Pastor's Blog: Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life

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As you are well aware, most of our viewpoints in life come from the songs we sing. This holds true regardless of the genre of songs we sing, and it is especially true when it comes to our faith convictions. I’ve often said that we learn more theology from our hymns and praise choruses than we do from sermons or Bible studies. (And I make that statement as praise for the former rather than as criticism for the latter.) 

Perhaps that’s why I find it interesting when a hymn drops out of one edition of a hymnal, only to reappear in a later one. Clearly, the cultural and spiritual dynamics of a particular season dictate the perception of a hymn’s worth so that if one no longer speaks to a certain hour, that hymn may be dropped by one hymnal editorial board. But if the situation suddenly changes, you may see it come back because of its newfound fitness.

One such hymn, which has reappeared in the Celebrating Grace hymnal we use at MBBC is one from the turn of the 20th century, “Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life.” Written by a Methodist minister, Frank Mason North, the hymn in its original context reflected a cultural shift in the United States as more and more people moved from rural areas to urban ones. With that shift came a greater focus on systemic challenges as opposed to individualistic ones. Thus North saw a need to challenge Christians in his day to seize the opportunities of such a societal shift to the cities and based his hymn on his understanding of Jesus’ parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22, where the king tells his servants, “Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find” (Matthew 22:9). North could see in his day how a new cultural reality demanded a new response from the church, one that moved God’s people from an attractional model (“Here we are; come and find us”) to a missional one (“There they are; let’s go find and invite them”). 

I have to admit that I didn’t grow up singing this hymn in the Baptist church where I grew up. Clearly, we were more focused on individually oriented hymns, each of which focused on the pronoun “I.” You can likely name the ones we sang, ones quite frankly I still cherish. But as the circle of life and faith goes, things do tend to come back around. I see such a circling back today as our society struggles with fragmentation and division from the cries of “race and clan.” Our cities are still very much “haunts of wretchedness and greed.” Only a missional mindset will engage our day, one where kingdom-focused believers go out into the world to bear witness “to the voice of the Son of Man.” 

So, how do we best pursue such a mission? On this Labor Day weekend, I’d offer you Frederick Buechner’s famous definition of “vocation,” from his wonderful book, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, which goes: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need” (pp. 118-19). In other words, as we “cross the crowded ways of life,” God’s call is to express through our labor the deep gladness that comes from inviting others to join us in celebrating the myriad gifts of grace God makes possible through our faith in Jesus Christ. Only then “will all the world learn (Jesus’) love and follow where (His) feet have trod,” a path that will ultimately lead us all to a better city than any of us will ever know on this earth, a city that is nothing less than “the city of our God.” 

Now, that is a work worth giving one’s life to. So, just as Jesus literally did in bearing His cross through the crowded city of Jerusalem two thousand years ago, let us in all our earthly labors today do the same here in Birmingham, and beyond.

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Colossians 3:17).