Today we
continue our series of sermons on hymns.
Music is an integral part of worship, as today’s reading from Isaiah
tells us. “For you shall go out in
peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all
the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”
From earliest times, music has been central to praise.
Yet, as
Father Barry pointed out last week, we sometimes tend to treat hymns as nothing
more than traveling music, or something to fill time while we process, or
collect the offering or prepare the altar.
But that line of thought cheapens our experience, because hymns are far
more than that. They are poetry, they
are prayer, they are far more than simple words on a page, or catchy
tunes. In fact, a hymn is far more than
words and music alone. Hymns are an
excellent example of the idea that a whole is sometimes far more than the sum
of its parts. Sometimes one and one can equal three. Let’s
test that.
Hymn 523 “Glorious things of thee a re
spoken, Zion city of our God. He whose
word cannot be broken formed thee for his own abode”.
A pretty poem; it rhymes, almost.
The words are actually based upon the text of Psalm 87, but rearranged a
bit. By themselves they are nice, but
sometimes poetry by itself doesn’t actually speak to all people. In know this because I am one of those
people. But when you put it together
with the music, now you have something.
The music by itself may not move you, the words by themselves may not
move you, but the combination of the two creates something more than either of
them alone. (sing) Do you see how the combination of words and
music make it more than just words and a tune?
But hymns
are even more than just the words and the music alone or the combination of
them together. You can listen to the
radio or go to a concert if that is all you want. For hymns are not simply music; they are not
simply lyrics; they are a form of corporate worship. What do we do with hymns? We sing them.
Together. We join our voices with
the organ or the piano or the guitar and we create something together. It makes no difference if you sing like
Pavarotti or if you sing like a broken down washing machine. For each of us adds our own individuality to
the experience. It is a shared moment
that is here and gone, and we experience it together.
But that is
still not unlike a chorus coming together to sing with an organ or even an
orchestra. So how are hymns
different? Because at its core, each
hymn is a prayer to God. They may be
hymns of sorrow, pleas for help, songs of thanksgiving or prayers of joyful
gratitude; but every hymn that we sing together is a shared worship experience. The phrase has been ascribed to many people,
but I think it was St Augustine who said that “He who sings, twice prays”. The act of singing a hymn in a community of
believers is a prayerful experience as we lift our voices together to God.
By now I
hope you are developing the sense that there is more to our experience of hymns
than mere traveling music.
So let’s
talk about the hymns themselves for a moment.
Did the tune to Glorious Things sound a bit familiar to anyone? Pull out your hymnals and look again at 523. Now turn to 379, God is Love. Notice anything? For those who don’t read music I will answer
my own question. The tune is the
same. The words are different, but the
tune is the same. If you don’t believe
me, turn to 511 Holy Spirit Ever Living and you will see that this too is the
same music. If you look at the end of
the hymn you will see that the authors of both the words and music are listed,
and in italics is the name of the tune.
This one is called Abbot’s Leigh, and is named after the village in
England where the Reverend Cyril Taylor was living when he composed the
tune. It is a lyrical melody and works
in a rhythmic pattern for each set of words.
You will
notice though that the words and the music to each of these are written by
different people. Cyril Taylor wrote the
music, but didn’t write any of the words.
In fact, some were written long before he was even born. This is not unusual, as composers will often
write music to poems or stories written by other people. This particular tune was written as a hymn
tune with the express purpose of applying it to many different words, and that
is exactly how it has been used over the years.
So now we
have Rev Taylor’s tune firmly in our heads.
But did anyone notice anything unusual about the gradual hymn when we
sang Glorious Things? Abbots Leigh is
beautiful melody, but did it seem at all strange to you? Perhaps this would be a bit more
familiar. (Austria)
Did that
feel a little better for you? Now we see
that while the same music can be used to accompany different words, the same
words can be set to different music. But
why did one setting feel better to you than another? While words and music can be interchangeable,
another aspect of a hymn is the affect it has on you personally. If you came here today never having heard
this hymn before, you are not sure what I am talking about. But if you know this hymn, you likely have a
preference for one tune or the other.
You have an expectation of what the hymn should sound like. You may even associate it with an event in
your life.
Glorious
Things was written by John Newton.
Newton was a very reluctant Christian.
He had a difficult life; raised by an indifferent stepmother, he was
sent to boarding school, was conscripted into the Royal Navy, then become a
slave trader. He was a vulgar man who
was anything but a Christian. And then
he had an experience. His ship was in a
dreadful storm; winds tossing them about; waves pounding the ship, threatening
to capsize it at any moment. And Newton,
who had never cared for anyone or anything, found himself praying to God for
salvation. Salvation for himself AND for
his shipmates. The storm subsided, the
winds diminished, and Newton promptly returned to his vulgar ways; all pleas
and promises to God forgotten. But not
completely. For while it didn’t happen
in a flash, this experience marked the beginning of his conversion and he
ultimately became a believer. He eventually
went to seminary and became a priest in the Church of England. And he began to write.
Deeply
ashamed of his participation in slavery, he became a passionate advocate for
abolition and worked with William Wilberforce to help eradicate the African
slave trade. In fact, his experience of
being saved helped him to write another hymn which you may have heard.
“Amazing Grace how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me. I once was
lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”
Familiar words, but now that you know a bit more about them, perhaps you
can see them from a different perspective.
But that too
is part of the equation. As I said, hymns
are based upon our personal experience of them.
We experience them based on how they make us feel, or when we first
heard them, or we equate them with places and times of our lives. Besides being one of everyone’s favorite
hymns, Amazing Grace has become synonymous with funerals and services of
remembrance. While it was actually
written about a conversion, it is often played on such occasions and indeed was
played at my mother’s funeral. It was
more than a year before I could hear the song without tearing up. I want my hymn back! I want to reclaim amazing grace as more than
a funeral hymn. I want it to be a
celebration of life and a recognition of how the free gift of Grace changes us
in ways we could never have imagined. Perhaps
now that we know a bit more about what caused John Newton to write the words,
we can begin to do just that.
Hymns are
much, much more than mere traveling music.
In fact, it is hard to think about worship without Hymns, of one kind or
another. They are a tangible expression
of our faith, a touchstone to the past, and a communal expression of our love
for God. Think about that as we raise
our voices together in prayerful song today, and praise God for the gift of
fine music.
