****FOR THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH

I read, this week, that The Church of Sweden has urged its clergy to use more gender-neutral language when referring to God and to avoid referring to the deity as “Lord” or “he.”

The move is one of many made by the national Evangelical Lutheran Church, which is in the process of updating a 31-year-old handbook, which will outline how services should be conducted in terms of language, and that will include necessary revisions to the hymns they sing.

It is not unusual that many of our older hymns have gone through some revisions.  Sometimes those changes have been improvements but there are some that were made for the wrong reasons.

In 1864, Folliot Pierpoint published an eight-stanza poem, “The Sacrifice of Praise.”  It was originally meant to be used as a communion hymn.

In the original refrain, “Christ, our God, to Thee we raise, This, our sacrifice of praise,” reflected the author’s intent for a communion hymn.  But it was changed to “Lord of all, to Thee we raise This our hymn of grateful praise.”

As it turns out, that was a good change, but it was forced by political correctness.  There were heresies then, like now, that denied the deity of Christ and there were spineless publishers who were uncomfortable with the way the text equated Christ with God.

 

Pierpoint stood firm in his defense of the original text.  He argued that there had been a long tradition of Christians singing hymns to Christ as God; and, besides, the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553), referencing 1 Cor. 2:8, affirmed that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified in the flesh, is true God, and the “Lord of glory”.

Nevertheless, the hymn was changed and, I think, for the better.  Two stanzas, that weren’t very good, have been omitted and two have been combined. 

So, now, FOR THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH, is a five-stanza hymn with a new refrain.  And the focus of the original hymn has been broadened from a communion hymn to a song of praise and thanksgiving to the “Lord of all.”

The progression in the imagery of this hymn makes it a good teaching aid for children.  The thanksgiving starts with the natural creation; the world around us and then progresses to thanks for human relationships, then the Church, and finally, to the incarnation; the Gift of God’s own Son in human flesh.