Photo Credit: ACNS/Sweeny
Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Church of God, elect and glorious’ by James Seddon. Although a relatively modern hymn (undated, but the writer was born in 1915 so it’s from the 20th century) the style is that of older traditions of hymnwriting and the suggested tune, Lux Eoi by Arthur Sullivan, is a late Victorian one.
The text of the four verses seems to be based on 1 Peter chapter 2, describing in the first part of each verse the ideal of the Church of God – elect and glorious, holy nation, chosen race, God’s own special people, called into light, citizens of heaven, royal priests. It goes on, in the second part of each verse, to expand on what that might mean in practice: telling of and demonstrating God’s infinite love, being light in the world, finding fresh hope and purpose in Christ, prayerful and joyful service of others.
This ideal of the universal Church isn’t as popular in hymns or sermons as it used to be, the emphasis nowadays in most churches being either on our individual conversion and spiritual formation, or the local congregation and its service to the local community, or the Christian role in worldwide causes of justice and peace that bring in those of all faiths and none. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things, but the idea that God has set apart the Church (in the sense of all Christian believers) as a special body of people with a unique role in the world, seems to get left behind.
But it needs to be there, in balance with those other levels of understanding of what it is to be a Christian, if we are to retain our hope of making a difference in an increasingly challenging world. You and I may not be able to do anything practical about the problems we hear of faced by people on the other side of the world. But we can pray for our brothers and sisters in local churches there who are equally part of Christ’s body, and have the humility to recognise that they will be praying for us too.
James Seddon is (or rather was) a hymnwriter whose work I am growing to appreciate more – he strikes me as the evangelical forerunner of people like Timothy Dudley-Smith, Michael Saward and others, and some of his words, like “Go forth and tell” have become classics. I hadn’t come across this one before, but it ticked all these boxes for me: it is faithful to the biblical text, it calls for a thoughtful enthusiastic response, and it is crafted in a very workmanlike manner (as Stephen outlines in his second paragraph above).
There is just one rhythmical difficult I spotted: verse 2 line 7 “and all … ” has the musical stress on the first syllable but the lyrical stress on the second. Perhaps “and we all find hope …” would sing better, although it would mean less than what James wrote.
I don’t normally care very much for hymns which emphasise the Church (with its capital “C”) as a divine institution for God’s purposes, and tend to ignore its warts; and there have been a few in the “Sing Praise” book which have raised my hackles.
But this hymn has a healthy perspective: it makes the warts clear (v2 line4, v3 lines 1-2), it speaks of the priesthood of all believers (v1 line 4, v4 lines 5f), and its emphasis is on exhortation rather than sitting on one’s laurels. I think it is very helpful as well as encouraging.