Provenance i

Twice, Sunday, we sang "In Christ Alone." Morning worship at our own church. Evening service, with a pile of other churches at a Reformation Day special. Twice "In Christ Alone," and both times, for me, a long and blessed story emerges from that contemporary hymn. 

Seems amazing that "In Christ Alone" is only 20+ years old. Stuart Townend wrote the lyrics, Keith Getty the music, their very first collaboration, and it became a world-wide hit. Those with more musical knowledge than I have claim that "In Christ Alone" has a distinctively Irish folk tune feel, which it surely might, given that Townend and Getty call Ireland home.

In some circles at least, its immense popularity was helped along by a rip-roaring doctrinal fight, created when the PCUSA, the quintessential "mainline" denomination in North America, decided against giving it a place in their hymnal. They couldn't handle one particular line: "Till on that cross as Jesus died/the wrath of God was satisfied." The Presbyterians hated even a whiff of the idea that God almighty was responsible in any way for his son's own death, so they tried alterations. Townend wouldn't buy them--it's got to be what he wrote. 

The last thing I'd care to do is mix it up in a theological brawl--I'll stay out of that ring. Besides, that's not the story that rises from in my soul whenever I get anywhere near that music. That's a story that begins with a telephone call.

"Jake Mulder, Emo," the voice said--period. Masculine, young but not a kid, forceful, so sure of himself that it never dawned on him the man he was calling might not know exactly what an emo was. I withheld the giggle, but I'm sure I smiled. What I knew in an instant was that I'd have to solve the mystery of "emo" through whatever content was a'comin'.

They were having a retreat, Jake said, the young people of the church (Emo was a town with a Christian Reformed Church), and they were wondering whether I'd be interested in coming up (okay, it's in Canada) and be their speaker. 

I'm guessing I'd been teaching at Dordt College for two years, hadn't yet entertained requests to speak anywhere that I remember. Going to this place--this "Emo"--sounded like a trip--especially if the rest of the kids were anything like Jake Mulder. He sold me. I don't think he doubted for a moment that I'd say yes. Who would, after all? It's Emo we're talking about here. 

It took another call or two to get the arrangements down. Emo was pretty much straight north in northern Ontario, he told me, even though the town itself is pretty much right on the river that divides the States from Canada, which would seem to me to be "southern" Ontario--I mean, you can't go too much farther south. He had the trip all determined for me-- part of it in a little single-engine lightweight that landed on a grassy field. 

Sometime along the line I asked about the crowd. It would include kids from Thunder Bay to Winnepeg, a bunch, he told me. I told myself to find out where Thunder Bay was. High school age? "Sure," he said, as if they studiously avoided discrimination, "and older too." In Canada, as in the Netherlands back then, a young people's society included 20-somethings. You left the fold only when you got yourself a spouse. 

"We got a place for you right down the road from town," he told me, "the Veldhuisens." I had no idea what I was in for. One of the Veldhuisen girls had taken a class with me. She's the one who said they ought to get the Dordt guy to come to Emo. 

All I knew was I'd be staying at the Veldhuisens somewhere just down the road from a place called Emo, a very real place, in Canada, somewhere around another town called International Falls, wherever that was.

I'm quite sure they wanted me to read stories. If they'd wanted me to preach, hard as it would have been to turn down Jake Mulder, I'd have begged off--I've never been a preacher.