A Nutcase, a Critic, and a Carol (NRH 09)

So many endearing carols, who attempts to write a new one?

What wonder filled the starry night (NRH 09) LM

There's so many wonderful Christmas carols, only a poetic nutcase would attempt to write a new one. Okay, that would be me. New Reformation Hymns (NRH 09), "What wonder filled the starry night," is intended to be  just that, a Christmas carol. Insanity! you say. Only a moron would attempt to write a Christmas carol, much less post it and put on display the extent of his carol-crafting delusion. Okay, you're probably right.  But it's too late. I've already posted it. Greg Wilbur (and others) has already written and recorded music for it. "The deed is done and cannot be undone" (something clearly amiss when one finds oneself quoting Lady Macbeth).

In part because of such fears, early scribblings for this hymn/carol sat dormant for several years; hymn writing can sometimes be like that for me, an initial burst of ideas, then nothing, just an imaginative black hole. As Christmas approached in 2010, something changed. Sitting in front of the fire in our living room one evening, I pulled out the initial notes again. Before bedtime I managed to sift through all the scribbles, idea banks and word banks, and set down the lines below pretty much as you see them here.

Overcoming my trepidation at writing my first hymn was difficult enough (The Lord Great Sovereign, 2001), but writing a Christmas carol? Only a moron would attempt it. The sacred charm of the existing carol canon guarantees failure. I must be certifiable! Carols are pregnant with emotive atmosphere, celebratory associations, roasting chestnuts (a curious metaphor considering Americans do not roast and eat chestnuts at Christmas or any other time, to my knowledge), open fires, Jack Frost nipping at our noses, Good King Wenceslas going out on the feast of Stephen, snow lying all about, and every cozy winter association imaginable and unimaginable. Writing a Christmas carol is like inviting the world to come watch you fly off the Eiffel Tower, equipped with nothing more than chicken-feather wings and delusional bravado (what were they talking about in physics class?). Bring your smart phones. 

Yet, here I go, posting a Christmas carol, one I wrote. Maybe I should be feeling like one of those chestnuts. I'd like to claim to be impervious to critics (my last hymn post prompted one fellow to fume and fulminate at me), but it would be a lie. Nevertheless, write anything and there will be someone there to gnash his teeth and tell the world what an unworthy vessel you are. For the record, I am daily aware of my vast limitations (could fill a book with them). But in all seriousness, I don't write books because I think I'm the best writer in the world, any more than I love my wife because I think I am the best husband in the world, any more than I parent my kids because I think I am the best parent in the world, any more than I worship Christ because I think I am the best worshiper in the world. Neither do I write hymns because I think I am the best hymn writer in the world--and certainly not because I think I'm the best writer of a carol.

So endearing are carols to Christian hymnody that experts tell us the best-loved hymn of all time is actually a carol, Charles Wesley's Hark, the Herald Angels Sing). Only a certifiable
moron would proceed. With fear and trembling I originally set my imagination to work on a carol, and now with the same I launch it out to you.

What wonder filled the starry night
          When Jesus came with heralds bright!
I marvel at His lowly birth,    
          That God for sinners stooped to earth.
       
His splendor laid aside for me,
          While angels hailed His Deity,
The shepherds on their knees in fright
          Fell down in wonder at the sight.

The child who is the Way, the Truth,
          Who pleased His Father in His youth,
Through all His days the Law obeyed,
          Yet for its curse His life He paid.         
         
What drops of grief fell on the site
          Where Jesus wrestled through the night,
Then for transgressions not His own,
          He bore my cross and guilt alone.

What glorious Life arose that day
          When Jesus took death’s sting away!
His children raised to life and light,
          To serve Him by His grace and might.

One day the angel hosts will sing,  
          “Triumphant Jesus, King of kings!” 
Eternal praise we’ll shout to Him
          When Christ in splendor comes again!

                             Douglas Bond (December 16, 2010)

Why a carol in October? I decided a number of weeks back to post New Reformation Hymns in the chronological order in which I wrote them over the last number of years; this carol simply comes next in that chronology. See previous hymn posts. Several composers have written tunes for this carol, most recently my friend and collaborator on New Reformation Hymns/New Parish Psalms, Greg Wilbur. Subscribe to my blog for updates on our forthcoming album in 2017.

Modern Worship--Five Parts Short: The Seven Parts of True Worship (NRH 08)

NEW REFORMATION HYMNS album coming soon

NEW REFORMATION HYMN 08 (NRH 08) 

Come Bless the Lord (Long Meter, LM, 8.8.8.8.)

What do most people mean when they say, "The worship was, like, really great today?" Are they referring to the confession of sin? The sacraments? Prayer? Public reading of Scripture, exhortation, preaching, the benediction? No, in the vast majority of people's minds, worship today is synonymous with music. That's it, music, and they usually mean a particular kind of music. So what then, in a majority of churches today, has become the measure of worship being great?  I fear that for many the quality of worship is measured by how closely the worship band managed to replicate the popular CCM radio sound and feel of the original band that created the music. If this is true, then worship in many churches, among other things, may be at least five parts short of biblical worship.

Observing many worship services today and one could easily conclude that there are essentially two (or maybe three) parts to worshiping God: singing and listening to some form of preaching. But that's an intensely new-fangled and wrong-headed (and wrong-hearted) way of looking at Christian worship. So much is left out. Herein, once again, Church history comes to the rescue. Based soundly on the Word of God, the Reformers of the 16th century rediscovered the seven biblical parts of worship, worship in Spirit and in truth.

Reflecting on this, and in the spirit of that great rediscovery, I attempted to build Come Bless the Lord (NRH 08) around Psalm 134 (the opening line) and Isaiah 6 when the prophet found himself in the presence of God and saw the Lord high and lifted up. Each stanza of the hymn follows the order of Reformed corporate worship in seven parts. Can you summarize the seven parts? Where does Jesus appear in those seven parts (hint: EVERYWHERE!)

• COME BLESS THE LORD, by Douglas Bond/Ron Bechtel. Listen to audio version

Come, bless the Lord and trembling rise
Before the Sovereign of the skies;
Before his majesty now raise
Adoring hymns of grateful praise!

Bow humbly down, your sins confess;
Pour out your soul, on mercy rest.
Since Christ triumphant bears your woe,
Repent, his cleansing mercy know.

Rise joyful now and Jesus bless
For his imputed righteousness,
His sovereign kindness, lavished grace,
His freely dying in your place.

Pay all your vows and cheerful bring
The gifts he gave; give back to him.
His gifts, so vast, his life outpoured—
Ourselves we lay before you, Lord.

Come, Word of Life, yourself reveal;
Your truth make us to know and feel;
Inflame our minds to love your ways;
Make us a sacrifice of praise.

Come, Jesus Christ, sweet heav’nly Bread,
And with your life this table spread,
Then grateful we will solemn dine
On hallowed bread and sacred wine.

Now go into the world in peace,
And bear the burdens of the least,
And bathe your neighbors’ feet in love,
So Christ they’ll know and praise above.

Douglas Bond, Copyright, June 4, 2008

No Wiggle Room: The Five Unshakeable Solas NRH 07

Rome to Geneva Bond Tour 2015

NEW REFORMATION HYMN 07 (NRH 07)

Creator God, Our Sovereign Lord (8.8.8.8.8.6.)

I originally collaborated on this hymn with Paul Jones, Music Director, organist, and composer at Tenth Presbyterian, Philadelphia, he providing the excellent musical composition, and I the poetry. It's based on the five "solas" of the Reformation, sola Scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria, with a refrain based on John Calvin's personal seal, "My heart I offer thee, O Lord, promptly and sincerely." We entered it in a Calvin 500 commemorative hymn writing contest based in Geneva... and lost; they said it was too doctrinaire, or something like that, and preferred a hymn written in commemoration of Calvin's 500th birthday (July 10, 1509) to be more conciliatory with modern ideas about God and religion.

Watch for this hymn and others on a forthcoming album composed and arranged by Greg Wilbur.

• Listen to the Audio: CREATOR GOD OUR SOVEREIGN LORD, by Douglas Bond/Paul Jones

Creator God, our Sovereign Lord,
The heavens tell, the stars have shown,
Your splendor, might, and Deity,
Yet Truth lies in your Word alone.
                        My heart to you, O God, I give,
                        And by your Word I live.                                               
                       
In Truth your Word reveals my guilt,
My lost, unworthy self makes known,            
But now made new I’m justified
And live and move by Faith alone.
                        My heart to you, O God, I give,
                        And now by Faith I live.

Before you made the world you chose,
In love, to send your only Son
To ransom me and make me one
With Christ, my Lord, by Grace alone.
                        My heart to you, O God, I give,
                        And now by Grace I live.

O Christ, Redeemer, Savior, King,
Subdued by grace, I am your own;
Enthrall my soul and make me free,
Reformed, redeemed by Christ alone.
                         My heart to you, O God, I give,
                         And now in Christ I live.

O glorious God, who reigns on high,
With heart in hand, before your throne,
We hymn your glory ‘round the world   
With psalms adoring you alone.
                          My heart to you, O God, I give
                          And for your glory live.

                                 Douglas Bond, Copyright, October 31, 2007

Brief commentary:
Creator God, our Sovereign Lord, by Douglas Bond, is written in quatrains of iambic Long Meter with a developing refrain arranged in an 8.6 couplet in iambic meter. The five stanzas are organized around the five theological priorities of John Calvin and the Protestant Reformation, expressed in Latin as, Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, Soli Deo Gloria, and in English as the Bible alone, Faith alone, Grace alone, Christ alone, to God alone the glory. The refrain makes parallel references to these five solas, and also alludes to Calvin’s inscription on his personal seal, Cor meum tibi offero, Domine, prompte et sincere, or in English, “My heart I offer thee, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.”

Giving Birth, the Epidural, and Writing Hymn Poetry (NRH 04)

NEW REFORMATION HYMN 04 (NRH 04) Triumphant Jesus (Long Meter, LM, 8.8.8.8.)

While reading CH Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, wherein he was waxing eloquent (as only Spurgeon can do and so often does) on the phrase "The Lord mighty in battle" from Psalm 24, the following lines came to me, considerably more rapidly and effortlessly than is remotely normal for me. Poetry is whole-being labor, not quite so extreme as that cosmic and peculiar kind God carried my wife through six times over when delivering our children into the world, but to me at times it feels sort of like that when writing. But not on this one. I had a spiritual, theological, and poetic epidural anesthesia.

Triumphant Jesus is another effort of mine to write Psalm-like lyrics, the veil torn back, and all the glorious blessings of the New Covenant in full view, lyrics that have that Psalm-like warrior component so appealing to young men--and, alas, so conspicuously absent in the output of the well-intentioned but sometimes vacuously emotive lyric of some worship leaders shaped more by the dictates of a feminized culture than by the themes and attitudes of the Psalms. (Hymn poetry) Several able composers have written fine music for this lyric.

Triumphant Jesus bore the cross
Of cruel passion, curse, and loss;
He routed sin, and death, and woe,
And Satan my infernal foe.                   

Yet does the fiend still prowl and lurk,
His schemes upon my heart to work.
But God before me who can stand
When Christ in battle guides my hand?

Since Christ my Savior works within,
No more am I a slave of sin.
The hopes of hell and Satan wrecked,
No more can he charge God’s elect.

No power of flesh or demon’s might
Can snatch from me Christ’s blood-bought right.
I more than conquer by the Word
Of Christ my Captain and my Lord!

                                Douglas Bond, Copyright, December 12, 2007

Pairing Cherry Coke with Filet Mignon in Worship

Would you pair this with Cherry Coke?

“Beautiful music,” said Luther, “is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.” Polarized as we are in the church over what music qualifies as beautiful, I do wonder what Luther would have to say after he had a good listen to some of our sung worship today.  

In the last fifty years church music has undergone a radical metamorphosis. While most Christians applaud these unprecedented changes, I sometimes feel like many efforts to blend the timeless truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ with pop music modeled after the entertainment industry work about as well as pairing Cherry Coke with filet mignon. 

Not surprisingly, in response to the tendency of worship leaders to prefer music composed in the last fifty years, there are those who want to recover the beauty of what is often termed classical music. I have the highest regard for composers of great music like Bach and Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mahler (and Luther); my music collection is full, among other things, with their music. I would love to see another generation of God’s people develop a renewed appreciation of the splendor and beauty of music that strikes the chord of eternity in worship (regardless of genre). But I wonder if our zeal to bring this about at times consumes our wisdom.

GAZING ON THE MUSIC

In my church experiences over the years, I have found myself jolted out of meditation on the Living God in worship by a liturgy feature that worries me. While I attempt to take the words of the silent prayer to heart—“Turn my heart to you, O Lord.”—I am deftly steered clear of that by a prominent text identifying the music being played, “Prelude in B-flat major, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847).” To be blunt, it strikes me as intrusively academic and, dare I say it, elitist, to be confronted with this information so prominently. While attempting to quiet my heart before the Lord in preparation for worship, I am diverted by details straight from the syllabus of a music appreciation course. 

Furthermore, I wonder how it strikes an unbelieving visitor. There’s already plenty of high register elements surrounding an unbeliever in Christian worship, and then we club him with this wholly unnecessary one. Whereas the music itself might have helped lift him above the ordinary and commonplace, the labeling in the bulletin creates a Berlin Wall, one that in all likelihood will appear to be a snub. “We are a sophisticated church of elite music snobs,” the labeling appears to be saying. “You’re welcome here if you become one too.”

HIGH-BROW MEDITATIONS

For believer or unbeliever, the placarding of the music and composer has shifted us from high thoughts of God to high-brow thoughts of Western art music. The prominent music labeling in the bulletin reminds me of the derailing distraction that happens in a liturgy where worshipers are pointed to a sculpture or painting of Jesus instead of to JESUS himself. So in this case, art enshrined on a pedestal inadvertently trumps the true Object of worship. 

The prominence of the music and the composer is made still more preeminent by what is sometimes left out. Oddly, in some bulletins we do not identify the author of the poetry in the hymns—Newton or Cowper, Watts or Wesley—yet we contort ourselves placarding the music and composer.  Oddly, as I prepare to sing, “Take my life and let it be / Consecrated Lord to thee,” I am confronted with the important fact that Franz Liszt who was born in 1811 and who died in 1886 wrote the music Consolation being now played by the musician (while poet Francis Havergal’s name is never mentioned).

WORDS COME FIRST

But what’s so wrong with drawing attention to the music and the composer? After all, in the opening pages of Genesis (4:21) it says that “Jubal was the father of all who play the lyre and pipe.” And we learn about the Sons of Korah and their important role as musicians and composers of music for worship. And don’t some Psalms lead off telling us the actual name of the tune, for example, “Doe of the Dawn” (22)? What’s the problem? It’s all right there in the Bible?

The problem is precisely because it isn’t all right there in the Bible, not in the way it is in some of our printed worship guides. In the Bible the music is only very rarely identified in the inspired liturgy of the Psalms. While the vast majority of the Psalms identify the poet who, under Divine Inspiration, wrote the poetry of the Psalm, very few of the 150 Psalms identify the name of the tune, and fewer still identify the musical composer. What's more, the smartest OT scholar on the planet does not have a clue what "Doe of the Dawn" sounded like; as much as me may wish they had, not a riff from an original Psalm tune has survived--but ever jot and tittle of the words of 150 Psalms has.

Why are the Psalms so frequently attributed to the poets but so seldom to the musicians? Likely it is because Christianity is all about the Word of God, revealed to us in a book filled with words, including the most glorious poetry ever penned. While “…music is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us,” and ought to have a central place in Christian worship, the Bible and Christian worship is first and last all about the words. 

The way some of our worship guides identify music and text, however, one would think it were the reverse. Music comes first, the words come after. I don’t believe this is our priority in worship, but simply looking at the order of service in some bulletins on a Sunday morning and it feels like this: “Turn my heart to the Sonata quasi una Fantasia Op 27. No. 2, O Lord, and turn me to Ludwig van Beethoven, and to his birth year in 1770 and to the year of his death in 1827, O Lord.” When we do this, our zeal to recover classical music has become the Cherry Coke of the metaphor.

THE SOLUTION

In the interest of doing everything we do in word and deed as we sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs in the name of Jesus (Colossians 3:16-17), a Christ-centered liturgy would do well to include neither the composer’s name nor the poet’s name in the progression through the printed guide to worship.

Let’s stop thinking of our printed liturgy as a polemic on our theology of worship in which we showcase our sophisticated classical music taste. If we do choose to identify artists, we would do well to be Psalm-like in our priority, never subordinating poetry and poet to musical composition and composer. The simplest solution? Identify hymn writers and composers in footnotes at the end of the bulletin—back page, small print, after the announcements and notifications. Soli Deo gloria!