Generally speaking our Worship Committee does an outstanding job, with very limited resources, in planning our music and other worship elements from week to week.Memorial Day weekend is always a conundrum, though, when patriotic glurge regularly collides with good theology; and this weekend Trinity Sunday made the mess even worse.
So we got "America the Beautiful" as a prelude, and -- argh -- "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" as a closing hymn.
I was assisting today, and after the last note of that hymn, when it was my turn to announce, "Go in peace and serve the Lord," I put a special emphasis on the word "Lord." I doubt anyone noticed, or if they did they probably attributed it to some sort of verbal tic; but it felt good.
3 comments:
Sometimes the hymns are the the compromise. I managed to avoid them this time because it fell on Trinity Sunday but usually the 4th of July weekend I have to throw out those two hymns to avoid worse liturgical nightmares.
We had none of the patriotic stuff, except for the postlude. Didn't miss it either. But we did have some of the Female images of God in the hymns.
Do national flags and patriotic hymns have any place in a Universal Church?
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