“Clothed with Glory, Christ Is Coming”
This month we continue our Hymn of the Month series in which one or more hymns drawn from collections published by Leupold Editions will be posted on the opening page of the website for consideration by pastors and musicians who may wish to introduce the hymn to their congregations the following month. The Hymn of the Month will often be thematically appropriate for a particular season of the church year or it may be related to a more general theme about the church’s mission in contemporary society. Thus, pastors and/or musicians may wish to have the choir introduce the hymn on the first Sunday of the month or season and then invite the congregation to join with the choir in singing the hymn on each of the remaining Sundays. Additional hymns will occasionally be suggested for a particular Sunday in the church year or for annual commemorations, such as the liturgies of Holy Week; such hymns may only be appropriate on the designated day, or they might be used as a Hymn of the Month in anticipation of or in response to the particular day observed on the church calendar.
A suggested hymn for Reign of Christ Sunday (Christ the King Sunday) in 2023 is Clothed with Glory, Christ Is Coming, a text by Gracia Grindal (b. 1943) and a tune by Daniel Charles Damon (b.). With references both to the Second Reading (Ephesians 1.15-23) and the Gospel (Matthew 25.31-46) appointed for Reign of Christ Sunday in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary, Grindal’s text, in the first two stanzas, masterfully contrasts Christ, “the King of kings” who is coming, “clothed with glory,” to “judge the nations,” with Christ who appeared as “an unknown stranger in a manger, lacking worth.” In the third stanza, she reminds us to look for “the Lord’s appearing, not just in the skies,” but “also in your neighbors,” in whose “gaze you will meet Jesus.” In the fourth, she affirms that “Jesus blesses those who feed” and clothe him and concludes by paraphrasing Jesus’ words to the blessed in the Gospel: “Come, I have prepared mansions in the courts of heaven . . . for you there.” Damon’s elegant, but straightforward, tune works well with the text and “feels” like a familiar tune, despite being new.
Grindal is a native of North Dakota educated at Augsburg College in Minneapolis and the University of AR in Fayetteville. She taught at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, for sixteen years before joining the faculty of Luther Theological Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1984. Upon her retirement in 2013, she was named Professor Emerita of Rhetoric.
Damon is an internationally published writer of hymn texts and tunes, an ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church, and a jazz pianist who has played in many hotels and clubs in the San Francisco Bay area. He holds degrees from Greenville College, Greenville, Illinois (BME) and the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California.
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