Great (Hymn) One Liners 13. The wine of the world

For me, one of the greatest English language hymns that I have never sung (in a congregation) is Lift up your voice and sing. 

It is a reflection on freedom in the context of slavery and oppression in America, and framed in the language of the Exodus.  Although it could apply in many situations it has never resonated outside Black America and those who are its allies.  It has been sung at the SuperBowl, and especially in the context of George Floyd's death - but certainly not at Wembley or Westminster Abbey  This is why I have never got to sing it, having only once preached in a Black American church.

It deserves far better and although much of it is movingly written, the line I have chosen is in the last verse which applies the spiritual warning for the freedom ahead - a verse sometimes left out perhaps exactly because it is so spiritual:

[Keep us forever in the path, we pray . . .] Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Freedom is painful to achieve, wonderful if it is gained, potentially intoxicating when it is known.  The devil loves oppression, division and hatred, but he is clever enough to do well in freedom too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_Every_Voice_and_Sing

Great (Hymn) One Liners 12. Conscience

Growing up with evening services I have memories of setting sunlight on pews and sometimes quite doleful evening music with quite doleful evening congregations.  There were, happily, many exceptions to this.  Overall I used to, and still do, prefer evening services to morning ones.  London thankfully has many evening services but there are many English towns with hardly one at all.

So it is rare today that a congregation sings At even e.er the sun was set, a hymn which is full of great lines but strangely the only one of Henry Twells' hymns to make it into 20th century consciousness before the 21st century snuffed it out.

I think a special line, describing gathered worshippers, recognises a genuine mark of holiness:

and they who fain would serve thee best are conscious most of wrong within

Too many of us worship with an attitude of entitlement, but a God-sensitive conscience will never allow this.

For other blogs in this series click on the 'hymnline' tag

Great (Hymn) One Liners 11. More

Matt Papa's worship song What love could remember was written in this century but owes its greatest line to an 18th Century sermon by John Newton which inspired it:

Our sins they are many, His mercy is more

Among great hymn lines it is hard to imagine a greater one than this.  We come to worship trying to block out of our thoughts the behaviours of another week, the things undone or scarcely done or wrongly done.  Yet in coming to our great yet forgiving and merciful God we discover that the pile of detriment is dwarfed by the sea of mercy.  Something John Newton had needed to depend on more than many.

Hallelujah.

For other blogs in this series click on the 'hymnline' tag

Great (Hymn/Anthem!) One Liners: 10. Zadok and Nathan

After a short blog break I can't resist cheating for my next Great Hymn One-Liner.

It is not a hymn!  So it really is a cheat.

And it's not great!  So it's a total cheat.

But it is worth a blog for more than one reason.  So what is it?  It's a line from the Anthem sung at the fundamental moment in the Coronation of the Monarch in Westminster Abbey.  The words are 

Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon King . . .

It references Solomon's coronation, recorded in 1 Kings Chapter 1.  It references it, but it takes plenty of liberties because it ignores Benaiah and a whole bunch of others - the Cherethites and the Pelethites. 

Its use in English coronations goes back into antiquity, but the setting now used for hundreds of years is the setting by Handel.  What makes this a great one liner in my opinion (though not just mine) is that Handel has taken just about the most boring line imaginable and somehow elevated it to the position of highest drama.

By a clever and long introduction that seems repetitious but changes in all kinds of subtle ways the composer prepares us for a dramatic line. A pause and the choirs come in at full volume.  What they are singing is lost in the fact that they are singing and the setting they are singing in.  

It is the triumph of music over meaning and is therefore perhaps as great a lesson in musical worship as any of the great one liners we have looked at.

(To see the whole series click on the hymnline tag)

Great (Hymn) One Liners 9. The Gate

 It's Easter, and today our Great Hymn One Liner comes from a German hymn.  Generally Easter hymns are simple by the very nature of the event.  Whilst profound in its significance, the Resurrection of Christ tends to be sung about in straightforward terms.  And why not?

henceforth is death but the gate to life immortal

The line neatly captures the forever transformation that Easter Day brings to the singer, and everyone else, who believes.   Nothing, following the resurrection, will ever be the same again, ever.

There is such a difference between the brick wall that unbelievers see themselves  hitting in death and the gate to a new future that the believer in Jesus sees.  This is a glorious day to be a Christian.  Yet in  truth, so is every other day!!

Great (Hymn) One Liners 8. In man for Man

A vast array of memorable lines are on offer for Good Friday.  I am going for a line that, frankly, most people singing it probably do not grasp (here I am judging others by my own weaknesses, it is true).

The double agony in man, for Man. should undergo.

The line comes from 'Praise to the holiest in the height' by the Victorian Anglican-turned-Roman Catholic John Henry Newman.  The line describes the extent of the generous love of God in Jesus who died for us.  

The whole hymn is deep and dense, but here Newman uses the simplest of words - in man for Man - to describe the humiliation of God becoming human (Agony Number One) in order to save humans by his death (Agony Number Two).

Did you see what happened there? I took a long and complex sentence - Newman took four words totaling eleven letters. 

These agonies are the agonies of this day, and our good salvation.

(To see the whole series click on the hymnline tag)

Great (Hymn) One Liners 7. Ride On

The essence of great one liners is that they say an enormous amount in a tiny space.  On Palm Sunday approaches (as I write) this one line comes from an old Palm Sunday hymn, Ride on, ride on in majesty.

In lowly pomp ride on to die

If this seems like just an obvious line for Palm Sunday it might be worth pointing out

a) lowly pomp  This is all but a meaningless expression - pomp is exactly the opposite of lowly.  Yet lowly pomp is exactly what was on display as Christ rode the young donkey into the great city.  Incongruous, yet true; and incongruity is in the middle of the atmosphere of Easter.

b) ride on This phrase captures the partial nature of this journey.  He is riding, but he must ride on.  There is very little Gospel in Palm Sunday though at first glance it is almost the best news imaginable. The point of Jesus entry into the city was, in fact, to leave it.  

c) to die. He made evident to his disciples - who did not really listen - that he was up to Jerusalem in order to die.  A ride to the triumph of the cross.

Henry Milman, who wrote this hymn, was far from a great devotee of the Gospel - but he was a great writer and here, in 7 short word, he captured a lot that is essential about Easter week.

Great (Hymn) One Liners 6. To the loveless

 Recently we sang this line at Communion:

Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be

Samuel Crossman's hymn, one of the first written in the English language, is full of poignant phrases of which this is perhaps the most profound.  A threefold use of love which in summary describes the operation of the love of God on lost humanity.

Love is used in many ways in the lives of people and via the media, but never is it so wisely located as it is here.

Great (Hymn) One Liners 5. The Way In

On St Patrick's Day it seems only right to have a one liner from a hymn written in Ireland.  

This line summarises something which passes a great many people by - including almost the entire UK education system.

He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in

From the children's hymn, There is a green hill far away this line expounds so many things in so few words.  You can't just choose to go to heaven (and nor could your dead relatives).  There is a way of getting to heaven - there is only one way though.  The Way is a person, one person.  There was no other good enough.

Cecil Frances Alexander, wife of the sometime Archbishop of Ireland (earlier Bishop of Londonderry), may have been writing catechetical hymns for children, but she also gave us all something important to remember as we approach Easter.

(for more in this series click on the hymnline tag below)

Great (Hymn) One Liners 4. Reaching the Light

Thomas Binney goes against the grain of the first three in this series (tag hymnline below) in that he wrote very few hymns, though he was a prolific writer.  None he wrote are really sung much any more either, but one that should be - perhaps the only one - is Eternal Light.

The whole hymn is amazing poetry, but Binney excels himself and perhaps nearly all other hymnwriters when he describes the answer to the question of how (sinful) human beings can hope to reach, or even live, in God's eternal light  . . .

An offering and a sacrifice, a Holy Spirit's energies, an Advocate with God.

Rarely has anyone captured so succinctly so many of the riches of the Gospel, for which we truly owe God our song.

Great (Hymn) One Liners: 3. God's Peace

It's St. David's Day - the national day of Wales - so it only seems right to have a hymn line from William Williams, the most famed welsh hymnwriter.  In this verse he is describing the peace of God:

O! anchwiliadwy fôr, Sy’n cynnwys ynddo’i hun Ryw annherfynol stôr;

The hymn is set in the context of battle but describes the Gospel as the banner that assures peace.  And in this line, O well of peace . . .

O deepest ocean, containing within it, unending stores.

As we have already seen in these blogs, the sea and the sky supply hymnwriters with the poetry of divine greatness - and in a troubled world, how wonderful to reflect that this metaphor of endlessness is also applicable to God's peace in which we rest day by day.

Great (Hymn) One Liners 2. God's Hands

 In this series of blogs I'm looking at some of the great lines in hymns and songs in the Christian faith.  Of course these do not carry the weight of great texts from the Bible, but many summarise vast ideas in poetic genius. The series can be selected by using the 'hymnline' tag.

Two things that are easily but wrongly assumed are that:

1. Old hymns have depth and new ones don't

2. People who write many hymns and songs write lines that cannot have lasting significance.

This blog series will debunk Point 1. On Point 2, nearly all hymn/song writers have written vast amounts of material, much of which has long been discarded (in some cases by the writer themselves).

With this in mind my second one-liner in this series comes from my own lifetime - and Spring Harvest, and Graham Kendrick.:

Hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered.

No matter that the stars were not flung, this line profoundly describes the bewildering sacrificial love of God in Jesus Christ.  

My surrender to him can never match his surrender for me.

Great (Hymn) One Liners: 1. God's limitlessness

In this series of blogs I'm looking at some of the great lines in hymns and songs in the Christian faith.  Of course these do not carry the weight of great texts from the Bible, but many summarise vast ideas in poetic genius. The series can be selected by using the 'hymnline' tag.

John Mason is a relatively mystical figure from the troubled 17th century in England.  He was hugely admired both for his preaching and his godly spirituality and his poetry and hymnody has made its mark.

Francis Jackson, one of the greatest church musicians in 20th century England, and who lived to over a hundred years old, selected Mason's hymn 'How shall I sing that Majesty which angels do admire?' for his funeral service in York Minster last year.

There are few hymns which explore in such depth the sheer glory of God - and even in that hymn no line which so captures the infinity of God as this:

_________________________

Thou art a sea without a shore, a sun without a sphere.

_________________________

Though Francis Jackson was a phenomenal musician, he recognised in the choosing of this hymn the unlimited greatness of the God who cannot be limited to any borders, let alone the walls of York Minster.