I paid a visit to Eton College Chapel as I was passing by yesterday. Maybe it was because it was Friday 13th and I was hoping for some shaft of blogging light, but it was not to be.
Instead of light I was reminded of one of the weirdest hymns I have ever sung. Apparently this was the hymn in Chapel on Monday -
Ye watchers and ye holy ones.
To say that this hymn is not often sung in Baptist churches is like saying that Hillsongs don't often lead worship at the British Humanist Association's annual meeting. That is why I once had the experience that is much rarer for a Pastor than most people of being in a service where a hymn left me so bewildered in its first verse that my spinning mind failed to give the rest any attention . . .
Ye watchers and ye holy ones,
Bright seraphs, cherubim and thrones,
Raise the glad strain, Alleluia!
Cry out, dominions, princedoms, powers,
Virtues, archangels, angels’ choirs:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Subsequent investigation suggested my problem was a lack of identity with Dionysius the Areopagite fed by that general Baptist malaise of Church history beginning with the previous Spring Harvest, New Wine or random other Christian Conference. For here the hymn writer has somehow managed to get all nine ranks of angels into one verse. Which is clever.
But then people at Eton College are clever, so it was understandable that they sung such things.
Whether identifying nine ranks of angels is clever is another matter entirely. I suppose there is the prospect of having a very long time to sort this kind of thing out in eternity (as in "Excuse me, are you a Virtue or a Throne? Oh, a Princedom - I can see you're busy. Can you have a [fairtrade] coffee in about a thousand years and tell me what a Princedom is then? Thanks. Oh, okay, two thousand then.")
For the rank ignorant Baptists there is always the consolation of the hymn we'd sung the previous Sunday which describes Jesus taking his human identity to the grave and then . . .
Humbled for a season, to receive a name
From the lips of sinners unto whom He came,
Faithfully He bore it, spotless to the last,
Brought it back victorious when from death He passed.
Bore it up triumphant with its human light,
Through all ranks of creatures, to the central height,
To the throne of Godhead, to the Father’s breast;
Filled it with the glory of that perfect rest.
Ranks of heavenly beings may be a clever study, but its spiritual worth is no more than that of studying cloud formations as your plane transports you across the world to see your closest friend.
