Why did we grow up singing Christian hymns in school assemblies? Why do Christians always seem to come with songs attached? Christianity has always been a singable thing because Christianity has always been good news, however bad things seem to get.
The Tale of a Hymnbook
In my first week at secondary school we were given our own little blue hymnbook. We were told to write our name on the inside cover, to bring it with us to all hymn practices and assemblies, and to keep it in respectable condition. We were told how we could do this by fitting them into the inside pockets of our school blazers. These pockets were, in fact, suspiciously hymn-book-shaped. It was as if the whole process had been designed to ward us off from carrying around anything more exciting, dangerous and/or delicious.
Whatever state that we
or our little hymnbooks
were in, these strange
words seemed to stay
with us, however little
we knew it at the time.
Young boys, however, always seem to find a place for such things. Hence, we often managed to wedge in various coins, football stickers, half-eaten chocolate bars, and inexplicable wads of receipts. I can only assume that we only kept such a volume of receipts so as to seem a little more grown-up, as if a day might come when we’d be required to provide a comprehensive account of all tuck shop purchases to a jury. In any case, those little blue hymnbooks sat there in those custom-tailored pockets like awkward paving slabs. You dug around them, not within them, to find treasure.
Strange Words
Over time, the pages of those hymnbooks inevitably became significantly less “respectable”. Upon teacherly inspection, however, you could always pretend their dog-eared state was down to pious overuse, as though in your spare time you really had been poring over the verses. Respectably or otherwise, these hymnbooks accompanied us throughout our entire school life. We sung from them (or pretended to) several times each week, year after year.
We weren’t remotely “Christian” as far as we could tell at the time. So we had little idea what any of what we were singing about actually meant. At breaktimes we’d occasionally mock-sing the more dramatic-sounding lines, like Jerusalem’s “bring me my bow of burning gold…” (a fitting prelude to a playground skirmish), or Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer’s “feed me ’til I want no more!” (a wonderful ode to the lunch queue). Whatever state that we or our little hymnbooks were in, these strange words seemed to stay with us, however little we knew it.
Strange Memories
Given the quite
remarkable promises
offered in such words,
it’s a strange thing
we didn’t pay more
attention to them
at the time.
Today I think back to such words very differently, conscious of all I missed out on by not caring about them at the time. Odd lines still return to me now and then, usually inspiring some fresh investigation into their origins. One such hymn was Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us (Thomas Edmeston, 1821). My actual memories of singing that hymn weren’t particularly delightful. One especially gloomy line often came to mind: “lone and dreary, faint and weary / Through the desert thou didst go”. It seemed to sum up precisely what it felt like to be at school on a cold, dark, damp November morning.
Dreariness to Joy
Strangely enough, the 1986 editors of the New English Hymnal actually tried to get rid of that line, swapping it for something more generic, because they “felt it desirable to abandon the description of our Lord as ‘lone and dreary’”. Yet it is only because of Christ’s actual aloneness and dreariness that we have anything worth singing about at all. Jesus knows about cold, dark, damp November mornings. He knows not as a distant observer but as one who inhabited this earth, who felt “its keenest woe”, and who took it all with Him to the Cross.
As Edmeston’s last verse evokes, the Spirit who descended upon Jesus before the wilderness is the same Spirit who descends upon us today, filling our hearts with heavenly joy, love, pleasure, and indestructible peace:
Spirit of our God, descending,
Fill our hearts with heavenly joy,
Love with every passion blending,
Pleasure that can never cloy:
Thus provided, pardoned, guided,
Nothing can our peace destroy.
Given the quite remarkable promises offered in such words, it’s a strange thing we didn’t pay more attention to them at the time. A lifetime of tuckshop receipts couldn’t come close to cataloguing the delights offered so freely in this Gospel.
There’s something
about songs of worship
that gets at something
fundamental in the
longings of the human
heart.
A Singable Gospel
Hymns like these kept getting sung across generations because they kept speaking profound truth to the depths of the human condition. The words to articulate that condition might change between centuries, but the condition does not. And this remains the case even for those who consider themselves beyond the naivete of “religion”. Who hasn’t at some time felt the need of divine guidance “o’er the world’s tempestuous sea”? What honest person hasn’t cried out to God (whoever they thought he might be) at their darkest (or finest) hours? There’s something about songs of worship that gets at something fundamental in the longings of the human heart.
Singing For a Reason
I read an old Cliff College student’s diary from the 1940s last year. One particular event struck me: a band of “Cliff Trekkers” were singing hymns in a town square when, suddenly, a crowd of a hundred or so people spilled out of the nearby cinema. Immediately they found themselves joining in spontaneously with the Trekkers. This crowd seemed to find the singing of those hymns irresistible.
I think it used to be better understood in all echelons of western society that Christianity was a singable thing. And I think that people knew that it was a good thing that it was. Perhaps other singable things have now replaced what many people found so comforting in Christianity in this part of the world. But Christianity is not merely the expression of emotion about something we love, such as sport or general camaraderie. Christianity and hymns go together for a reason. And that reason is fundamental to what Christianity is: “O Death where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?” (1Cor. 15:55).
More Than a Mere “Idea”
To know this Gospel
is to feel it,
and to feel it
is to sing it.
It is often the singability of Christianity that provides us (and even those around us) with an anchor in the storm. Hardened atheists like to think such “anchors” are delusional. We may let them laugh, but it won’t stop them wondering in the midst of their own tempestuous seas at some point in life.
The Christian Gospel is not merely an “idea” that works well in a hymnbook. It is itself an inherently singable thing. It’s not about imagining that you could have indestructible peace if you really felt like it; it is actually to have this peace, as those liberated into true freedom. This is the Gospel that “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light” (2Tim. 1:10). To know this Gospel is to feel it, and to feel it is to sing it.
Singing Not Optional
Wherever there have been Christians, it seems, there has been singing. There are literally countless songs directly attributable to Christianity, probably numbering in the millions. The Bible itself even has its very own hymnbook – the Psalms – tucked inside its own middle pocket. It is no bland singalong textbook, it’s full of colourful, vibrant, even disturbing songs which traverse the ups and downs of human existence before a holy, mighty, loving (but often perplexing) God.
Like the message to
which they point,
the songs of the
Bible have teeth.
Like the message to which they point, the songs of the Bible have teeth. It was the song of Moses that crowned the Israelites’ liberation from slavery and the destruction of their enemies (Ex. 15:1-21). It was the songs of Paul and Silas that were shaking prisoners’ hearts even before the earthquake broke their chains (Acts 16:25). It’s no surprise that Paul went on to tell the Ephesians to “address one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph. 5:19). Christian songs are powerful things, not optional things.
The reason Christianity is a singable thing (and always has been) is because Christianity is a good news thing (and always will be). It’s why schoolchildren carried hymnbooks around with them long before they truly knew what they were carrying. It’s why Christians must continue to pray that such songs will bear unexpected fruit in those grown-up schoolchildren who may still remember them. It’s why, however tempestuous the seas, Christians mustn’t ever stop singing.