This Christmas season, we have touched on a wide variety of topics as we have investigated what the hymns in Glory to God say about justice for the church and for individuals. Some of what our authors have shared has been received almost universally with great rejoicing, and some has brought controversy and discomfort.
However, there is at least one important topic that we’ve yet to fully address; ironically, it is the topic to which Jesus dedicated the most space in his earthly ministry. It is at once the most seemingly mundane and the most controversial issue our church faces. This is the topic of economic justice – the relationship of the rich to the poor and the call to God’s people to live in such away that all have the basic necessities not only for survival but also for joy.
Economic justice is seemingly mundane; one would be hard-pressed to find a church that doesn’t want to “help the poor” or “give to those in need.” This is especially true in the Christmas season. Churches put up Angel Trees, adopt Christmas families, and hold alternative giving fairs. The urge to “help the poor” pervades our secular culture as well this time of year – from the increase in giving to charitable organizations to the various adaptations of stories like Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol airing on prime-time television. The Christian imperative to care for the poor is perhaps the most widely-accepted contribution that Christianity offers to our wider culture.
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Jesus’ words about the last being first and the poor inheriting the Kingdom of God are deeply challenging words for the average US Christian. And to the powers that be in our world, economic justice is downright threatening.
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Yet at the same time, Christ’s call to economic justice is perhaps the most controversial, subversive, and radical aspect of the gospel. Jesus’ words about the last being first and the poor inheriting the Kingdom of God are deeply challenging words for the average US Christian. And to the powers that be in our world, economic justice is downright threatening. We need look no further that Pope Francis’ recent “Apostolic Exhortation” criticizing trickle-down capitalist economics – and the defensively fearful responses of those with economic power – to see how radical and controversial the economic justice of the Gospel really is.
We get caught by this difficult difference between charity and justice. In the famous words of Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” While we gladly embrace charity, most of us Presbyterians shy away from the unsettling prospect of true economic justice – precisely because good news for the poor often means bad news for us—or we think it does, not knowing where we actually stand.
So what does Glory to God have to say about economic justice? Let me start by saying that there is no way to address all the hymns in this volume that speak to economic concerns – and that is good news! As many authors in this issue have already pointed out, the words we sing regularly in worship inform our beliefs and become part of our stories. Before we know it, we have begun to sing these very words into being. I am overjoyed to see that who use Glory to God as a worship resource will have no shortage of opportunities to sing the economics of the gospel into action.
Hymns About Charity
That said, the hymns in Glory to God address economics both from the “charity perspective” and from the “economic justice” perspective. This is both helpful and problematic. Hymns about charity are undoubtedly an important part of Christian worship. Glory to God includes some old favorites about the way we give charitably to God and to one another, such as “We Give Thee but Thine Own,” (#708) and “As Those of Old Their Firstfruits Brought” (#712). The latter joyfully describes the ways in which people of faith seek to give to “a world in need” from our own “wealth…of farm, market, shop and home, of mind and heart and hand.” To classics like these are added new hymns such as “God of the Fertile Fields” (#714), the second verse of which proceeds: “We would be stewards true, holding in trust from you, all that you give; help us in love to share, teach us like you to care for people everywhere, that all may live.”
I am encouraged by these hymns about charity because they remind us that all our wealth is held in stewardship; furthermore, they point to sharing that wealth as the very imitation of God. However, among these charity hymns, Glory to God also includes hymns like “God Whose Giving Knows No Ending” (#716), another favorite from the blue hymnal. After two verses of describing the spiritual and non-material gifts God gives us, this hymn continues, “Treasure, too, you have entrusted, gain through powers your grace conferred: ours to use for home and kindred, and to spread the gospel word. Open wide our hands in sharing, as we heed Christ’s ageless call, healing, teaching, and reclaiming, serving you by loving all.”
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No matter how selflessly we might give that wealth away, our simple charity cannot erase in consequence or ethical import the sinful economic systems through which we acquired it.
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This verse is a perfect example of why we can’t simply stop at hymns about charity. So much of this verse (and this hymn as a whole) confirms the values of sharing, serving God, loving all, spreading the Gospel. And yet, the hymn also embraces something of a misunderstanding of stewardship. Its assertion that this “treasure” and “gain” come to us “through powers [God’s] grace conferred” fails to see what the Pope’s exhortation and prophets past and present so clearly elucidate: the exploitative systems through which so much of our treasure and economic gain makes its way into our possession. No matter how selflessly we might give that wealth away, our simple charity cannot erase in consequence or ethical import the sinful economic systems through which we acquired it. Even beyond that, our relative wealth as a society is built up over many years and is a gift of those previous generations, not an achievement of even the most brilliant innovator among us.
Hymns About Justice
And that is why I am grateful that Glory to God also includes hymns about economic justice. Again, some are familiar tunes from hymnals past, such as “Today We All Are Called to be Disciples of the Lord” (#757), which describes discipleship as, “to help to set the captives free, make plowshares out of swords…to serve the poor and homeless first, our need and comfort last.” Similar is “Live Into Hope” (#772), a hymn based on Luke 4:16-20, in which, “The oppressed shall be the first to see the year of God’s own jubilee.” Hymns like these portray economic justice not as the charity of giving wealth to God and neighbor but instead as participating in God’s creation of a new world order. A world in which the poor are the first to receive the good news, the lowly are exalted, and the rich are sent away empty. A world turned upside down.
Glory to God also presents new hymns that are even more explicit in calling for a world based on the Biblical vision of the Kingdom of God. Some, like “Heaven Shall Not Wait” (#773), joyfully anticipate the coming of such a world, proclaiming that “Heaven shall not wait for the poor to lose their patience…for the rich to share their fortunes, the proud to fall;” for, “Jesus is Lord; he has championed the unwanted; in him injustice confronts its timely end.” Others, like “In An Age of Twisted Values” (#345), confess our own complicity in such sinful systems: “In sophisticated language we have justified our greed. By our struggle for possessions we have robbed the poor and weak. Hear our cry and heal our nation till our nation honors you.”
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However, if the world is about to turn – if the Kingdom of God is to be made manifest on earth as it is in heaven – for many of us Presbyterians in places of economic privilege, this turning may look a lot like bad news before it looks like good news.
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The new hymnal has no shortage of hymns that witness to this systemic, structural understanding of economic justice. However, I believe the most compelling of these hymns is “The Canticle of the Turning” (#100), Rory Cooney’s paraphrase of the Magnificat. David Lamotte quoted this hymn in his article last week as an example of a “bold challenge to power and the status quo” – a prophetic hymn worthy of the Biblical text on which it is based.
I first encountered “Canticle of the Turning” in a worship service with the YAV program. It was an instant favorite among that group of young adults; as I’ve watched Glory to God make its way into the pews, I’ve witnessed the same phenomenon in the PC(USA) as a whole. There’s something extraordinarily powerful in those words and melody. I always look down to find goose-bumps on my arms by the time we make it to the end of the first verse and sing the question, “Could the world be about to turn?”
However, if the world is about to turn – if the Kingdom of God is to be made manifest on earth as it is in heaven – for many of us Presbyterians in places of economic privilege, this turning may look a lot like bad news before it looks like good news. Mary’s Magnificat and Cooney’s paraphrase in this hymn draw dichotomies both in terms of power and of faithfulness that leave privileged people of faith in an uneasy tension. While we may sing, “Though I am small, my God, my all, you work great things in me,” we must also become keenly aware that, “the halls of power and the fortress tower” of which the third verse promises, “not a stone will be left on stone” are the very systems of commerce, governance, and military might that allow us to maintain our present comfort. “The world is about to turn!” we sing, and that is good news for the poor and oppressed, but not necessarily for our mutual funds, 401ks, and high-definition smart-TVs.
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Perhaps it is because the Gospel has gotten to us. The Holy Spirit is moving within us, giving us eyes to see that more joyful than the world of our own excesses is that world where “the hungry poor shall weep no more for the food they can never earn.”
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And yet, for so many of us privileged Christians, singing songs like Canticle of the Turning, Heaven Shall Not Wait, and other hymns of economic justice, is a deeply powerful spiritual experience. It may make no logical sense, but for some reason, we crave these hymns. Why?
Perhaps it is because the Gospel has gotten to us. The Holy Spirit is moving within us, giving us eyes to see that more joyful than the world of our own excesses is that world where “the hungry poor shall weep no more for the food they can never earn.” I wonder if somehow, in spite of all our wealth and privilege, the Gospel has made its way into our inmost desires to light a “fire of love in our flesh and our bones” (Gather Us In, #401).
So what then? Are we just a bunch of idealists and dreamers, perfectly happy to sing about the Kingdom of God from our fancy new hymnals but ultimately content to leave things the way they are?
Or is it possible that for us, like for Mary, singing these songs about a world turned upside down is the first step in making this world a reality?
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AUTHOR BIO: Ginna Bairby, the Managing Editor of Unbound, is a graduate of Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA (M.Div. 2013) and a candidate for ordination in the Presbytery of the James. She grew up in Richmond, VA; earned a Bachelor of Arts in both Religious Studies and Music from the College of William and Mary (2009); and spent a year living and working in Lima, Peru, as a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV). Ginna currently resides with her husband Andy Bairby in Louisville, KY, and enjoys reading, hiking, traveling, and both listening and playing to music – particularly that of the Indigo Girls.
More from Advent IV: PEACE on Earth, Goodwill to All.
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