Top Ten Funeral Songs 2018: 5. Angels (Robbie Williams)

2018:  The Co-operative Funeral Services list of Top Ten Funeral Songs (now containing no Christian songs or hymns).  I'm looking at the merits and demerits of the top ten, and this time number 5 - 'Angels' - (Robbie Williams)  . . .

Why it's good for a funeral:

Great melody and sort of other-worldly.

Why it's bad for a funeral:

Angels have their uses but they're a poor substitute for their Boss.  Death is a big deal and needs the Boss.

Line that's most like a Christian Song

And I know I'll always be blessed with love

Line that's least like a Christian song:

I'm loving angels instead

A Quote from (singer) Robbie Williams:

Sometimes I feel like I'm sailing on a sunken dream.

Why I don't want this song at my funeral:

Nothing against angels, but this song is like requesting the funeral director's window cleaner instead of the director themselves - how about loving God instead?

A better Christian alternative:

[Hail the day that sees him rise]

Highest heaven its Lord recieves

Yet he loves the earth he leaves

Though returning to his throne

Still he calls us all his own.

The Wonders of Christmas Cards 6: Let's turn to Carol number . . . .

Singing Angel is the name of this picture - it's on the back of the card, trust me.  It has holly on its head - I think this may be a misunderstanding of holy, holy, holy which angels are known to use.

The angel is singing from a book.

This strikes me as very strange.  Truth be told I know pretty much all the basic Christmas Carols off by heart after just a few decades of Christmases.  What's with this angel which has had far longer (if heaven works like that which I don't think it does) to learn the words and the music?  Maybe it's a junior angel, still learning the material?  Still, you'd have thought they'd have used the senior angels for something as important as Christmas . . .

The Wonders of Christmas Cards 2: Angelic Supination

So often Christmas cards raise complicated theological problems and this one is just of that kind.  Dwelling as spirits and unfallen in sin angels remain tantalisingly familiar and unfamiliar to us.  From time to time - Christmas was such a time - angels are known among mankind.  Known or unknown they are able to assume human form and many of us, myself included, have had a moment or moments when we wonder whether the mysterious person we met was, in fact, an angel.

Although the Bible does not specifically reveal it to us we assume that angels are quite fit and well.  If pain and disease is consequential of the Fall they could only assume a failing human body, surely, for a particular divine purpose.  Enter this Tearfund Christmas card:

Even a cursory, non-medical look at those feet discloses a real problem.  Have you ever seen feet more turned in (supinated) than this? 

There's no operation for it.  Most usually it is treated by the use of insoles or built up footwear.  Here we see the serious problem this angel faces because it doesn't wear footwear, flies a lot and anyway is a spirit.  As far as I can see this is untreatable.

A Second Look at a Christmas Card No. 3: Angel Bird

Starting at the top of this Christmas card it is immediately apparent that this is the standard picture of an angel accompanying the star over Bethlehem.  We don't really know about angel wings but as angels sometimes appear in the sky and move swiftly the wings are a reasonable bet.

So far so good.

But wait - is it an angel?  Is it a plane?  It's a bird!!

It's all about perspective but in this picture that is one BIG bird.  A perfectly decent image biblically - Noah's Ark, various prophets and Psalms, a symbol of the Holy Spirit at Christ's Baptism and so on.  But perhaps the artist who drew this forgot that in the birth narratives of Jesus the only doves are dead ones, offered as a sacrifice when the newborn is taken to the Temple.  That dove needs to be careful . . .

Days to Remember 3: The Baptism of John

Every Baptist Pastor faces a central dilemma when the baptistry is full and ready to use.  What if someone has a sudden urge to be baptised?  Opinions differ.  Some make a virtue of it and encourage the instant response, most baulk at that.

We are about to have a baptism at church, just as we hope to do every Easter. 

And that reminds me - one day at the appeal John came forward.   He had hardly been to church before and he was of Central/East European extraction.  His dialect meant his wishes did not become clear very quickly.  He duly failed to get baptised mainly because we only later understood that was what he's intended.  Perhaps, we thought, that was just as well as he had no change of clothes.  (On the other hand we did have a Church store of clothes for people who need them, albeit rarely after their baptism).

On the day he was baptised the store became useful because he brought a complete change of clothes except one thing: a change of trousers . . .  There are several baptising by immersion techniques but none I know that leaves the person's trousers dry.

John's mysteries were many.  It was a mystery how he exited a car park by driving through a barrier, something more commonly found in riotous young car thieves than an elderly gentleman.  Lest the reader misunderstands, he did stop on hitting the barrier, inspected the inconvenience laying on his car bonnet, and revved up the engine to send it flying.  Quite a way to head home from a church service.

We never worked out what country he came from.  We never found out any family members he knew.  He died after being well cared for in a nice nursing home, but I scarcely knew of any outside visitors he had as it was out in the country.  We heard of his death when he was several weeks deceased.

But he followed Jesus.  He remains possibly the most enthusiastic baptismal candidate I have ever known, one of the oldest, and certainly the most mysterious. At one point I remember thinking of angels.  Every once in a while beings cross my path who are indeed mysterious as to their origins and destination and you just wonder - was that an angel?

Surely an angel would drive a car better though?  Angels don't ask for baptism do they?  (I suppose their boss did).  I think I'll just remember John and smile.

Ranks

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.

Christmas

One of our songs for Christmas Day and not a church, candle or carol in sight!

But there is a mother and a family . . .