HYMN FOR THE REIGN OF CHRIST SUNDAY/Yes, Jesus, You are King

for a more familiar hymn Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven, click here. https://www.hymnfortheday.com/post/hymn-142-praise-my-soul-the-kiText : Hallgrímur Pétursson (1607-1674)   Tune: Icelandic folk 9. Yes, Jesus you are king, most clear The King of glory through the years The King of angels, mankind’s King, The King of all created things.   10. You stood to wait your judge in bonds While howls of torture clamored round, Forsaken, mobbed by enemies. Oh what a wonder here I see!   11. Lord, Jesus, hear me, hear me, right One day you shall be my delight When I will see your glory, Lord, Your judgment seat beyond the clouds!   12. Fearless I’ll face your final word Redeemed to hear your judgment, Lord When in your name all chosen ones Will call me chosen with your Son.   13. King I can call you, Lord, and King: Call me your thrall, your underling; There is no dignity on earth Compared to what God’s slave is worth.   14. The paved high street has proved a snare, Often my footsteps stumbled there. But you were led there willingly So grace came washing over me   15. Your church elects you, hear it sing For you, her one and only King Now may your Lordship guide her ways To heaven’s light and shining peace. Amen.   Tr. Gracia Grindal 2019 Hymns of the Passion REFLECTION The hymn for today, from iceland's greatest hymn writer, is based on John 19:13-15 and Luke 23:23. Jesus becomes king by his obedience to his father and his willingness to suffer the passion and ultimately defeat death and the devil..That Christ becomes king by suffering the most vile punishments, abuse and scorn, goes against worldly wisdom, but when we see it in the klieg lights of eternity, what he has done is truly royal.   The phrase, character is king flashes into my mind as these words appear. Because Jesus suffered these terrible things, and did not flinch, we know his true character—only a God could do such a thing. Hallgrímur fully understood the scandal of the gospel. It is when Jesus is most cruelly abused that the poet sees his true kingly character emerge. “When I will see your glory, Lord, Your judgment seat beyond the clouds!”   We know that simply being called a king is no proof of great character, in fact the pampering and privileges given royal children is not destined to produce great character, which is probably why the British royal family sends its sons into the military where they actually serve. Soldiers learn quickly whom to trust among their comrades. This explains the fierce attachments of veterans to each other. Character is revealed under fire. Aristotle taught in his Poetics that we do not know another’s character until we see them make a choice. In making their choice, we see the inner being of a person come forth. Some might remember when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain came home from his conversation with Hitler on September 30, 1938, with a document that he said “Insured peace in our time.” Eleven months later Germany invaded Poland and England declared war on Germany. The world was engulfed in the most terrible war of all time. His appeasement and unwillingness to stand against Hitler at the time is considered one of the greatest failures of character in the annals of twentieth century history.   As we have seen just now, running for office in a democracy can be awful. One's life, family, work and associations are all fair game in this brutal work. Voters want to know the character of the candidates for whom they are voting and the campaign can be brutal as we have just experienced.   We know we can trust Jesus because he chose to suffer and die on the cross for us. It gives us the faith to trust him with our lives. How could he take the abuse, the shaming, the violent and deadly rejection of the entire establishment and leadership class? He did it for love of us. Today we need to look more closely and see how easy it is to domesticate Jesus and miss how we as leaders of the establishment would have looked on him.   HYMN INFO This is a central text in the collection of Passion Hymns by Hallgrímur. On October 27, 2024, I was in Reykjavik for a performance of the oratorio by Sigurdur Sævarsson remembered the 350th anniversary of Hallgrímur's death. Nothing goes so deep in the Icelandic Christian's soul as these hymns. As I have written elsewhere, Hallgrímur was a brilliant young boy whose antics got him sent off to Denmark where he worked as an apprentice to a blacksmith. He was discovered by an Icelandic scholar in Copenhagen and sent to the cathedral school where he distinguished himself as a scholar and poet. When he returned to Iceland, under a cloud, he suffered more. Because of the understanding of his bishop, he was finally given a living in Hvalsnes, a remote parish near Keflavik. There he and his wife suffered the death of their young daughter (for whom he wrote a great hymn) and lived in penury. The bishop took pity on him and sent him to a much richer parish in Saurbær where he wrote these hymns, making a name for himself as a scholar, preacher and poet. He died from leprosy. He is remembered throughout Iceland today as not only a great poet, preacher and pastor, but also a character with a fascinating life story. The church in the middle of Reykjavik is named in his honor. (For more see HYMN 19.) LINKS Schola Cantorum, Reykjavik https://youtu.be/QQtGnkAVuX8?si=E4C1c-qQJAl4arVJ Anna Pálína Árnadóttir - https://youtu.be/Q-9FzZ9zQP0?si=J40q6E0UqouymqXg excerpts from the oratorio https://youtu.be/K-KFosgC9Bw?si=bj-Te4x_tYtVDTjq link to my translation of the Passion Hymns https://kirkjuhusid.is/products/25576-hymns-of-the-passion-passiusalmar-in-english?_pos=2&_sid=6de747994&_ss=r NB: Jesus the Harmony  would make a nice Christmas present. It can be read devotionally over the entire year, one poem for every day.   "With these 366 sonnets, remarkable in artistry and number, Gracia Grindal has made literary history. The scriptural and theological knowledge that supports these poems is vast, but it is the imagination infused with the holy in poem after poem that reveals the poet's grace and skill and the astonishing work of the Spirit." -- Jill Baumgartner , Poetry Editor, Christian Century, and professor of English emerita, Wheaton College https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Harmony-Gospel-Sonnets-Days-ebook/dp/B08L9S4Z1T/ref=sr_1_3_nodl?dchild=1&keywords=Grindal&qid=16145