Sing Praise – Page 25 – The Raynville Rambler

As Royal banners are unfurled

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is another Good Friday one, and a twentieth century translation of a much older sixth century Christian text, ‘Vexilla Regis’ (‘the King’s banner’). In the hymn book it’s set to a version of the traditional monastic chant, but John has played it to a better known English hymn tune ‘Gonfalon Royal’ that also allows for the Amen at the end.

I looked up the original on Wikipedia where several English translations are offered. The Latin original is said to have been written to celebrate the arrival of a large relic of the True Cross which had been sent to Queen Radegunda. The ‘banner’ may therefore be intended as meaning the cross itself as a sign and symbol of our salvation, although another interpretation would be Pilate’s sign above the Cross, “Iesus Nazarei Rex Judaeorum” (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews).

The hymn celebrates the same paradox of ‘sadness and gladness’ that I explored yesterday but goes into more detail of how the scandal of the cross is for Christians a sign of hope. The optional verse 6 sums it up concisely: “The saviour, victim, sacrifice, is through his dying glorified; his life is overcome by death and leaps up, sweeping death aside”.

The ‘veneration of the cross’ is of course a Catholic practice which is not part of the Christian tradition I come from. As the Catholic News Agency website explains, “Adoration or veneration of an image or representation of Christ’s cross does not mean that we actually adore the material image, but rather what it represents. In kneeling before the crucifix and kissing it we are paying the highest honour to our Lord’s cross as the instrument of our salvation. Because the Cross is inseparable from His sacrifice, in reverencing His Cross we, in effect, adore Christ.” But why not ‘cut out the middleman’ and worship Christ himself rather than the inanimate wood on which he hung?

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”.

A purple robe, a crown of thorns

A Good Friday procession to the Church of the Assumption, Beeston, Nottingham

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is Timothy Dudley-Smith’s “A purple robe, a crown of thorns”. In one way this is getting a bit ahead of ourselves as it’s clearly a hymn about the Crucifixion, so would better be set for Holy Week, but the hymn book has so many hymns for Holy Week that I have to start getting them in early so that I’m not still singing songs about the Passion after Easter!

The copyright information doesn’t say when the lyrics or melody were written, but it was probably still quite new when I first came across it. It was as a newly committed and confirmed Christian, so probably around 1981/82. Up to that point I only knew the mainly traditional hymns that were sung at school assemblies, so to discover that there was a whole world of different styles of music in worship was rather exciting. The church I attended as a student sang many contemporary ‘choruses’, which sound rather dated forty years on, as well as some older hymns.

This one fits nicely between the two. It’s not a typical 1980s chorus but nor is it a traditional hymn (i.e. several verses sung to the same tune). I’m not even sure whether to describe it as a ‘hymn’ or a ‘song’. It’s a ‘hymn’ in so far as it has five verses with a regular metrical pattern of words and the words are mostly making factual statements about Christ’s death. On the other hand the words are in the first person – “I see my Saviour stand … I see my Saviour go … I see my Saviour bear [the cross and all our sins] … I see my Saviour die … I sing my Saviour’s name” which is more the style of a worship song.

Musically, it’s noted as “common metre” so that it could in theory be set to any number of traditional hymn tunes, but that would rob the hymn of its character. The music by David Wilson appears to have been written especially for these words, and the five verses have three melodies in a pattern of A-B-C-A-B which is found commonly in more recent worship songs. The melodies themselves however are in a minor key, as befits the solemnity and despair of Good Friday. The final verse sings of Jesus’ reign on high, so should probably be omitted if it’s actually sung in Holy Week when we try not to anticipate the ‘happy ending’ of the story.

So this is a hymn that although it has not achieved widespread popularity in churches, even on Good Friday itself, is a firm favourite of mine. It’s unique, and it reminds me of the early days of my own walk with God.

[N.B. for once I’m writing these notes the day before the post is published, so I don’t know what John might say about it on Friday].

Behold the Lamb of God

Today’s choice for a Lenten hymn is actually another very simple song, which as John says in his morning prayer video might be used in various ways such as in between intercessions. The text is a form of the ‘agnus dei’: “Behold the Lamb of God, Behold the Lamb of God, He takes away the sin, the sin of the world”. Those are the words of Jesus’ relative and forerunner, John the Baptiser ,as recorded in John 1:29.

I wrote a blog post on 6 February about an image of the Lamb of God. This title, one of many for Jesus in Christian history, is one that seems to have endured. The idea of the all-powerful One becoming as weak and helpless as a baby sheep is intriguing to the outsider, and maybe comforting to small children. From an adult perspective it is one of many apparent contradictions in our faith. It is perhaps the end of the development of the idea of the Messiah being the ‘servant of God’ in Isaiah: a servant (or more precisely a slave) has no choice in whether or how they serve their master or mistress, as a result of which there is a strong human tendency to treat servants badly.

The particular scandal of the image of Jesus as a Lamb is the association of lambs with the Temple sacrifices in the older form of Judaism and other religions. So the idea that Jesus as God’s servant was forced to an excruciating and humiliating death on the cross is taken as evidence that our (Christian) concept of God is of a wrathful father punishing his servant / son as a substitute for everyone who has angered him. That is of course a simplistic way of putting it, and the idea of atonement is more subtle and complex than that, but it’s how some humanists view Christianity and what puts them off.

There is however a second image at play when we think of the Lamb of God: that of Passover, when the blood of the sacrificed lamb is sprinkled around the doors of the Hebrews’ dwellings, not to punish but to save. Those households alone were spared the destruction of the firstborn of Egypt, just as Jesus himself was saved from Herod’s massacre of innocent children. For the sake of balance, and to show that the images of ‘atonement’ and ‘saviour’ are a contrast and not intended to reinforce each other, here’s an interesting view from a Jewish writer.

So taking the two images together, sacrifice for sin and sacrifice for redemption, we come closer to the Christian understanding that Jesus had to die in order that we might live. His sacrificed body has a purpose: to “preserve our bodies and souls unto everlasting life” to use the words of the old Prayer Book communion. These two images also frame the Lenten journey from the confession of Shrove Tuesday to the celebration of our salvation at Easter.

Kyrie Eleison

My choices of hymn/song from Sing Praise for both the 2^nd and 3^rd of March (and adjacent in the book) are settings of the Greek text ‘Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison’ (Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy). John Hartley’s comment on my post of 28 February is worth reading and there’s not much more I can add, other than to say that No.184 (an anonymous setting of ‘a Ukrainian traditional chant’) was familiar to me from somewhere, while 183 (a setting by Dinah Reindorf and Geoff Weaver) was not. It’s more of an acclamation in style, whereas the Ukrainian melody is more meditative. Unlike John I don’t move in compositional circles, and Geoff Weaver is one of the few composers/writers in this book whom I have met personally.

Purify my heart

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is another devotional song, “Purify my heart”. Although relatively recent (like all the songs in this book – this one was written c.1990) it has become popular in many churches. Unlike yesterday’s song which was corporate (“Father, hear our prayer”) this one is personal (“Purify my heart”) and it fits the theme of Lent, as it asks Jesus (not named but it is obviously He who is being addressed) to “purify my heart” in various ways.

The first verse asks that I become “as gold and precious silver … as gold, pure gold”. This, and the chorus (addressing Jesus as the Refiner’s Fire) refer to Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, where the Lord’s messenger is said to be coming like a refiner’s fire to “sit as a refiner and purifier of silver” to refine the descendants of Levi (i.e. the Temple priests) “like gold and silver until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness” (Malachi 3:2-3). In other words, it is asking Jesus to strip away all the impurities that are preventing me from serving him as I should.

The second verse is more direct: “cleanse me from within and make me holy … cleanse me from my sin, deep within”. It recognises that sin is not just my relationship with the outer world – the things I say and do wrong – but also my inner life, my thoughts, desires and attitudes. Those are harder to deal with, and that’s why I have to ask Jesus to deal with them. The other prayer in the chorus is that I should be “set apart for you, ready to do your will”. So the purification of the inner person is not only for my own sake but so that I can serve Jesus better.

Father, hear our prayer

Today’s ‘hymn’ from Sing Praise is a short devotional song by Andy Piercy, “Father, hear our prayer”. You can hear it sung here. As John has already noted in a comment on an earlier post, this is one of the songs in the book headed “Penitence” but which isn’t particularly penitential in its words. Rather, it’s a song of dedication to God, asking that our lives may be consecrated to him and that we may be filled with his power. The second part is the traditional ‘Kyrie’ prayer – Lord have mercy on us. I would have expected this to come first, as the typical pattern in prayer is to ask for God’s mercy on our weaknesses and failings before asking for him to change us and empower us.

Brother, Sister, let me serve you

Today’s choice of hymn from Sing Praise is, unlike many of the others, very well known to me. “Brother, Sister, let me serve you” is sung in many churches, but was also one of the hymns that my wife and I chose for our church wedding at St Luke’s Eccleshill.

The reason it makes a good wedding hymn is that it covers the many ways in which a couple in a long-term relationship serve each other, irrespective of what religious affiliation they may or may not have, but it is also a thoroughly Christian text that begins “Brother, Sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you, pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too”. The inclusion of “grace” reminds us that we need God’s help to make our relationships work well, and that second line points to the truth that being served by others graciously takes effort and grace just as much as being the servant.

These various ways of serving are summarised in the second verse as “we are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load”, a reference to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:41) that “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile”. This is itself said to be a reference to the Roman law that a soldier could make someone carry their equipment for one mile, a law invoked when Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry Jesus’ cross on the way to his crucifixion. But forcing? compulsion? crucifixion? How does that square with love? Perhaps it is intended to mean that when our partner is suffering, is under the pressure of external forces, we are expected to share that burden. It finds expression also in the traditional English marriage service where each partner is asked to make a vow to love the other “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health”. Marriage cannot be expected to be a lifetime of easy happiness, but where there is the commitment to support each other in all circumstances, it can survive and even flourish and grow in difficult times.

The following two verses (3 & 4) list some of the ways this will work in practice: “I will hold the Christ light for you in the night-time of your fear, I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear”; “I will weep when you are weeping, when you laugh I’ll laugh with you, I will share your joy and sorrow till we’ve seen this journey through”.

The fourth verse is again thoroughly Christian as it looks forward to “singing to God in heaven in perfect harmony”, although “we” here must mean the whole Christian community, past, present and future, since Jesus taught that there will be no marriage in heaven: our individual loving relationships will be blended into the perfect love of God that God intended for all creation.

Linda and I have been married for nearly eighteen years now. We’ve certainly known the ups and downs of “sickness and health”; while not experiencing poverty we’ve known the uncertainties of the private rental market and times when expenditure exceeded income; and certainly our share of weeping and laughter. We can testify to the truth of the words of this hymn.

The one line I haven’t quoted yet is the first half of the second verse: “we are pilgrims on a journey, and companions on the road”. Now you know where our domain name (pilgrims.org.uk) comes from – from this hymn and our experience of living it out.

Bright as fire in darkness

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Bright as fire in darkness”, words attributed to Stanbrook Abbey. We have already had one of their other compositions, “When Jesus comes to be baptised”, on 14 January.

This is a very short hymn, comprising just three verses, each four lines of five or six syllables. Yesterday’s theme of the Word of God appears here too, revealed at the end of verse 1: “Bright as fire in darkness, sharper than a sword, lives throughout the ages God’s eternal Word”. Note that ‘Word’ is capitalised to make it clear it refers to the person of the Trinity revealed in Jesus. And as with yesterday, the Word is seen to be active – fire and sword are not static images, nor are they signs of safety. There are risks involved when we engage with the Word of God.

The second verse also refers to the ‘word’ – “Christ, your eyes of mercy see our sins revealed; speak the word that saves us, that we may be healed”. Forgiveness, salvation and healing are not three separate things but three aspects of the work of the Word of God. Note that this time ‘word’ is not capitalised – is there a meaningful distinction between the person of the Word who lives throughout the ages, and the spoken word that saves us? Is salvation not through the Word himself, rather than the spoken (or written) word?

In the last verse the first two lines are a standard doxology (praise to the Trinity) followed by “compassed in your glory, give the world your light”. The reference to light brings us full circle to where we started – ‘bright as fire’. So may we be.

Praise to you, O Christ, our Saviour

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is by Bernadette Farrell, one of my favourite modern hymnwriters. She has a gift for writing in plain (American) English but without it sounding trite, and to melodies that are easy to sing. The title (first line of the chorus) is “Praise to you O Christ our Saviour”, but the theme of the four verses is Christ the Word. For an exploration of the different meanings of that phrase, see my commentary on her similar hymn “Word of God, renew your people” (25 January).

In the first verse here, the Word is the one who “calls us out of darkness and leads us into light, who brings us through the desert”; in the third verse, the one who “calls us to be servants, whose only law is love, who lives among us” and in the final verse the Word “binds us and unites us, calls us to be one, teaches us forgiveness”. In the second verse, “the Word” doesn’t appear but Jesus is names as “the one whom prophets hoped and longed for, who speaks to us today, who leads us to our future”. Many of these phrases contain verbs expressing the way Jesus is active in moving us along – leads, brings, calls, and (again) leads. The Christian understanding of God as revealed in Jesus is not like the remote mountaintop guru who must be sought out, but the complete opposite, one who is always on the lookout for people who might respond if he calls them, follow if he leads them.

Not for nothing is Lent often thought of as a period of journeying. We not only hear the story of Jesus’ own journey from fame to infamy and from Galilee to Golgotha, but also (hopefully) find him calling us and leading us on the next stage of our own journeys.