I Also Love Saying "Liveth and Reigneth"

  

   I love TLH (the Lutheran Hymnal, 1941). I grew up with it and have used it almost exclusively now for 17 years as a pastor.  Is it a perfect hymnal?  Not hardly.  Many (far more than I thought years ago) of the hymns are so weak as to be methodistic (one or two may be heterodox), and the type font is microscopically small.  And of course, "page 5" is an "unding" and should be ripped out of every pew copy.
   But oh how I love the Jacobean English.  Every parish which uses the AV for the pericopes (as I do) does itself a great complimentary and harmonic blending favor by also using the common service of "Page 15."
  
   Of course by utilizing the AV I am permitted two of my chief joys: 1) being able to say "ass" in church twice a year [the Holy Gospel for both Ad Te Levavi & Palmarum) and 2) being able to say "Sexagesima."     Of course, I say "ass" in Bible Class all the time.     :)

   This brings me to two recent other observations for the current Season of Passiontide.  TLH also has the Jacobean translations in the "propers" for the Sundays.  I am simply overjoyed that we will hear the people say this coming PALMARUM in the "Introit": "...and deliver me from the horns of the unicorns."  [TLH p. 64]  Take "that" you pernicious relevant, scientific, modernism!

    But what is even more serendipitous, and really quite amazing, is that the "Tract & Verse" for Maundy Thursday uses the language of John 6 for the pre-eminent service during the Church Year in which to talk about the Sacrament of the Altar.  Notwithstanding the fact that the appointed Evangel deals (per John's non-synoptic eye) with Our Lord's footwashing and NOT with the Verba, it still is wonderful to have the following being said during the Mass: "My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed: he that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me and I in him."  [TLH p. 66]

   It may not be Latin, but there's nothing for English speaking American Lutherans that bespeaks "tradition" quite like the good ol' Jacobean language of TLH.
   Indeed!