Hymns: Phos Hilaron

Phos Hilaron

Hail, gladdening Light, of his pure glory poured, Who is the immortal Father, heavenly, blest, Holiest of holies, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now we are come to the sun’s hour of rest, The lights of evening round us shine, We hymn the Father, Son and Holy Spirit divine. Worthy are you at all times to be sung With undefiled tongue, Son of our God, giver of life, alone: Therefore in all the world your glories, Lord, they own.

Alaskan Wood Frogs

All week I’ve been telling folks that I knew where I thought this sermon would end, but I didn’t know where it started.

And then I was watching a sermon that a friend of mine preached online, and I saw the most unusual, strange, and incredible thing, and behold! An introduction was found!

Meet the Alaskan Wood Frog!

Now, you are probably looking at this and thinking that this is just a basic frog. Nothing too crazy!

But the Alaskan Wood Frog very often lives above the arctic circle, and perhaps you know that it often gets really cold up there.

And so God has created these little guys with a super power.

If it gets too cold, if they’re away from heat for too long, the Alaskan Wood Frog actually freezes solid!

And to be clear, this is completely frozen!

Their heart has stopped.

There is no blood flowing through their veins.

They are, scientists would tell us, for all intents and purposes, dead.

And yet…

If it warms up a bit, they get a bit of sunlight on them, all of a sudden they spring back to life.

(Pun kind of intended)

It turns out that the Alaskan Wood Frog freezes, dies, and revives itself 10-15 times every winter.

It might find itself in the cold for long enough that it literally dies…

But a little bit of time in the light, and off he goes!

Where We’ve Been

Quite accidentally I assure you, as we’ve been studying these hymns we share, I think they fall in to two categories, and they point to two distinct truths.

Grace Is All On God’s Side

Amazing Grace

We talked a bit about how some folks try to take the word “wretch” out of this hymn.

But first of all, we’re Presbyterians, don’t do that.

And second of all, it’s what we are!

When we get real with ourselves, we realize that on our own we have no goodness, no love, no light at all.

John puts it this way: we are walking around in the darkness!

Amazing Grace is amazing because God does the work to set us right, not us!

We’re wretches! Everything we try would backfire right in our faces.

But God…

God takes care of us in the person of Jesus Christ.

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Again here, we see a story of God’s grace!

We looked at a hymn writer who had been struggling with alcoholism and addiction.

He found his way to the path, and then found his way right back off of it again.

Only to meet a woman on a train who reminded him of where he had been, and reminded him of the God that holds him so closely.

He couldn’t do anything to get back on that path.

God did everything to get him on that path.

Barth Quote

Grace is absolutely the work of God.

I’ve discovered a book in my doctoral studies.

It’s a book of sermons given by my favorite theologian Karl Barth

Two interesting things about that:

1) Hard core theologians actually don’t often preach.

2) These sermons all came from a time when Barth was filling in for his friend, who was the chaplain at Basel Prison.

All of these sermons were preached to prisoners in jail.

Barth had this great line in his 1954 Christmas Sermon to the prisoners:

The Savior is also he who has wrought salvation free of charge, without our deserving and without our assistance, and without our paying the bill. All we are asked to do is to stretch out our hands, to receive the gift, and to be thankful.

Grace is yours already.

You don’t have to earn it, which is great, because you can’t.

Instead, we are just to receive the gift and be thankful.

And wouldn’t you know it? That’s the second category of hymns we’ve studied this time around, isn’t it?

It leads us to praise.

All Creatures of Our God and King

We saw these pulsars in the sky, the stars literally singing over us every night.

How could we possibly wander this earth without a sense of wonder, and joy, and amusement?

That’s praise!

It is well with my soul

Ann preached a fantastic sermon where we heard the story.

We heard the story of a family who’s life could have been marked by tragedy and loss.

But instead they turned it around and made sure that the gospel was proclaimed, and that justice was done in the name of Jesus.

That’s a beautiful act of praise, isn’t it?

Is He Worthy?

Due to a couple of funny circumstances, the sign out front actually had the name of that hymn up for two weeks.

My fault entirely!

So I noticed one day towards the end of it being up that the sign didn’t let people know it was a hymn or anything, it just said “Is He Worthy?”

And I think one of the folks who wait for a bus out there might have gotten a little impatient with us, a church asking that question, because they rearranged the letters on the sign to say He is Worthy!

But sometimes it’s ok to ask the questions that you already know the answer to.

Is he worthy? Of course he is!

And it’s worth reminding ourselves of this over and over again.

That you are saved by grace.

You are saved by grace.

You are saved by grace.

That’s what makes him worthy.

And so we end here at the beginning!

Phos Hilaron

Phos Hilaron is thought by many to be one of the oldest, one of the very first Christian hymns.

We have the words, which were in Koine Greek, the same kind of language that makes up our New Testament.

So this hymn likely comes from around then.

Phos Hilaron in Greek literally means “Gladdening Light.

It’s the kind of light that can make you happy!

This is where the church started.

With a claim that there is a light that makes you happy.

There’s a light that we can walk in.

There’s a light that comes from the Father, the Spirit, and the Son.

So what do we do with this light?

What happens when we wander?

Walk in the light.

What’s that mean? Philippians

There’s this great passage in Philippians 4 that’s worth studying today:

The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language Chapter 4

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

Walk in truth

In our world today, truth is getting harder and harder to discern, right?

We used to say that a picture was worth a thousand words.

But now with all the advancements in AI, it might be better to say that a picture is worth a thousand second looks, so we don’t get fooled!

Everyone is claiming that news that comes from the other side’s chosen source is fake news, leading us to literally question what the heck is going on all around us!

And with social media’s dominance, everyone only ever puts forward their best selves, so we get this fabrication of what a successful life looks like.

So to walk in the light, we should be people who are dedicated to truth.

We’re dedicated to finding not what proves our side right, but what’s actually happening in the world.

We’re dedicated to letting our yes be yes, our no be no, and nothing else.

And when we do have to challenge mistruths and lies, we are dedicated to speaking the truth in love, not in bludgeoning people to death.

Walk in kindness

Walking in the light also means walking in kindness.

Again, this is a trait that is starting to disappear from our world and culture, isn’t it?

We somehow think that bullying people is strength.

We somehow think that shouting is winning an argument.

We somehow think that being right is the most important thing.

Jesus might have something to say about that.

Jesus might say that no one has greater love than one who would lay down their lives, not those who would beat people up.

Jesus might say that we don’t need to shout, because it’s the blessed meek ones that will inherit the earth.

Jesus might say that love is more important than holding to the letter of the law.

So in this case, walking in the light means being a force for kindness in a world that isn’t really interested in kindness.

Walk in beauty

Paul also says that we ought to walk in the beautiful, not the ugly.

When was the last time that you were knocked out by the beauty of this world?

The other day I was out for a walk in the morning and I came across a friend.

The pictures are bad, because I was a ways off.

But I got to see this fox bouncing around in the field below me.

And after I snapped a few pictures, I just sat and watched this guy bouncing around.

It was beautiful.

Maybe for you nature is beautiful. We should spend time there.

Maybe for you art is beautiful. We have a stunning collection here in Pittsburgh.

Maybe for you church is beautiful. For that I’m grateful!

Walk in praise

We’ve been talking about this a lot lately, so I don’t want to belabor the point.

To praise something is to say “Good job!”

Pauls says we ought to focus on praise, not what we curse.

This way of walking in the light is all about finding the good, even in bad situations.

It’s about finding things that are worth lifting up, rather than finding things we can put down.

At other churches…not this one, but other churches…sometimes people come up to the pastor to complain about something.

I’ve gotten in the habit…when I was at other churches…of stopping someone when they are complaining about something with me and asking “What about this situation is great for you?”

Shockingly, every single time I’ve done that, even in the midst of the deepest complaining, folks tend to find at least one thing that is great about life for them.

It’s almost like God designed us to be for praise, and not for complaint.

At other churches…

Walking in Darkness

Maybe you’ve noticed at this point in the sermon, that we’re not always walking in the light.

We’re not always focused on truth, or kindness, or beauty, or praise.

What does it look like when we’re walking outside the light?

Walk in deception

Nothing will take us outside the light like being about deception rather than truth.

Look, this isn’t always about being a straight up liar (that happens sometimes too).

But sometimes this is with holding some piece of the truth that you know is going to reflect badly on you.

Sometimes this is about curating the facts such that they only fit your argument.

Sometimes, this can even look like total honesty, except for our intentions.

Sometimes we do the right things for the wrong reasons.

And here’s what’s tricky about this:

No one in our culture will stop you.

No one will think you’re out of place.

No one will call you out on it.

In this world we live in, not only will folks let you live in desception, they might legitimately celebrate it.

But it’s just not walking in the light.

Walk in meanness.

The other day I went to the grocery store, and I was greeted with the grumpiest employee I think Aldi has ever hired.

She was cranky, she was short, she was kind of barking at me while I was shopping.

And it took almost zero time for me to go there with her.

I was having a good day!

I was in a good mood!

I was having a good time!

But…

When someone’s mean, it doesn’t take much for us to go there with them, does it?

In fact, as I was driving away I thought that it’s more than likely that this woman’s bad mood was caused by a day’s worth of cranky customers…

Again, the world won’t begrudge us this!

If you’re met with a cranky grocer, you are well within your rights to be cranky back, right?

But…that’s not walking in the light.

That’s walking in a spirit of meanness.

Walk on the ugly side

Actually, what often happens here is we trade in beauty for practicality.

It’s not like we choose to spend our time in garbage dumps or anything.

A nuclear power plant is extremely practical. And zero percent beautiful.

Walk in complaint

At other churches…

Freezing

It turns out, that if we spend too much time walking in the darkness, if we’re out of the light, we tend to get stuck.

It’s almost like…these guys.

C.S. Lewis put it this way when he imagined hell.

He thought that what would happen would be that we would just become our biggest sins.

People who were tremendous grumblers would be reduced down to a grumble.

Liars would become nothing more than a lie.

We could get so caught up in walking in the darkness that we never get moving again.

Thawing

But you know, these frogs, all they need is a little bit of daylight.

All they need is just a little bit of warmth, a little bit of sunshine, and they start to thaw out.

It doesn’t seem to matter how long they’ve been frozen.

It doesn’t seem to matter how many times they’ve been frozen.

It doesn’t seem to matter where they’ve been frozen.

They can thaw out with just the slightest bit of sunlight.

Maybe you’ve been stuck for a little bit.

Maybe you’ve been walking in the deception of our world for a little while, to the point where you’re not sure what’s true any more.

Maybe you’ve been walking in complaint, where you’re starting to feel less like a person and more like a grumble.

Maybe you have been too enticed by the ugliness of the world, to the point where beauty doesn’t even impact you any more.

Maybe you forgot what a life of praise really looks like.

If that’s you, hail gladdening light.

Take a moment to bask in the light of Jesus Christ, who gives you grace without you having to earn it.

Hail gladdening light.

Take a moment to feel your heart beat again as you behold the beauty of God’s world.

Hail gladdening light.

Take a moment to wiggle your fingers and toes as you celebrate the goodness of this world, rather than focusing on the negativity.

Hail gladdening light.

Take a moment to thaw out as you shine that light on others, reflecting the light of Jesus Christ.

Hail gladdening light of God’s pure glory poured on a wanting world.