"Be Thou My Vision"

“Be Thou My Vision”
Luke 13:10-17
Todd Buegler
August 25-27, 2007
Lord of Life
Homily for a “Hymn Sing”


Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

I have to admit that when I was growing up, I wasn’t really a “hymn singing” kind of guy. I think it’s because I grew up in an extremely traditional, older congregation in south Minneapolis. Let me be clear, I love my home church.
But when it came to worship, Diamond Lake Lutheran was extremely traditional.

Their idea of contemporary music was simply to play the organ a little louder. And the organist, as good as he was (and he was very good), well, he only had one speed for his hymns…slow.

So, I think mostly because of the speed and the repetitiveness, I didn’t develop an appreciation for the hymns of the church until I went to college. The chapel at Gustavus was also very traditional. And the Chaplain loved his hymns and his liturgy. But one day he was talking to a group of students, and I heard him say that each hymn tells a story, and that each hymn is a confession of our faith. Each hymn says something about what we believe. So he reminded us to “pay attention” to the words. “Don’t sing it if you don’t mean it!” And he said, “to remember: God is listening.” Well, how can you argue with that? So I started to pay attention. Instead of just singing, or more frequently, doing the “Lutheran Mumble” (you know what I mean) I started really reading the words as the congregation sung them. The first hymn I paid attention to after I heard the Chaplain was “Be Thou My Vision”. I fell in love with that hymn…and its story:

Only one missionary is honored with a global holiday, and only one is known by his own distinct color of green. Of course, I’m referring to St. Patrick, a missionary priest to Ireland.

Patrick was born in AD 373, along the banks of the River Clyde in what is now called Scotland. His father was a deacon, and his grand father a priest. When Patrick was about 16 years old, Irish raiders descended on his little town and torched his home. When one of the pirates spotted him in the bushes, he was seized, hauled aboard ship, and was taken to Ireland as a slave. There he gave his life to the service of Jesus Christ. “The Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief,” he later wrote, “in order that I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God.”

Patrick eventually escaped and returned home. His overjoyed family begged him to never leave again. But one night, in a dream, Patrick saw an Irishman pleading with him to come and to evangelize Ireland.

It wasn’t an easy decision, but Patrick, now about age 30, returned to the land of his former captors with only one book, the Latin Bible, in his hand. As he evangelized the countryside, thousands of people came to listen. But the superstitious Druids opposed him and sought his death. Patrick’s preaching, however, was powerful. He became one of the most fruitful evangelists of all time, planting about 200 churches and baptizing over 100,000 converts.

His work endured and several centuries later, the Irish church was still producing hymns, prayers, sermons and songs of worship. In the eighth century, an unknown poet wrote a prayer inspired by the work of St. Patrick. Patrick had asked God to open his eyes and to be his vision; he asked that he could view the world as God would view it. He asked God to be his Vision, his Wisdom, and his Best Thought by day or by night.

IN 1905, Mary Elizabeth Byrne, a scholar in Dublin, Ireland, translated this ancient Irish poem from Gaelic into English. Another scholar, Eleanor Hull of Manchester, England, took Byrne’s translation and crafted it into verses with rhyme and meter. Shortly thereafter it was set to a traditional Irish folk song, “Slane,” named for an area in Ireland where Patrick reportedly challenged local Druids with the Gospel.

I think that sometimes we all enter worship with the wrong frame of mind. Growing up, I assumed that the point of worship was to keep me interested, and if the pastor, or the music weren’t entertaining enough, I’d check out. I assumed that sitting in the pews, I was the audience.

In worship, as in much of life, God turns the tables on our expectations. God, or the pastors are not the performers. God is the subject of worship. We…all of us… are the ones on the stage, giving our prayers and praise to the one who created us and redeemed us. And as the Chaplain said, “God listens.”
God listens.

We know the power of great hymns. You can see a physical reaction in people when they sing “How Great Thou Art” at the funeral of a grandparent. I’ve led worship in nursing homes and have seen people who couldn’t track with anything we were doing, suddenly lock in to the worship when we started singing Amazing Grace. At the end of a long day on an AWOL mission trip, or on Mission Jamaica, I’ve seen the emotion when we’d gather for a campfire, or for devotions, and would sing together. There is a spiritual power to singing.

And “Be Thou My Vision” is a great hymn of the church. More than that, it is a prayer and a request to God. Like St. Patrick, we ask that God blesses us with his vision. We ask to see the world, and to see each other, through the same kind of eyes that God sees. We ask to look upon each other and all of creation with vision of grace and love. We ask for God’s wisdom. We ask for assurance of God’s presence. We ask for the promises God makes to be true in our lives; and for us to see them come alive within us. And we are reminded that God delivers on his promises…to each one of you.

At Lord of Life, sometimes we sing the great, old hymns of the church. Sometimes we sing the new, contemporary worship songs. Sometimes we sing with piano, or with a synthesizer with an organ setting. Sometimes it’s with guitar, bass and drums. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. Ultimately, worship is about living out and expressing our relationship with God. I believe God loves it when we sing, however we sing. I believe God hears our music. The very act of singing is a confession of our faith and strengthens our belief.

God, in this hymn, we ask you to be our vision…our wisdom…our inheritance…our treasure…

And God, we know that when we sing, you listen.
Amen.