Tag: Ascension

Clap your hands all you nations

Trumpet stop, organ of St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
(one of the last organs built by the late Kenneth Tickell in 2014)

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise (the third in the Ascension Day series) is “Clap your hands all you nations” by John Bell.  The tune is brisk and slightly syncopated, which suits the style of an acclamation of praise.  The format is of three verses, each verse having four lines with a refrain of “Amen, Alleluia!” after each line. This could lend itself to a cantor-and-response setting, or the whole hymn can easily be picked up by the congregation.

The words are based on Psalm 47, and include in verse 3 of the hymn verse 5 of the psalm, “God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet” (NRSV translation). It is this phrase “God has gone up” that links this psalm with the Ascension. Gerald Finzi wrote an Ascensiontide anthem “Sing praises out”, which includes verses from this psalm and Ps.24 along with lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry. I have two recordings of this, a grand one by the Halifax Choral Society and a more intimate one by the smaller choir of Lincoln College, Oxford.

The Biblical account of the Ascension in Luke/Acts (with a brief mention by Mark) does not mention trumpets, in fact the disciples are portrayed as confused rather than triumphant at the spectacle.  The trumpets, used in many human societies to herald the arrival of a ruler, are perhaps intended to represent rejoicing in heaven at the successful return of the Son of God from his mission to earth, hence Finzi’s wording that we sing praises to God “seraphicwise” (that is, like the angels).

Meditating on the words of the hymn and the psalm, I was struck by John Bell’s wording of Ps.47:9, “those on earth who are mighty still belong to our maker”.  I can see a double meaning here: that God abandons no-one, be they powerful or powerless in society; or that everyone, even if they see themselves as ‘above the law’ on earth, is still accountable to God for their actions.  The second perhaps fits the theme of the season better: Jesus may have gone out of sight, but he still knows what we are doing and will one day judge us for it.

We’re out of the Easter season now, so according to my plan no more Saturday hymns until Advent (just because there are fewer than 365 hymns in the book).  On Sunday we start looking forward to Pentecost.

Ascended Christ


The Ascension painting, St James Bermondsey (John Wood, 1844)

Today is Ascension Day, and the selected hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Ascended Christ, who gained the glory that we sing’ by Christopher Idle.  The tune set with it is ‘Christchurch’ although I found the alternative suggestion of ‘Darwall’s 148th’ (‘Ye holy angels bright’) more appropriate. John took the trouble to compose one specially for the occasion.

Unlike yesterday’s ascension hymn, which I pointed out consisted of statements about Christ, this one is unashamedly a song of praise addressed to him. The first verse uses the same trio of titles as yesterday – Prophet, Priest and King – and I like the last line ‘by many tongues the Church displays your power and praise in all her songs’.

The second verse describes Christ as reigning ‘above each other name’ and verse three looks, as it were, in the other direction, with Christ ‘from your father’s side’ making us new and setting us free. There is a theological question here, whether after the Ascension it is Christ who acts on earth, or the Holy Spirit whom he sent. But that’s getting into discussion of the relationships within the Trinity, always a tricky area. 

In the fourth verse Christ is the one who ‘calls us to belong within one body here’ and notes that ‘in you are alone we are complete’.  It’s always good to be reminded, in this individualistic age, that the Church is ideally regarded as a unity, a single body, not just a group of people sharing mostly the same opinions.

The last line of the last verse is (as printed) ‘beyond all words creation sings the King of kings and Lord of lords’.  I think John sang ‘beyond all worlds’ but that makes equal sense: the true praise of God is more than mere words can express (an idea which leads us towards Pentecost) while the one whom we worship has indeed ascended ‘beyond all worlds’, present in time and space while also being beyond the dimensions we can perceive.

Come see the Lord in his breathtaking splendour

Ascension window, Easby St Agatha, Richmond (N.Yorks)
image (c) Tiger licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Come, see the Lord in his breathtaking splendour’ by Martin Leckebusch, several of whose hymns we have sung this year.  This one is the first of just two hymns set in the book for Ascension Day (tomorrow, 13 May), but as only one verse of it is specifically about the Ascension it could be sung at any time of year as a statement of faith in Jesus. 

It comes with its own tune ‘Barnard Gate’ but John picked the tune Epiphany usually associated with the words ‘Brightest and best of the sons of the morning’.  As both hymns are worship songs about Jesus, that seems a good choice.  But whereas ‘Brightest and best’ is in the second person, addressed to Jesus, these words are in the slightly more distant third person form, making it a hymn about Jesus.

The first and last verses have the same two opening lines: “come, see the Lord in his breathtaking splendour: gaze at his majesty, bow and adore!” which point us metaphorically upwards to the heaven to which he ascended.  In between are three contrasting verses about his birth and earthly ministry, death on the cross (from which he “emerged as victor, [but] still from the nails and the spear he is scarred”), and the ascension that we will be celebrating tomorrow.  This fourth verse ends with a series of honorific titles: “Hail him the First and the Last, the Almighty, Jesus our Prophet, our Priest and our King”.

That last phrase takes us back to Epiphany, when the magi (in legend, the ‘Three Kings’) gave gifts that foretold this threefold calling of Jesus as religious teacher, representative of humanity before God (which is what ‘priest’ means in this context) and rightful ruler of the earth. The ‘good teacher’, the miracle worker who was crucified, and the reigning Christ are one and the same, a truth at the heart of our faith but one about which we keep needing to remind ourselves.

The Bible in a Year – 5 July

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this, and the introduction to the Psalms for this book of the Bible in particular.

If you are a regular visitor and wondering why the posts stop at 4 July it is just because I have been away for a few days – making notes but without the opportunity to post them online.  So we will catch up shortly.

5 July. Psalms 46-50

Psalms 42-49 are all headed “of the sons of Korah”. Perhaps they were a group of musicians who played for temple worship.

At present we need little reminder that “the nations are in uproar” (46:5), with violent demonstrations against world leaders in Hamburg this week, continuing warfare in the Middle East, central Africa and other places, and increasing numbers of migrants seeking asylum in more settled countries. But the Biblical response is to hold on in faith, even if the “whole world melts” (which with nuclear tensions building up again between America and North Korea does not seem much of an exaggerated fear). God, his support for the vulnerable, and his strength for the weak, will never cease.

 

Psalm 47 stands out from most of the others with its positive affirmation of monotheism – there is one God who rules over all the kingdoms of the earth.  The triumphal shout that “God has gone up!” is seen by Christians as a prophecy of the ascension of Jesus, forty days after his resurrection. Whether we think of that as a literal or metaphorical description of what happened, all Christians can agree that Jesus is now the “king of all nations” in a way that is much more real than when the Jews had to have faith in an unseen God.

 

Psalm 49 turns our thoughts to the unavoidable subject of our own mortality, with a reminder that, as we say in English, “you can’t take your money with you when you go [to heaven]”.  Riches (“mammon”) have no real existence, nor does the human body after death.   All that remain are the soul, and God’s memory of our thoughts, words and deeds.  Some of the verses, “No-one can redeem the life of another or give God a ransom for him – the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough – that he should live for ever and not see decay” (49:7-9), are a worldview that is in fact overturned by the death of Jesus. We believe that in fact he did, by his death, ransom all people to God at great cost, so that they may have the opportunity of eternal life – free from guilt in this life, and with the promise of resurrection to a new life with a new kind of body beyond death.

 

The Bible in a Year – 27 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

27 May. Jeremiah chapters 46-48

Until this point the main thrust of Jeremiah’s prophecy has been about the captivity and future restoration of Judah.  But now the revelations he has turn to the surrounding nations.  Many of them, he foretold, would be conquered by the Babylonians, including Egypt; while Egypt would itself have first conquered the Philistines.

 

The picture is therefore of a whole world (at least, the world known to the writer) in turmoil as one nation makes war against another.  And always, the innocent suffer.  As I write, there is turmoil in the near east as several groups battle for the country of Syria, leaving millions dead and other millions fleeing for their lives to refugee camps or other countries.  Libya and Egypt (to name but two others) are likewise divided into many warring factions. This week a Libyan has committed a terrorist attack in Manchester, England killing 22 people, and a similar number of Christians were murdered in Egypt by Islamist attackers.

 

We cannot see now where God’s hand is in all this.  No sane person who believes in a God of love and mercy could accept that any individual death was God’s fault, and yet in a fallen world where man constantly threatens violence against man (and woman), the Bible’s message is consistently that God’s hand is behind the bigger picture, as he issues judgements on entire ethnic or religious groups for their sins.  We rightly pray for the victims of terror, for justice to be done and for security forces to do all they can to prevent future attacks.  But when we pray for peace, and for God’s kingdom to come, we are in effect also putting ourselves in his spotlight for judgement.  Is my lifestyle bringing forth the kingdom of justice, or is there anything in it that promotes injustice?  Maybe not directly but indirectly through the effect my lifestyle choices of purchase and travel have on the environment or on the economies of developing countries, for example?

 

Yesterday was Ascension Day in the Christian calendar, and the Archbishops of England have asked all churches to pray over the next ten days for the mission of the church in our land.  These days we don’t think of mission so much in the narrow sense of making individual converts to Christianity (though that is part of it) but in a wider sense of helping to steer the wider culture towards being the kind of peace-loving, justice-seeking society that God would have it be.