Sirach 3:17-20, 28-29; Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-14; Psalm 68
August 28, 2022
Lloyd Penner
Stories Behind our Songs
I have been led to do something quite different this Sunday. I have long been interested in the stories behind the songs we sing in worship. What were the circumstances that led people to create these songs? I think that some knowledge of the background of the songs will enhance our experience of worship when we sing them. Later we will sing some of the songs I will reference in this homily.
Joseph Scriven immigrated to Ontario from England in the mid 19th century. His life was filled with tragedies. On the day before he was to get married to his fiancée she was thrown from a horse and died. A few years later he was engaged to another woman and she died of pneumonia. As you would expect he was devastated but he turned to God and dedicated his life to live out the teachings of Jesus as found in the Sermon on the Mount. He became known in the community as a person you could go to whenever you needed help of any kind. He also wrote a poem that came out of his grief which was put to music by William Rowlands. The song is “What a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear. Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share? In his arms he’ll take and shield thee -thou wilt find a solace there.” When Joseph Scriven was asked how he could write such a song given the terrible things that had happened to him he replied that he had not written the song alone. The Lord and he had written it together.
Fanny J. Crosby lost her sight at the age of 10 weeks because of mistakes made by a doctor. As an adult she accepted her blindness. She said it helped her to develop an inner life and brought her closer to God. She went on to write over 9000 hymns some of which are still sung today. You will recognize them: To God be the glory great things he has done, Pass me not oh gentle Saviour, Jesus keep me near the cross, Safe in the arms of Jesus and Blessed Assurance. Her gifts as a lyricist are demonstrated in the story about how she wrote “Blessed Assurance” A composer of hymn tunes, Phoebe Knapp, came to her house one day and played a melody on Crosby’s piano. Knapp, then asked Crosby what the tune was saying to her. Crosby immediately replied, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine.” Given her physical blindness vs. 2 is especially powerful. “Perfect submission, visions of rapture now burst on my sight.” She once said that she was excited to think that the first thing she would see would be Jesus after her death.
Francis Havergal was an English poet who started writing poems at the age of 7. She also studied languages and mastered Greek, Hebrew, Latin, French and German in addition to English but she devoted much of her life to composing hymns. We sing a few of her songs. For example, “Take my life and let it be dedicated Lord to thee.” After she wrote verse 4 which begins with “Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold” she realized she needed to put these words into action. So she sold off her jewelry and other treasures and gave the money away. At one point she was very ill and it seemed she might die and the words of another song came to her which she dictated to her sister, “Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace” The second verse is particularly poignant: “Hidden in the hollow of his blessed hand, where no harm can follow in his strength we stand. We may trust him fully all for us to do. They who trust him wholly find him wholly true.”
Isaac Watts lived in the early 18th century and is credited with ushering in a new era of hymn singing. Prior to Watts, hymns tended to be very dreary almost dirge like. He was a non-conformist which meant he had left the state church-the Church of England. He and other non-conformists were often persecuted by the government. Out of this experience he wrote, “Oh God our help in ages past. Our hope for years to come. Our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home.” Probably his greatest hymn is the song we often sing on Good Friday “When I survey the wondrous cross.”
Robert Robinson grew up in a very poor family and he ended up in a gang who got into crime. One day he heard a sermon by George Whitfield, the great mid 18th century English evangelist and was converted to Christ and he became an evangelist himself and a composer of hymns. One of them which we often sing is, “Come thou fount of every blessing.” which he wrote when only 23 years old. This song has an amazing story connected to it. In his later years, Robinson wandered away from the faith. The third verse of this song already reflects what he knew was his tendency to wander away from God. “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it prone to leave the God I love?” One day many years later when he was riding in a stage coach a woman passenger began to sing the hymn he had written many years before. She asked him if he knew the hymn. Robinson burst into tears and replied, “ Madam, I am the poor, unhappy man who composed that hymn many years ago. I would give a thousand worlds to enjoy the feelings that I had then.” People who have researched his life’s story are not sure whether he did come back to the faith although he became a strong promoter of social and political reform.
Twenty-two of the songs in the Grain of Wheat songbook were composed by Gord Johnson. Gord told me that sometimes songs come to him when his spirit is troubled and emotions are welling up inside. An example is “Be at Rest once more o my soul” It was written in less than a minute at a time he was looking for solace. He had picked up his old friend, the guitar, and started to play. The words and music came to him instantly. Gord said that the song had helped him move from a troubled state of mind to lamenting and from there to consolation and a message for all of us. And so the song ends with the words “O the Lord has been good, O the Lord has been good to you.”
I hope that hearing about the circumstances in which some songs were composed will deepen our worship experience when we sing them.
This Sunday, 40 days after Easter, we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension. In the Bible, 40 days is highly symbolic-it means completeness. Jesus has completed his task on earth. He has shown that he is alive and now it’s time for him to continue his work with the Father in heaven. I found it interesting that for the Orthodox Church, the Feast of the Ascension is one of the most important events in the church calendar. The drama of salvation is about to begin a new and very important stage. In his last words to his followers, Jesus says that after he has ascended to heaven he will send the Holy Spirit who will empower his followers. Their task will be to bear witness to the resurrection and spread the good news to the ends of the earth. As for Jesus, he will sit at the right hand of the Father and exercise authority over all earthly authorities as well as being the head of the church. And then at some future time he will come again. This is a brief summary of the Biblical story of the Ascension and the church’s traditional interpretation of that story.
Jesus was not the first person in the Jewish tradition to have ascended to heaven without dying. Three of the most well-known Biblical figures to have done so were: Enoch, Moses and Elijah. Even before Jesus was crucified, he gave a strong hint to his disciples that his later ascension was part of the plan. In Luke 22:69 Jesus says, “the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of God.” One commentator goes so far as to say that the Ascension is a theological necessity.
Because after he died on the cross the spirit of Jesus descended into hell where he defeated the powers of evil. He then arose from the dead and 40 days later ascended to heaven where he now reigns as the cosmic Christ. In other words, the Ascension was an essential part of the God’s plan to defeat evil and save all peoples.
But what does all this mean for us today. What are the connections between the Ascension and the life of our church community as well as our individual lives? Where do we find ourselves in the story? The fact that Luke, the author of Acts, places the Ascension at the end of this Gospel and again at the beginning of the book of Acts is very significant. It means that everything that happens in the history of the early church is connected to and to some extent dependent on the Ascension. Indeed, Jesus had said that he must leave this earthly realm in order for the Holy Spirit to come and it is the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that gives birth to the community of faith. Grain of Wheat is part of this story and therefore we are connected to the Ascension.
The Ascension is also important in another way. It is as the ascended Lord that Christ provides the church with spiritual gifts: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers and more. Indeed, for Paul the Ascension is an essential part of his theology. In the Ephesian passage we heard earlier, Paul states that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated him at the right hand of the Father is at work in us who believe. Do we really believe that?
The author of the book of Hebrews adds to our understanding of the Ascension. In the passage we heard read, the resurrected and ascended Christ is depicted as the high priest who through his work on the cross has enabled us to enter the inner sanctuary of the heavenly temple -the place where God dwells. “Therefore” as the author of Hebrews says in chapter 4 “since we have a great high priest, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” What are our needs at this moment? I encourage us to name them and then bring them to the throne of grace. There, the risen and ascended Christ will meet with grace and love. Amen.