A song in church this morning reminded me of the potential for one piece of music to affect me in a variety of ways.
The hymn in question, “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name,” was the very first song in the old green Broadman Hymnal, probably the first song book I held in church from the time I was big enough to clutch one in my own two hands.
This often was the very first song we sang on Sunday mornings in my childhood and youthful years. So, chronologically, my earliest associations with “All Hail the Power” take me to a string of small country Baptist churches as Daddy moved us from farm job to farm job in Nolan County, Texas, around Sweetwater, the county seat.
In one of those churches, I made my profession of faith in Jesus Christ and was baptized. In a later church, I came to love and appreciate the first pastor who called me by name. In a third, this one in Sweetwater itself, I made my public declaration that I felt “called to preach.”
“All Hail the Power” is sung to at least three different tunes. All three were in that green Broadman. But until I started to college, it didn't really dawn on me that one set of words could be set to completely different music. This point of discovery added another dimension to my musical awareness.
In church in the college town and in a campus choir -- while I was sort of learning to follow the bass line -- I learned to sing the fanciest setting. That version goes crazy with the six words at the end of every stanza: “And crown Him Lord of all.” I could pretty well keep up with my fellow basses as we sang bunches of “crown Hims” under the other voice parts and then sang one almost endless “crown Him” on descending notes toward the end. I felt I had arrived, musically! Another landmark associated with those words.
When I first started trying to sing that song in church, I had no idea what some of the words meant. I didn’t know how angels would “prostrate fall” or that “diadem” was another word for a crown. On “let every kindred, every tribe,” I figured “kindred” was something like kinfolks, and I knew Indians lived in tribes. It didn’t dawn on me that “this terrestrial ball” meant the planet earth. Even so, through frequent repetition, the words and music were ingrained in my mind. Then, as I began to understand the implications of all those words, the song opened new depths of theological meaning, and the lyrics spoke to my soul as well as my mind: We are related spiritually to every group of people -- "every kindred, every tribe" -- on earth.
The hope of life beyond this one comes into focus in the last stanza, looking to that moment when, “with yonder sacred throng,” we fall down before Jesus and “join the everlasting song and crown Him Lord of all.”
I didn’t have time to process all these different dimensions, intellectually, this morning in church. Still, I think all those elements mingled in a high emotional and spiritual moment as I stood in the congregation and did my best with the tricky bass part on that high falutin’ version of a wonder-full hymn.
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