“Like a rose, trampled on the ground.
He (Jesus) took the fall and thought of ME, above all.”
(a potential winner of the “lyrics I really can’t stand” award)
When I was pastoring an evangelical church we would sometimes sing the song “Above All”. I hated it, but I was careful about who I told. It struck me that the lyric above was, to say the least, not an altogether apt description of the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Is He “like a rose trampled on the ground”? Did he think of ME “above all?
This is not to impugn any of you who really love or loved that song. I share this because there is a part of hopeful theology and faith that accepts that some of the things that we don’t like (I try not to say “hate”) are thought of as very wonderful by some other people.
As a pastor, I always felt that this was one of the skills necessary to make it through some music and worship times. (Others may have said the same about my sermons.) Sometimes I would say to myself, “What I am enjoying about this time of worship is how much I don’t like it while seeing how meaningful it seems to be to others here.”
I honestly came to enjoy some of the songs that I disliked the most. “Shine Jesus Shine” was never really one of my favourites, but a lot of other people were obviously taken with it, and so when we sang that I would marvel at how much I disliked it and how much other people liked it - and wasn’t it great that people who felt differently about things could worship together?
I would share the benefit of this kind of approach with some parishioners who complained about the music not being for them. To be fair, if there are times in church when the worship seems to be appreciated pretty much only by those leading it, there is a problem that may need addressing. If, however, you can see that others are clearly engaged with something that doesn’t connect with you, then you can take up the practice of appreciating that something that you don’t like is very meaningful to numbers of other people.
Speaking of “Shine, Jesus Shine,” not long ago I came across a news article about a feature on a growing number of houses in NYC (many in Brooklyn) that has become somewhat divisive. In many neighbourhoods, shiny stainless steel decorative fences have been growing in popularity and disdain. You can read the article if you want detailed information. Here are a couple of quotes:
“Like the white picket fence, long a symbol of the so-called American dream, the stainless steel fence embodies a similar sense of making it.”
“And though he (a man who makes the fences) spends most of his days working with the material, he’d never install a steel fence at his own home, he said. “I don’t like any of them one bit. I look at these things all day every day,” Mr. Li said. “At my house, we just use plastic fences.”
Photos: Clark Hodgin for The New York Times
You can see from the photos that these fences really are shiny. They are not aiming to blend in. It might be possible, upon looking at them to say, “I hate them. Aren’t they fantastic?”
Here is why:
Seeing the humanity of others can actually include something as simple as enjoying how much someone likes something that you just can’t get your head around. I love the photo in the article of the older gentleman standing for a photo with his expensive shiny fence. I can’t imagine liking something like that with such joy, but I am grateful that he does.
Photo: Clark Hodgin for The New York Times
Very many of the things that people can get upset about in church are “shiny fences.” They might generate a kind of disgust in some, but other people really really like them. There is something of hope in letting go of some of our own tastes and interests and opinions and truly finding it fantastic that other people are so different than we are.
Hope moves in the direction of bringing people who are different together, not in the direction of making people the same.
I still really don’t like the trampled rose on the ground thinking about me above all. That might be a step too far for me to appreciate. I struggle with appreciating what I consider to be bad theology.
But go ahead and “fill this land with the Father’s glory, blaze Spirit blaze.” Sounds too marching band-ish and Expo 86, David Foster-esque to me, but if you like it, then I am with you.