Path junction on Slate Delfs Hill, Calderdale (own photo)
Today’s hymn
from Sing Praise is ‘I do not know tomorrow’s way’ by an American writer, Margaret
Clarkson, to a tune by the Northumbria Community, though the suggested
alternative of the older and well-known tune ‘O waly waly’ seems to work
equally well.
Its theme is
that we trust in Christ whatever happens in life, for we do not know the future. The uncertainty applies from day to day (the
title line) as unexpected problems arise, through life’s ups and downs (‘grief
or gladness, peace or pain’), and as we approach death not knowing how much
longer we will live (euphemistically here, ‘when evening falls, if soon or late
earth’s day grows dim’).
The repeated
motif is in the third line of each verse: ‘But I know Christ…’ and the various
assurances he brings (‘he abides with me … his presence will sustain … he’ll
call me home to him’). It’s this assurance, difficult to explain but found
inside the believer, that keeps us both hopeful and joyful (in the spiritual sense,
as distinct from necessarily ‘happy’).
Today’s hymn
from Sing Praise is ‘Sing, my soul when hope is sleeping’ by John Bell and
Graham Maule. Unusually for their hymns,
instead of a Scottish tune the compilers of the book suggest the high Victorian
‘Cross of Jesus’ with its associations with the Crucifixion. I think John did
the right thing writing his own gentler tune with minor modulating to major to
reflect the theme of the hymn, which is that singing can lift us out of
sadness.
The four
verses each offer one of more reasons to sing, not as a response to feeling
happy but to generate a mood of at least contentment, when circumstances would tempt
us to despair. ‘When hope is sleeping,
when faith gives way to fears, to melt the ice of sadness’; ‘when sickness
lingers, to dull the sharpest pain’, when I have wandered far away from God,
and ‘when light seems darkest, when night refuses rest, though death should
mock the future’.
As it
happens, the day before this came up in our schedule I was unexpectedly taken
to hospital – nothing serious, but I was lying on a trolley for several hours
waiting for a doctor to discuss the result of tests. Even though I was not in physical pain, I found
that in the confusion, the not-knowing, the sounds of the pain of other
patients, singing hymns and the evening prayer canticles from memory (under my
breath, not aloud) was a way of coping.
The hymn I
selected from Sing Praise for 17 November was ‘Safe in the shadow of the Lord’
by Timothy Dudley-Smith. It’s based on Psalm 91, which is traditionally used at
Compline (night prayer) as it speaks of trust in God at the end of the day. The gentle tune by Norman Warren is also well
suited to the end-of-the-day feel of the hymn.
The third
verse is most specific about this: ‘From fears and phantoms of the night, from
foes about my way, I trust in him, I trust in him, by darkness as by day’. This
refrain ‘I trust in him, I trust in him’ comes not at the end of each verse but
before the final line, which is then a reason (different each time) for such
trust. God is ‘my fortress and my tower’, the one who ‘keeps me in his care’
and ‘hears and answers prayer’. The last
verse concludes this trust with ‘Safe in the shadow of the Lord, possessed by
love divine, I trust in him, I trust in him, and meet his love with mine’.
Christ healing the woman with a flow of blood. Detail of stained glass window, St John the Baptist , Peterborough Copyright Julian P Guffogg and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence
Another
short chant from Sing Praise today, this time not from Taizé but from John Bell and Graham Maule. ‘Lord Jesus Christ,
lover of all, trail wide the hem of your garment, bring healing, bring peace.’
The suggested
use of the chant is as a response to intercessions in a church service. Intercessions
usually include prayers for healing, often of named individuals. We believe
that Jesus, though no longer present in the flesh, is present in spirit and
knows the people whom we pray for by name. The reference to ‘the hem of your
garment’ in the chant is presumably to the woman whose long-standing problem
with a flow of blood (maybe period problems, as some commentators suggest) was
healed by merely touching the hem of Jesus’ cloak, and he knew it. He may not have known her personally, but the
mere fact that she had faith enough to reach out to him was enough for her to
be aware of her need, and to meet it instantly.
That is the level of faith that we are supposed to develop in praying
for others.
‘Bring
healing, bring peace’. Healing and peace belong together, both being elements
of the concept of ‘shalom’. Where physical
pain or mental distress are healed, there is a sense of peace. And when we pray for peace in the world,
perhaps for a particular area of conflict, we are also praying for the healing
of prejudice, hatred and resentment. So whether our prayers and for a close friend
or a faraway country, we can use this chant to bring them to Jesus.
Today’s song
from Sing Praise is ‘Nothing can ever come between us and the love of God’, another
chant from the Taizé community.
The title is
the first line of the chorus, the second line being ‘… revealed to us in Jesus
Christ’. I’ve discovered this week that
there is now a tradition of a ‘gender reveal party’ where a baby’s gender is
disclosed, not only to friends but to the parents themselves who have not
previously been given the information (you may well call me slow on the uptake
here, as apparently the idea started in America ten years ago, but I don’t have
children myself!) The point is that to
reveal something is not only to share factual knowledge, but to make an event
of it, to add drama to that passing on of information. So when the Bible says that God reveals himself
to us (and a concordance tells me the word is used 81 times in the Bible) it is
more than simply telling us that he exists, it is intended to make a sudden and
dramatic change in our understanding, one that will change our lives radically in
the same way that people’s lives are changed by having a baby.
The verses,
or rather chants to be sung by a solo cantor, are verses from Psalm 56 and Romans
chapter 8. They are all about trust in God, and God as the Father who have us
his son who died, rose again and prays for us. As a result, to quote the last
one, “neither death, nor life, nor things present or to come, nothing can ever
keep us from God’s love”. That love once
revealed never leaves us, like the love of a mother for her child.
The song for
today is ‘In manus tuas pater, commendo spiritum meum’, a chant from the Taizé community. Like many of theirs, it’s short and simple. The Latin
text translates as ‘Into your hands father, I commend my spirit’.
The saying is
one traditionally used in the service of Compline at the end of the day, as we ‘let
ourselves go’ into the hands of God. It’s a concept that I, and many others
find helpful, whether it’s pictured as God holding our hands, or embracing us,
or (as some images interpret it) as being a tiny baby in the large hands of father
that are big enough to cradle us. It’s about letting go worries, letting God
handle them.
John used
the song for Saturday morning prayer as usual, and perhaps this chant can be
seen as relating to the Gospel reading where Jesus tells his disciples not to
worry about tomorrow (for tomorrow has worries of its own) and trust God to provide
their basic needs.
The Oxford University crest, the opening line of Psalm 27
Today’s hymn
from Sing Praise is ‘Safe in the hands of God’ by Michael Perry. The suggested
tune is a Scottish one, ‘Bunillidh’, but John wrote his own.
It’s a
setting of Psalm 27, one of the more positive psalms, and the first line of
which, “The Lord is my light” (in Latin) is well known to any Oxford student as
the University motto (see image above). Michael Perry rearranges the lines so
that doesn’t appear at the start of this hymn.
The themes of psalm and hymn are that God lights our path and acts as
our salvation if we trust him and follow in his way.
‘Salvation’
here doesn’t mean particularly having our sins forgiven and becoming part of
the Christian church, which is the more common Christian use of the term. In
the sense used here, it refers more to offering protection, saving us from the
harm caused by evil in ourselves or from other people, or making whole (the
Latin ‘salus’ can also mean ‘health’).
“Lest we forget: Poppy wreaths at the Cenotaph, Whitehall” Copyright Derek Voller and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence
Today’s hymn
from Sing Praise is one intended for the Remembrance season, so it is appropriate
for today, 11th November when we have been remembering the victims
of war. ‘Eternal God, before whose face we stand’ by Timothy Dudley-Smith is a
traditional style of hymn by a modern composer, and set to a 19th
century tune.
The first
verse reminds us that [all] earthly children are made by God, who knows all our
hearts and longings. On that basis we have confidence in praying for peace in
the world. Peace can seem a hopeless
ideal to those without faith, but faith in a loving God who answers prayer
makes such prayers worthwhile.
The second verse
acknowledges the mixture of feelings we may have when contemplating the
soldiers of past conflicts: grief at their deaths, thankfulness for victory against
enemies, pride in our armed forces (occasionally misplaced perhaps when
scandals come to light, but often justified), loneliness and loss (felt most
keenly by their immediate friends and relatives). These feelings we bring ‘to him who hung
forsaken on the cross’, and indeed the whole tradition of Remembrance since 1919
is based on the Christian faith at the heart of most European cultures, that
Christ was sacrificed for the sake of all humanity and not for one nation alone.
The third
verse acknowledges the sin of war and makes a commitment to build an enduring
peace across the world, and the last verse refers to that peace as a ‘fragile
flower’. Indeed it is, as we so often see conflict re-emerging from a shallow
peace, like the embers of a fire spontaneously re-igniting in a breeze. The final lines of the hymn look beyond our
present earthly politics to the time when Christ shall renew all things: ‘When
night is past and peace shall banish pain, all shall be well in God’s eternal
reign’.
Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘My life flows on in endless song’ by Robert Lowry and Doris Plenn, also known from the chorus line as ‘How can I keep from singing?’ It’s one of the few old (pre-20th century) hymns in the book, and of American origin.
The four
verses alternate the troubles of life (not listed in any detail but described
as lamentation, tumult, strife, darkness etc.) with the peace that comes from
knowing Jesus, whose song (‘the sweet though far-off hymn that sings a new
creation’) enables the singer to cope with them. The chorus likewise asks ‘Since
love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?’
I can certainly
testify in my own experience that singing hymns and spiritual songs is a good
way to avoid losing faith in the face of difficulty, though I don’t often
achieve the level of serenity implied by these words. And I wouldn’t try and
comfort someone in distress by saying “never mind, your troubles will be as nothing
if you just sing hymns”.
John
referred this morning to alternative lyrics found on WIkipedia
and there’s a reference there to the version by Irish singer Enya. That was the
first version of the hymn that I knew, having bought her album ‘Shepherd Moons’. The last verse in that setting is ‘In prison
cell and dungeon vile, our thoughts to them are winging. When friends by shame
are undefiled, how can I keep from singing?’ Around that time it was widely
suggested that this reference to those in prison was a subtle indication of
support for IRA prisoners. Whatever the
rights and wrongs of Northern Ireland’s civil war, where atrocities were committed
on both sides, Jesus did include visiting those in prison as a sign of living
out his compassionate love, and for those in prison, a visit may be as uplifting
as a song.
The hymn I
picked today from Sing Praise was ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy’ by
Frederick Faber. John points out that
the hymn is a shortened version of another, older hymn ‘Souls of men, why will
ye scatter?’ (or in a modern inclusive version, ‘Righteous souls, why will you
scatter?’) with an extra 8-line verse (or two 4-line ones) at the start, setting
the scene for the rest of the hymn in humanity’s tendency to wander from God. That’s
what he used in morning prayer, to a different tune. But it’s the Sing Praise
book that I’m blogging this year, and coincidentally our own church music group
sang ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy’ to the same tune Coverdale before last
Sunday’s service. So that’s my starting point.
The words of
the hymn tackle some misconceptions of the Christian understanding of God. Is the greatest virtue that of liberty (verse
1)? No, greater virtues are mercy and justice, seen in the Bible as two aspects
of God’s character as well as the basis of good human law – not opposed, but as
the two sides of the balance that make liberty workable. If the rule of law
strays too far towards strict justice, people get punished for innocent mistakes,
while too far towards mercy and the guilty go unpunished. God is not a vengeful deity but one who
demands and administers justice with mercy: ‘there is no place where earth’s
failings have such kindly judgement given’. The opposite is in verse 2: ‘We
make his love too narrow by false limits of our own, and we magnify his
strictness with a zeal he would not own’.
God is also
not remote and unfeeling: ‘there is no place where earth’s sorrows are more
felt as up in heaven’. And in verse 2, ‘the heart of the Eternal is most
wonderfully kind’. Which is why he became one of us, sharing our emotions as
well as our temptations.
The third
verse focuses on the sacrifice of Jesus. ‘There is plentiful redemption through
the blood that has been shed, there is joy for all the members in the sorrows
of the head’. The final half-verse (if an 8-line tune such as Coverdale is
used) challenges us to be more simple in our love for Jesus, to take him at his
word. Meaning perhaps sayings such as “Unless
you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven.”
