Today I awake and God is before me

Raindrops and chapel. Copyright Stephen Craven 2005.

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Today I awake and God is before me”. It comes with its own tune written by the composer, John Bell, but I first came across it to the tune better known to the words “Morning has broken”.  Like that one, it is a “morning hymn” rather than specifically an Easter one, but in the Easter season we are reminded that Christ’s resurrection revealed at daybreak on Easter day was as a new morning for the world. In form, the hymn is Trinitarian – one verse each referring to the Creator, Son and Holy Spirit and one to the Trinity (three persons, one God). 

Equally important, I would say, are the verbs used at the start of each verse: I awake, I arise, I affirm, I enjoy.  Everyone goes to bed expecting to awake in the morning, though knowing that one day we will not. Nearly everyone (except for those afflicted by disease or disability) is able to arise.  But to affirm and enjoy the new day is a matter of the will.  in verse 1, we sing “God never sleeps but patterns the morning in slithers of gold or glory in grey”.  I have illustrated this post with a photo taken in 2005 when I was on a photographic holiday retreat at Scargill House, in wet and grey weather unsuitable for outdoor colour photography.  We sang this hymn and were encouraged to take monochrome and indoor photos instead. This one shows the chapel – representing the praise of God – beyond the raindrops in the foreground.

While come people’s circumstances make it easier to do so, it is the ability to thank God even for the “glories of a grey day” that perhaps makes the difference between those who find cause to grumble right from the start of the day even when there is much to give thanks for, and those who manage to find good things in life around them, however challenging their circumstances. The singing of a hymn of praise at the start of the day is a good way to get into the right mood.

In verse 2 we sing of Christ who “walked through the dark to scatter new light”.  He did that on earth, bringing hope to the sick and sinful, but supremely in death and resurrection. “Yes, Christ is alive, and beckons his people to hope and to heal, resist and invite”.  It is that hope in the one who brings new life in the most hopeless circumstances that allows us to enter each new day joyfully.

Verse 3 affirms the work of the Holy Spirit, while in verse 4 we “enjoy” God’s presence in any way, who “called me to life and called me their friend”.  I would just query here the use of the plural “they/their”, which I doubt is intended to reflect current usage by transgender or non-binary people.  It may just be to avoid gendering God as ‘he’ (John Bell has written other hymns that address the Spirit, at least, as ‘she’) but seems to go against the traditional Christian understanding that the three ‘persons’ of the Trinity are one God.

We shall draw water joyfully


Jesus and the Woman of Samaria,
painting by Henryk Siemiradzki

Today’s Easter song from Sing Praise is “We shall draw water joyfully”.  It’s one of those set for cantor and congregation, with the cantor’s line adapted slightly for each of the three acclamations. 

These three cantor’s acclamations are based on Isaiah chapter 12, and express firstly confidence in God’s salvation, secondly the thanks due to him for his ‘mighty deeds’ and thirdly a psalm of praise to the Lord as we make his works known.  Thanks and praise to God in response to his saving acts are a regular theme in the Hebrew scriptures and in Christian worship.

The chorus is to a tune that fits the words – fast, flowing and joyful as we sing “We shall draw water joyfully, singing joyfully, from the wellspring of salvation”. he chorus could just as easily be said to be based on Jesus’ own sayings about himself offering ‘living water’.  The ‘water’ here is metaphorical and represents both something that meets the needs of our physical life (which of course is utterly dependent on H2O) and also a spiritual refreshment contrasted with the insipid and sometimes dangerous forms of spiritual sustenance that this world offers us.

If Christ had not been raised…

Today’s hymn choice from Sing Praise is “If Christ had not been raised from death” by Christopher Idle, which can be sung to either of the tunes to the older hymn “I heard the voice of Jesus say”.  It is based on 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and the three verses all start with “If…”, changing in the second half of the verse to “But…”.   This “if/but” language makes clear the distinctions between those who have faith in Christ and those who don’t.

In verse 1, “If Christ had not been raised” (in which case all religious activity is meaningless) is countered with “but now the Lord is risen indeed” (the common Easter acclamation) which means that “in Christ we are forgiven”.  In verse 2, “If Christ still lay within the tomb” (meaning death is the finality it appears to be) is opposed with “But now the saviour is raised up”. The reality of physical death and separation is acknowledged as it should be, while also believing in a future life: “when a Christian dies we mourn, yet look to God in hope”. Verse 3 starts with “If Christ had not been truly raised”, the implication of which is that all our proclamations of everlasting life are lies. But… “now our great Redeemer lives, through him we are restored”.

These three affirmations of the truth of the Resurrection are shown to lead to forgiveness, a promise of eternal life, and restoration to God’s fellowship in the here-and-now, instead of guilt, death as the end of our being, and separation from God (logically, verse 3 might come before verse 2). That affirmation of relationship is at the core of Christianity, rather than any rules and regulations.

This is the night of new beginnings

Easter Vigil at the church of the Ascension, Oak Park, IL, USA

Today’s hymn choice from Sing Praise is “This is the night of new beginnings” by Bernadette Farrell. The tune and the words of the chorus are the same as her hymn “Longing for light”.  At first I thought the present hymn an adaptation of that one, but see John’s comment below, that this hymn dates from 1990 & 1991, and “Longing for light” is later (1993).

These original words, then, are intended for the Easter vigil. This ceremony is observed by some, but by no means all, church congregations, either at sunset on Easter eve or sunrise on Easter morning depending on local preference).  Neither is ‘wrong’, for who can say at what moment Christ was resurrected between the start of the Sabbath (Friday evening) when the women went home and the rising of the sun on Easter Sunday when they returned?  The emphasis varies with the chosen time: if at sunset, it’s about entering the darkness, the loss of contact with God as Jesus his son has died (while also anticipating the resurrection).  We do need this in our spiritual lives, an acknowledgement that sometimes God seems absent and life seems hopeless, and faith in the resurrection seems a distant hope. 

If the vigil takes place around sunrise, it begins in sombre darkness, often gathered around a fire, but as the day dawns the Easter candle is lit from the fire and carried into church with great shouts of “The light of Christ!” and “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” 

This year, of course, it was all different. At our church at least, the Covid restrictions meant there was no singing other than the Vicar’s wife singing an Easter song quietly outside the church, and a strong wind meant that the Easter candle had to be lit indoors (there was no fire anyway: our service is not at dawn).

But back to the words of the hymn. Both options above seem to be covered: verse 1 speaks of the “night of new beginnings” (a reminder to me of an Easter sermon by the late Revd Val Clarke who described the Christian life lived in the light of the Resurrection as “the land of Begin-Again”). Verse 2 is about the “night Christ our Redeemer rose from the grave triumphant and free”. The middle verse speaks of the fire kindled in darkness to dispel the shadows of night. 

Verse 4, which should probably be marked with an increase in volume and maybe tempo, urges people to “Sing of the hope deeper than dying, sing of the power stronger than death, sing of the love endless as heaven, dawning throughout the earth”. I love those words: it reminds us that the Easter celebration is not for the individual, nor just the local congregation nor even the totality of Christians worldwide, a billion strong though we are.  No, Easter is for the whole of creation to sing praise to our redeeming God.

Finally, as the sun rises perhaps, the last verse proclaims that “into this world morning is breaking” and calls God’s people to “lift up your voice, cry out with joy, tell out the story, all of the earth rejoice!”  

The chorus after each verse is “Christ be our light, shine in our hearts, shine through the darkness. Christ be our light, shine in your church gathered today”. This is another reminder that we are part of a larger whole.

I will sing the Lord’s high triumph

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “I will sing the Lord’s high triumph” by Christopher Idle, a contemporary adaptation of perhaps one of the oldest known songs of praise, that of Moses and his sister Miriam recorded in Exodus chapter 15.  That song celebrates the freedom of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt and the destruction of their Egyptian captors in the ‘Red’ (or reed) sea. It is therefore associated for Christians with Easter, when we celebrate the freedom from sin and destruction of the power of death achieved by Jesus in his death and resurrection.  Perhaps because of that, John chose to sing this to ‘Cwm Rhondda’ a tune equally associated with the hymn ‘Guide me, o my great redeemer’ and its final verse with the words “Death of death and hell’s destruction, land me safe on Canaan’s side”. The first verse of this hymn, in its final couplet, also refers to this: “through the waters God has brought us liberty”.

The second verse recounts God’s power demonstrated ‘in the storm and at the mountain’ (of Horeb, where the Ten Commandments were given in cloud and lightning). The third refers to God guiding us safely to our homeland, which in spiritual terms means heaven, but can also be applied in our earthly lives as God will often call people to move and change, an uncomfortable period in our lives, but with the purpose of bringing us to where we can have a fuller life and one where we can serve him better.  The last verse makes the connection again between God leading the nation through the sea, and the One (Jesus) “whose blood released is from our deeper slavery”.  It finishes with the Easter acclamation, “Alleluia, Christ is risen: we are free!”

Exult, creation, round God’s throne

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is Christopher Idle’s “Exult, creation, round God’s throne”.  It’s a contemporary setting of an ancient hymn that is still sung in Latin plainchant in some churches during the Easter Vigil.   Here, it is in three metrical verses; John used in his morning prayer video an original fourth verse that is omitted in the book, and used the more common tune Gonfalon Royal.

The three verses in the hymn book call on all creation to exult (that is, rejoice) in the resurrection of Christ, which as I noted yesterday is a cosmic event, not just one for the people and time of Jesus.  The hymn addresses firstly the angels of heaven (who, let us remember, are created beings themselves); then the earth in general, as the Lord has won his victory over the powers of darkness here; and thirdly Christians in particular, both living now and gone before us (“exult, all Christians, one in praise with our Jerusalem above!).  

The fourth verse is a doxology with water imagery, calling us to exult in God (the father) who is the “well of truth”, Christ (the son) the “fountain-head of grace” and the Holy Spirit, “flowing stream of life”.  This water imagery perhaps alludes to the heavenly city in the book of Revelation (and Ezekiel’s earlier vision) where streams of living water flow out of it, as well as some of Jesus’ own sayings about being himself the living water. I affirm a comment I saw on social media this weekend that to believe in the resurrection can never be just a matter of interpretation of historical facts, or a hope for some distant future event, but has to be allowing God to work within in us here and now to become part of his constant changing and reshaping of our world for good – to let his living water flow into and through us.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!


St Michael & All Angels, Jarvis Brook – Stained glass window
© Copyright John Salmon and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

The Easter Sunday hymn from sing praise is titled, perhaps predictably, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen”, the shout of triumph and joy echoed by millions of Christians around the world today.  This is, though, an unfamiliar hymn to me, written by the American composer Herbert F Brokering. The meters is unusual (9.10.9.10 + 10.9), the hymn book doesn’t offer any alternatives that fit it, and the I found the tune (“Earth and all stars”) a difficult one, even to sing along to a recording found online. 

The hymn is in three verses, and is maybe intended to illustrate three ways in which the resurrection can be understood.  The first is about the cosmic implications: “Trumpets resounding in glorious light! Splendour, the Lamb, heaven forever!” It is a fact not often mentioned that no-one actually witnessed the resurrection happening inside the sealed tomb, so it must remain a matter of faith, perhaps rightly so. Also, it was not just about completing the redemption of humans from sin, but more about starting to put right the decay of all creation that Paul refers to in Romans 8.

The second verse is about Jesus’ first appearance to the women at the tomb. “Weeping, be gone; Sorrow, be silent: death is defeated and Easter is bright. Angels announce, Jesus is risen!’ Clothe us in wonder, adorn us in light”.  It was important for those first witnesses to go and tell what they had experienced, even though they could not make sense of it, but equally important was the transformation of mourning to joy at the sight of Jesus.

The last verse refers to the Emmaus Road story of Easter evening, but is phrased more as explaining the way that we, here and now, can experience the resurrection for ourselves as we learn more about him continue in fellowship with others and share Communion. “Walking the way, Christ walking in us, telling the story to open our eyes; breaking the bread, showing his glory; Jesus our blessing, our constant surprise.”

Cosmic event, immediate appearances to his disciples, and the ongoing transformation of lives through Christian fellowship: these are what we understand as the resurrection of Christ.  Happy Easter to anyone who reads this!

His cross stands empty

image from Creative Commons

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “His cross stands empty in a world grown silent” by the sisters of Stanbrook Abbey (one of several of their hymn in this book). As John commented in his video, Easter Eve forces us to think about what happens to our own bodies after death, and what (if anything) we can say Christ was doing between his death and resurrection.  This hymn takes the traditional view that his spirit ‘descended to the dead’ to bring them the good news of salvation and release them from death (using the ancient image of the souls of the dead lying captive beneath the earth while heaven is above it).

All such ideas are of course pictorial images of matters beyond the realm of science and everyday experience.  The belief that the souls of the dead live on beyond the decay of their bodies is widespread across many religions and cultures, evidenced (if you wish) by the many people who have seen ghosts or hear the voices of their deceased at a séance, although Christianity has always been wary of such ‘contacts’ (often attributing such manifestations to the deceptions of evil spirits). The Christian view is that we should just have faith that God will one day resurrect with new bodies all who have trusted in him, the resurrection of Christ being sufficient proof for us to hold that belief with confidence.

The empty cross is a symbol of that faith.  Although some Christians wear the crucifix or display it on walls, altars or elsewhere,  the cross itself without the corpus (body of Christ) is an equally common symbol (probably more common in Protestant churches) and represents the enduring promise that even after the crucifixion has happened, God always has the power to bring its benefits to humankind.

Come and see the King of Love

Watching Jesus die. Original source unknown

The Good Friday song choice from Sing Praise is Graham Kendrick’s “Come and see the King of Love”.  After writing this blog post I discovered that the Scargill Movement had also chosen it as the first song for their Good Friday service, which you can now view here: https://youtu.be/NC_1kQnSTh8

The King, of course, is Jesus, and the love is that shown on the cross.  The invitation to “come and see” is at the heart of Good Friday worship, traditionally a time to imagine oneself stood by the crosses at Calvary and watching Jesus die.  Thus the song starts with this invitation: “Come and see the king of love, see the purple robe and crown of thorns he wears” (these being the mocking symbols put on him by Roman soldiers).  “Lone and friendless now he climbs towards the hill” – not literally alone, as there was a crowd around him, but inwardly so, knowing that no-one could truly share or even understand his unique suffering.

The second verse invites us then to “Come and weep, come and mourn” – for what? “for the sin that pierced him there, so much deeper than the wounds of thorn and spear”.  The Christian understanding of Jesus’ suffering is that although unspeakably awful in terms of physical pain,  it was the spiritual torment of bearing the guilt of all humanity’s evil acts through time that was far worse – “all our pride, greed, fallenness and shame; the Lord has laid the punishment on him”.

The last verse addresses Jesus directly, seeking his pardon and looking towards Easter day: “Man of heaven, born to earth to restore us to your heaven, here we bow in awe beneath your searching eyes; from your tears comes our joy, from your death our life shall spring, by your resurrection power we shall rise”. 

The chorus, though, it perhaps the best part of this hymn and what has made it popular.  It sums up Jesus’ act of redemption and our rightful attitude to it in these few memorable lines: “We worship at your feet, where wrath and mercy meet, and a guilty world is washed by love’s pure stream. For us he was made sin, O help me take it in, deep wounds of love cry out “Father, forgive!”. I worship, I worship, the Lamb who was slain”.

Stay with me

The song I have picked for Maundy Thursday from Sing Praise is a chant from the Taizé community, “Stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray”.  Those are the only words of the refrain sung by the congregation, and they are to be sung reflectively and repeatedly.  This simple chant can be used on its own to lead into intercession or a time of silent prayer.

Alternatively, it can be the base line or ‘ostinato’ while a cantor sings other words above it.  The texts given here are probably intended as examples rather than a fixed set, but what they have in common are that they are all words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels as being spoken on this last full day of his earthly life. The first is nearly the same as the refrain, but looking at the others:

Lines 2 and 3 form a pair: “Watch and pray not to give way to temptation / The spirit is eager, but the flesh is weak”.  Even Jesus struggled with temptation, especially in this last trial when he knew an agonising death faced him.  He warns the disciples that they too would be tempted to abandon him for fear of persecution – and indeed many did.

Line 4, “My heart is nearly broken with sorrow, remain here with me, stay awake and pray” is another reminder that Jesus really was human, in the emotions he experienced.  He actually needed the friendship, support and prayer of his disciples, just as church leaders today need the friendship, support and prayer of their congregations.

Lines 5 and 6 form another pair: “Father, if it is possible let this cup pass me by / Father, if this cannot pass me by without me drinking it, your will be done”.  Jesus in his humanity really didn’t want to through with the crucifixion, and asked God, his own father, to find a way round it.  But it was not to be, and he finally abandoned himself to his fate, forsaking any divine powers and letting humanity do its worst.

Line 7, “Stay awake, be ready, the Lord is coming!” reminds us that the command to stay awake and alert is not only for this night but for the whole of our lives, as there will come a time either through death or the return of Christ when we will be judged by our response and attitude to him.

 “Stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray”.  This takes us into the night when Jesus was condemned.