TheoLog

Singing the Incarnation

by Mark Bonnington, 14 Dec 2011

One of the great things about worship is that gives us words that we cannot find for ourselves to express faith, devotion and adoration. I never cease to be amazed at the banality, repetitiveness, lack of creativity, repetitiveness and sheer uninventiveness (did I just make that word up?) of my own ways of expressing the depth and power of what God has done for us in Christ. Hearing Scripture read and preached, celebrating the gospel in prayer and praise – these things lift me from the grey world of my own imagination to thrill once more at the character and actions of the God of glory and of grace.

Quite often recently I have found myself moved to tears in worship at some aspect of the gospel arriving unexpectedly at my door with new power or persuasiveness. Perhaps it’s just sentimental old age, but being moved by truth still feels life-enhancing. Due to preach one Sunday morning a few weeks ago I found myself in tears as my wife and I prayed together, as we usually do, during the preceding communion. Ruth asked with gentle concern : ‘Are you going to be all right?’ It was fine – tears of joy and thankfulness seem easier to control than those of grief. But it would have been nice to have had space to linger longer on the grace of God.

In between these precious moments I find I live with nothing as serious or worthy as waves of doubt or spiritual despair. Instead vast, grey, flat oceans of mediocrity, dullness and spiritual listlessness fill the landscape and seem in danger of becalming my prayers or sapping my spiritual vitality.

Suddenly in the reading of Scripture, in hearing the gospel and in praying the prayers and singing the hymns of the God’s people my heart is lifted by gospel truth. This hymn of Charles Wesley’s does this for me every time. First published in 1745 in a collection of Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord  it is described in the commentary on Hymns and Psalms as possibly the boldest statement of the doctrine of the incarnation in the English language.

That I don’t know how to sing this hymn properly in no way diminishes the punching power of the words. The usual C18th tune is not great, though at a Methodist communion at St John’s College the pianist gave it a good go. The result was something that only the most diehard traditionalists would call ‘lively’. The later tune Ellacombe is better but a bit too ‘plinky plonky’ for the majestic words. Twelve years ago Shona Shaw set these words to a more modern tune for me so that we could sing it in Kings. Not exactly right for regular congregational worship, she described it as a hymn tune crossed with Jamiroquai. We had a fascinating conversation around her piano as we discussed a draft of the tune. I wanted a slight pause between ‘being’s source’ and ‘began to be’ to stop the very compressed meaning coming out garbled, and she couldn’t make that work in every verse. Frustrated that we couldn’t quite get on the same wavelength she eventually sat back on the piano stool and said: ‘OK, I see, I’m trying to make the tune work and you are trying to make the words work.’ What it really needs is a tune that only a full orchestra and Welsh male voice choir could do justice to. Nothing less will really do. With Shona’s help, for a few moments, a new tune allowed Wesley’s words to open a window on the glories of Christ for a whole congregation way beyond anything I could express in the earlier sermon.

One problem of the hymn is that the repeated theological contrasts are so numerous and expressed in such compressed language that on a single run through their depth and power simply cannot be assimilated (and ‘clod’ doesn’t help!). Yet precisely these contrasts, between the glory of Christ’s divinity and the abject humility of his intimate incarnate identification with us, give the hymn its power. It is as if Wesley is taking John 1.14: ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us...’ and hammering it home with repeated theological blows: God on high – peace on earth, invisible – appears, maker – humbled, being’s source - begins to be, God – born, Lord of earth and skies – humbled to the dust, etc.. The thread of the nativity story runs right through. The other allusions to Scripture are numerous. The movement of the verses is subtle: the first slightly emphasises divinity (God on high, the invisible, Great I AM), the second the event of the incarnation at Bethlehem (angels’ tidings, God is born!), the third Christ’s humanity (a mortal, an earthly clod, humbled to the dust, in a manger). Finally the fourth is the response and reminds us, as the does the Nicene Creed (‘for us men and for our salvation...’), that the church confesses and celebrates this closeness of God on behalf of all humanity (‘we sons of men’): ‘Jesus is our brother now and God is all our own.’ I have lots of favourite lines here. Top of all comes verse 4 line 3: ‘shout Immanuel’s name’. When praying the hymn ‘shout’ is just the right verb in the right place to express my exultation in God’s grace.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a congregation today that could grow familiar with this hymn and truly comfortable with its truth? Wonder, joy and humility would surely course through the veins of such a body of Christ’s people.

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