunity for the Church’s counter-message to shine most distinctly, as the city on a hill (Matt. 5:14).

Yet at just the moment we ought to be radiant, the Church has become fearful and docile. We worry about appearing “arrogant” or “self-righteous” so we hide our lamps away (Matt. 5:15). We end up believing that if we must sing of such “glorious things”, we should do so under our breath. The effect is not unlike singing through a mask (something too many Christians have become accustomed to of late).

The Bombast of Humility

Christian aspirations for humility today are often misdirected. The result is often an underselling of God’s glory and a paralyzing timidity which would be alien to most Christians in the history of the world. I don’t think that was what Paul meant to happen when he wrote Philippians 2.

at just the moment
when we ought to be
radiant, the Church
has become fearful
and docile. We worry
about appearing
arrogant or self-
-righteous so we hide
our lamps away…
believing that if we
must sing of “glorious
things”, we should do
so under our breath.
The effect is not
unlike singing
through a mask…

Newton, the self-proclaimed ‘wretch’ of Amazing Grace, knew that the confidence resounding from his hymn is directed entirely to God alone. Indeed, the hymn’s best-known melody (Haydn’s ‘Austria’) is sometimes labelled ‘bombastic’ given its parallel use for ‘Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles!’. Yet regardless of other connotations, Haydn’s uplifting tune fits Newton’s words wonderfully. We ought to be singing such words like that.

In fact, Haydn’s inimitable melody was prominent in Christian hymnody long before it became a German nationalistic treasure. There is a funny story about when Kaiser Wilhelm II once visited his godmother, Queen Victoria. Standing in church one Sunday he was said to be taken aback to be singing this cherished tune in worship to God rather than his homeland. This itself is a powerful reminder of how such glorious songs can subvert worldly expectations. This is what the things of God’s kingdom always seem to do (cf. 1Cor. 1-2).

A Different Kind of Kingdom

Newton himself was a former slave ship captain, with vivid memories of all the misplaced ceremonial glory gushing amidst the grand ships of the British Empire. He had little time for worldly boasting in human achievements: ‘Fading is the worlding’s pleasure / All his boasted pomp and show’.

The self-proclaimed wretch knew our wild-sounding confidence is only justifiable because of God alone, whose kingdom is unlike any empire this world has ever known. It is a kingdom that does not stand upon the brittle promises of Man. Zion is instead undergirded by the One ‘whose Word cannot be broken’, who ‘Formed thee for his own abode’. Newton certainly had in mind Psalm 87 here, but also Isaiah 33:20–21, the hymn’s beating heart:

Behold Zion, the city of our appointed feasts!
Your eyes will see Jerusalem,
an untroubled habitation, an immovable tent,
whose stakes will never be plucked up,
nor will any of its cords be broken.
But there the LORD in majesty will be for us
a place of broad rivers and streams,
where no galley with oars can go,
nor majestic ship can pass

There is a striking defiance to Isaiah’s words, which obviously captivated Newton. Such words offer powerful resistance to the myriad attempts to undermine God’s people and purposes.

Christian aspirations for
humility today are often
misdirected. The result is
an underselling of God’s
glory and a paralyzing
timidity which would be
alien to most Christians in
the history of the world.

We see here too the fount of those ‘streams of living waters / Springing from eternal love.’ Zion is indeed a mighty fortress, but it is also a place of deep, tender fellowship with the LORD. These streams are vast, quenching all our needs and wants. Yet such streams remain unassailable by any enemy galleon, neither those professing to rule the waves in Newton’s time, nor those professing to rule the airwaves in ours.

Glory Over Mockery

Newton doesn’t want us to forget the anointed blessings of Zion (Ps. 133:3), and all they imply for our lives here on earth. Like bedraggled schoolchildren, we often find ourselves dragged back into doubt by our mocking contemporaries on the playground. Newton’s words call us back to holy defiance: ‘Let the world deride or pity / I will glory in thy name.’ Indeed, Jesus’ questions to the disciples in Luke 24:38 couldn’t be more apt for our time: ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?’ Jesus had just appeared to them from nowhere, somewhat like a ghost – yet very unlike a ghost, with a real, physical, yet supernatural body.

Like schoolchildren, we
often find ourselves
dragged back into doubt
by the mockeries of the
playground. Newton calls
us back to holy defiance:
‘Let the world deride or pity /
I will glory in thy name.’

This is precisely the kind of ‘glorious thing’ to keep singing about in glorious songs. It is a thing of Zion, brighter than anything offered us anywhere else on earth. This is why we must not become embarrassed to sing the ‘glad songs of victory’ (Ps. 118:15) as our heritage. Such songs are entirely appropriate for those who believe the early Church’s victorious (bombastic?) assertions about the Resurrection: ‘O death, where is your sting?’ (1Cor. 15:55). Newton’s very last line cements the power of this epic victory, this difference between Church and world which propels us from the fleeting to the utterly permanent: ‘Solid joys and lasting treasures / None but Zion’s children know.’

In ever darkening times, such unabashed confidence in God’s promises needs reclaiming. And there’s no better place to start than by singing out those very things which too many in our world are so desperately missing.