EDITORIAL: FOCUS ON GLORY
Backstage | Jimmy Dodd
I recently heard Trés Ward trace the history of worship in the USA, from spirituals sung during times of slavery and harsh oppression to the Azusa Street Revival (1906) to modern day. He helped me grasp a commonly overlooked pivotal element of worship.
He said that in 1939, after the decade-long Great Depression and on the brink of World War II, George Thomas “Dad” Speer and Adger M. Pace wrote a song called, “Heaven’s Jubilee,” typical of many gospel songs from that era. The first line leads with the lyrics “Some glad morning we shall see Jesus in the air, coming after you and me, joy is ours to share.” The song talks about “joy,” “rejoicing,” “singing,” “shouting” and, of course, “jubilee.” During times of national crisis, to get oneself through the trials and pain of this life, it was not unusual to hear songs about our promised home with Jesus in glory.
Similarly, I challenge you to name one spiritual that is focused on anything but glory. Spirituals speak of heaven as a place of freedom and reunion. The spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” speaks of a chariot coming to take believers to glory. “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” speaks of coming into glory to be reunited with loved ones. These songs remind us of the pain of earthly struggle and the hope of eternal reward.
To give a personal example, during my nearly 125 trips to third world countries I have witnessed the poorest of poor expressing hope in their worship by singing about what is yet to come.
These types of songs share a common theme: future glory.
In contrast, as Glenn Packiam observes in his 2020 book Worship and the World to Come, worship in the prosperous U.S. is fixated on a present-ongoing state of being. In other words, why sing worship songs centered around future glory when we are presently surrounded by wealth, privilege, abundance and relative ease (in comparison to the rest of the world)? Why sing songs about being with Jesus in heaven when the U.S. church faces minimal amounts of persecution, suffering and the threat of death. Life is good. Why long for heaven and sing of future glory when we have everything we need in the here and now?
Have we become so content in this life that future glory has dissolved into an afterthought?
Is the American church so content with all we have today that there is no need to hope for tomorrow? Where do Christian believers in Gaza, Haiti, North Korea, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Iran, Syria and many more places around the world find their hope?
They have their eyes on glory. Their hope is not in the comfort of today. Their hope is the promised comfort of tomorrow. Their hope is one day being in the presence of Jesus.
Ward closed his message by saying, “When we don’t sing about the end of time, we aren’t telling the whole story. People need to know that God is near here and now, but they also need to know that when this life is over, he will be with them in the there and then.”
In times of unmerited prosperity and in seasons of heartache or pain, may our eyes always be fixed on future glory, and may that shape the way we live—and sing—today.