Icon by Betsy Porter (c)betsyporter.com
This coming weekend sees the start of the Kingdom Season (from now until Advent) with choices of hymn to match. So today’s is “The Lord is King” by Brian Hoare.
The first half of each of the first three verses list the ways in which the Lord is King: that he set the stars in space (i.e. is the creator), sent his Son to earth, and sent his Spirit; thus, a Trinitarian structure, although usually in Christian parlance the terms Lord and King refer specifically to Jesus Christ rather than to the Trinity as a whole.
The second part of each verse is an appropriate response: “Creator God, your kingdom stands”, “O Saviour Christ, your kingdom comes” and “Spirit of truth, whose kingdom grows”. The final verse proclaims praise to the Lord and King from all created things.
In all, the hymn is nicely crafted as a statement of faith, and might well be used in place of a spoken Creed in the Communion service, but didn’t strike me as conveying any original thought.
I tend to agree with Stephen in his verdict on the hymn: sound, well-structured and well-crafted, and not conveying anything particularly original. But singable enough for all that.
In the book the hymn is set to John Barnard’s tune “Yanworth”, which I think is a great tune, all the more so for it having a puzzling extra couple of beats somewhere along the line. However, despite many attempts over the years, I still can’t play the tune fluently enough to be able to sing to it as well as play it; so I had to duck that, and sing the hymn to “Woodlands” instead. I must practise harder (or, rather, longer).
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We did do the “Kingdom season” (which I thought started at All Saints, at the beginning of November) at St Luke’s Eccleshill a few years ago, but I found it an odd experience. Somehow the modern world seems to anticipate festivals: Christmas is almost over by the time one has reached Christmas Day, both in the secular world with the displays in the shops, and in the ecclesiastical world of Carol Services. Advent, which is (I always thought) supposed to be about the Second Coming, is mostly about preparations for the first coming (with readings about John the Baptist and the Annunciation, and the actual “Advent” theme curtailed to a single Sunday), and so a “Kingdom Season” has been invented (which has a Sunday called “Christ the King” in it, as well as All Saints) which is all about what I thought was supposed to be the theme of Advent. Somehow it all makes me feel that I have passed my best-before date!
The Kingdom of God is justice and joy,
at least, so it was when I was a boy,
but now it’s liturgical, so I am told!
I must say, it doesn’t half make me feel old!