Christ Jesus Lay in Death's Strong Bands, II

One of the hallmarks of a great hymn is the number of spin offs it inspires over time.

A hymn--a song of praise--by nature is corporate in its reach. Not only is it shared among a people in the present while they celebrate some thing but it has the power to endure, engaging the memory singing it in church as a kid and with grandmother peeling potatoes. A hymn is a folk song, a song of a people--an identifier of who they are and what they believe is important.

To Martin Luther if all God's people were to live out God's grace through faith, they would have to be full participants in worship and this certainly included singing. The Latin Mass was exclusive in that regard. But if illiterate German Christians were more or less silent when they went to church, they weren't silent after, especially on festal occasions. The people sang many faithful songs in their own language. These folk hymns were Luther's inlet to congregational song in worship. By taking vernacular hymns and fitting them with new words the modern notion of hymnody came to be.

By the time Luther wrote "Christ Jesus Lay in Death's Strong Bands" this hymn's ancestry had spread into a mighty tree. It has two predecessors: one a Latin Easter hymn, "Victimae Paschali laudes," Praise the Paschal Victim, the other a German vernacular song, "Christ ist erstanden," Christ is Risen. Both these songs have long histories of their own. Suffice it to say Luther was not intent on abandoning these songs but wanted rather to bask in the light of their tradition. These are faithful songs, why toss them out? Are they honorable? Then honor them. Build on them and extend their reach. The Master gave you a talent. Don't bury it.

But to build and invest necessarily will bring change and even improvement. With "Christ ist erstanden" improvements were needed, if only for the sake of clarity. An early English translation by Miles Coverdale reads:

Christe is now rysen agayne

From his death and all his payne:

Therfore wyll we mery be

And reioyce with Him gladly.

Kirieleyson.

The problem with this is the incongruity between the merriment celebrating the Resurrection (that parties with Jesus Himself) and the phrase "Kirieleyson," Lord have mercy. 

Really there's nothing wrong with that. We beseech Mercy in everything. But the ordinary connotation is that we need mercy to cover our sins. And since Christ is risen we are no longer in our sins (1 Corinthians 15:17).

See the problem? 

To make a clearer response to the Resurrection, Luther proposed this first verse as an alternative:

Christ Jesus lay in death's strong bands,

For our offenses given;
But now at God's right hand He stands
And brings us life from heaven;
Therefore let us joyful be
And sing to God right thankfully
Loud songs of hallelujah. Hallelujah!

The party is still there. Christ is risen. Indeed. But the refrain is different. Let's not sing loud songs of "Lord have mercy," but "Hallelujah."

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Christ Jesus Lay in Death's Strong Bands

Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:7-8, NKJV)

In biblical tradition leaven is a metaphor for the infectiousness of sin. During Passover unleavened bread was eaten to symbolize the haste with which the meal was prepared and eaten. There was no time for waiting around for bread to rise. There is a readiness lived out in the life of faith, not complacency which often can lead us down sinful paths. Later in the Bible, where Paul exhorts the Ephesians to have their feet “shod with the readiness of the Gospel,” he may have the Israelites in mind who ate the Passover with shoes on and staff in hand.

That Paul invokes feasting connects his command to the Communion meal and a celebration at table is what Martin Luther sets down in this Easter hymn:

Then let us feast this joyful day

On Christ, the bread of heaven;

The word of grace hath purged away

The old and evil leaven.

Christ alone our souls will feed,

He is our meat and drink indeed;

Faith lives upon no other. Hallelujah!

We come to Christ hungry. Wallowing in rebellion we saw no need of Him and grasped after bread that could not satisfy. With that bread spent up we now come to the Bread of Life to feed our famished faith.

Hymns are a food for our faith and hymns like this have nourished the faith of generations of Christians. The minor key of the hymn tune is a sign of its heartiness, like seedy loaf full of crackle. This is no sad song. Crusty bread lacks no nourishment and satisfies our bellies.

Ethnocentric Church Music

For all that evangelicals say condemning racism, it remains present in contemporary church music.  Grasping at idol of relevance inevitably leads to marginalizing slices of the populace.  Certainly we ignore the covenantal (i.e. multi-generational) aspect of worship when we turn to pop music as a model for worship song.  But perhaps more subtly, a lot of contemporary church music I know tends to appeal to white people, finding its inspiration often in rock or celtic styles.  Church music can and should have its own local flavor, but for the sake of unity, church music should also have broad appeal: "there is one Church, one Lord, one Baptism..."

Old hymns (texts and tunes together), particularly from the 16th century until the Second Great Awakening, remain the best congregational music the church has created.  These hymns teach Biblical truth in a way that is rather easy to sing and sing together as a body of believers; they move the affections while avoiding unhelpful sentimentality.  This style ought to form the model of new worship song.

Congregational Hymn: Sing and the Mystery Declare (Pange lingua)

I arranged this hymn for a congregation looking for something to sing during the Lord's Supper. The Pange lingua chant is an ancient hymn of the church and quite un-Protestant in its original poetry.  This newer version of the text is more useful.  Enjoy!

Hymn: Holy, Holy, Holy

 The four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne…(Revelation 4:8-10 ESV)  

The poet of the text, Reginald Heber, was an Anglican Minister who was appointed Bishop of Calcutta just a few years before an untimely death at the age of 43.  His hymn texts were composed early in his career while yet a parish priest in the west of England.  Among them are the Christmas text “Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning” and the striking and martial “The Son of God Goes Forth to War.”  Paraphrasing portions of Revelation 4, the text for “Holy, Holy, Holy” thoughtfully builds upon God’s triune nature by regularly joining together sets of three complimentary ideas.  These highlight God’s personal attributes (holy, merciful, mighty; power, love, purity), His eternal nature (wert, art, evermore), created beings that praise Him (saints, cherubim, seraphim), and the places wherein God is praised (earth, sky, sea).  

The tune NICAEA, was composed specifically for this text and is aptly named after the Council of Nicea (325 AD), a church council that defended the doctrine of the Trinity.  The Nicene Creed, the most widely utilized confession of the Church, originated with this council.  The tune’s composer, John Dykes, built the melody upon an ascending melodic triad, a three-note chord that musically symbolizes the triune Godhead.  The hymn has become classic due in part to the majestic quality that the tune lends to the text.  Dykes, also an English clergyman, composed texts and music for numerous hymns.  His best-known tunes are found in the hymns “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say,” “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” and “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee.”

Judging a Bad Hymn

Until rather recently, Westerners believed that pure music is meaningful apart from extra-musical texts, narratives, or images.  Plato and Aristotle had a lot to say about music's meaning and use in affecting society.  The early Church Fathers, taking up the baton, condemned pagan musical practice using the logic they inherited from the philosophers and combining it with sound Biblical reasoning.  Throughout its history, the Church has maintained that music is meaningful and thus ought to be closely regulated.  It is only in the last couple of centuries that Western opinion has become skeptical of the idea of musical meaning.

In our present situation the Church is at best reluctant to make musical judgements.  At worst, the Church is unable to make such judgements at all.  One of the primary areas in which we've abdicated judging musical meaning is how we match texts and tunes inappropriately.

For example, the following text represents the direst spiritual situation any human could experience: 

Out of my bondage, sorrow, and night,
Jesus, I come!
Into Thy freedom, gladness, and light,
Jesus, I come to Thee!
Out of my sickness into Thy health,
Out of my want and into Thy wealth,
Out of my sin and into Thyself,
Jesus, I come to Thee! 

This is a beloved hymn text and for good reason: it describes the sinner's lost condition apart from the Savior and does so with clear imagery.  Yet when it comes the music, the hymn fails.  This is because the tune has nothing to do with bondage, sorrow, night, sickness, want, or sin.  The tune is breezy, and carefree.  Combined with this text, the hymn is flippant and makes light of a grand and serious subject.  This is not to say that their isn't happiness in the text--the text IS happy, but there is a difference between flippant happiness and the happiness of relief from hardship.  The tune sounds like carousel music from a really old one.  There's nothing wrong with music like that or feeling nostalgic listening to it.  It simply fails to convey the text in an accurate and meaningful way and in that sense the hymn fails.  

God calls us to real abundant human life in Christ.  Our hymns--text and music together--ought to portray our life accurately and sincerely.

Puritans and Church Music

I have recently been reading Percy Scholes's Puritans and Music (OUP, 1934), a work that examine's the Puritan attitude toward music--an attitude that by no means condemned music in general, but rather served to elevate secular music as a noble pursuit.  Through a series of essay-like chapters, Scholes convincingly makes a case for a high view of music and the arts among the English Puritans.  Time and time again Scholes reiterates Puritan disapproval of instrumental and polyphonic music in church and in one chapter devoted entirely to the subject, he outlines various manifestations of this point of view in and outside of English Puritanism.  

Iconoclasm is useful in church history to purge abuses of the arts but I think it ought to be the exception and not the rule, namely because it can tend to misplace our priorities.  The worship of God is our highest calling as men and the character and setting of our worship reflects the greatness of God's glory.  If secular music is the "best" and most cultivated music, then church music essentially lies about the character of God.  Obviously there is a lot to be qualified in these statements, but simply put, plain worship poorly represents the great God it seeks to serve.

A Problem with Contemporary Worship Music

While trying to be relevant and contemporary-sounding, praise music falls sadly behind the pack of cultural progress and becomes irrelevant.  New trends and fashions change continuously and are difficult to keep up with.  Some may claim they are not trying to be cutting edge but are rather trying to do music in a style that the culture understands.  But what does the culture understand and what sort of music has broad appeal that church people young , old, black, white, life-longers, new converts, and seekers can all appreciate?  I suggest that contemporary worship music can't do what its proponents say it can.

A problem that plagues all art is the reality of context; that a work of art is tied to a point in time, and has particular audience in mind.  The context of worship song is the worship service itself, while the context of contemporary praise music is popular music which is in constant change.  For all its merits, this video to the writer sounds like post-grunge music that appealed to young white people back in the mid-1990s .  (I may be hearing a trace of The Wall Flowers?)  In such a case, how does invoking this music actually side track and distract from authentic worship?  I say we must consider our music choices carefully, keeping the special character of worship in view.  God does not share His glory with a competing god, and we must take care to make sure this doesn't happen when our music suggests something other than God's glory.

Hymn: O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High

...have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge… Eph. 3:17-19

These verses form the basis of the first stanza of this hymn. The remaining stanzas describe the magnitude of Christ’s love in His life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and in sending of the Holy Spirit.  Although it is primarily about Christ, it acknowledges the full, Triune nature of God as it closes with a paraphrase of the Gloria Patri (“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was…”).  The hymn text, in its original Latin, is often ascribed to Thomas à Kempis, author of the devotional book The Imitation of Christ.

The exuberant tune, DEO GRACIAS, was composed shortly around 1415 when the English defeated the French at Agincourt in Normandy.  The music was originally set to another text thanking God for England’s victory.  The film score to Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V, which retells the famous battle, quotes this tune to stunning effect.

As you sing this rousing hymn, enjoy the jaunty, dance-like rhythms of the music.  The music is a fitting match for the lofty, celebratory, Christ-centered text.

Psalm 119:103-4

Here's another setting I recently completed of a couple verses from Psalm 119.  Enjoy!

Setting of the Magnificat

Here's a new Magnificat setting I composed last summer.  We've used it at our church with some success.  Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

The High Call to Worship

I lament an obvious lack of experience in music and singing in our culture. Nowhere is this lack more troubling than in our institutions of higher ed. It is shocking and appalling that college students in very good music programs read music so poorly. I sing in a college choral ensemble and our director recently commented to me on how poorly some of the students read notes.

The problem is not necessarily the fault of the singers themselves. They just simply haven't been taught to read notes. Again, the problem here is cultural. Our culture's pragmatism and desire for instant gratification have allowed the next generation of pro musicians and teachers to go without basic musicianship training. As mentioned before, part of this problem simply stems from worship. In worship we make a joyful noise unto God through song and this is something we do regularly and with purpose. Pragmatism has spoiled communal music-making in the schools, turning an exercise that in itself is worthwhile into concert preparation: "kids, we've got to learn these 8 songs for our holiday concert in December. Ready,...altos..." The kids learn their notes by rote and learn very little about personal responsibility and skill. On the other had, weekly worship is a performance before the Almighty, not a rehearsal, and the purpose and object of worship is worthy and true. So the church's music making is better than the world's, because 1. we have more "concerts" and, 2. our goal is divine.

But do we in the church think of worship as a performance, and what are we doing to prepare ourselves and our kids for hearty praise each Sunday? If nothing, we are no better than the heathen who do what they have to do prepare for the concert.