Today’s Pentecost season song from Sing Praise is “Come Holy Spirit, descend on us” by John Bell. It’s a song with few words, as it consists of a chorus (“Come Holy Spirit, descend on us, descend on us, we gather here in Jesus’ name”) and a series of very short invocations by a cantor.
It is traditional in Christian spirituality to call on the Holy Spirit to come. Not that he can be far from us, of course, but unlike God the Creator who we assume is always present, or Jesus who promised to be “with us always, to the end of the age”, the Spirit is seen as the person of God who is only felt to be present when the conditions are right. That might be because there is a particular need to be met, but perhaps more often it’s because an individual or group has been waiting on God in prayer, as the first disciples did after Jesus’ ascension. Waiting in prayer is something I’m not good at, which is probably why I have rarely experienced the presence of the Spirit.
The eight invocations by the cantor are five titles of the Holy Spirit and three of his functions. Come, Holy Spirit / Breath of Heaven / Word of Mercy / Fire of Judgement / Great Creator; Come to unite us / disturb us / inspire us. The apparent contrast there between mercy and judgement, unity and disturbance, reminds us that we can never pin the Spirit down. When we call for mercy, maybe we first need to be judged – or vice-versa. When we pray for unity or inspiration, perhaps we first need to be disturbed from complacency before we can identify the nature of the unity that the Spirit seeks or be inspired to follow his leading.
A few days after we sang this hymn, whilst looking for other hymns on the Holy Spirit, I came across this one in the Methodist “Singing the Faith” book (no. 374), and noticed that there it has the instructions: “The cantor gives the lead line which is echoed as the new first line of the refrain.” I must say this makes better sense! I wonder why the editors of Sing Praise didn’t put this instruction in?