The Sing Praise hymn book that I am using includes a surprisingly large number of hymns (13 in all) under the heading of Christian initiation, so we have quite a few more to get through. My accompanist and commentator John Hartley has chosen not to include this or some others that refer to the sometime controversial practice of baptism of young children (see my comment on “Child of blessing, child of promise”). However the references to a child here are only brief – “offspring of a human love” in verse 1, which of course is true of people of any age, and and “new creation, new-born child” in verse 3. Most of it is relevant to all of us.
John’s other reason for not including this hymn in his morning prayer videos is that the last verse refers to the eucharist (communion) which is a different Christian sacrament. Although many churches do perform the rite of baptism within the setting of the eucharist, it’s not essential to do so, and other churches including my own prefer to keep the christening of children as a separate occasion with just a few of the church members attending what is otherwise a time for a family to dedicate their child to God. Adult baptisms, by contrast, are best included as part of the main Sunday service where the convert can declare their faith publicly as they become a full member of the church.
Having said that, the focus of the rest of the words is on the contrast between our natural ability to live God’s way (“human hopes and human graces break beneath the weight of sin” … “Human love is unavailaing counterweight to sin and strife”) with the grace that is given through the Holy Spirit, as expressed in the opening lines – “Source and fount of all creation, pour your Spirit from above”.
The second and third verses remind us that it was not enough for Jesus to be baptised with the Holy Spirit, but that he must also go through suffering and death to achieve the full purpose of God in reconciliation. “God and sinner reconciled” in verse 3 echoes the well known Christmas carol “Hark! the herald angels sing” and reminds us that we are still in the extended Christmas/Epiphany season for another twelve days. The world at large has marked Christmas briefly and moved on, but the Church takes its time to take in the full implications. Our own journey of faith, like Jesus’, will take a lifetime to accomplish, but the grace given at baptism gives us strength for facing whatever the journey brings.
Yes, I plead guilty as charged. The hymn specifically focuses on infants – e.g. v1 line 4, v3 line 4. Such a shame, as the petition could be equally made for all the baptismal candidates of whatever age.
I agree with Stephen that there are many insightful comments in the wording, and I particularly agree with the diagnosis in v2 (and the second part of v1) that despite the best efforts of parents in “human love”, these efforts are “unavailing” at outweighing the sin and strife which will emerge in the young child as soon as s/he is able to express him/herself and make his/her own choices. It is hard for us as parents to remember that we cannot mould our children into disciples of Jesus – only God can do that, and he exercises his sovereign restraint far more than we would like to acknowledge.
But somehow, the very complex language of the hymn obscures for me some of the unfortunate ways in which it expresses itself, and leads me to questions throughout. I don’t really think Christ “repeats his work” in us (v3 line 6) – the word “repeat” conjures up all those discussions about what the sacraments are doing and how we can express the relationship between what we do in churches now and what Jesus was doing in his earthly ministry. I’m puzzled about what “bring us to the eucharistic feast” means in v4 – is it to the feast in heaven or is it to the service of Holy Communion? I like the contrast between “human love” and “love of God” in v2, but I’m not sure in what sense “love of God” holds us to our path – is that God’s love for us or is it our response of love for him?
I read Stephen’s summary of the hymn at the end of his post: “the grace given at baptism gives us strength for facing whatever the journey brings”. Well, so far, I have found his grace has given me strength. But was it really given AT BAPTISM? Isn’t it actually given in many and various other ways as well? Is it right for the hymn to ascribe all this significance to this one sacrament?