Songs that Shaped Me: "When Christians Sing That Nazi Song"

Did you ever go to church and hear a Nazi song in the worship service?  Yeah--me neither.  Or, at least, I never thought of it as a Nazi song when I was a kid.  But when I was a teenager, I was surprised to find that one of my most beloved hymns was also the national anthem of the Third Reich. Maybe you've sung this song as well... 

Yes, "We are Called to Be God's People" is one of the songs that shaped me as a child, for two reasons.  First, it is a musically amazing Austrian hymn by Franz Joseph Haydn.  The English lyrics by Thomas Jackson inspire Christians to understand their calling to live in unity, share hope, to work for God's glory, and shed light in the world. 

We are called to be God's people
Showing by our lives His grace
One in heart and one in spirit
Sign of hope for all the race
Let us show how He has changed us
And remade us as His own
Let us share our life together
As we shall around His throne

We are called to be God's servants
Working in His world today
Taking His own task upon us
All His sacred words obey
Let us rise then to His summons
Dedicate to Him our all
That we may be faithful servants
Quick to answer now His call

We are called to be God's prophets
Speaking for the truth and right
Standing firm for godly justice
Bringing evil into light
Let us seek the courage needed
Our high calling to fulfill
That we all may know the blessing
Of the doing of God's will

I absolutely loved singing this song in church on Sundays.  Its message genuinely shaped the way I view our calling as Christians.  But this song shaped me in another, more painful way as well.  Back in the mid to late 1980s, a dear old lady named Vida Savkovich, had a terrible time whenever we sang my favorite hymn.  She told our pastor that if we continued to sing it, she would have to leave the church.  That's because every time we sang it, her PTSD kicked in and she was a child watching Hitler's tanks roll through her country.  Yes, I found that one of my favorite hymns was also the Nazi national anthem.  Its opening words say, "Deutschland, Deutschland, over everything / Over every other land," and Vida was retraumatized every time she heard it.  Thanksfully, our pastor and music minister listened to her plea, and struck the song from our church's repertoire.  

Think my church's leadership overreacted?  That they made too bit a deal of her pain?  Listen to what this German vlogger has to say:

So even Germans (who have some sense) say you should avoid the first verse of that song, out of respect to others and out of a desire NOT to bring up painful feelings.

"We Are Called to Be God's People" is a song that shaped me in two ways.  First, it helped me to understand our calling as the people of God.  Second our congregational experience of the song taught me to be sensitive to the feelings of others, who may be offended by something that I might view as perfectly wholesome, beautiful, and theologically correct.  It taught me that just because something is right, that doesn't make it good.

Vida's story has impacted the way, as a pastor, I have tried to deal with other songs that involve hints of racism, traces of emperialism and violence, or sexist language.  This song that shaped me also made me aware of how much our musical choices affect young and old people who hear them.  It's important that the church listen to the theology in its music, and make sure it's communicating truth.  We need to be aware of the subtle social messages that are coming through in our hymnody and worship music.  And we need to be brave enough to ditch the songs that need to be cut.

Songs That Shaped Me: "By Our Love"

If you grew up in church, you might not remember the sermons you've heard through the years, but you sure remember the music.  Thisis because the message comes through meter and rhyme, rhythm and repetition.  And it's likely that you hear each sermon only once, but you'll hear the same church music for years.  Because of this, the songs we sing in church tend to sharpe us as much as, if not more than, the Sunday school lessons or sermons that are preached.  This is why I've always tried to make sure that the songs we sang in the churches I served, reflected good theology.  

Unfortunately, many Christian songs have some poor messages that we keep repeating each time we sing them in church.  I've butted heads with some good music directors in churches, over their insinstence upon singing bad songs just because "the people love them."  I've tried to explain that the songs we sing shape our outlook on life--for good or for evil.  And even the songs we sing in church can have a bad effect on us, so "be careful, little ears, what you hear."

I've decided to take a few blog posts to talk about the songs that shaped me--some for the better, and some for the worse.  Some you might know, and others you may not recognize.  They are defintely all throwbacks.  The first is an idealized vision of what the Church is supposed to be--and for this reason, it may have made me somewhat of an idealist in my own view of the Church.  They'll Know We are Christians was written in the 1960s, so you know that when I heard it in the 1970s and 1980s, it was still considered new, by church standards.  I'll share with you a more updated version, "By Our Love," by For King and Country:



These lyrics, by Fr. Peter Scholtes, communicate the ethos of what the early church intended--unity and love.  In fact, they quote John 13:35, which says that love should be the distinguishing characteristic of believers.  The world will know that we are disciples of Jesus by the love we share.    No, it's not the crosses around our necks or the Bibles that we carry.  It's not the steeples on our churches or the multi-million-dollar TV shows.  The world will know we are Christians by our love.  Sound idealistic?  Jesus didn't think so.  And it's this simple, idealistic, message that shaped the way I saw the church as a child.

Perhaps this is something the Church needs to regain--unity in the Spirit.  We need to remember that unity does not equal conformity.  It doesn't even mean agreement.  Look, we are never going to agree on everything--maybe especially not on the hot button issues.  But when we can learn to live in unity despite our differences, they'll know we are Christians by our love.  Not by our insistence that we have the right interpretation of scripture,  not by our adherence to the strictest of moral laws, and not by the way we worship.  When we live in unity with one another, and embracing the world Jesus died for, they'll know we are Christians by our love.  

"I'm broken. The church is broken. And that's beautiful."

"I'm broken.  The church is broken.  And that's beautiful."  That was my answer when someone asked me what I'd say if I ever interviewed for a pastoral position again.  Now, I'm not saying that I will, and I'm not saying that I won't, ever pastor a church again--that's up to God.  I'll just say yes to whatever God directs.  But when the question came to me, how I might represent myself or communicate my vision for the (universal) Church, I answered in terms of brokenness.

You see, I come from a broken home--two times over.  My parents didn't divorce til I was grown, but it profoundly impacted me as a young adult.  My first marriage lasted almost a quarter century, leaving many blessings but also some damage to my heart, to hers, and to our children.  But God specializes in restoring things that are broken.  People who are broken, too.  But God restores us beyond that which was fractured, and gives new purpose to our shards.

Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold or silver lacquer.  This serves as a metaphor for the way that pain, grief, and trauma can transform us into something beautiful.  It reminds us that our brokenness, our scars, can become things of beauty.  My life is Kintsukuroi. 

Now, I don't claim that I have been restored.  Instead, I'm proud to say that I'm broken.  But I'm being renewed day by day.  God has forgiven my failures, is putting me back together, and constantly restores my life, my love, and my livelihood.  God has brought me together with my amazing new bride, given me a new home, a new country, and a renewed purpose.  I can't say whether I'll ever stand in a pulpit again--but when somebody asked me how I'd express myself to  the Church, I'd say that I'm broken, and that's beautiful.

I'd also tell any individual congregation that it, too, is broken.  Because the Church (universal) is made up of damaged people who are all in the process of being restored, individual churches too are comprised of messed-up people.  They're led by messed-up people.  And they serve messed-up people.  If I ever stood before a church again, I'd tell them not to forget that they're all broken.  And that when they engage the world, they shouldn't do so from a position that says, "We've got it together, and we want to help the damaged people to be like us."  Instead, the church needs to embrace its Kintsukuroi-ness, and understand that broken is beautiful.  We're all damaged--and God is putting us back together.  The Church can only get real with the world when it gets real with itself.  Because the broken world will never be attracted by a pristine church.  Only a damaged Church will do.

"The Apple of My Eye"

Do I have an apple in my eye?  I've always wondered what the phrase, "the apple of my eye" meant--mainly because I'm a "word nerd," who loves learning where our interesting words and phrases originate.  Grammarist describes it thus:

The apple of one’s eye describes a thing or person which someone loves above all others, someone’s favorite person or thing, a person or thing that he is proud of. The phrase the apple of one’s eye dates back at least to the ninth century, first seen in King Aelfred of Wessex’ Gregory’s Pastoral Care. It was probably used in conversation long before that time. Originally, the apple of one’s eye referred to the pupil of the human eye. It was believed that the pupil was a round, solid object. In a time without proper eye care, sight was a precious commodity. It wasn’t long before the apple of one’s eye became a metaphor for something precious. This metaphor was used several times in the King James version of the Bible, as in Psalms: “Keep me as the apple of thine eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings.” Shakespeare used the phrase in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “…Hit with Cupid’s archery, Sink in apple of his eye.” The term was resurrected when Sir Walter Scott used it in his novel Old Mortality, published in 1816: “Poor Richard was to me as an eldest son, the apple of my eye.”

Three different times in Scripture, we find the phrase.  David writes in Psalm 17:8 (NIV), "Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings."  In Proverbs 7:2 (NIV), a loving father says to his son, "Keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye."  Zechariah 2:8 (NIV) says, "For thus said the Lord of hosts, after his glory sent me to the nationis who plundered you, for he who touches you touches the apple of his eys."

So the "the apple of your eye" means something or someone very dear to you.  It's a mistranslation, and means "little person" or "little doll" of the eye, and refers to the fact that when you get really, really close to another, you can see a tiny reflection of yourself in their pupil.  In The Reasons of the Heart, John Dunne writes:

Nicholas of Cusa in his Vision of God, while speaking of our inner vision of God, speaks...of God's vision of us.  He has it that our seeing God consists of our having a sense of God seeing us: to see God is to see one who sees; it is to have an experience of being seen.  It is like looking at one of those protraits, he says, where theeyes are so contrived as to follow the beholder wherever he moves.  No matter where the beholder stands, the eyes of the portrait seem to be looking at him.  Or better, we could say, it is like feeling the gaze of another person, feeling the gaze without seeing the other's eyes.  Or it can be like meeting the gaze of another.  Or it can even be like looking into the eyes of another and seeing there the pupil, the pupilla, the "little doll," the tiny image of oeself reflected in the other's eyes."

Today, I'm thinking of all the "pupils" I've had in my life--my own children (biological and not), church family that I was blessed to serve as their pastor, clients that I now care for.  When I look at each one, very closely, I can see a tiny image of myself reflected in their eyes.  I'm reminded that, if I want to see this remarkable thing, I've got to get very close.  You don't make an impression on someone from a distance--you've got to get close in order to change someone's life.  But be careful, what you say and do--because those "little dolls" in your life will never forget the difference you made, for good or for evil.  

The Bible says you are the apple of God's eye.  The Divine Loving Parent has shown you how very precious you are, in God's sight.  Do others know how precious they are, in your eyes?  I hope that, with every interaction, you might not just see other people--but that you might see them, seeing you, seeing them.  And that they might know, from your perspective, how lovely they are.