New Hymn Text - Save Us, God
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Hello everyone! I’m in the midst of my intensive class on the theology and practice of the sacraments this week, so I’m going to keep this brief, but I wanted to introduce a new hymn.
I don’t know about other liturgists/worship planners, but there are some yearly worship services I plan that have never felt quite right for my context. Give me all the Easter Vigils and Easter Sundays and Advent services, and I’m a happy camper. But for some reason, Good Friday has always felt off somehow at ResCov (Resurrection Covenant Church). Traditionally, there’s not much to the service; you read the Passion narrative, perhaps blow some candles out (if you’re doing a Tenebrae service), sing a few songs, adore the cross (in some traditions), and leave. Yet, when I have planned it, it has always felt too plug-and-play, too formulaic. Somehow the other services seem to draw the worshiper and their contemporary lives into the story, and I often feel shut out by or distanced from the Passion narrative.
Perhaps it is the evangelical crucicentrism that I grew up with that hasn’t allowed me to see other aspects of the cross beyond my sins killing Jesus who died to satisfy my debt (“Behold the man upon a cross, / my sin upon his shoulders. / Ashamed I hear my mocking voice / call out among the scoffers. / It was my sin that held him there / until it was accomplished”). For people like myself who tend toward self-castigation, I’m not sure we need a night set aside for meditating on how, in addition to our many and diverse other failings, we also killed God. Then there’s also the way the narrative has been used to fuel antisemitism throughout history.
Obviously there is much more to the crucifixion, and I understand that some of these aspects are my own limitations, but this past Good Friday, I wanted to try something different with my community that has largely been formed in a similar evangelical theology. Instead of the traditional service, I planned one that would be a sort of mirror image of the Easter Vigil. So, I chose seven readings from the biblical narrative where people faced death and were still waiting for salvation; people stuck in those Good Friday or Holy Saturday moments: Cain killing Abel (Gen. 4:1-12); the Hebrew people caught between the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s pursuant army (Ex. 14:5-12); Jonah swallowed by the whale (Jon. 1:7-17); Ezekiel looking out on a field of dry bones (Ez. 37:1-3); Jesus mourning Lazarus (John 11:28-37); the death of Jesus (John 19:16b-30); and his burial (John 19:38-42).
As I began choosing songs, I realized that there weren’t many that spoke specifically to these moments before salvation. Using the aforementioned Exodus story, I thus wrote a song that people then and now could sing when caught in situations that seem inescapable.
Save us, God.
Save us, God.
On the shores of fear
as the soldiers near,
save us, O save us,
save us, O save us, God.
Save us, God.
Save us, God.
From the poisoned path
of the empire’s wrath,
save us, O save us,
save us, O save us, God.
Save us, God.
Save us, God.
When the nations crave
powers that enslave,
save us, O save us,
save us, O save us, God.
Save us, God.
Save us, God.
When we cannot see
how you set us free,
save us, O save us,
save us, O save us, God.
© 2024 GIA, Inc.
Right when I finished, I knew that Mark Miller would bring the necessary pathos to the text, and boy, did he ever! Here’s a demo where I play about 3/4 of the notes Mark so skillfully composed:
You can purchase the music here.
Wonder-ings
As I mentioned, I’m prepping for my class on the sacraments, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite quotes on the sacramental imagination—seeing God in the ordinary stuff of life:
The sacramental principle is “to see God in all created things. In other words…God is revealed in the whole created world; and in that sacramental perspective, everything is understand as an access, or a transparency, to the presence and action of God…[O]rdinary things can be instruments of grace…an object, a physical, created object can bear the holy, can be an instrument or means of grace…The sacramental sense is not narrowly Christian because it is grounded in a certain understanding of our humanity.”
-Louis Weil
and:
“Everything is, or can become, a sacrament. It depends on human beings and the way they look at things. The world will reveal its sacramental nature insofar as human beings look at it humanely, relating to it and letting the world come inside them to become their world.”
-Leonardo Boffand:
“And so, God who was serene and distant and uninvolved was no good to us. We needed a God who was willing to be incarnate.
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.
We needed a God, who, whatever the cost to himself, was willing to come down out of his bliss and, like the river, carry this evil out of our world. We needed a God who was willing to live on amongst us in his sacraments.”
-John Moriartyand:
“To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. When we do it knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, destructively, it is a desecration.”
-Wendell Berryand:
“One of the most important—and most neglected—elements in the beginnings of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendor that is all around us in the creatures of God.”
-Thomas Mertonand:
“Granted, in daily speech, where we don’t stop to consider every word, we all use phrases such as ‘the ordinary world,’ ‘ordinary life,’ ‘the ordinary course of events.’ But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone’s existence in this world.”
-Wisława Szymborska
and, perhaps my favorite:
“Hawks huddled disgruntled against hissing snow. Wrens in winter thickets. Swallows carving and swimming and slicing fat grinning summer air. Frozen dew outlining every single blade of grass. Salmonberries blackberries thimbleberries raspberries cloudberries snowberries strawberries blueberries gooseberries. My children learning to read. The sinuous liquid flow of rivers and minks and cats. Fresh bread with waaaaaaay too much butter. My children’s hands when they cup my ancient grizzled face in their hands. Exuberance and ebullience. Tears of sorrow which are the salt sea of the heart. Sleep in every form from doze to bone-weary. The shivering ache of a saxophone and the yearning of an oboe. Folding laundry hot from the dryer. Cobblers and tailors. A spotless kitchen floor. The way horses smell in spring. Postcards on which the sender has written so much that he or she can barely squeeze in a signature. Opera on the radio. Toothbrushes. The postman’s grin. The green sifting powdery snow of cedar pollen on my porch every year. The way a heron labors through the sky with such vast elderly dignity. People who care about hubcaps. The cheerful ears of dogs. All photographs of every sort. Tip-jars. Wineglasses. The way barbers sweep up circles of hair after haircuts. Handkerchiefs. Libraries. Poems read aloud by older poets. Fedoras. Excellent knives. The very idea of albatrosses. Thesaurii. The tiny screws that hold spectacles together. Book marginalia done with the lightest possible pencil. People who keep dead languages alive. Wooden rulers. Fresh-mown lawns. First-basemen’s mitts. Dishracks. The way my sons smell after their baths. The moons of Jupiter, especially Io. All manner of boats. The fact that our species produced Edmund Burke. Naps of every size. Junior Policemen badges. Walrussssses. Cassocks and surplices. The orphaned caps of long-lost pens. Welcome-mats and ice-cream trucks. All manner of bees. Cabbages and kings. Eulogy and elegy and puppetry. Fingernail-clippers. The rigging of sailing ships. Ironing-boards. Hoes and scythes. The mysterious clips that girls wear in their hair. Boddhisatvas and beauticians. Porters and portmanteaus. Camas and canvas. Bass and bluefish. Furriers and farriers. Trout and grout. Peach pies of any size. The sprawling porches of old hotels and the old men who sprawl upon them. The snoring of children. The burble of owls. The sound of my daughter typing her papers for school in the other room. The sound of my sons wrangling and wrestling and howling and yowling. All sounds of whatever tone and tenor issuing from my children. My children, and all other forms of coupled pain and joy; which is to say everything alive; which is to say all prayers; which is what I just did.”
-Brian Doyle
May you find God’s presence shining through the simplest, most overlooked stuff of our world—even your very self.
Peace,
Dave