crosscurrents
17/1/19
WESLEY HYMNS
On July 8th we celebrated the publication of the new Wesley Hymns in a service where several people chose their favourite hymn and explained why. One of the hymns chosen was , Lord, my inward ear (Hymn 47 which was chosen by Glenn Kesby.
He wrote
In our Wesley Hymns project, we were aiming not only to protect, in print, a valuable part of our Wesleyan Methodist history, but also to offer a new resource for use in our private prayers, meditations and worship. It’s in thinking about the second purpose I selected Open, Lord, my inward ear (Hymn 47). Its emphasis is on quietness, stillness and contemplative reflection.
The first two verses quieten us down to be receptive to God’s quiet and comfortable voice that, when we’re ready, we will hear from within. We withdraw from the distractions of the noisy world. We wait silently and in stillness. There are allusions to Elijah’s experience, in 1 Kings 19, watching earthquake, wind and fire pass by - only to discover that God was not in these impressive, turbulent events, but that God’s still, small voice was in the silence that followed.
By the third verse we are ready to hear the secret of God’s love and Jesus’ sacrifice for us, and to begin our response to this sacrifice.
The remainder of the hymn asks for awareness of our sins to the extent that we are able to understand and bear them, and to humble us. Then we’re ready to put the rest of our earthly lives into God’s hands.
This Wesley hymn hadn’t really stood out to me until five years ago, when David Cruise asked me to sing it for a service about Charles Wesley - the man. I find the poetry both beautiful and surprisingly modern. The tune then was the one we’ve included in the hymn book, written in 2010 by Nicola Morrison
On July 8th we celebrated the publication of the new Wesley Hymns in a service where several people chose their favourite hymn and explained why. One of the hymns chosen was , Lord, my inward ear (Hymn 47 which was chosen by Glenn Kesby.
He wrote
In our Wesley Hymns project, we were aiming not only to protect, in print, a valuable part of our Wesleyan Methodist history, but also to offer a new resource for use in our private prayers, meditations and worship. It’s in thinking about the second purpose I selected Open, Lord, my inward ear (Hymn 47). Its emphasis is on quietness, stillness and contemplative reflection.
The first two verses quieten us down to be receptive to God’s quiet and comfortable voice that, when we’re ready, we will hear from within. We withdraw from the distractions of the noisy world. We wait silently and in stillness. There are allusions to Elijah’s experience, in 1 Kings 19, watching earthquake, wind and fire pass by - only to discover that God was not in these impressive, turbulent events, but that God’s still, small voice was in the silence that followed.
By the third verse we are ready to hear the secret of God’s love and Jesus’ sacrifice for us, and to begin our response to this sacrifice.
The remainder of the hymn asks for awareness of our sins to the extent that we are able to understand and bear them, and to humble us. Then we’re ready to put the rest of our earthly lives into God’s hands.
This Wesley hymn hadn’t really stood out to me until five years ago, when David Cruise asked me to sing it for a service about Charles Wesley - the man. I find the poetry both beautiful and surprisingly modern. The tune then was the one we’ve included in the hymn book, written in 2010 by Nicola Morrison
Alison Gowman chose Hymn number 49 Where shall my wandering soul begin? She wrote ? Because it was written in May 1738 immediately following the conversion experience of Charles Wesley on 21st May.You may know that I am a trustee of the Aldersgate Flame the 15 foot bronze sculpture of a flame standing outside the entrance to the Museum of London in Aldersgate Street- marking the spot where John Wesley on 24th May had his own conversion in a Bible Study meeting near that spot. This second date is the one that Methodists commemorate as Wesley Day or Aldersgate Day and the Sunday nearest is also a time of reflection in many Methodist Churches. We share a service at the grave of Charles with St Marylebone Parish Church on this Sunday every year.
This hymn in a sense speaks to the experience of both brothers. Something I personally find quite difficult partly because I cannot point to a time or a day as to the start of my faith and secondly because of a reserve about speaking of such personal matters. The bronze Flame is actually one of three symbols of this very religious moment. There is one of the gates of Postman's Park next to the church St Botolph's Aldersgate and one more recent on the concrete wall of the Museum at the corner of Aldersgate Street. It was probably the older one that I recall was mentioned in a sermon by Rev Dr John Newton who was quoting a French diarist describing his visit to London and wrote that in Paris we put up statues to men of war and mark battles but here in London they mark a matter of the heart and soul.
This remark makes me proud to be a custodian of such a meaningful landmark.
This hymn in a sense speaks to the experience of both brothers. Something I personally find quite difficult partly because I cannot point to a time or a day as to the start of my faith and secondly because of a reserve about speaking of such personal matters. The bronze Flame is actually one of three symbols of this very religious moment. There is one of the gates of Postman's Park next to the church St Botolph's Aldersgate and one more recent on the concrete wall of the Museum at the corner of Aldersgate Street. It was probably the older one that I recall was mentioned in a sermon by Rev Dr John Newton who was quoting a French diarist describing his visit to London and wrote that in Paris we put up statues to men of war and mark battles but here in London they mark a matter of the heart and soul.
This remark makes me proud to be a custodian of such a meaningful landmark.
Come on, my partners in distress (wh 96)
Most of the films of the great director Ingmar Bergman involve intense studies of personal relationships within families or small groups in the Sweden of his time or a little earlier. But one of the greatest of them all is quite different. It opens with an immensely long panning shot of a desolate Danish landscape stricken by the Black Death. Eventually there appears, crossing it, a solitary knight, returning empty-handed and disenchanted from what had begun as the idealistic adventure of going on Crusade, and it transpires that he is now committed to what will prove to be a losing game of chess with Death. A voice over intones the account in Revelation of the opening of the seven seals of the Book of Life, the first six accompanied by the horrors of conquest, war, famine, martyrdom, earthquakes and death. But when the Lamb opens the seventh seal, instead of some culminating catastrophe the text reads "there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour", apparently a bathos but in truth one of the most stunning climaxes in all literature.
Bergman was far from being alone in recognising the impact of those words and using them to artistic effect, and in this hymn Charles Wesley echoes them masterfully at the end of the penultimate verse and the beginning of the next: " …. and silence heightens heaven. - In hope of that ecstatic pause …."
This is a hymn about heaven, drawing widely, in those and other phrases, on the imagery of the book of Revelation, especially in the closing verses, but also capable of the astonishing leap outside the Newtonian cosmology of Wesley's day displayed in verse 2: "Beyond the bounds of time and space".
Do not be put off by being addressed as "partners in distress". Charles was by no means a miserable or tormented person. He was happily married and after sharing, in earlier years, his brother's rôle of a travelling preacher had for the last 17 years of his life settled here in Marylebone with his family as a gentleman of modest but adequate means, still a leader of London Methodism but also participating in the literary life of the capital and holding musical soirées at which the precocious talents of his sons Samuel and Charles junior were displayed. He describes life here as "this vale of tears" not because it lacked its own comforts but in order to highlight what was to him the incomparable superiority of the life to come. Many of his hymns end in heaven; this one is there throughout.
John Hicks
Bergman was far from being alone in recognising the impact of those words and using them to artistic effect, and in this hymn Charles Wesley echoes them masterfully at the end of the penultimate verse and the beginning of the next: " …. and silence heightens heaven. - In hope of that ecstatic pause …."
This is a hymn about heaven, drawing widely, in those and other phrases, on the imagery of the book of Revelation, especially in the closing verses, but also capable of the astonishing leap outside the Newtonian cosmology of Wesley's day displayed in verse 2: "Beyond the bounds of time and space".
Do not be put off by being addressed as "partners in distress". Charles was by no means a miserable or tormented person. He was happily married and after sharing, in earlier years, his brother's rôle of a travelling preacher had for the last 17 years of his life settled here in Marylebone with his family as a gentleman of modest but adequate means, still a leader of London Methodism but also participating in the literary life of the capital and holding musical soirées at which the precocious talents of his sons Samuel and Charles junior were displayed. He describes life here as "this vale of tears" not because it lacked its own comforts but in order to highlight what was to him the incomparable superiority of the life to come. Many of his hymns end in heaven; this one is there throughout.
John Hicks
I have chosen Hymn No. 82: Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to me
This is John Wesley’s loose translation of the hymn “O Jesu Christ, mein schönstes Licht” by the famous 17th century German Lutheran pastor and hymn writer Paul Gerhardt.
Here’s the story – and this happens a couple of years before John Wesley’s heart was “strangely warmed” in his "Aldersgate experience" of 24 May 1738, at a Moravian Christian meeting.
- In October 1735, John Wesley (then aged 32) and his brother Charles sailed for America, where John, already ordained, was to become a minister at Savannah in the Georgia Colony – preaching both to Native Indians and colonists. Stayed just under 2 years.
- During the 4 month sea voyage, the Wesley brothers became acquainted with Moravian Christians, and John learned German from them.
- In Georgia, John discovered a 16 verse hymn by Paul Gerhardt in the Moravians’ hymnal.
- John Wesley was so taken by the hymn that he translated 9 of the original 16 verses into English.
- It meant a lot to him: in his final sermon before leaving Georgia, he quotes the 3rd verse as “his heart’s cry.” – the cry was later answered at Aldersgate.
- He then published the hymn in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739) where he titled it “Living by Christ—from the German.” In both the original and Wesley’s 9 verse version, it moves through all stages of life, both the easier times and the difficult times.
- More recently the published versions have 5 verses. Our version here uses 4 of Wesley’s original verses – while I can’t track down the provenance of our Verse 2!
- [Of these hymn books now usually use CH-1, 2, 3, 8, and 9. – but our version uses CH-1, ??. 2, 8 & 9.]
Scripture is referenced in every verse of this hymn. Echoes of Deuteronomy 6:5 (“Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength”) can be heard throughout.
Taking a quick look at 2 verses:
Verse 1: In the opening line of the hymn, we find the idea of Jesus’ “boundless love” that tongues cannot express nor “thought can reach.” This is also seen in Ephesians 3:18-19, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
[The “strange fires” of which Verse 3 speaks (Wesley’s V2 on which he preached) allude to Leviticus 10:1-2, [where the Lord destroyed Nadab and Abihu for using profane or unauthorized fire to burn incense in the tabernacle. The fire was to have come from the altar of sacrifice in the courtyard (16:12), a fire which God Himself had ignited (9:24). [Nadab and Abihu had substituted something foreign and unworthy for the work of God. And since the rising smoke of the incense was to picture praise and prayer ascending to God (cf. Ps. 141:2), what they did represents a fleshly religiosity and a carnal substitute for true worship, rather than being founded upon the shed blood of the sacrifice (picturing Christ).]]
In the final verse, John Wesley draws upon the paradox found in 2 Corinthians Chap 12 verse 9, Christ’s love being peace in suffering and power in weakness. Paul tells the Corinthians, “And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’”
Gerhardt and Wesley encourage us to show Christ’s love to our neighbor, knowing that Christ’s love will fill our very souls. As in verse 3. may our “every act, word, thought, be love.”
Our tune, David’s Harp – is actually older than John Wesley translation. It was first printed in 1722 in something called The Divine Companion – with slightly different harmonies. Beware of the 5th line where the lower and upper voices separate! I’ll ask Magi to play the whole hymn through before we sing it.
Ann Mckay
Taking a quick look at 2 verses:
Verse 1: In the opening line of the hymn, we find the idea of Jesus’ “boundless love” that tongues cannot express nor “thought can reach.” This is also seen in Ephesians 3:18-19, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
[The “strange fires” of which Verse 3 speaks (Wesley’s V2 on which he preached) allude to Leviticus 10:1-2, [where the Lord destroyed Nadab and Abihu for using profane or unauthorized fire to burn incense in the tabernacle. The fire was to have come from the altar of sacrifice in the courtyard (16:12), a fire which God Himself had ignited (9:24). [Nadab and Abihu had substituted something foreign and unworthy for the work of God. And since the rising smoke of the incense was to picture praise and prayer ascending to God (cf. Ps. 141:2), what they did represents a fleshly religiosity and a carnal substitute for true worship, rather than being founded upon the shed blood of the sacrifice (picturing Christ).]]
In the final verse, John Wesley draws upon the paradox found in 2 Corinthians Chap 12 verse 9, Christ’s love being peace in suffering and power in weakness. Paul tells the Corinthians, “And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’”
Gerhardt and Wesley encourage us to show Christ’s love to our neighbor, knowing that Christ’s love will fill our very souls. As in verse 3. may our “every act, word, thought, be love.”
Our tune, David’s Harp – is actually older than John Wesley translation. It was first printed in 1722 in something called The Divine Companion – with slightly different harmonies. Beware of the 5th line where the lower and upper voices separate! I’ll ask Magi to play the whole hymn through before we sing it.
Ann Mckay