The Trumpet Child – 7

Here, finally, is the last installment of the Trumpet Child series. A while back Megan and I went to an OtR concert in NYC where we gave them (via their guitar player) a copy of all these posts. Who knows if they got them. Either way, enjoy!

The trumpet child will lift a glass
His bride now leaning in at last
His final aim to fill with joy
The earth that man all but destroyed 

Here we arrive at the end of the song, and what we get once again is another beautiful image, Christ and his bride celebrating his final victory. His bride now leaning in at last. For some reason, I feel like there are a number of OtR songs that use this language of “leaning in.” It strikes me as very Linfordesque. I’ll have to do some research.

The bride here, of course, is the church. The church so afflicted and torn throughout the centuries will finally rest in her Savior’s arms. Her disobedience will be overcome and her destiny to be the children of God through Christ (Eph. 1) will finally be realized. The glass mentioned here could be several things. It could simply be a glass from the final “marriage feast of the Lamb” spoken of in Revelation, which would make sense of why he is lifting it, as if to give a toast at his wedding reception. But there is another place where Christ lifts a glass in front of his friends: “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’” (Luke 22:19-20). To be sure, the marriage feast cup and the last supper cup are really the same. Both cups represent God’s abundant blessing and provision. Both cups are given in thanksgiving. Both cups are given by Christ.

His final aim to fill with joy / The earth that man all but destroyed. This is the perfect way to end the song. It captures the remarkable hope of the song, yet it does not let us forget about where we still reside—in a broken world. Christ’s final aim is our joy. As Iranaues says, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” God has no hidden agenda, no secret plans, no phony posturing. The best answer I can give to the problem of evil is right here: divine transparency. God hides nothing from us. There is no dark secret of God. Jesus Christ is the being of God among us. And God’s will for us? Joy. God entire will is in Jesus Christ, to subvert our destruction and replace will everlasting life.

One final comment on the song as a whole to close things out: Writing about the eschatological future always brings with it a good many dangers, one of them being that we lose a proper orientation to the broken world we continue to inhabit. Eschatological hope can all too often turn into an unfounded optimism or an inappropriate negativity toward the present world. Either we think we can bring in the eschaton, or we think we should simply forsake this world and wait for the next one. Neither attitude is reconcilable to biblical eschatology. It is this world that God will redeem, but we must always remember that God will do it, not us.

Real Christian eschatological hope, therefore, is dialectical. On the one hand, we look around and see that our world is far from its final joy and that, even though we are compelled to do what we can to anticipate the world’s re-making, our efforts at improving it are always thwarted from a thousand different angles. Our projects and dreams often fail; our own weaknesses hold us back; others do not support us like we thought they would. We usually have ample cause to despair of our efforts. In short, we continually realize that we cannot fix the world, and indeed, that we are part of the problem. On the other hand, Christians live and move and have their being under the constant consolation of the Gospel. If we have ears to hear, we know that God’s ‘Yes’ to the world in Christ runs deeper and subverts every ‘No’ and ‘Maybe’ we utter to God and neighbor. When we see and hear Christ as he really is, we behold the promise of a new creation and the undoing of the powers that bind this old one. Despite our failings, we are called and enabled to be witnesses to the startling fact of God’s redemptive presence among us. We are permitted to be joyful, yes, even happy. The Gospel enables us to carry on in this broken world, for this broken world. But we never forget that it is a broken world. As Karl Barth puts it, Christian existence in this world is one in which we “laugh through tears.”

Over the Rhine’s music in general, this song in particular, has helped me to know what it might mean to “laugh through tears.” ‘The Trumpet Child’ offers wonderfully lavish pictures of the world to come, it is an incredibly hopeful song; yet it is shot through with a realization that our world is still broken and that God alone can get us out of this mess. It is no accident that the song is in a minor key. The song itself embodies the dialectic of Christian hope. It is a joyful and confident anticipation of Christ’s final victory, yet its music captures the pain of the current state of the world. And for those extra-careful listeners, is there a trumpet it in song? Yes, but it is muted, and it only makes a very brief appearance. Christ is with us, yes, but we do not see him fully: “now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12). We have yet to hear the un-muted blast of our re-creation. For now, we sigh, and groan, and pray, and leave space for the real Trumpet Child to play his tune.