PRAISE TO THE LORD, THE ALMIGHTY
It was August 2021, the Sunday before I started my first year of seminary. Sunlight flooded through the stained glass, creating multicolored mosaics on the stone floor of All Saints’ Chapel in Sewanee, Tennessee. The entrance hymn was number 390, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.” The chapel organ roared into life, and as the procession made its way to the altar, the congregation joined in song.
For the past year and a half, I and the rest of the Church had been living through a challenging period of physical isolation due to the pandemic. The primary activities of Christian life: gathering, eating, and singing together, were no longer just vectors of participation in the Paschal Mystery but also vectors of spreading a deadly virus. The eventual easing of restrictions meant that these things became possible again. However, their return was slow so that each opportunity to gather was an occasion for great thanksgiving. My own parish had only returned to its building a few weeks before I left for Sewanee. I was grateful to be gathered into a new community but also nervous about what that might look like and feeling a sense of loss at having left my former community behind.
These were the thoughts on my mind that August morning. I, like many Christians before me, was already quite familiar with “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.” Originating in the seventeenth century Lutheran tradition, it is a standard across many denominations with its expressions of praise, strong tune, and vibrant harmonies. But singing it on this particular day brought new meaning for me. By the end of the fourth verse, “Let the amen sound from his people again,” I was in tears. “Again” here not only meant that God’s mercies are new every day but that once again, we were able to gather, to praise, to lift our voices together in song.
This hymn really has only two themes, but they are the themes most foundational to Christian worship. The first is a description of who God is and how God has acted. The second is the creature’s response to God’s self-revelation. Both themes intertwine in each verse, broadening in scope until all of creation is singing full praise for eternity.
The first verse builds on biblical imagery, especially from the Psalms. God is the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation (Psalm 8). God is health and salvation (Psalm 67). God is to be praised by the soul (Psalm 103) and with instruments and voices (Psalm 150). Already, we see the invitation for the soul to “join the great throng,” because our response to God’s goodness is both individual and corporate.
Stanzas 2 and 3 build on the images established in the first verse, weaving a tapestry of images of God’s action in the past, present, and future. (In the original German text, there are three internal verses, but both Catherine Winkworth’s translation and the translation of The Hymnal condense them into just two.) The second verse is focused on God’s preservation of the saints throughout history, but the third verse is again directed more to the individual. It also uses both present and future tenses to emphasize God’s goodness not only in history, but in the present and continuing into the future. God currently “prosper[s] thy way” and “his goodness and mercy shall ever attend thee.” What we are invited to “ponder anew” here is not simply what the Almighty has done but what he is doing and will be doing. All of it is worthy of praise.
After exploring God’s saving power in the past, present, and future, the final stanza turns entirely to the created order’s response. The text here is all-encompassing: “all that is in me”, “all that hath life and breath”, “gladly for ever adore him.” We are all in on praise here! Not simply the individual, but all of creation, participates in this endless song of praise and adoration. The venerable tradition of singing the final stanza of a hymn in unison underscores the unity of our whole selves and the whole creation joining in praise together with one voice. On the other hand, the addition of the descant printed in The Hymnal 1982 brings the hymn to a dramatic climax, especially at the phrase “Let the amen sound…” Either way, there is no other way to sing the final stanza than forte – strong – engaging the full voice and indeed the full body.
The invitation of this hymn, especially in light of the period where we could not respond to it, is to reflect on the importance of congregational singing in public worship. Although there are references to the individual soul, it is also clear that praising God is a corporate exercise that is done in community, with every voice lifted up and every instrument employed. When we join in corporate worship, we “join the great throng” gathered with us and across space and time in praise of God.
I know I was not alone in missing the corporate dimension of worship during Covid. Singing a hymn alone, or even listening to a recording of one, is simply not the same as being in the room, feeling the vibrations, and hearing the other voices overlapping and joining in with your own. Sometimes I cannot even hear my own voice, but I know that it is joining in with all the other voices in the church and being heard by God. Singing, especially the time-honored texts in our psalter and our hymnal, gives voice to all that I am feeling and experiencing and invites me to share it with God, turning everything to praise.
Praising God is not the exclusive duty of humanity, either. “All that hath life and breath,” and even the trees, rocks, and stars, praise and adore God along with us, even as we give particular voice to that praise through our human language. The psalms, the great hymnbook of the Church, repeatedly emphasize the role of all creation in praising God. In Psalm 148, God is praised always and everywhere, by angels and saints, celestial bodies, the heavens and earth, creatures of the deep, the weather, geological formations, and finally by all stripes of humanity. It is this song of praise that we join in every time we sing together. As those created in the image and likeness of God and adopted by the waters of baptism into the family of God, we have the right and responsibility to join our voices with those of all creation in praise of God’s marvelous majesty and powerful work. In some sense, humanity has the responsibility to lead this worship on behalf of the rest of creation. Eucharistic Prayer D says that we give “voice to every creature under heaven” as we sing the Sanctus. So in our corporate worship, we give thanks not only for our own creation and preservation, but for the creation and preservation of the whole world.
All of this reflection leads to the realization that we are a small part of something bigger, but that our individual contributions are still infinitely important. God has acted, is acting, and will act both in creation and in our lives, and our response is praise. Our individual acts of praise and thanksgiving may seem small, but when we “join the great throng” of the gathered Christian community, all the saints in every place and time, and of all creation, we realize that we are essential constituents of the Body of Christ. As St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “the body does not consist of one member but of many.” These many members, each arranged as God has chosen, each function according to their individual skills and talents.
When we sing—perhaps especially in harmony—we each play our role: some on the melody, others on the bass line, others on the inner voices. We may each sing with varying degrees of talent and skill, but in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body and so we all sing together with one voice. May we “ponder anew” all that God is doing for us, and find ourselves, like Isaiah, transported to the throne room of God, crying “holy, holy, holy, is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
