In the Rector’s Forum this summer we are looking at hymns.
It may seem like an odd topic. After all, the singing of hymns is of secondary
importance, right? They are just the warm up act for the important business of
scripture, sermon, and sacrament, aren’t they?
That’s exactly why I believe it’s important to think about
hymns.
Christianity is a singing faith. The New Testament is full
of hymns. In Luke’s gospel alone there are three important hymns – the Magnificat
or the song that Mary sings when she visits her cousin Elizabeth, the mother of
John the Baptist – “My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God
my Savior”; the “Gloria in Excelsis,” the song that the angels sing when they
announce Jesus’ birth to the shepherds – “Glory be to God on high and on earth,
peace, good will to men”; and the Nunc Dimittis, “Lord, now lettest thou thy
servant go in peace according to thy word”, the song that the aged Simeon sings
when he sees the infant Jesus in the temple.
Or consider the Book of Revelation. When John is taken up
spiritually into heaven he sees and hears the multitudes around God’s throne
singing. They even sing a form of the Sanctus, the “Holy, holy, holy,” that we
sing every Sunday at the eucharist.
It is almost impossible to have a religion without music. Encountering
the divine seems to compel us to respond with music.
But hymns are boring, right? They are slow and plodding;
there’s no syncopation; and they are relics of a bygone era.
Not necessarily. I think we do a good job of singing hymns
at Christ Church, but there are many different ways of singing hymns.
Some hymns are practically jazzy (Here Paul Hesslink, our organist, plays the syncopated version of “A
mighty fortress”).
But keep in mind that hymns are corporate music. They are
meant to be sung by congregations, so the rhythm needs to be fairly simple.
I want to encourage all of you to pay more attention to the
words that we sing. Our hymnbooks contain some marvelous and often moving
poetry.
That is why Father Rick and I will be preaching on hymns
during the month of July, and the last Sunday of the month we will celebrate
three great composers who all wrote music for hymns – Johann Sebastian Bach,
George Friedrich Handel, and Henry Purcell.
Today I want you to think about one of our national hymns – “America
the beautiful”.
Wellesley college English professor Katherine Lee Bates
wrote the words to “America the Beautiful,” after a trip to the summit of Pike’s
Peak in 1893.Bates was an accomplished person. She was the daughter of a
Congregationalist minister and graduated from Wellesley in 1880; studied at
Oxford in 1890 to 91; and became a full professor at Wellesley in 1893.
The text refers not only to the “purple mountain majesties”
she saw from the top of Pike’s Peak, but also to the “spacious skies” and “amber
waves of grain” Bates had seen from the window of the train during her trip
from Massachusetts to Colorado.
On the way to Colorado Bates visited the World’s Columbian
Exposition in Chicago which inspired her reference to “alabaster cities.”
From time to time people propose that “America the beautiful”
replace “The Star-spangled banner” as our national anthem. Personally, I am in
favor of that. I prefer it for several reasons.
First, “America the beautiful” is a prayer. It is addressed
to God.
America, America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
Secondly, “America the beautiful” is about America itself
rather than about our flag.
But what I mostly want to talk about this morning is Katharine
Lee Bates’ vision of America.
With Katharine Bates, I share the view that America is an
unfinished project.
The United States of America is distinctly different from
most other nation states. A nation is
usually defined as a group of people
defined by a “common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a
particular country or territory.” A nation also usually shares a common
religion.
Think of England, China, or France. The English, Chinese,
and French all share a common culture, territory, history, language, and even
religion, for the most part.
Of course, America is defined by a common history, and we
share a particular territory, but we certainly don’t share a common descent. And
there is even a sense in which we are not defined by a common culture or even a
common language.
It is often pointed out that we are a nation of immigrants,
a melting pot, a rainbow. We come from Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, or
the islands of the Pacific. We are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus,
Buddhists, and Sikhs. We speak English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Yoruba.
This makes the American project, the American story,
complicated. We do not share loyalty to a crown or a holy book, so what does
bind us all together?
America’s defining characteristic is not our common descent
or common language but rather a common set of convictions set out in our
foundational documents – the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
America is defined by our conviction that “all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” We
are defined by our commitment to the principles of limited government of, by
and for the people as set out in the Constitution.
But the American project is an unfinished project and the
American story is an unfinished story because every generation has to work out
for itself what these ideas mean and how they are to be implemented.
And I believe Katharine Lee Bates understood that and
expressed it in the words that she wrote in the second verse of her hymn:
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
In other words, the American creed is not “my country right
or wrong” but as Pres. Lincoln’s friend Sen. Carl Schurz put it, “I confidently
trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to believe
that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ They will
not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and
welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we
cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country—when right to be
kept right; when wrong to be put right.’”
America has never been and never will be a country without
flaws. On his way from Springfield, Illinois, to his inauguration in
Washington, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech to the New Jersey legislature in
which he referred to America as an “almost chosen nation.” An almost chosen
nation needs the grace of God and must seek the grace of God to “mend its
flaws.”
The third verse of Bates’ hymn begins
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country
loved
And mercy more than life!
I am certain that the “heroes proved in liberating strife”
to whom Bates referred were the men who fought for the Union cause in the Civil
War, but it is ironic that she published the final version of “America the beautiful”
in 1913, only one year before the beginning of the First World War, the war in
which the United States for the first time took on the role of an international
defender of liberty.
It is a role that is still controversial, still a topic of
lively debate in our own time. To what extent should the United States
intervene in conflicts beyond its borders? It is good to debate that topic
because I think the debate is part of our ongoing project of interpreting and
applying the words of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created
equal, and are endowed by their Creator with … life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness…”
If one country denies life and liberty to the citizens of
another country, how long will it be before they deny those rights to other
countries? Several years ago I heard former Secretary of State Madeline
Albright say that in World War II we learned that evil anywhere in the world
will eventually come to the shores of the United States. I believe she was
right. The American creed compels us to make common cause with other nations
who share our convictions, especially when they are threatened by those who do
not share our convictions.
But the “liberating strife” does not just take place on
distant battlefields, and the heroes and heroines who engage in it are not just
those who take up weapons and wear the uniforms of the armed services.
It seems to me that every generation of Americans is called
upon to engage in liberating strife right here at home.
There is a dynamic element in the American creed.
Jefferson was a slaveholder and never intended for his words
“All men are created equal” to include African Americans, but the Civil War and
civil rights movement were “liberating
strifes” that extended Jefferson’s words to include African Americans
Just weeks before the Second Continental Congress adopted
the Declaration of Independence, John Adams’ wife, Abigail, wrote her husband, “ I desire you would Remember the Ladies,
and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not
put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would
be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and
will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or
Representation.”
Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott and the members of the
Seneca Falls Convention waged a “liberating strife,” and finally the Nineteenth
Amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote and Jefferson’s
words expanded once again.
Katharine Lee Bates herself waged a kind of “liberating
strife.” The great love of her life was Wellesley’s dean and economics’
professor, Katharine Coman. When Coman died in 1915, Bates wrote, “So much of
me died with [her] that I'm sometimes not quite sure whether I'm alive or not.”
Here at the beginning of the 21st century the great
question to be answered about Jefferson’s words is this: Do they include
Katharine Lee Bates and Katharine Coman? Do they include those who love someone
of the same sex?
But the main reason that I personally prefer “America the
beautiful” to “The star-spangled banner” is because it is a hymn. A hymn is a
song addressed to God. I would never want us to have a national religion, but I
would always want the United States to acknowledge that we seek God’s grace and
need God’s guidance.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
