SING THE THIRD VERSE [W, 4-16-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—SING THE THIRD VERSE [W, 4-16-25]

 

Quite a few years ago now, my wife attended a worship service in which the sermon was entitled, “Sing the Third Verse.” She thought, “Oh, how interesting. He’s going to talk about some part of the Gospel we usually omit.” It was all the more intriguing because this particular preacher had a reputation for curing insomnia.

She said to herself, “I wonder what the ‘third verse’ represents?” Well, nothing. He just excoriated the people for 20 minutes for not singing the third verse of a hymn, when he himself was the person who usually said, “We’ll sing the first, second, and fourth verses, because time is short.” He was also the one who caused the time to be short in the first place.

She shook her head in dismay as she told me about it. “It was really just about singing the third verse. And he shouted it! Over and over! Sing the third verse! Sing the third verse!”

Reminds me of the preacher who was known to write in the margin of his manuscript, “Shout here, because the point is weak.”

It made me wonder about the dullest sermon I have ever heard. Nothing came to mind right away. I guess that is not surprising. By definition, a dull sermon won’t be very memorable.

I do remember hearing about one, though, that would surely qualify, if you only heard the first part of the story. A man told the preacher, “Your sermon last week changed my life.” The preacher was surprised and delighted. Even he knew that his sermons were plodders. “It changed your life?”

“Yes. You know when you said, “I have now ended the first part of my sermon, and I shall go on to the second part?”

“That changed your life?”

 “Yes. I thought, ‘I have ended the first part of my life. I need to go on to the second part!’”

Will Barrett, Walker Percy’s character in the novel, The Second Coming, is a retired lawyer who says you need to listen to bad preachers because they will always say something by accident that you need to hear. “Good preachers know how to leave the accidents out.”

Well, I’m not saying we should seek out dull preaching, even though Will Barrett has a good point. I do think we should sing the third verse, though. Otherwise, we’ll miss these words of Robert Robinson…

O to grace, how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be.

Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.

John Robert McFarland

“Come, Thou Fount, of Every Blessing.” Written by Robert Robinson, 1758, when he was 22.