The Stories Behind the Hymns

Hymns Sung at Worship
August 26, 2012
Elizabeth Deibert

The Stories Behind the Hymns

Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” has often been called the “Battle Hymn of the Reformation” and has been translated into almost every known language. It was perhaps the single most powerful hymn of the Reformation, as it was a great source of strength and inspiration for those who were persecuted and even martyred for their convictions.   The story that Luther took a tavern song from the bar and changed the words is mostly legend.   Luther did compose both words and tune, proving that he was not just a theologian but a musician as well.  (mudcat.org)

Isaac Watts was said to be so enamored with poetry as a child that he often rhymed his ordinary conversations.   Among his best known hymns are Joy to the World and Jesus Shall Reign, along with this classic Our God Our Help in Ages Past.   Many of his hymns are rhymed versions of the psalms, as it was common for the church to sing the psalms in worship.   It is said that he was complaining to his father as a teen that the psalter music sung in church was impossible to sing and his father said, “So write something better.”  So he did.  He wrote 600 rhyming hymns.  (lectionary.org)

Amazing Grace is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world, perhaps sung as often as 10 million times each year.    Newton was a slave trader, and there’s a legend that when he converted to Christianity, he got inspired to write this hymn, and then released all the slaves he had brought to England.   But this is not true.   Yes, Newton was a slave trader, and yes, he did have a profound conversion experience while on the ship, but it was due to his life being spared after a terrible storm.    He eventually gave up the slave trade and went into the ministry as an Anglican priest.   It was at least eight years after he wrote the hymn, that he began to denounce his involvement in the slave trade.   This story just goes to show that Christian maturity is a long process.    Conversions may happen overnight, thanks to God’s amazing grace, but changed lives, that “twas blind but now I see” part – that can take much longer.   (Wikipedia and Snopes)

This hymn was written after several traumatic events in Spafford’s life. The first was the death of his only son in 1871 at the age of four, shortly followed by the great Chicago Fire which ruined him financially (he had been a successful lawyer). Then in 1873, he had planned to travel to Europe with his family, but he sent the family ahead while he was delayed on business. While crossing the Atlantic, the ship sank rapidly after a collision with another ship, and all four of Spafford's daughters died. His wife Anna survived and sent him a telegram telling him that she was "Saved alone . . ." Shortly afterwards, as Spafford traveled to meet his grieving wife, he was inspired to write these words as his ship passed near where his daughters had died.   (wikipedia)

 

 

The Way of Wisdom

1 Kings 2:10-12 and 3:2-14
August 19, 2012
Rev. Tricia Dillon Thomas
 

Since we have been primarily steeped in the New Testament this summer, let’s spend a little bit of time locating today’s lesson from 1 Kings in the larger biblical story.

In the beginning, The Old Testament begins, we read about God’s creation of the world, the land and seas, creatures great and small, and humankind. We are introduced to Adam and Eve, the first people. There is the story of Noah and the great flood and the covenant God makes with which we are reminded of everytime we see a rainbow. …skip some to Abraham and Sarah who God promises a great nation (later called Israel) numbered more than the stars and sand and a great land filled with milk and honey. We’ll fast forward to God’s people exiled in Egypt. The Israelites oppressed under Pharoah, whose heart is hardened against them. Moses we remember called by God, leads the Israelites thru the desert for 40 years where God’s law is taught to the people, and these Israelites are eventually delivered to that Promised Land of milk and honey called Israel. 

In the Promised Land Israel is fruitful and guided by God through prophets and judges. But at some point the people demand that a king rule them. And so in First Samuel, the prophet Samuel delivers a warning to the people. “He cautions that a king will take their resources and their labor for his own benefit, and they will end up as his slaves (1 Samuel 8:11-18). And that warning looms over the whole account of the rise and fall of the monarchy in the books of Samuel and Kings.”[1]

The first king appointed by the prophet Samuel was Saul, who started out well enough, but after being disobedient to instructions given by God thru Samuel, begins to fail in his kingship and health; eventually falling to evil spirits. After Saul dies, his son-in-law David (who killed Goliath with the sling shot and played the harp so beautifully it would soothe Saul’s evil spirit) becomes the successor to the throne.

David, a faithful servant, had a brilliant military mind. After he conquers Jerusalem, David brings the Ark of the Covenant there, establishes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and promises to build a temple there for God. God is pleased with David’s faithfulness and thus delivers a promise called the Davidic Covenant. In this covenant God promises David: "Your throne shall be established forever.” If we jump ahead, this is why there are lines of succession written in the New Testament—to prove that Jesus came from the house of David as God promised. David was also smart and poetic, as attested to by the psalms attributed to his name in the book of Psalms. Strong, good looking, bright, poetic, a musician...King David was dreamy. And like the saying goes, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is…King David had a weakness for the ladies. Remember Bathsheba? David was the one who had Bathsheba’s husband killed so that he could be with her.  

Before David dies, there is a fight over who will take over the throne. By some sketchy means, Solomon, son of David and Bathsheba is declared heir to the throne. And this brings us to today’s readings. So let us listen now for the spirit is speaking to us.

Read 1 Kings 2: 10-12 and 3: 3-14.

 ¹⁰Then David slept with his ancestors, and was buried in the city of David. ¹¹The time that David reigned over Israel was forty years; he reigned seven years in Hebron, and thirty-three years in Jerusalem. ¹²So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David; and his kingdom was firmly established.

³Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places. ⁴The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the principal high place; Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. ⁵At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask what I should give you.” ⁶And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. ⁷And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. ⁸And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. ⁹Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” ¹⁰It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. ¹¹God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, ¹²I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. ¹³I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life; no other king shall compare with you. ¹⁴If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life.”

This is the Word of our Lord. Thanks be to God.

 

I really, really don’t like to pick out sermon titles. They force me to sum up in a few short words or a phrase what this is all supposed to be about, and it just seems trite. Sometimes I can get away with telling Gia or Elizabeth to just not put a title in, or make it generic enough to not really matter. But this week Elizabeth was on to me. I turned on my computer after session Thursday night and after trying to ignore two emails for a title, I had no less than 5 emails asking the same question. Some with beautiful pictures, some with just titles, and one finally said, because she was trying to leave town, “Okay, lady, give me a title.”

So I picked the last one she sent me. A beautiful picture of a journey. A path. A choice we have to make to live…either in wisdom or…not. “The Way of Wisdom.”

The truth is, though, I just don’t get this wisdom stuff. My context for wisdom resides primarily in these two parts of the Bible: the one where Adam and Eve are tempted by the serpent who says if they eat from the Forbidden Fruit they will become wise like God knowing good and evil. And well, that makes God really unhappy and now among other things the whole childbearing thing became a heck of a lot harder.  

And then there’s the whole book of Proverbs and the personified “Lady Wisdom.”  This is apparently the place to go to understand wisdom. How many of you have to read through the book of Proverbs? That Lady Wisdom is something else, but the one thing for certain she lets us know is that once you think you understand what wisdom is, you are a fool. 

So there you have it. Wisdom. I’m a screaming child birthing FOOL.

Most scholars agree that wisdom isn’t about intellect or someone’s IQ. Here’s a sampling of some things they did say:

Wisdom is…

A listening of the heart, not an understanding of the mind.

        A verb. A way of being in the world where one lives and rules 

       according to God’s justice.

            To do away with the materials and idols of this world and to be in

           covenant relationship with God. 

I have a friend Fred who is an artist and a preacher. And when he finally brought those two gifts together, his sermons painted our imaginations with riches words could never find. I think if Fred painted wisdom, it would be with oils, so that the canvas would be bumpy from the globs of paint smacked down on top of one another… where the ending of one image leapt to the side for the beginning of another. And it would be abstract and full of colors. There would be moments of harmony in the colors, except every once in a while you’d see a bright yellow or red streak that looked out of place, but when you started to really pay attention you noticed it actually helped tie the whole piece together. When Fred paints these gorgeous pictures accidents happen, but he’s “not afraid to let them happen because the accidental and the dissonant always point to new possibilities.”[2]

Are you with me still? If you’re not, that’s perfect because you probably understanding wisdom more than the rest of us.

And so now you can see why this slide has a different sermon title than the first: Solomon’s Dream, a very vanilla, just generic enough title that can cover about anything else I might say without any real high expectations.

So let us return to the text:

¹⁰Then David slept with his ancestors, and was buried in the city of David.

It might help some of you to hear that “David slept with his ancestors,” might be better translated, “Then David died and was buried with his ancestors in the city of David.” There wasn’t some kind of weird party before he died.

But the point is to remind us that Solomon comes from the line of David pointing to the Davidic Covenant promised not too long ago to David by God.

Chapter 3 continues: “³Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places. ⁴The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the principal high place; Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. ⁵

I think it helps to understand that the theology expressed in this story about Solomon is called Deuteronomic Theology. Say it with me: Deuteronomic Theology. What that means is that in this passage with Solomon, there are some understood requirements God has from Solomon and Israel that were spelled out in the Book of Deuteronomy. I’m sure you remember all those, so in summary I’ll say the underlying principal is that the “Lord is Israel’s only God.

 “So worship of other gods is forbidden and all of the Lord’s covenant laws must be obeyed, including the requirement that the Lord may legitimately be worshiped in only one place.”[3]

So, when we read that Solomon loved the Lord and was faithful like his father David, BUT that Solomon sacrificed at high places, it tells us a couple of things. 1) Solomon has already messed up. Yes, the temple hasn’t been built so there’s not a proper place to offer the burnt offerings (which foreshadows the major achievement of Solomon—the building of the Temple; but 2) Solomon is already showing tendencies to not be so perfect in his righteousness. It says Solomon is worshipping God or “gods” in other places.

Let’s continue:

⁵At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask what I should give you.” ⁶And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today.

I just have to stop and say, really? Really, Solomon?  We’re just going to forget all about David’s wondering eye, his lady troubles with Bathsheba, and the killing of her husband so David can have her for himself? And we’re gonna forget that dear old dad’s life went downhill after all that drama, and just proclaim to God (who knows everything) that David was faithful and steadfast, and righteousness? Okay. I digress.

⁷And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. ⁸And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. ⁹Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?”

So Solomon says he’s a little child. He’s not really a little child, we know he’s at least old enough to marry Pharaoh’s daughter. But saying you’re a little child is a way to say, “God, I don’t know what I’m doing and I need your guidance.” And this is evidenced by the rest of what Solomon says.

I’ve never had to be in charge of God’s chosen people…so I can’t begin to imagine the pressure Solomon’s under. He’s not a little child, but he is young, and he’s quick to point out that God’s chosen people, just like God promised to Abraham and Sarah, number more than the stars in the sky. And he knows he has the daunting task of having to build a house…FOR GOD. And so, when God asks Solomon what he wants, he forgoes riches and power, good looks and brawn, he asks, and he asks quite humbly, for wisdom.

When some of us looked at this passage the other night at our session meeting we began to compare Solomon’s account with our modern day candidates. I mean can you imagine?

The mailings? The calls? You pick up the phone and it’s a telemarketer who says, “I’m calling you on behalf of Barak Obama. Look, he’s a real good man, just like his pop, and yes he’s kind of green, in fact he’d tell you he’s just a baby. And yeah, he doesn’t know which way is in or out, but he wants to be a good leader for the lot of you. Vote Obama.”

Or a TV ad that said, “Hi. I’m Mitt Romney.  I mean when it comes down to it…who can really govern us? There’s a whole lot of you, and you all have a lot of problems. I don’t really know what I’m doing. Vote Romney.”

Solomon knows he can’t do this alone. Solomon asks for an “understanding mind.” Solomon prays for wisdom. It’s interesting that Solomon who married Pharoah’s daughter, Pharoah, whose heart was hardened against God’s people, asks for wisdom, which I commented earlier can be translated as a listening heart. So instead of an understanding mind, Solomon asks for a listening heart.  

This Deuteronomic theology that we spoke of earlier is relational. It not only calls for God’s people to be in singular relation with the one God Lord of all, it also calls for God’s people to be in relationship with another. It specializes in attentive care to the oppressed: for widows, orphans, and immigrants.[4] It specializes, as Jesus reminds us in Matthew, to yes, love God with every fiber of your being, but to also actively and unconditionally love your neighbor as yourself. And so as I mentioned earlier, even though we can’t really define the term “wisdom,” we do know that “this wisdom is not successful management or clever rulings or flourishing economy or technological mastery… [Rather, this wisdom is attentive] to the socially, economically vulnerable as the prerequisite for effective governance and power.”[5] God’s wisdom, a gift, is indeed a verb, which should become our highest action—it calls us to do justice in the world. And it is given to those who are steadfast in their obedience and faith of the Lord.

Immediately following our lesson for today, Israel becomes aware of Solomon’s unmatched wisdom when two women argue over whom is the real mother of the sole surviving child. Solomon asks for a sword and says he’ll just cut the baby in half and each woman can have her half of the baby, until the real mother relents and says the other woman can have the child, and Solomon declares she must then be the birth mom.

And later on we hear that the Queen of Sheba is so impressed by the stories she hears of Solomon’s great wisdom that she travels nearly 14 days to meet him for herself.

God grants Solomon with a wisdom that the world had not seen before and promises the world will never see again. God grants Solomon with a wisdom that seeks to be a listening heart; God grants Solomon with wisdom that forces him to be an active participant in God’s justice in the world.

And it begs the question…this wisdom that Solomon prays for and receives what would that look like in the daily walk of this Church? In the daily walk of our lives?

In the last verse of today’s scripture God says to Solomon, ¹⁴Walk in my ways and keep my statutes and my commandments.”

We can choose our will, or we can choose to listen to God’s will for our lives and God’s creation.  We stay in relationship. We come to worship, we pray the Lord’s prayer, we study God’s word with another.

It’s not that we earn God’s love, it’s that we have a choice about how to live our lives. God’s prayer is that we choose God.

May it be so.

---

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=8/16/2009&tab=2

[2] Fred Wise as explained on Facebook 08.18.12

[3] Weeks, Wayne A., The Harper Collins Study Bible: NRSV, HarperCollins Publishers (London:1993), 511.

[4] Walter Brueggemann,  http://www.odysseynetworks.org/news/onscripture-the-bible-1-kings-2-10-12-page-2

[5] Ibid.

For the Life of the World

John 6:35,41-51
11th Sunday after Pentecost

Elizabeth M. Deibert
12 August 2012
 

If we stood out on the streets today, shouting and waving signs, free bread – will make you live forever – many people would scoff and laugh.   Ha, yeah, right.   

While pumping gas this week, Marilyn and I were approached by a woman offering us a free Godfather’s pizza and liter of drink.   I looked at the saleswoman with skepticism, assuming there was some deception in this offer.   No, she said, a man bought this pizza and wanted me to give it away.   I was truly convinced that there had to be a hidden agenda.   Most free things in life are not free.   Like when I signed up for a Southwest credit card just to book one free flight for Andrew home from college, only to learn that they would charge me an annual fee before my “FREE” flight would be available.   Not quite so free. 

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true, except in the realm of God.   Jesus is bread of life.   He gives us this bread to make us live forever.   Sounds too good to be true, but it is truer than anything else we know.

Let us pray:  You satisfy the hungry heart with gift of finest wheat, oh give to us, O Saving Lord, the bread of life to eat.   521

Hear now our Gospel for today, from John, chapter 6, verses 35 and 41-51.

John 6:35, 41-51

³⁵ Jesus said to them,

"I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry,

and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

 

⁴¹ Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said,

"I am the bread that came down from heaven."

⁴² They were saying,

 "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?

How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?"

⁴³ Jesus answered them, "Do not complain among yourselves.

⁴⁴ No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me;

and I will raise that person up on the last day.

⁴⁵ It is written in the prophets,

'And they shall all be taught by God.'

Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

⁴⁶ Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God;

he has seen the Father.

⁴⁷ Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.

⁴⁸ I am the bread of life.

⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.

⁵⁰ This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

Whoever eats of this bread will live forever;

and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."

(NRSV)

You are what you eat.  If you want to live forever, you need to eat Christ’s bread of life, which he calls his flesh.   Seems like we should have people pounding on the doors to eat this bread.  But this mystery is under-appreciated, and under-celebrated.    But many Presbyterians, Methodists, and Lutherans are coming back to the regular weekly celebration of the Sacrament of communion as normative for worship.    In an over-reaction to medieval Catholicism, we lost a crucial element of weekly worship – the unity of Word & Sacrament.

In the not so great Enlightenment age when all that was rational and subject to clear explanation was more highly valued, many Protestants distances themselves from that which we could not explain.   Until thirty years ago, we Presbyterians would not allow children to partake of the sacrament because they did not understand.   I was one of those children who watched the plate pass by me until confirmation.    What does it mean to understand the sacrament?  Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.”   Do you understand that?    He says, “The bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.”   Can you explain that?   I cannot.  

And I spend a chunk of most weeks studying these matters.  Eucharist, by the way, means thanksgiving.   It comes from the Greek verb, eucharisteo, which means to give thanks.   The center of the word is charis, which means grace.   I have just finished reading a book called “One Thousand Gifts.”   It is the story of Ann Voskamp’s journey toward spiritual health through a life of giving thanks to God.    That is supremely the purpose of our sacramental worship and of our lives as Christian people – to give thanks.  Not to figure everything out.   Not to be perfect.   Not to master control over your life, but to give it all up to God in thanksgiving.  

There’s a book written by Alexander Schemann called, “For the life of the world” in which he tries to help us appreciate the mystery of the eucharist, this bread, which makes us live forever.   He claims that we misunderstand symbol as being the opposite of real.  Symbol stands in place of what is real, but symbol from a sacramental perspective also becomes real in the experience of it – the real presence of Christ.   All I can do is fall on my knees and say “Wow”   This bread makes me live forever!    Sing, pray, stop trying to figure it out, just fall down in adoration.  “When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun, O, Lord, have mercy on me”. 

The Jews who were struggling to figure out Jesus, challenged not just his message about being the bread of life, but also his claim to have come from heaven.  Their intellect getting in the way, they argued, “How can Jesus say he came down from heaven?   We know this man as Mary and Joseph’s son.”    So it is with us, if we struggle to believe the mystery of the incarnation – that God entered Mary’s womb and became one of us, making Jesus fully divine and fully human – then it is also hard to accept this message that eating this bread will make us live forever.  Our intellect gets in the way of our faith.   “Faith seeking understanding,” St. Anselm’s motto, cannot be reversed to understanding seeking faith.  

When Gia was just out of surgery in May, only home a day, I was so glad she said to me, “I’d like you to bring communion.”  Gia’s high view of the sacrament meant that she understood her need (not just desire) for the sacrament.   She needed, just as we all need, the Sacrament to help her get well.  

 Saint Irenaeus calls the Eucharist, “the medicine of immortality.”    He was surely reading John 6 when he wrote that.  

John 6, the part we did not read, goes on to emphasize that unless we eat this bread and drink this cup, we have no life in us.  No life in us.   Many rise up to debate with Jesus then and now.    “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?   How can this bread and this wine, fermented or unfermented, make anyone live forever.”   I’d love to offer you a rational explanation, because that’s what our generation loves.   Give me proof.    But I cannot.

I can only testify that these mysteries have captured me, and that I believe they are necessary for our life.  We need the Sacrament as much as we need the air we breathe, as much as we need hydration to keep our bodies functioning properly.   If you don’t drink enough water, over time, your joints will suffer, your organs will suffer.   You may not feel that for a very long time.   If you eat processed foods instead of real fruits and grains and vegetables, your body will suffer over time.  Nobody can look at you and see that you had Twinkees or Cheezits for breakfast, but over time, it might affect your health.   So it is with your spiritual health and this sacrament.   Our souls need the Sacrament. 

Our father in the Reformed faith, John Calvin, pointed out that God instituted the sacraments as a means of confirming in us the truth of His promises.  We have these signs, these symbols, Baptism and Eucharist, which prop up our faith like good nutrients prop up our immune system.   Calvin called the Sacraments a crutch for his faith.   We limp around in faith, without Christ’s body in our body, without Christ’s body mingling with our body.   We are what we eat.  We need these mysteries, these physical symbols of reality, which become for us our reality in the experience of them.   We need this supreme mystery to touch with our hands, to smell with our noses, to taste with our mouths, to see with our eyes all the things that we have trouble trusting with our minds.
  

People often ask people like me, because of the role I play, “How do you believe?  How can a person just trust that this faith is real.”   One of the answers to that question is by participating in this mystery, by taking this bread and this cup and subjugating my inquisitive and very pragmatic mind to the fact that God is larger than my understanding, beyond my ability to comprehend.    I can worship when my questioning mind is subject to a mysterious faith which simply calls me to taste and see that the Lord is good, to eat this bread and drink this cup and never hungry or thirst any more.  We should be on the streets, calling people in for live eternal.    Yes, they would scoff at us, but oh, how they would be transformed little by little, week by week, year by year, by participation in the real but inexplicable presence of Christ at this shared feast. 
 

This Sacrament is not just a memorial service to remember Christ’s sacrifice.   This Sacrament is not just a social-justice meal to remind us that Jesus welcomes all people to his table – the rich and the poor, the outcast and the powerful.    This Sacrament is not just a unifying moment for us to recall that we are in communion with one another and with all Christians around the world.   This Sacrament is not just a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, to remind us of the day when we will hunger and thirst no more.

“Bread of heaven, bread of heaven.   Feed me til I want no more.  Feed me til I want no more.”     This bread from heaven we will tear off from the loaf, baked in this room today.   This Sacrament nourishes us with the flesh of Christ, our Gospel lesson tells us.   By nourishing us, it gives us power to trust, which is the word I would use for the Greek verb, “Pisteo” in translating this passage instead of believe.

One of my most vivid memories of youth group in the Faison Presbyterian Church was of the dark night in the parking lot playing the trust game.   We were blind-folded and had to fall back trusting that our friends, representing Christ to us, would catch us.   What is trust, but belief in the not knowing with certainty.   It is an act of faith.   Just as coming to this table is an act of faith, but participating in this meal is also a faith-builder, as falling backwards was.  

You have nothing to lose but a futile, rational grip on life.   You have everything to gain – belief, life eternal, Christ flesh intermingled with yours.   It is for the life of the world – we are fed so we might be bread.    Let us prayerfully sing our middle hymn.