Musings on a Hymn

I was really struck by the gradual hymn (the one framing the gospel reading) in church today. The lyrics are as follows, and really after reading those you can just stop because nothing I have to say will be as powerful:

Father eternal, Ruler of creation,

Spirit of life, which moved ere from was made,

through the thick darkness covering every nation,

light to our blindness, O be thou our aid:

thy kingdom come, O Lord, thy will be done.

Races and peoples, lo, we stand divided,

and, sharing not our griefs, no joy can share;

by wars and tumults love is mocked, derided;

his saving cross no nation yet will bear:

thy kingdom come, O Lord, thy will be done.

Envious of heart, blind-eyed, with tongues confounded,

nation by nation still goes unforgiven,

in wrath and fear, by jealousies surrounded,

building proud towers which shall not reach to heaven:

thy kingdom come, O Lord, thy will be done.

Lust of possession worketh desolations;

there is no meekness in the powers of earth;

led by no star, the rulers of the nations

still fail to bring us to the blissful birth:

thy kingdom come, O Lord, they will be done.

How shall be love thee, holy hidden Being,

if we love not the world which thou hast made?

Bind us in thine own love for better seeing

thy Word made flesh, and in a manger laid:

thy kingdom come, O Lord, they will be done.

Most of the stuff we sing has more of a sense of hope to it. Even the hymns for Holy Week, while focusing on Jesus' suffering and death also focus on the reason for it and on our appropriate gratitude. This is more like a lament. I could see it fitting in with Jeremiah. We've screwed up, we're collectively clueless, and we're not showing any signs of improvement. Our only hope is in God hearing our cry.

The writer of the lyrics is listed as having lived from 1865 to 1959. He would have been about 50 during World War I and about 80 at the end of World War II. I wonder when it was actually written, and what he saw in the world that inspired such sorrow. At the same time, I feel like it's completely relevant today. The world is still torn by inequality and greed – hurting both the people in the poorest nations and the natural environment we all depend on – and hurting the rest of us too, both because of the violence that often results from inequality and because of the way it scars our hearts to commit or even be complicit in injustice. And certainly no national government is about to embrace humility and vulnerability and true repentance from exploiting others. They probably wouldn't be able to stay in power if they did. It seems like even when we can behave halfway decently in our day-to-day lives, we still collectively behave like ogres. I don't know to what degree governments are capable of anything else in the long term, but I certainly don't believe this is what God has in mind for humanity. Yet we're so very stuck.

In addition to the general idea of our desperate situation and need for God, I was also moved by the way biblical references were incorporated into the lyrics: the tower of Babel, the Magi/star of Bethlehem, and of course the birth of Christ. I find that those kinds of references make both the hymn and the Bible more meaningful to me because of the way they tie ideas together. We are collectively both prideful and lost, each nation-state thinking it should rule the world, but none of us able to see beyond our own immediate advantage. We aren't likely to turn to God on our own; our only hope is for God to come to us, as indeed He has.