Tower and Town, March 2021

  (view the full edition)

Clergy Letter: Singing The Faith

The first time I heard The Hallelujah Chorus I got the giggles and couldn’t stop laughing. I was six or seven years old, in school assembly, and I had never heard anything so wonderful and joyous. A few years later I came into the sitting room one day to find my mother and her sister sitting by a log fire listening to I know that my Redeemer Liveth, also from The Messiah. They weren’t talking but enjoying each other’s presence, lost in the beautiful music. A decade later, a school friend of my wife, Jane, sang it at our wedding. A few weeks ago, we played it as we left the crematorium after my mother’s funeral. Such glorious music is timeless and touches us at different times in our lives. At this time of Lent, when we are in another lockdown, it is so uplifting and encouraging to listen to music and with Handel’s Messiah to know that our redeemer, Jesus Christ, lives and is with us in this trying time.

Music has always been important to me and a vital expression of my faith in Jesus. My maternal grandparents were Methodists in North Devon and worshipped in a little chapel just on the Hartland side of the boundary with Clovelly. They were always singing folk songs and hymns as they went about their work on the farm. Gran loved her hymn book, and often if she was too tired to pray, she would read a hymn as a prayer. How right she was. Sometimes the words of a hymn will express just what I want to say, when I haven’t got the words. It is just like the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament.

The Psalms are the hymns and prayers of the Jewish people. They would have been the prayer book of the early Church. I love the Psalms and have found them a great help throughout my life and especially during the pandemic. They cover every human emotion and situation. The Psalmists are not afraid to bring their true feelings to God. So, one might be praising God for the wonders of creation, whilst another is crying out of the depths of despair. One is angry with God, whilst another thanks him for his loving goodness. One asks why God has abandoned him, and another thanks him for always being there. However we are feeling, or whatever we are thinking, there is a Psalm which expresses just that. Throughout the centuries, the Psalms have been set to music, helping us in our worship and encouraging us in our faith.

The Methodist Hymn Book of 1933 states in the introduction that ‘Methodism was born in song’. The founders of Methodism in the eighteenth century, John and Charles Wesley, understood this. John preached the good news of Jesus and Charles wrote hymns – more than six thousand of them – often setting them to the catchy, dance tunes of the day. Every line of all Charles Wesley’s hymns relates to a verse in the Bible, so that the Christian people known as Methodists, like all Christians, are singing their faith. Today’s Methodist hymn book is called Singing the Faith, reminding me that when we leave church after an act of worship, the words of a hymn are usually going round in our heads, rather than the words of the sermon.

Singing the Faith is more than a book of Wesley’s hymns. It does contain such gems as Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Love Divine, all Loves Excelling, and O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing. However, it also includes ancient hymns, such as Aurelius Clemens Prudentius’ fourth century hymn, Of the Father’s love begotten, and St Francis of Assisi’s twelfth century hymn, All creatures of our God and King. Numerous hymns and songs down through the ages to the twenty-first century hymns of John Bell, Graham Kendrick, the Taize community, Stuart Townend and others help us to worship God and express our faith. I love the mixture of ancient and modern hymns and music which helps and encourages us in our faith journeys, and which we find in all Christian worship, whatever the denomination.

During Lent, Marlborough Christians Together are holding a series of talks and discussions on Wednesday evenings on Zoom to explore Finding God in the Arts (the details are given on page 26). Alongside finding God in film, poetry, humour and fine art, we will be discovering God in music, which is such a rich resource and powerful source of inspiration, touching our lives in so many ways.

I am looking forward to what will be an encouraging time on Zoom, as Christians Together, but I am also eagerly anticipating the time when we can meet safely for worship and sing our faith together again. We might not manage The Hallelujah Chorus, but we will sing our praises with gratitude and gusto, from the bottom of our hearts.

Stephen Skinner