© Joseph Mischyshyn licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence
Today’s hymn is “How good it is” by another composer new to me, Ruth Duck. It continues our series on justice in the world, but is also a setting of a psalm (Ps.133). The words (set to a different tune from the one in Sing Praise) can be found here:
The opening line – “how good it is, what pleasure comes when people live as one” – sets the tone for the first two verses, about a desire for peace, justice and friendship. This is a vision shared by many people, whether religious or not, that there should be peace and harmony between all people.
The second pair of verses begins “how good it is when walls of fear come tumbling to the ground”. They include the biblical vision of “swords being beaten into ploughshares” (in this version, “arms are changed to farming tools”) with the ultimate aim expressed in the last line, “that hate and war may cease”.
This seems relevant today when the media’s focus is on the hundredth anniversary of the partition of Ireland into the independent Republic and the northern province that remained part of the United Kingdom. That division, at the time largely driven by the mutual hostility between ‘protestant’ and ‘catholic’ Christians, has continued to be a cause for division with violence continuing intermittently to the present day, even though the different factions within the Church itself are now willing to co-operate in the search for peace and live with our differences. So today, this hymn can be seen as much a prayer for Ireland as anything else.
Psalm 133 is a very short Psalm and I think it requires a very light touch to set it as a hymn – and I thought Ruth Duck’s contribution was well worthwhile in its own terms.
The essence of the psalm is to say that dwelling together in unity is lovely, and it is like two things: (i) oil running down Aaron’s beard and robes, and (ii) dew on Mount Hermon. Somehow, v1 of the Psalm needs to be the chorus, and v2 and v3 need to be the two verses. Ruth’s hymn doesn’t clarify this structure.
Of course one problem is that to the modern reader, oil running down a beard and robes is just messy rather than evocative of peace; and I don’t know how this problem can be overcome by a hymnwriter – we have the same problem with Jesus being anointed by the sinful woman, where the perfume poured simply seems messy!
The first messy church?