St Margaret's Church Prestwich

This month’s letter to the parish comes from hte keyboard of Rev Helen, and reflects on the hymn “Let all mortal flesh keep silence”:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly minded,
for, with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
as of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
in the body and the blood.
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heav’nly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
spreads its vanguard on the way,
as the Light of light descendeth
from the realms of endless day,
that the pow’rs of hell may vanish
as the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six-winged seraph,
cherubim with sleepless eye,
veil their faces to the Presence,
as with ceaseless voice they cry,
“Alleluia, alleluia,
alleluia, Lord Most High!”

There’s something about singing this hymn, which I love, around Easter. The magnitude of the music, the meaning of the lyrics and they mystery of it all. The Resurrection is a mystery in its own way; many people have tried to crack and solve it but there is still lots we don’t know or really understand about what happened all those years ago. Just one of the many mysteries round Jesus that has been debated by Christians in the years since the resurrection.

One example of this is the substance of Jesus, was he completely human, completely God or a mixture of both. A question that still puzzles Christians, but in the early days of Christianity many were desperate for clarity on this and different schools of thought emerged; Docetism, God appearing masked as human, Eutychianism, a human-God hybrid, Adoptionism, human adopted by God later in life (just to say all of these have been declared heretical by the church but are fascinating to look into). We’re left with Jesus being fully human but the same as God. He feels, suffers and dies as a human but with the nature of God inside him. What exactly does this mean? We’ll if you work it out let me know, theologians have been trying to decide for 2,000 years! It’s all a bit of a mystery really.

King of kings, yet born of Mary…Lord of lords, in human vesture, in the body and the blood.

All that settles down until the reformation when Jesus’ nature is debated again with the question, what happens during communion when the priest holds their hands over the bread and wine? There are many different views on this across the Christian Church. Transubstantiation, that the bread and wine become Jesus body and blood. Consubstantiation, Jesus’ presence is within the elements or simply it’s symbolic re-enactment of what Jesus asked his followers to do the remember him after he died. Even the reformers couldn’t agree over this! Again, if you work out a definite answer, let me know!

He will give to all the faithful. His own self for heav’nly food.

The thing is no matter how much we analyse Jesus he’s still a bit of a mystery and this hymn embraces that. It lives in the mystery of Jesus and celebrates it. Jesus is God wrapped in human flesh coming to redeem humanity through his teachings, death and resurrection. We don’t fully understand because this is heavenly stuff, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be disciples and blessed by Jesus.  

ponder nothing earthly minded, for, with blessing in His hand,

This Easter be renewed by the mystery and wonder of Jesus resurrection, for mortal flesh stands in silence before him, for he is God risen from the dead! Alleluia!

Rev Helen