My God, How Great Thou Art

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made,
I see the stars; I hear the roaring thunder:
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Refrain
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee;
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee;
How great thou art, how great thou art!

When through the woods and forest glades I wander,
and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
when I look down from lofty mountain’s grandeur
and hear the brook, and feel the gentle breeze;

Refrain

And when I think that God, his son not sparing,
sent him to die, I scarce can take it in;
that on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
he bled and died to take away my sin;

Refrain

When Christ shall come with shouts of acclamation
and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!
Then I shall bow in humble adoration,
and there proclaim, my God, how great thou art!

Refrain

I wrote this sermon back in February for my course on Congregational Song as a Resource for Preaching and Worship. While my father has been in ICU these past few weeks, this hymn and sermon have been on my mind regularly. I offer the words here as a sign of peace for all of us as we struggle through difficult times.

How Great Thou Art

When my grandfather died in 1998 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, this beautiful hymn, How Great Thou Art, was chosen for his funeral. Grandpa JB requested this hymn years previously while planning for his funeral, before his mind had started to fade too much. He chose the hymn because it represented one of his happiest memories. When my father was a young boy taking singing lessons, he would sing this hymn to my grandfather for hours on end, trying his hardest to achieve the perfect sound.

Although I was not there, and have only the vaguest memories of my grandfather, I can just picture how absolutely blissful these moments were for him. Before my father suffered from throat cancer and lost his saliva glands, he had one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard, with the perfect husky quality to it that made the hymns he sang so perfectly soulful that you could just feel the emotions portrayed by the text. And my grandfather JB was such a perfectly God-loving man that he has been my inspiration as I walk along this spiritual journey of mine. To listen to his son, with his soulfully formed notes, sing a hymn of such eloquent praise to God, I can only imagine that my grandfather could not have been prouder.

For me, the hymn is heartbreaking. It reminds me of times before my father’s voice was diminished by radiation treatments, and before my grandfather’s mind withered away as a result of the disease eating away at him. The sharp contrast between who these two people used to be, and who they became as they struggled with illness, causes me to question the message the hymn delivers. Rather than a proclamation of awe, the refrain becomes a question for me: My God, How great art thou? How can you send your son to die on a cross to save the rest of the world from sin, yet leave my father and my grandfather to suffer through the burdens of their dysfunctional human bodies?

As I was preparing to write this sermon, I researched the origins of this hymn, and found a compelling story about the author’s inspiration for writing it. The hymn was written in 1885 by a Swedish poet named Carl Gustav Boberg, and was set to the tune of a traditional Swedish folk song. Boberg wrote the hymn after walking home from church near Kronobäck, Sweden. As he returned home to Mönsterås,

“a thundercloud appeared on the horizon, and soon sharp lightning flashed across the sky. Strong winds swept over the meadows and billowing fields of grain. The thunder pealed in loud claps. Then rain came in cool fresh showers. In a little while the storm was over, and a rainbow appeared.”

When Boberg finally arrived home, he opened the window and saw the bay of Mönsterås, and heard the song of a thrush and the peal of the church bells in the quiet evening air, and was inspired by this series of sights, sounds, and experiences to write the hymn.

I cannot help but translate the actual experience of surviving a sudden thunderstorm into the experience of surviving the metaphorical storm that illness wreaks upon one’s family life. As the hymn gradually shows, and as Boberg celebrates, the thunderstorm is an inevitable trial of life, but God’s greatness is shown in the fact that all thunderstorms end, just as all of our trials and suffering end because of the grace of Christ’s death on the cross.

There is a verse of this hymn that is rarely found in hymnbooks or sung in churches, and I would like to offer it as a prayer:

“When burdens press, and seem beyond endurance,
bowed down with grief, to God I lift my face;
and then in love God brings me sweet assurance:
‘My child, for thee sufficient is my grace!’
Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee,
How great thou art, how great thou art!”
Friends,
let us remember God’s sweet assurance,
and let our souls sing out with joy
in even the most difficult of times.
Amen.

On Love

"[Love is] a human emotion." "No. It is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies." ^‡

A wise friend once told me that love is not an emotion, but a decision that one makes about one's relationship with another individual. I would perhaps expand upon this definition: love is an ethic which guides one's actions with regard to other individuals.

This is not to say that there is not an emotion which occurs frequently in conjunction with this guiding ethic and which may be referred to as "love;" in truth, the emotion makes it easier to act ethically towards the individual upon whom one feels such an emotion. However, the presence of this emotion, which is a purely chemical phenomenon comprised primarily of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, in destructive relationships, and the ability to feel this emotion towards inanimate objects with which it is impossible to enter into relationship (such as depicted in scientific studies that claim it is possible to fall "in love" with chocolate; the same chemical reaction is produced by THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana) demonstrates that the emotion does not necessarily correspond to the virtuous qualities with which we associate the word "love."

Another good friend of mine argues that love is something which must be recognized by the person^† or individual^† that is loved; love requires the possibility, if not the actuality, of reciprocation. From a biological standpoint, I find this definition difficult to work with because it excludes sentient individuals who are biologically recognized as incapable of experiencing love. My primary example of such an individual is a child born with a brain stem (which is necessary for life) but without a cerebrum or cerebellum (which is necessary for higher-level functioning such as emotion, morality or ethic). Biologically speaking, the child is incapable of reciprocating love in any way, but is capable of being loved.

So what does this mean in terms of the Christian notion of love?

There is a popular Bible passage oft-quoted at weddings which defines the qualities of love. Interestingly, this passage (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) sets forth a description of love which is rarely fulfilled completely by human persons. As a whole, humanity is guilty of failing to love fully in the way that this text describes.

I remember reading once a meme which took 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and replaced each instance of the word "love" with the name of God, resulting in a complete picture of God's eternal and unchanging love.

In the Christian tradition, God sets the ethic with which we are supposed to live, yet it is in our human nature to fail. We are impatient; we are unkind; we are envious, boastful, arrogant, rude. We insist on our own way (the one and only way); we are irritable and resentful.

In some ways, we expect these failures. We prepare ourselves for the failure of others to live fully into God's example of love. What would the world look like if we loved as God loves?

† I use the word "person" here to indicate a specific member of the species Homo sapiens, whereas I include members of other species under the nomenclature "individual;" as a panentheist, I recognize sapience, sentience, and emotion across species.

‡ The focusing quote of this essay comes from Matrix: Revolutions. I worried that citing the source at the beginning of this post would undermine the seriousness with which I approach the subject. I find in my own moral philosophy that wisdom and revelation can come from the most unlikely sources, though I understand that some may not share my philosophy. Thusly, I wished to approach this subject without the burden of revealing my source as a third-rate sci-fi flick.