Hymns and Hymnwriting     •     Echoes of Creation

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As this collection begin to take form, I looked for a common thread or theme: the tag "Echoes of Creation" came to mean several things. Creation itself evoked a song of praise: and we should still hear it, although faintly through our darkened nature. But as part of creation it is our responsibility to join that song: as fallen creatures our voice is dimmed but not silenced. Finally, in creating anything: whether song or poem or computer program or casserole or crocheted pattern or machine or well-framed cabinet or waterproof roof, we as humans are in a faint way imitating the Creator of All: and we are made to create, because we are made in the image of a Creator.

Creation--space-time--contains all our experience: but, by the grace of revelation, the range of our experience extends far beyond our own lifespan. Now, the spatial aspect of creation is well-represented in our songs; I made a conscious effort to express the temporal aspect as well. Here, "sunrise" is at once a time, a direction, and a recurring event. As the gospel is set in temporal context, the schema naturally follows dispensational periods:

1. Noah, Abraham, Lot
2. Moses and the prophecied divine warrior
3. Jesus

I deliberately avoided proper names, although anyone who knows the bible stories should recognize the primary allusions.⁰ But the point is that there are patterns in God's actions of which these events are merely examples.

This song consists largely of simple lists.¹ But that is no excuse for lack of coherence or absence of logical development! The verses are tied together in a variety of ways, arguing by example that God's actions similarly form a perceptible pattern. I wouldn't expect anyone to see all the connections in one reading: but when writing for adults one would want to stimulate thought, not constrain it to a narrow but well-worn channel.

For example, the Noah half-stanza consists of a list of four items: two active birds, a plant, and a physical atmospheric phenomenon. But those fourteen words evoke the whole story of the end of the flood one one level; on another, they introduce the ideas of revelation, sacrifice, creation, obedience, covenant: not as 3 but as ever-present aspects of human experience.

The second half-stanza was written with Abraham and Lot in mind: of other mornings when God warned them, or of yet another morning Abraham went out not daring to hope for a substitute sacrifice. But I hope a reader may be reminded of other mornings, and may be reminded that there are more instances of the pattern than we can know.

At the syntactic level, the text exhibits a variety of poetic devices: anaphora, assonance, rhymes; parallelism and chiasmus on multiple levels; contrast and paradox. At the semantic level, I introduce theological terms only at the end, and only terms that can be semantically connected to human experiences that have already been introduced.²

Use

We have few enough morning songs in our books. This song is about morning, but about every morning, not this morning: another way of saying to God, "your covenant faithfulness is new every morning⁴." Therefore it need not be limited to morning use. It might be used as a song after the Lord's Supper, because of the reference to the resurrection.

And one way of using a text is to write it. That alone is a kind of offering even if the text is never used in community worship. I suspect that the same impulse which drives some people to prepare flower arrangements for the church building, or bulletin boards for classrooms, acts in its own idiosyncratic way on me. And, yes, perhaps a congregation could worship even if none of its members had felt a creative impulse all week. But ... God made us in His own image, and the creative impulse is surely one aspect of that image. So God creates, and we create. God may create a planet, a life-form, a crystal even though it awakens no sense of wonder in any sentient creature, even though it is never perceived by any living creature until the end of time. It is enough for the creator that it was created.

Music

This text needs a vigorous tune: both strong and lively. The Welsh hymn tradition is especially rich both in trochaic 8/7 meter and in general vigor; anyone interested in hymn tunes solidly rooted in the best of folk music will find untold riches there. And I seriously considered several Welsh tunes. But I eventually settled on the well-known adaptation of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." It is a bit of an old warhorse, of which our hymnals make such little use that it could well bear one more rarely-used text.

Notes

⁰Note how the language of the song simultaneously quotes the biblical description of one event while alluding to another. That's not a failure of memory! It's in fact a common feature in prophetic and poetic biblical texts.

¹Our hymnal includes a pop song "Jesus, name above all names", consisting almost altogether of a list of theological names for Jesus. But I should be extremely disappointed if anyone saw any likeness between my use of lists and that! Even with my feeble, undeveloped poetic sense, that song repels me by its arrogant denunciation of effort: "why should I" (the author seems to say to me) "bother to put any thought or effort into preparing a ram for the sacrificial offering of your lips? If you are sufficiently contemptuous of all logic, morality, or beauty, as to pay copyright fees for this incoherent drivel, simply because it has what may pass for a catchy tune, then you deserve nothing better. And God neither deserves or expects anything better from you."

I have, with my best thought and effort, aimed at forming a coherent and aesthetic form, in the belief that the church no less than God deserves that. Though it be no purebred prize-winner, it is from the best of my flock. And it is no mercenary project, no commercial offering, no attempt to make merchandise of the worship. In fact, it's not even really written with an expectation that it could be widely used. If someone sees, from this, how a true desire to praise God would lead to more spiritual criteria for choosing the vehicles of praise--then my main purpose will have been accomplished. And I suspect they would then go elsewhere to find or create better hymns of praise, which would be far better than mere thoughtless use of my efforts.

²The sacrificial aspect is perhaps the most obscure connection. One of the "morning" events that was in my mind as I wrote the song, was the ram Abraham found in a thicket on Mount Moriah. Eventually the verse filled out, leaving no room for more specific allusions.

³I abhor and deprecate our careless habit of flinging theological terms around like watermelon seeds at a picnic, making no effort to embed them in a real context or imbue them with a real meaning. Such an approach fosters a shallow arrogance; a mindless emotional participation in worship; an attitude of "see, I must be religious, I feel so emotional, so pious when I use these pious words." That is exactly what "Jesus, name above all names" does. And that is precisely the attitude of the notorious pharisee of the parable.

But in reality, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PIOUS WORD! All words are human conventions based on human experience. If we don't connect our theological vocabulary to human experience, we might just as well be spouting Scientologist^TM mumbo-jumbo. So I've made a determined effort to use ordinary English (as the Holy Spirit used ordinary Hebrew or Greek) -- and, if I slipped in some rare words, at least they are just as rare in modern hymns and sermons as in modern news reports or scientific papers. (For instance, "oblation", probably in this respect the worst offender from any of these texts, occurs in the King James Version; but its synonym "sacrifice" is much more common in modern theological language.)

⁴Lamentations 3:23.

This text, © Stephen Hutcheson, 2005, and offered freely for use under a Creative Commons License. These studies are created by members of the West Allen Church of Christ in Allen, Texas