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“Is that Bringing in the Sheaves or The Good Old Summertime?”  Someone raised the question as we drove across York Region, picking up the familiar tune and trying to sing along.  We were listening to the Metropolitan Silver Band, founded in 1931, a unique brass and percussion ensemble in fabulous stereo, booming out the familiar tune with their sparkling, voluminous sound.  “I think it’s Bringing in the Sheaves,” I said, “but it sounds exactly like Good Old Summertime!”  

And so help us, the melody lines were very similar.  When you hear that chorus struck up by a big brass band — “we shall come rejoicing… bringing in the sheaves”  — it sounds exactly like “walking through the shady lanes, with your baby-bye.”  So we had a bit of competition as we drove along, a small ensemble of would-be vocalists singing two different lyrics to the familiar tune: “Bringing in the Sheaves” and “The Good Old Summertime.” 

Talk about a melange!  We had a blend of the missional and the vacational! We were harking up the thatch church roofs New Guinea along with the beach umbrellas of New Haven!  Half were singing about “sowing seeds kindness, sowing seeds of mercy” while the others picked up “you hold her hand and she holds yours…”  Same tune, different moods!

“That’s the whole problem with the church today,” I suggested, when things quieted down and I could turn the steering wheel into a lectern.  “We don’t know the difference between bringing in the sheaves and the good old summertime! When we should be ‘sowing seeds of mercy in the dewy eve’ we are ‘walking with our baby through the shady lanes!’”  There may have been a smattering of amens. 

It was later, at the end of day, that these catchy tunes got me thinking about J. I. Packer and his Hot Tub Religion (1987) — inspired on a summer evening as he lounged in a jacuzzi with a bunch of Regent College students. Packer says we are wallowing away in the warm bubbles of the ‘good old summertime’ and it’s not good:

Now we can see hot tub religion for what it is – Christianity corrupted by the passion for pleasure. Hot tub religion is Christianity trying to beat materialism, Freudianism, humanism, and Hollywood at their own game, rather than challenge the errors that the rules of that game reflect.  Christianity, in short, has fallen victim yet again (for this has happened many times before, in different ways) to the allure of this fallen world.  Worldliness – that is, embracing the world’s values, in this case pleasure – is the source of hot tub religion’s distinctive outlook.  “The place for the ship is in the sea,” said D. L. Moody, speaking of the church and the world, “but God help the ship if the sea gets into it.” 

I think the late Dr. J. I. would want to remind us that we need to keep our melodies straight.  Either it’s The Good Old Summertime, or it’s Bringing in The Sheaves.  It can hardly be both!  We need to make up our corporate mind. 

Unless, that is, you want to go down the inviting road of compatibilism and say there’s no need for these two things to be mutually exclusive.  Why should bringing in the sheaves and the good old summertime not join hands in a shady lane of their own? Why should it not be perfectly possible to sing along with both tunes and, indeed, live them out?  Why not enjoy the good old summertime while still remembering to sow those seeds of mercy in the dewy eve?  

Maybe it all comes down to living charitably. To live with awareness of the needs around you. To live responsively.  As for summer, we are assured that “even a cup of cold water,” that most summery of drinks, “will not lose its reward.” 

And whatever the season, with our priorities right, and in the right spirit, as the old hymn says, we shall come rejoicing.