#693: Come, Ye Thankful People, Come

[lutheranhymns]

Another one for the "harvest" mini-section rather than "things to sing for your pledge drive" (although October is often pledge drive month, at least in normal years, so who knows, maybe this was all deliberate). It's an elaboration on the parable of the wheat and the weeds (here translated as "tares," which you pretty much never see outside this context), and the implications are kind of sketchy, but then, the parable itself is kind of sketchy. "Good people and bad people are mixed together like wheat and weeds in the fields, and it's impossible to uproot the bad without destroying the good, so let's just wait till the end of the time so the angels can throw the wheat in the fire like they're chomping at the bit to do. P.S. God, please help us be good wheat. P.P.S. it's fine if you want to hurry it up and come already. But you're the boss."

The hymn is better than I'm making it sound, but it (repeatedly!) tries to rhyme "come" and "home," so maybe not by very much.