Tag: Jesus

I am the Light whose brightness shines

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘I am the Light whose brightness shines’ by Robert Willis, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral.  It is not specifically an Advent hymn, beyond the fact that its focus is Jesus.  Its seven verses each interpret one of the seven ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus in John’s Gospel: the Light, the Gate, the Well (or living water), the Bread of Life, The Vine, the Resurrection and the Life, and the Way, the Truth and the Life. 

Whole books have been written about these sayings, and a few sung lines in a hymn cannot plumb their depths. But Willis’s words do make these timeless theological declarations personal, by relating them to the life of the believer. For example, ‘The shepherd who will tend my sheep, that none are lost or stray’, or ‘whoever truly trusts in me shall live and never die’. The full text can be found online as part of a service booklet.

The suggested tune is called ‘Richmond’ which turns out to be one usually associated with the hymn ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height’, though that hymn is also commonly sung to ‘Gerontius’.  As these are ‘common metre’ tunes, either is suitable, as would be many others.

Praise the One

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Praise the One who breaks the darkness’ by Rusty Edwards.

The hymn is all about Jesus, and is from the ‘General’ section of the book rather than ‘Advent’. I put it into this season because the opening lines, at least, seem appropriate: ‘Praise the One who breaks the darkness with a liberating light. Praise the One who frees the prisoners, turning blindness into sight’.  The rest of the first verse recounts some of Jesus’ other miracles, all of which John the Baptist took as a sign that Jesus was indeed ‘the One who is to come’. 

The word ‘One’, always capitalised, is what binds this hymn together.  The second verse celebrates his powerful words (whether blessing children or driving out demons) and the well of living water that he promised in our hearts.  The third verse is more theological (or even soteriological, if I have the right word) as it praises the One who is love incarnate, died and rose to save us by grace, and redeems us in glory.  The final line is perhaps the only weakness in the words with a repetition: ‘Praise the One who makes us one’.  The last word is to rhyme with ‘done’, so perhaps ‘Praise the Lord who makes us one’ would be better, or ‘Praise the One who is God’s Son’ which would keep the rhyme.

The hymn is copyrighted by an American publisher, and the name Rusty suggests an American writer.  The tune ‘Nettleton’, also of American origin, is dated 1813, but the tune is much less staid than English hymn tunes of that era and together with the words makes a great song of praise.  The tune was familiar as it is also used for the Iona song ‘We rejoice to be God’s chosen’.

There is a Redeemer

Today’s song from Sing Praise is ‘There is a redeemer’ by Keith and Melody Green. Dated 1982 on the copyright, I’ve known this song since probably not long after that. 

The song praises Jesus by several of his Biblical titles: Son of God, Lamb of God, Messiah (Christ), Holy One, Redeemer, Name above all names, King for ever.  The chorus invokes all three persons of the Trinity: ‘Thank you O my Father for giving us your Son, and leaving your Spirit till the work on earth is done’.

My only criticism would be that there is an inconsistency whether we are singing to God (‘Jesus my Redeemer’, ‘Thank you O my Father’) or about him (‘There is a Redeemer’, ‘I will see his face’).  It’s an inconsistency that we have found in other songs, but I prefer it if a song or hymn is clearly one or the other: are we encouraging our fellow singers in the faith or expressing a personal faith directly to God? The style of the music suggests the latter. So why not reword it ‘You are the Redeemer’, ‘I will see your face’?

We shall see Him in the morning

Jesus cooks breakfast for his disciples
image- merrycatholic.blogspot.com artist unknown

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘We shall see him in the morning’ by Randle Manwaring. John chose to use an old Welsh hymn tune rather than the one written for these words.

I had originally chosen this for Armistice day, as a cursory reading of the words seemed to suggest it may have been written with that In mind (especially the reference to those who have ‘toiled and struggled till the earthly fight was won’) but John suggested swapping it for one that’s more explicit about that.  The ‘earthly fight’ may in any case be intended as metaphysical, i.e. the struggle against evil, rather than referring to wars between nations.

Either way, whether soldiers of an earthly king or of the heavenly one are intended, the message is that it’s worth a struggle to live a holy life now, for the reward we will get in the next life.  That reward is pictured as the welcoming arms of Jesus and his commendation for our efforts (“his welcoming ‘Well done!’”).

The ‘breakfast celebration’ (referring to the meal he cooked for his disciples when he met them on the shores of Galilee after his Resurrection) as well as the ‘mists of life’ suggests that the ‘toil all night’ may also hark back to their fruitless fishing expedition, in which case the promised welcome is not only for soldiers and spiritual heroes, but for all who have lived an honest and hard-working life.

In Christ alone

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is in Christ alone my hope is found’ by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty.  It’s a candidate for ‘most popular hymn of the last decade’ – the copyright is dated 2001, but in the last ten years it has found popularity well beyond its original evangelical roots.

The phrase ‘In Christ alone’ seems to hark back, maybe deliberately, to the Reformation, where it is one of the five balancing principles: ‘By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to scripture alone, for God’s glory alone’.  Here we focus on one of those, but perhaps the most important, because whatever view you might take on the relative merits of faith and works, or the extent to which scripture is God’s direct revelation, surely all Christians can agree that without Christ, our faith would be in vain.

The first verse of the hymn praises Christ by giving him many honorific titles – ‘my light, my strength, my song, this cornerstone, this solid ground … my comforter, my all in all’.  Many of these have Biblical resonances of course, but put together make a firm basis for a hymn of praise. 

The second verse reminds us why Christ came, ‘gift of love and righteousness’ to take away our sin.   Some people prefer to substitute ‘love of God’ for ‘wrath of God’ when it comes to understanding what was happening on the cross, but both versions make sense: he bore the brunt of God’s anger at human sin, while also expressing the self-sacrificial nature of God’s love for sinners.  The last line is a beautiful paradox – ‘her in the death of Christ I live’.

The third verse celebrates the resurrection, ‘bursting forth in glorious day’, and his victory over sin.  The last reminds us that we have no need to feel guilty or fearful of what lies ahead of us, because of what Jesus has done to secure us eternal life. I would only quibble with the phrase ‘Jesus commands my destiny’ which sounds like the doctrine of predestination (that God has determined in advance our every action). I doubt that it’s intended to mean that, but perhaps something like ‘Spirit of Jesus guiding me’ would be better. But all in all, it’s a cracking hymn that brings together Christians of many persuasions to focus on the wonder at the heart of the Gospel.

Jesus, in your life we see you

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Jesus, in your life we see you’ by Basil Bridge. Each of the three verses addresses Jesus. In the first verse he is addressed as the one who in his earthly life used physical touch to bring hope and healing and his words to set captives free, but who in the end suffered rejection and death.  In the second and third verses he is addressed as ‘Risen Lord’, but the risen lord who retains wounds of the cross in his body as a sign that he continues to share the sufferings of the present time, including (as listed here) greed, exploitation, addiction and heartbreak. The final verse asks him to use us in his service and offer his divine compassion to those in need; although as John pointed out in introducing the hymn, it doesn’t explicitly pray for Jesus to act and heal people.

The hymn is set in the book to the Welsh hymn tune Ebenezer, though John used a Russian tune called Stenka Razin (who apparently was the leader of a unsuccessful 17th century peasant rebellion in Russia).  Personally I preferred the Welsh tune, perhaps because the minor key fits the theme of suffering.

Christ is the one who calls

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Christ is the one who call’ by Timothy Dudley-Smith. The tune set in the book is ‘Love unknown’ but John chose to sing it to ‘Harewood’ (‘Christ is our cornerstone’). 

In its five verses the hymn explores Christ’s relationship with us. Firstly he calls us as “the one who loved and came” – we believe that Jesus is God, and God is love.  Then he seeks us as the one “to whom our souls are known” – he is intimately within our very being, as well as at work in the world. Then he is “the one who died forsaken and betrayed”, for we must never forget the price he paid for saving us.  Yet he is “the one who rose in glory from the grave” – the promise of forgiveness of sin through the cross is inextricably connected with the promise of eternal life through the resurrection. Finally he is “the one who sends, his story to declare” – the gospels end not with the resurrection but with the disciples being commissioned, whether by their fishing boats or on the mountain, to go and tell others this story of God’s saving love.

There are of course other words to each of the verses besides those I’ve quoted, and the full text is online here. The hymn was new to me, but as a concise summary of the work of Christ and our response to him, it is worth remembering for another occasion.

Jesus Christ is waiting

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is the second of two on consecutive days by the Scottish hymnwriters John Bell & Graham Maule, both in the series on social justice issues.  Both of them invite us to join our own concerns with those of God. 

This one, “Jesus Christ is waiting”, has a much more active Jesus than yesterday’s.  He is pictured in various actions, beginning with ‘waiting in the streets’.  Is ‘waiting’ an action?  In Christian theology, yes.  Waiting can be about anticipation, praying into a situation knowing that God will move when it’s the right time to do so and not before.   The waiting here, though, is linked with loneliness, and we ask him to make us ‘fit to wait on him’ – a subtle pun on two meanings of ‘waiting’ in English. Are we the sort of waiters who stand around idle and lonely, or the sort of waiters (as in a restaurant) who work tirelessly to satisfy the needs of others who are lonely?

The other actions of Jesus are much more energetic: raging, healing, dancing, calling. Raging at life’s injustices, healing in response to need, dancing in triumph when goodness wins out, and calling for more people to follow his example. All these are seen in his life, indeed all are seen in his actions in the Temple: raging at the money-sellers, healing those excluded from the temple because of their disabilities, calling ‘on the last and greatest day of the feast’ (when surely there was dancing) for disciples to follow him, but also of course waiting on God in prayer.

What unites the words of the verses are that all these actions take place ‘in the streets’ – in the public realm, not in our private prayer rooms and chapels but where the need is and where our actions are visible.  And that in each verse our response is to say “I am … too”: we share Jesus’ concerns and seek to copy his actions.

I think the choice of tune – ‘Noel Nouvelet’ – is just right.  Its minor key suits the theme of dealing with injustice, but at the same time it has a lively dance rhythm (it’s described as a French carol tune) that goes with the image of Jesus dancing and calling in particular.  The verses should be varied in pace and volume when sung – slower and quieter for ‘waiting and healing’, faster for ‘dancing’, louder for ‘raging and calling’.

The Apocrypha in Lent – 26 March

If this is your first visit, please see my introduction to these Lenten readings.

26 March. Daniel chapter 6

Not a new thought today – I am re-posting with a few amendments what I wrote on 30 August last year, as it is relevant to Holy Week.

A pattern, perhaps not obvious at first, is seen in the story of the lions’ den when compared with the events of Holy Week (the last days of Jesus’ life).  Daniel. like Jesus, is charged falsely by his enemies; the ruler (Darius in Daniel’s time, Pontius Pilate in Jesus’ day) tries to get out of what the law demands, knowing that the man before him is actually innocent of any crime; the crowd prevails (as it did when calling for the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus) and the innocent man is reluctantly condemned to death.  Unlike Jesus, Daniel did not actually die, the lions miraculously sparing him.  But just as Jesus’ body was laid in a tomb and sealed with a stone, so Daniel is cast into a pit and a sealed stone put over it; at dawn the king, like Mary Magdalene and her friends, comes fearing the worst, but like them hears the voice of the one they thought was dead.

The outcome of both stories is much the same: King Darius is persuaded of the truth of the Jewish faith, and the Apostles come to believe in the resurrection of Jesus.

This story was written probably about 150 years before Jesus, yet it seems to be as much a prophecy or foreshadowing of what would happen to the Messiah, as it is a coded history of the various tyrants who had persecuted the Jews up to the time of the Macabbeans (which is how a historian would read the book of Daniel).  For that reason, as well as his God-given ability to interpret dreams, Daniel is regarded as one of the prophets.

 

The Bible in a Year – 31 December

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

The last four sections of the Bible in a Year blog, covering the whole of the Book of Revelation, are being uploaded together (just because I was without Internet access this week).

31 December. Revelation chapters 19-22

According to chapter 20, after all forms of evil are finally defeated, Christ returns to reign with his martyrs (but not the rest of humanity) for a symbolic period of a thousand years, after which all the dead are resurrected to be judged, and either live in paradise (described as the new Jerusalem – a magnificent and vast jewelled city with eternal light) or be thrown into the lake of fire (from which the popular idea of Hell arises).

But on what basis is this ultimate judgement made?  Jesus says here: “To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death” (21:6-8).   The contrast is between, on the one hand,  those who are “thirsty” (that is, longing for God’s presence and help) and those who “conquer” (that is, overcome temptation, and persist in faith during trials and persecutions); and on the other hand those who continue to live in ignorance or defiance of God’s directions for life – as I noted on 29 December, the list of sins here is very similar to the prohibited acts in the Ten Commandments.

The danger in interpreting John’s visions is twofold – trying to apply them directly to today’s world when the vision was initially given to 1st or 2nd century Christians; and reading them in isolation from the rest of the New Testament.    Here Jesus was specifically encouraging persecuted Christians to stand firm in their faith, by means of these visions, whereas in his direct teaching his emphasis was on showing love for God and neighbour in practical ways.

So at the end of the year we reach the end of the Bible, and the end of earthly time, in the way that John describes his vision.  To consider together the whole of Christian scripture – all 66 books of it written down over a period of over 1000 years, the last of it nearly 2000 years ago, and covering a longer period of time than that – is the work of a lifetime.  No-one can claim to fully understand either the original meaning or most appropriate interpretation of every part of it. Bible study is both essential and fascinating, with a good guide.

More importantly, it has always been regarded by Christians as a “living book” – when we speak of the “Word of God” we mean not just the written words of the Bible but Jesus himself.  As John understood it, “His name is called The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure (the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints) were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations” (19:8, 13-15).  That “sword” is usually understood as the combination of written scripture and the continual witness of the Holy Spirit through the gift of prophecy in all ages.  It is that combination – received teaching and the ongoing inspiration of Jesus and the Holy Spirit  – which will keep Christians faithful until Jesus returns in person, and eventually overcomes evil.  With the saints throughout the ages we can echo the last verses of the Bible – “Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.” (22:20-21).