When I was a kid, we sang Simple Gifts in elementary music class and I always hated the lyrics. It never made sense why we would need to go down to come round right. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned to appreciate the sentiment. The sermon in church today brought it home. Pride is everywhere, in the ways that we esteem ourselves more than we ought. Even false humility is a form of pride, a refusal to truthfully recognize your own state. What that means is that the only direction to go is down, so of course that’s where we come round right.
The incredible thing is that even though the right way to go is down, we are brought up into glory by and through Christ. (This point is beautifully demonstrated by the parable from the gospel lectionary reading today.)1
Footnotes
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Disclaimer: not theologically trained, may have misheard the sermon, and not entirely sure what the full lyrics to Simple Gifts are. ↩