A time to watch, a time to pray

Calvary shrine in the grounds of the church of Our Lady and St Peter, Laisterdyke, Bradford

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is, unusually for this book, a Victorian one rather than a modern one: J M Neale’s “A time to watch, a time to pray”.  Like the other hymns for this weekend it is intended for Good Friday and helps us look forward to that commemoration of Jesus’ death at the end of Lent.

In a few verses it tries to capture the paradox of the day that is reflected in its name.  If you do a web search for “why Good Friday?” you will find articles not only from religious websites and Wikipedia, but secular newspapers and other sites too.  What is good about a ‘blameless’ (if controversial) prophet and healer dying in agony after an unfair trial on false charges? 

There are two traditional explanations for the name: as a corruption of “God’s Friday” because Jesus is regarded by his followers as a manifestation of God; or because we also believe that the suffering and death of Jesus was ‘good’ because it was actually part of God’s plan for him and achieved the goal of taking away the effect of human sin by bearing the penalty of separation from God on our behalf. 

Hence the second part of verse 1, “the saddest, yet the gladdest [day] too, that earth or heaven ever knew”. Verse 2 explores the sadness in the pain and humiliation that Jesus experienced, and verse 3 the gladness in our sin being borne away. The last verse praises him as saviour – “Yours is the glory, ours the shame; by all the pain your love endured, let all our many sins be cured”.

Going back to the opening line, “A time to watch, a time to pray”.  Even those churches that normally try to ensure their main Sunday service lasts no more than an hour will invite people to  pend several hours on Good Friday in a programme of hymns, Bible readings, maybe following a solemn procession around the church (the “stations of the cross”) or around their local community, and taking time for personal reflection. Good Friday (and Easter day – the two are inseparable as neither makes sense without the other) are the true centre of the Christian year, not the more popular celebration of Christmas, and deserve that “time to watch and pray”.

One thought on “A time to watch, a time to pray”

  1. I hadn’t spotted that J M Neale’s verses are constructed as an attempt to explain the title “Good” in the phrase “Good Friday” – thank you for pointing it out, Stephen.

    To me, the hymn shows how Christians of different churchmanships can unite around the centralities of the Christian faith, particularly the cross. J M Neale was an unashamed high-churchman (the Wikipedia article about his is quite helpful) and I have mostly come across him in translations of ancient hymns: Greek, Latin, Syrian Orthodox, Coptic and the like. And several of them I find quite difficult to sing, as I’m from the Evangelical wing of the church.
    I cannot but respect his abilities as a translator, and a quick glance at the Index of Authors and Translators in Hymns Ancient & Modern Revised shows how prolific a translator he was: 46 of his hymn translations and 9 of his original hymns are included in that book.

    But I could wish Neale wasn’t so overt in including some of the less-fortunate overtones of the patristic period; and, to pick one of his original hymns at random … a hymn such as “They whose course on earth is o’er” (A&MR 273) which says “Are the departed linked with us in any way? Maybe not in experience and background (v1-4), but we are linked in sacrament and they ‘hold communion still with us'(v5-6)” fills me with deep inner disquiet. Yes, we are linked with saints of past generations, but why does Neale ascribe this linkage particularly to the Sacrament of Holy Communion? Surely he would have done better to cite the “great crowd of witnesses” in Hebrews if he wanted to write words that the whole church could sing wholeheartedly?

    However, today’s hymn shows that the cross has the power to transcend such difficulties, and I can wholeheartedly agree with all of his lines here. So I appreciated the chance to rejoice with Neale in the foundations of our faith.

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