We are what we sing -- again

Yesterday I commented on the hymn “And Are We Yet Alive,” and to a much lesser extent “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing.”  Both of these hymns (texts by Charles Wesley) play an important part in the history of the Methodist movement.  This is not only because they are hymns that we frequently use in worship, and therefore that the great majority of Methodists know (or at least recognize).  These texts are also important because they serve to carry the freight of traditional Methodist theology.

Charles Wesley wrote an average of 10 poetic lines a day for 50 years. He wrote 8,989 hymns.  He wrote hymns that taught and reinforced understanding of the basics of scripture and of Methodist theology.  In “And Are We Yet Alive” for instance, according to The United Methodist Church’s Discipleship Ministries website:

The original four stanzas represent a progression through the Wesleyan "way of salvation." The first stanza reminds us that God's prevenient grace has been present with us, preserving and protecting us even in our absence from one another; the second that God's justifying grace has saved us from sin and imputed to us his righteousness. In the third stanza, we see that God's redeeming grace has saved us and starts the work of regeneration in us. The final (omitted) stanza reminds us that God's sanctifying grace continues to work in us until the day we finally meet Christ, moving us from our imperfect state to entire sanctification.

The measure of great church music is that it transports the heart and mind heavenward.  Great music is not a theological treatise, that aims at the intellect only.  But neither is it mindless repetition that purposes to create feeling to the neglect of understanding: (O come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come… to the church in the wildwood).

Our worship time is too short, its opportunities too precious, to fritter away on meaningless verbiage.  Fred Craddock used to say that “We don’t get nourishment by chewing, but by chewing food.”  He was talking about preaching.  But it works for church music as well.