Time&Eternity

36 chapter 1
has died to sin with Christ, and now
with Christ is raised to live. 149
These words do not mean to imply that the now (the moment they are
spoken) is simultaneous with the death and resurrection of Jesus, which
were documented as a historically unique occurrence in the Gospels. Participation
in this event is certainly occurring now, but the hymn does not
reflect upon how the time between the then of that event and the now of the
baptismal ceremony is bridged.
A baptismal hymn translated from English into Swedish suggests the
notion that Baptism entails a universal simultaneity with the past:
Med Noa, räddad ur sin ark
från stormigt hav till vårlig mark,
med Mose, lyft ur floden opp,
vi firar fest med nyfött hopp. 150
This stanza of a baptismal hymn originally in Norwegian is also similar:
Över tidens gränser lever alltjämt
dina löftesord vid dopets vatten.
Dopets ljus förblir när livet slocknar. 151
In this hymn, however, one is dealing with the future instead of the
past. The sacramental event breaks through the boundary, toward the future,
more than it moves backward, between present and past.
One also finds the same outlook in some of the Communion hymns. In
the meal that is praised in song as a mystery, the bread that we break makes
us one with Christ, the brother who died for us on Golgotha; the wine that
we share unites us with God; the meal of the reign of Heaven gives us joy
and hope for facing tomorrow, certain of the faithfulness of Christ, who
once promised to return. 152 Here, one is not dealing with the simultaneity
of a salvation experience in the past, but rather with the arrival of
Christ/God in the present, in order to create the anticipation of a redemptive
future. An even clearer orientation toward the future is found in the
previously mentioned Communion hymn by Jonson. 153 It deals with the
threatened hope of humanity, which, in the bread of the Lord’s Supper, receives
a sign of the future, by virtue of which the peace that is still to come
can be realized. 154
On the other hand, the notion of a universal simultaneity is suggested
in the lines:
Du som med livets bröd
går genom tid och rum,