Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Meekness and Majesty” by Graham Kendrick. It’s one that achieved wide popularity in the 1980s/90s, and is still used in some churches. There’s something about this hymn that makes it stand out from the many other songs and hymns about the incarnation of Jesus, and I can remember that the first time I came across it, at a Christian young people’s camp in the mid-1980s, it moved me to tears. Maybe it’s the combination of the way the music flows (John will be able to explain that better) and the words that emphasise the human suffering of Christ while at the same time not diminishing his divinity (from verse 1, “in perfect harmony, the Man who is God”).
Kendrick finds several ways to express this harmony: “Lord of eternity dwells in humanity”, “Perfect in innocence, yet learns obedience to death on a cross”, “Suffering to give us life, conquering through sacrifice”, “Love indestructible in frailty appears”, “Lord of infinity stooping so tenderly”. This sort of pairing of opposite ideas is not unlike the Psalms with their couplets where the second either emphasises or counters the first; I wonder if that was a conscious influence on this hymn?
The words of the chorus are “Oh, what a mystery! Meekness and majesty, bow down and worship, for this is your God”. Christianity is famously unique among world religions for making the claim that our human founder is also divine: other religions have prophets who were clearly only human, or claim a divine revelation not backed up by an appearance in the flesh. But on top of that, our incarnate God didn’t use this privilege to impose his will on others, but demonstrated a new way of living by his humility. We therefore worship God, not in fear, but in response to his own self-emptying love.
Not sure I can “explain” what Stephen says. I too think that this pairing of opposite ideas is extremely effective, and the great advantage of doing it in a song (as opposed to a creed) is that the music keeps the pairings flowing so that they build on each other. (The effect is just the opposite in the “Athanasian Creed”, where the phrases like “the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Ghost incomprehensible; and yet there are not three incomprehensibles yet one incomprehensible” simply seem comical after a while.) The effect of the chorus is to cement the pairings in the mind and to draw one into worship, and I did hear someone once explain that the writing of the different chords under the last line is a stroke of genius in heightening the effect.
I don’t know that I would go so far as to say that this hymn is head-and-shoulders above all others on the incarnation; but I certainly think it is a gifted piece of writing, and we still sing it regularly at St Luke’s Eccleshill.