c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) I am driving home from work. My favorite radio station starts a piano piece.

Suddenly I hear the closing notes of the hymn “Abide With Me.” It isn’t the hymn itself, of course, for no classical station would stoop to playing 19th century English hymns. But the mere suggestion makes me want to sing this text written by an English pastor named Henry Lyte as he was dying of tuberculosis, and this tune composed by a prolific composer and arranger of hymns named William Monk in 1861 after watching a sunset and at a “time of great sorrow,” according to his wife.

Hymns come in all flavors and get put to all uses. “Abide With Me” spans some interesting gaps: a favorite at English royal weddings, a season-ending ritual sung by 100,000 soccer fans at the English football championship, and a favorite of India’s nonviolent revolutionary Mahatma Gandhi.

Whatever their use elsewhere, I find myself drawn more and more to hymns like “Abide With Me,” “It Is Well With My Soul” and “Now the Silence.”

They speak of submission to God and therefore of sadness, humility, helplessness (“help of the helpless, O abide with me”) and a confidence that God is larger than anything, even tuberculosis, civil strife, death at sea and the noise of warring nations.

I don’t feel helpless most of the time. But sometimes I do. I watch the nation I love descend into imperial swagger abroad and a mean-spirited plutocracy at home. Hubris is running amok. So is casual cruelty. The strong prey on the weak, the determined exploit the uncertain, the privileged mistake good luck for virtue, and the opinionated think themselves morally righteous.

A window of goodness seems to be closing. For a time _ what, four decades? _ we thought better of our lynchings, closed doors and glass ceilings. We didn’t exactly break out in kindness and equity, but there was a visionary atmosphere, a perspective, a self-restraint, a feeling that at long last the “American Dream” was opening to all.

Now wealth is being concentrated in the hands of a few, corporations are controlled by the rapacious, the prevailing religious attitudes are haughty and politicized, doors of opportunity are closing to people of color, citizens are being fed lies by politicians who have more attitude than vision, and we are embroiled in foreign conflicts that we aren’t given the opportunity to understand.

The hymns that I enjoyed a decade ago _ “Lift High the Cross,” “Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation” _ now sound too boastful to my ear. It is time to submit to God, not to boast of ourselves as right-opinioned equal partners with God.

It is time to remember that Jesus began his ministry by submitting to John the Baptist and ended it by submitting to his accusers. Pestered by the weak to become like other warriors, Jesus refused. He launched no empires _ ecclesiastical, political or media _ but accepted John’s baptism and went on to drown in the sorrows of a troubled land.

People then, as now, saw ways that they considered more promising: armed might, proud institution and wealth. They created institutions that improved on what Jesus actually did and said. But for Jesus, if there would be victory, it would be from God, not from armor or empire. (“Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory? I triumph still, if thou abide with me.”)

Submission is out of fashion. No one wants to back down. When they aren’t dismissing public opinion as ill-informed, politicians behave like medieval theologians, conjuring sterile theories in safe places _ without benefit of reality, ambiguity or dissenting viewpoints _ and then forcing them on the loyal as a test of loyalty.

The cardinal virtues of what Jesus did do _ inclusion, gentleness, courage, wisdom, compassion _ are deemed worthless in public life. The public stage belongs now to the elitist, monochromatic, hard-edged, the weak bully, the foolish and small-minded. Religion is made a weapon, not a beacon.

And so I yearn to sing of submission _ to a God who has seen these destructive parades before and hasn’t yet lost faith in humanity.

DEA END EHRICH