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.

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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.

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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)