Third Sunday in Lent Year A

This week the choir will be back in the “Lofty Pews” as we head deeper into Lent.  Here are some stories of the hymns today.

Our processional hymn will be “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” by Robert Robinson set to an early nineteenth-century folk-hymn tune.  It has gained wide acceptance and use in the hymnals of many Christian denominations across the United States.  Robert Robinson had a rough beginning.  His father died when he was young and his mother, unable to control him, sent him to London to learn barbering.  What he learned instead was drinking and gang-life.  When he was 17, he and his friends reportedly visited a fortune-teller.  Relaxed by alcohol, they laughed as she tried to tell their futures.  But something about the encounter bothered Robert. That evening he suggested to his buddies that they attend the evangelistic meeting being held by George Whitefield – one of history’s greatest preachers, with a voice that was part foghorn and part violin.

That evening Robert sobered up and sensed Whitefield was preaching directly to him.  The preacher’s words haunted him for nearly 3 years, and on Dec 10, 1755, he gave his heart to Christ.  Soon thereafter, Robert entered the ministry  and at 23, while serving in a parish in Norfolk, England, he wrote this hymn for his sermon on Pentecost Sunday.    

The sequence hymn for this day will be “Rock of Ages”, by Augustus M. Toplady. A hymn certainly recognized by millions of Christians today. 

~Robert Morgan tells his story in Then Sings My Soul, stories of the world’s greatest hymns.  On November 4, 1740, a baby in Farnham, England, was given the formidable name of Augustus Montague Toplady.  His father died in a war, his mother spoiled him, his friends thought him “sick and neurotic,” and his relatives disliked him. 

But Augustus was interested in the Lord.  By the age of 12 he was preaching sermons to whoever would listen.  At 14 he began writing hymns.  At 16 he was soundly converted to Christ while attending a service in a barn.  And at 22 he was ordained an Anglican priest. 

As a staunch Calvinist, he despised John Wesley’s Arminian theology and bitterly attacked the great Methodist leader.  “I believe him to be the most rancorous hater of the gospel-system that ever appeared on this island,” Augustus wrote.  In 1776 Augustus wrote an article about God’s forgiveness, intending it as a slap at Wesley.  He ended his article with an original poem, the first verse of our sequence hymn today.

August Toplady died at age 38, but his poem outlived him and has been called “the best known, best loved, and most widely useful” hymn in the English language.  Oddly, it is remarkably similar to something Wesley had written 30 years before in the preface of a book of hymns for the Lord’s Supper: “O Rock of Salvation, Rock struck and cleft for me, let those two Streams of Blood and Water which gushed from they side, bring down Pardon and Holiness into my soul.”

Perhaps the two men were not as incompatible as they thought.~

“Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah”, by William Williams will be the post-communion or recessional hymn.  The Great Awakening of the 1700’s was a revival to many parts of the world.  In America, we had George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards.  In England the open-air evangelism of Whitefield and the Wesley brothers did the same.  In Wales, it was the preaching of Howell Harris and his convert, William Williams.

Williams, son of a wealthy farmer, graduated from the university as a physician, intending to become a medical doctor.  But hearing a sermon that Harris preached while standing on a gravestone in Talgarth churchyard, he was converted.  Soon thereafter, he changed professions to become a physician of the soul—a preacher with an itinerant ministry.  He is best remembered, however, for his hymns.  In all, he composed over 800 hymns. 

Many years later, when President James Garfield was dying of an assassin’s bullet, he seemed to temporarily rally and was allowed to sit by the window.  His wife began singing this hymn, and the President, listening intently, began to cry.  To his doctor, he said, “Glorious, Bliss, isn’t it?”  This hymn was also sung at the funeral of England’s Princess Diana.

Several stanzas of this hymn are seldom sung.  One of the best reads:

“Musing on my habitation, musing on my heav’nly home;

Fills my soul with holy longings: Come, my Jesus, quickly come.

Vanity is all I see; Lord, I long to be with Thee.”

The music chosen for Eucharist is “Humbly I adore Thee, Verity Unseen” and was used as a private devotion among the prayers of preparation for the Mass, with an ascription to Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274).  The text is a personal meditation on the Eucharistic elements.  In the original piece, st 6 would have been translated  “Dear pelican, Lord Jesus, cleanse me, unclean, in your blood, one drop of which can save the entire world from all wickedness.”  According to medieval legend, the pelican is able to revive her dead children with her blood.  In another version of the legend, the pelican feeds her own blood to her children when food becomes scarce.  The comparison with Christ is found in several sources, and the story is occasionally depicted in Anglican church buildings.

This ancient hymn will be sung in plainsong by Bruce Moberly and Sharon Helppie.  You may read the words in your hymnals at hymn #314.