“And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” (Mark 14:26) This little verse in Mark’s Gospel which occurs at the end of the Last Supper account, has always intrigued me. It may well be one of the greatest pictures of quiet courage and confidence in all of literature. For Jesus and His students were singing in the very shadow of the cross!
I. THEY WERE NOT THE FIRST NOR THE LAST TO DO SO. Scholars suggest that the hymn they may have sung was the famous hallel Psalm 118, which was always sung after the final blessing at the Passover meal. But for Jesus and His friends it was no mere form or formality. As they sang it they shared in the great heritage of their ancestors who faced immeasurable odds with a song on their lips, as they armed their hearts and minds for the struggle to maintain their faith in the one true God. Down through the centuries hymns have had the same salutary effect.
Halford Luccock says that this short verse is so powerful that “The great scenes of Christian history might bear these words as a subtitle: ‘When they had sung a hymn, they went out.’” (THE INTERPRETER’S BIBLE, New York and Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951, page 879) It was true of martyrs as they faced lions in Roman amphitheaters in the first centuries of the Christian Era. It was true of the Reformation in the 16th century when Luther’s hymns ignited a revolution in the life of the Christian church. Emperor Charles V had invaded Italy and forced Pope Clement VII to make peace with him. Now Charles V sought to wipe out the Lutheran reform movement. It was, one historian has said, “the darkest hour” in Martin Luther’s life. In that bitter nighttime, Luther wrote: “A mighty fortress is our God.” He was under threat of personal death and the likely destruction of his reform movement. His convictions, his calling, his very life were in the balance each day. In that darkness, he sang a song which became the marching song of the Reformation. “Let goods and kindred go,/This mortal life also;/ The body they may kill:/God’s truth abideth still;/ His kingdom is forever!”
Then came the “Wesleyan Revival” of the 18th century..and it came on the wings of song. When John and Charles Wesley were criticized for setting some of their hymns to popular drinking song tunes of the day, they replied that they did not see why the Devil should have all of the good tunes! Perhaps the most popular Wesleyan hymn is “Jesus, Lover of my Soul.” Brother John didn’t like it much-it was, he said, “too chummy.” We don’t know what the circumstances surrounding the hymn were, but we do know the original title Charles gave it: “In Temptation.” He meant the song for those who were struggling with sin and doubt, and no doubt it sprang from his own personal battles. In the dark night of the soul, he sang: “Jesus Lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly!” The Wesleyan Revival was due not only to the inspired preaching of John Wesley, but also to the great hymns of Charles Wesley, who wrote over 6500 of them! Every great renewal of the Church has gone forth on wings of song!
When John Wesley died, he had the words of one of Isaac Watts’ hymns on his lips: “I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath;/ And when my voice is lost in death, / Praise shall employ my noblest powers./ My days of praise shall ne’er be past, While life, and thought, and being last, / Or immortality endures.” Let me tell you something about Isaac Watts. Early in life his health failed him, probably because of poor nutrition in his youth. For 26 years he was a semi-invalid, yet is acclaimed as one of the greatest song writers who ever lived and even has a memorial in Westminster Abbey. From him came such standards as “Joy to the world...” and “When I survey the wondrous cross...” Singing in the shadow of the cross!
George Matheson was a brilliant scholar in his youth. But he started going blind at 18 and was totally blind at age 21. But he wrote the great hymn, “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.” Out of his agony of soul he sang in the darkness....and the world has been blessed by his hymns. Singing in the shadow of the cross!
American Fanny Crosby almost equaled Charles Wesley’s productivity. She wrote only 6000 hymns. What most people do not realize is that she was blind almost all of her life. At the age of 6 she was blinded by an illness; but she never became bitter, One time a sympathetic minister remarked to her, “I think it is a great pity that The Master did not give you sight when he showered so many other gifts on you.” She quickly replied, “Do you know that if I had been able to make one petition, it would have been that I should be born blind.” “Why?” the minister asked. She replied, “Because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior.” One of her hymns is: “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine O what a foretaste of glory divine...” At age 95 Fanny Crosby passed into the presence of her Savior where she could see Him face to face. But until then, she sang her hymns in the darkness. Singing in the shadow of the cross. Hymns have been a source of strength to millions over the centuries.
II. THAT HELPS US TO UNDERSTAND ALL OF THE FUROR OVER THE NEW HYMNAL. During the past four years we have been hearing all sorts of things about the trials and tribulations of the Committee charged with the awesome responsibility of producing a new hymnal for United Methodists. The secular press had a field day with us disUnited Methodists! At times we United Methodists looked anything but “united.” Still, when the final vote was taken at the last General Conference, something like 98% voted in favor of the new hymnal. I would submit that when you get 98% of United Methodists to agree on anything, you’ve performed a major miracle!
Some opposed “Onward Christian Soldiers,” thinking that it glorified war. It doesn’t. St. Paul used military metaphors to describe the Christian’s struggle against the forces of evil in this world. And he did so, not to glorify war, but to remind the early Christians that they were engaged in a spiritual warfare which ought to engage their commitment every bit as much as worldly warfare. In a sermon a couple of years ago I insisted that the hymn was NOT a militaristic hymn - and then went home that evening to watch a television special on the life of Teddy Roosevelt. In it, I saw Teddy Roosevelt rallying the troops for battle during the First World War... And what was the music which accompanied their march? “Onward Christian Soldiers...” Sometimes you can’t win! Some Methodists opposed including the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in the new hymnal, for it has unfavorable connotations for our fellow Christians south of the Mason-Dixon line. And so it goes. You can’t please everybody. Both hymns have been retained, I understand, but at great cost in terms of argument and discussion. So bitter were the letters written to the hymnal committee, that the Bishop heading the committee actually suffered a heart attack during the enterprise! Our religious feelings are deep feelings, and when they are tampered with, we become upset.
But those who know something of the evolution of our present hymnal tend to view the whole flap about the new one as a tempest in a teapot. The hymns which we now sing are not sacrosanct. Some of us can remember what a battle the 1968 hymnal had in replacing the 1935 version! Hymn-changing and tampering with “the original words” is not a new pastime. It has a long and honorable history. John Wesley did not like the line “Thy saints have dwelt secure” in the hymn “Our God, our help in ages past,” thinking that was too Calvinistic, and so he re-wrote the line to read: “Still may we dwell secure.” And he resented the phrase “Our God.” Who are we to claim God as our own exclusive property? So he changed it to “O God, our help in ages past.” And now that’s the way millions of Methodists today believe that Moses handed it down from Mount Sinai! And then there is that grand old hymn “Faith of our Fathers”---I wonder what the revisers have done to make that more inclusive? Our faith is more likely to have come to us from our mothers than our fathers, isn’t it? I don’t believe that the hymn has been changed in the new hymnal, but we Protestants would do well to recall how the original went. It was originally written by an Anglican-turned-Roman Catholic priest who wanted England to repeal the work of the English Reformation. It originally read: “Faith of our Fathers, Mary’s prayers/shall win our country back to thee;/ And with the faith that comes from God/England shall then indeed be free.” I imagine that most Protestants would not wish to have that hymn appear “as originally written.”
Sometimes hymns have been revised to show mercy upon the singers. Charles Wesley’s magnificent “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing originally had eighteen stanzas...and may have taken a thousand hours to sing! And there have been alterations of language to express the changing meanings of words. How many of us would enjoy singing at Christmas: “Hark how all the welkin rings?” I think we’d prefer “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” And what’s a “welkin,” anyway? In one of his hymns, Isaac Watts has Jesus dying “for such a worm as I” but most of us would prefer the version which says “for sinners such as I.” Methodists just have never been comfortable with “worm theology.” Language changes its meaning over the years. There is a hymn that may not be entirely familiar titled “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown.” by Charles Wesley. There’s a marvelous last line, “’Tis Love! Ttis Love! thou diedst for me! I hear thy whisper in my heart; The morning breaks, the shadows flee; Pure universal love thou art! To me, to all, thy mercies move; Thy nature and thy name is Love.” But Wesley wrote it in good King James English, and originally it read: “To me, to all, thy bowels move.” One wonders whether people really know what they are asking for when they say they’d like the hymns “exactly as they were written.” Language changes.
Still, from the first century until now, hymns have been a source of power for God’s faithful children. Prisoners in more than one war have reported that they kept their sanity by recalling the words to great hymns they learned in church at their parents’ knees. One wonders whether future generations are going to have such a legacy to fall back upon in hard times. It would be tragic if all our children and grandchildren could call upon in time of trial is the jingle of some silly singing commercial! Hymns are important!
III. I IMAGINE THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE IN OUR WORLD TODAY WHO CANNOT POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND THIS. Worship is a lost art to them. Picture if you will a young family on the year 70 A.D. in the city of Rome, as they get up early on a Sunday morning before the sun has come up. They get dressed silently, and sneak off to the clandestine meeting of Christians, and walk through the dark streets with fear, for if they are caught and convicted of being Christians, they will pay with their very lives. If you were to ask them why they took the risk, they would say: “Who wouldn’t risk everything for the chance to meet the risen Christ in worship?” They go down into the catacombs - burial chambers - where dozens of people gather by candle light. They hug and greet one another in hushed whispers for fear that they might be heard. Their worship begins...and before long they are singing hymns quietly, reading from the Scriptures and re-reading that letter which came from Paul last week. Now, let’s move forward in time almost two thousand years. It’s Saturday night in twentieth century America and the family is getting ready for bed. “What do you think, John, should we go to church tomorrow?” “Ah, I don’t know. Sunday is my only day to sleep in. And besides we went last week. Or was it last month?” What a difference! For those first Christians gathering together on the Lord’s Day was such a dangerous and exciting thing that wild horses couldn’t keep them away. It is a cold and cruel world out there, and each Christian needs the sustenance which can only come where two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name. The old catechism said that our primary purpose in life is to “glorify God and to enjoy Him forever!” Many people are missing the whole point of life. They are missing something which God has given us as a gift to enable us to face life with fortitude and strength. And that gift is worship.
“When they had sung a hymn” Jesus and the disciples became renewed men, with spirits replenished from the experience of worship. In singing the Psalms they linked themselves up with their glorious heritage, the endless line of splendor of God’s children who face the world with faith in their hearts and a song on their lips. As they worshipped they experienced what the creed calls “the communion of saints”---the great company of men and women who had sung the same hymn in days gone by, and gained strength thereby.
Well, what does worship do for us? Does it help us to “go out” and deal more effectively with the shadows and crosses and conflicts which beset us and our world? Or is it true instead that “after we have sung a hymn” we do nothing at all? Instead of going out, we sit down and think we have done all that there is do to. But it is only the beginning. An angry reader once stormed into a newspaper office waving the current edition, asking to see the one who wrote the obituary column. He was referred to a cub reporter to whom he showed the column, including his own obituary. He said, “You see, I am very much alive. I demand an immediate retraction!” The reporter replied, “I never retract a story. But I tell you what I’ll do.. I’ll put you in the birth column and give you a fresh start!” Well, as Jesus and His friends left the Upper Room on their way to Calvary, they needed a fresh start. And they found refreshment in singing a hymn together. Jesus knew, if they did not, that ahead of him lay the Garden of Gethsemane, Calvary, and an ignominious death. But with the words of the hymn still ringing in Jesus’ ears he found the strength for the struggle ahead.
During the First World War a cynical English colonel delighted in badgering an old village priest, where the colonel’s regiment was billeted. One Sunday morning, as he passed the church, he saw a mere handful of people leaving mass, and he said to the priest at the door, “Not very many at mass this morning, Father, not very many!” “No, my son, you’re wrong,” the priest answered. “Thousands and tens of thousands!” In the old priest’s heart was still ringing the words of the Sanctus: “Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name; evermore praising thee, and saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory; Glory be to thee, O Lord most high!” And so, as we gather to sing hymns, remember that you and I are a part of a heavenly chorus of Christians of all the ages who lived their lives and went to their deaths with a song on their lips and hope in their hearts. And be thankful.