The hymn writer

Now. The children are gone; you’ve had the scripture reading so it must be time for the talk. A chance to relax, put the brain in neutral and catch up on those mental list of jobs next week. He should be good for 20 minutes – plenty of time to think. Safe in the knowledge that you’ll know when he’s finished nattering because George will start banging the piano to wake you from your peaceful reverie.

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint but we’re not going to do that this week. I’m afraid I am going to tax your grey matter so I want you’re full attention. We’re going to have an ecclesiastical version of that old family favourite “Name that Tune”. The maestro here will play the opening lines from a well-known hymn. As soon as you know, I want you to stick up your hand. As soon as someone has his or her hand up, we will stop the music and ask the volunteer for the name of the hymn. If you are right, we will all be impressed and if you are wrong we will treat you with complete contempt and derision and keep playing until someone else has a guess.

OK? You’ve got the rules sorted. Excellent. So off we go:-

MP 33	And Can it Be	Charles Wesley
MP 31	Amazing Grace	John Newton
MP 110	Darkness Like a Shroud	Graham Kendrick
MP 76	Christ the Lord is Risen Today	Charles Wesley
MP 162	From Heaven You Came	Graham Kendrick
MP 102	Come Thou Long Expected Jesus	Charles Wesley
MP 173	Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken	John Newton
MP 340	In the Tomb So Cold	Graham Kendrick
MP 424	Lo He Comes with Clouds	Charles Wesley
MP 251	How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds	John Newton
MP 445	Lord the Light of Your Love	Graham Kendrick
MP 449	Love Divine All Loves Excelling	Charles Wesley
MP 465	Meekness & Majesty	Graham Kendrick
MP 496	O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing	Charles Wesley

OK that’s it. Well done. Now, here’s a question for the real experts. If we look at this list of famous hymns, can anyone see any links between them? There are 14 hymns there – all in Mission Praise and between them they only have 3 authors – prolific hymn writers all. Any guesses as to who they might be? Graham Kendrick, Charles Wesley and John Newton.

To give you an idea, just how prolific these three were, in true anorak style, I have been through all 798 hymns in Mission Praise and can tell you that John Newton wrote 4 of them, Charles Wesley a much more productive 19 and Graham Kendrick a positively greedy 62. Now I don’t know whether any of you have given much thought to these poor old hymn writers but I have. A long number of years ago in our little rural church in Yorkshire, I organised a Top Ten Songs of Praise. You know the sort of thing, people vote in the parish magazine for their top ten hymns of all time, you add up the votes and create a top ten for the parish and string a service around singing the ten hymns.

To make our service more interesting, we did two things. Firstly, we replaced the organist with the Northallerton Silver Band for the evening – a clever ploy to get 20 more people into the church but something of a musical tragedy it has to be said. Secondly, I did a bit of background research on the writers of these top ten hymns so that I could introduce a bit more colour as I introduced each hymn.

I found this a surprisingly interesting process and one that revealed a lot to me about the people and about the nature of personal faith. It also makes the hymns that much more meaningful so I thought I would impose this research on you this morning.

Our first writer is the hugely prolific Graham Kendrick. Our Graham – as George and I have come to know him, was born in Northamptonshire in 1950. He trained as a teacher but launched out as a full time Christian singer/songwriter sin 1972. The statistics about his songs are truly amazing.

When Songs of Praise ran a national version of my little Top Ten competition a couple of years ago, Shine Jesus Shine came in at number 6, making Kendrick the only living author represented. The Church Copyright Licensing listings (the Ecclesiastical version of the charts) cite that 9 out of the top 25 hymns sung weekly in a cross section of Christian churches are Kendrick compositions and 80 out of the top 500.

From our most prolific modern day songwriter to one of the most prolific of all time – Charles Wesley. Now when I say prolific, I mean prolific. Wesley is reckoned to have written over 6000 hymns. He was born in 1707 and was, of course, the younger brother of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. The two brothers, three days apart each underwent a profound conversion experience and set out to stir up in others the sort of powerful awareness and response that they had experienced. John was a powerful preacher and Charles a gifted musician and composer.

And last but not least we have John Newton. Now here was a real character. Newton was born in London in 1725, the son of a merchant ship commander who went to sea with his father at the age of eleven. In 1744, he was press ganged into service on a man-o-war, the HMS Harwich. He found conditions intolerable, deserted, was recaptured and publicly flogged. He exchanged service onto a slave ship, became servant to a salve trader who brutally abused him and was rescued by a friend of his father. He ultimately became the captain of his own slave ship.

He had no religious conviction but on a homeward voyage his ship was hit by a terrible storm. He wrote in his journal that when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed “Lord have mercy on us”. Later in his cabin he reflected on what he had said and came to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him.

He gave up the slave trade and seafaring and became surveyor of tides at Liverpool where he got to know George Whitefield an Anglican deacon who became the leader of the Calvinistic Methodist Church. Newton became an enthusiastic disciple; met John Wesley whom he greatly admired and applied for ordination and eventually became curate of Olney in Bucks.

He became very good friends with William Cowper the poet and between them they published Olney Hymns which became very popular and featured 280 of Newton’s hymns.

So there you have it. 3 very different but prolific hymn writers and a bevy of trivia that may stand you in very good stead at some future village quiz night. But what’s the point of all this? Well the point is this. All of these hymn writers have set out with a common objective and that is to evangelise and to use the power of their words and music to drive home something that they feel passionately about.

In every case, the hymn writers have one objective in mind and that is to touch the hearts of each and every one of us with the message of salvation. They want us all to share in an experience that has changed their lives and they hope will change ours, namely the discovery of God’s saving love available to us all. Some of their hymns are very personal. They describe the process by which the hymn writer has experienced God at first hand and how that experience has shaped their lives and I want to show you a couple of examples of that change.

Firstly, from John Newton – our slave ship captain saved from the storm. His most famous composition was Amazing Grace. Remember his conversion came through a realisation that God’s saving grace was at work protecting him from the rigours of the storm and we have his words:-

“Through many dangers toils and snares

I have already come

Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far

And grace will lead me home”

His discovery of God’s saving power was gradual. It was not a Road to Damascus conversion – one off dramatic event. His change came through a realisation that the Holy Spirit (the Amazing Grace) was with him and could work through him as his faith developed.

Contrast this with Charles Wesley, who with his brother John had a much more dramatic change experience. Remember Wesley’s experience was not that of a non-believer like Newton suddenly finding belief. Wesley was a committed and dutiful Christian. He, with brother John, had been ordained. What they discovered was that this God of theology and ritual was actually a loving God who could engage your emotions as well as your mind – that was their breakthrough and it was a shattering experience for them. An experience of complete involvement that pulls you up short such that you are never the same again.

The hymn that captures this for me is And Can it Be, probably my favourite of all Wesley’s compositions. Look at this hymn (which we can do in a moment as we are going to sing it) and you can never again think of 18^th century hymn writers as dry and dusty. This is raw emotion – the story of Charles Wesley’s voyage of emotional discovery.

It starts like all good searches for fulfilment with questioning. And can it be that I should gain an interest in my saviour’s blood? Died he for me who caused his pain? I know he died and I know he was my saviour, all that’s in scripture but could it possibly have been that personal? For me??

He goes on to wonder at the enormity of Jesus’ sacrifice. “He left his Father’s throne above – so free, so infinite his grace. Emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race” And then in Verse 4 – I love this bit, the penny drops. Wesley changes. He realises the answers to the questions that he asks in Verse 1. The answers are all yes. Christ did die for him – personally. Yes – God’s love is that great and we get that emotion pouring out from Wesley’s pen.

Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and natures night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke, the dungeon filled with light. My chains flew off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth and followed thee.

Wow. You can almost picture it. Wesley sitting in prayer and contemplation, tortured by his insignificance and incapability when suddenly – bang, it all makes sense and he can write something as powerful as that. Doesn’t it make you jealous!!

I want to come on to what all this has to do with today’s reading and what it means for us in a moment but for now, let’s enjoy Wesley’s amazing words and see if we get some sense of his experience as we sing And Can it Be – Number 33.

Hymn 33 – And Can it Be

In John’s gospel today, Jesus tells his disciples “ Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life”. So what does this mean? And what’s it got to do with John Wesley and John Newton and Graham Kendrick?

Well it is all about change. The need for us to change to repent to turn around from one life to another. The sort of transformation through Christ’s spirit that John Newton refers to in Amazing Grace, or Graham Kendrick in Darkness like a shroud when he says “Arise Shine your light has come” or Wesley “My chains flew off”. Christ tells us that the seed must die to bear fruit just as something in us must die if new life is to rise in its place.

We hear entreaties all around us on TV, in the press, in songs to “live life to the full” “Look after No 1” “Do your own thing” Jesus declares in very simple and stark words that that will only lead to us losing our life in heaven. “He who loves his life loses it and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” That doesn’t mean you have to hate yourself. It means that you must recognise that living for yourself will never really supply what you really want out of life. It means that we must start with a surrender of our lives to Jesus – to recognise our lives are not our own. Remember, your life is not your own it was bought for you at a terrible price by God in the form of man dying on the cross 2000 years ago.

This was the realisation shared by our hymn writers and expressed so eloquently by them. I doubt that our realisation will result in anything as creative as an enduring piece of music – but it might just change our lives for the better. It might give us some sense of the awe, joy and peace expressed in the hymns and as we have talked so much about Charles Wesley who expressed his faith through words and music.

It seems fitting that we should finish with some words from his brother John – always the better preacher. He was asked on his 85^th birthday to say a few words and he said this – which sums up his total surrender to the way of Christ and his absolute recognition that his life was not his own but owed to Jesus who had paid for it with his life, death and resurrection. This is what he said.

“I have only to say; My remnant of days I spend to His praise, who dies the whole world to redeem; be they many or few, my days are his due and they are all devoted to him”

Tom Crotty