Meridian Magazine :: Hymns of Atonement

Hymns of Atonement
By Orson Scott Card

The hymns we sing most often are the sacrament hymns, because taking the sacrament is at the heart of our worship almost every Sunday in the year.

And because each sacrament hymn is designed to prepare us for a holy ritual, the music and the words are designed to quiet our mood and bring us to contemplate the sacrifice of Christ.

Yet, because we’re LDS, we aren’t looking for hymns that make us sad. The atonement is a joyful event, and Christ’s suffering led to the possibility of our salvation. So the music is not somber, and the words are full of hope.

Ultimately, the goal is for the hymn to be sweet, in the best sense of the word. The way the fruit of the tree of life in Lehi’s dream was sweet.

Because we sing sacrament hymns so often, there are 29 of them in the hymnbook, starting with “As Now We Take the Sacrament” (169) and ending with “O Savior, Thou Who Wearest a Crown” (197). With an average of 48 sacrament meetings a year, that means we could go six months at a time without repeating.

Of course, some of the hymns are more beloved than others. I have never actually heard or sung “O Thou, Before the World Began” (189). I have sung “Again We Meet Around the Board” (186) but it’s a jumpy melody that’s hard to follow while also reading unfamiliar words. And it cuts out the male voices for fully a quarter of the hymn, which I always resent.

Similar problems with melody make “In Remembrance of Thy Suffering” (183) hard to learn, while “O Lord of Hosts” (178) has the men-don’t-need-to-sing-these-words problem.

A Rule

Personally, I think it should be a rule that no sacrament hymn should cut out half the congregation, ever. We all need to say these words.

I don’t know why I’ve never heard or sung “Again, Our Dear Redeeming Lord” (179).

In my experience, at least, our sacramental rites begin with the same 23 hymns C and 21 hymn texts:

“As Now We Take the Sacrament” (169)
“God, Our Father, Hear Us Pray” (170)
“With Humble Heart” (171; rarely sung)
“In Humility, Our Savior” (172)
Two settings of “While of These Emblems We Partake” (173-4)
“O God, the Eternal Father” (175)
Two settings of “‘Tis Sweet to Sing the Matchless Love” (176-7)
“Father in Heaven, We Do Believe” (180)
“Jesus of Nazareth, Savior and King” (181)
“We’ll Sing All Hail to Jesus’ Name” (182)
“Upon the Cross of Calvary” (184)
“Reverently and Meekly Now” (185)
“God Loved Us, So He Sent His Son” (187)
“In Memory of the Crucified” (190)
“Behold the Great Redeemer Die” (191)
“He Died! The Great Redeemer Died” (192; rarely sung)
“I Stand All Amazed” (193)
“There Is a Green Hill Far Away” (194)
“How Great the Wisdom and the Love” (195)
“Jesus, Once of Humble Birth” (196)
“O Savior, Thou Who Wearest a Crown” (197)

If you doubt me, think of how many of these titles (which are invariably the first line of the song) brought a melody to your mind. Most Latter-day Saints probably don’t immediately remember the melody of more than fifteen or sixteen of them; no doubt readers of this column tend to be those who are musicians and are likely to remember more of them.

This is not a problem to be solved. The very familiarity that comes from repetition of a small set of hymns is part of the comfort and peace that should be in our hearts as we partake of the sacrament.

If we’re struggling to follow a jumpy melody, or have to watch closely to notice when we’re supposed to stop singing, we’re not preparing for the sacrament, are we?

Some of the sacrament hymns are musically very interesting without being difficult; and composers and arrangers of the music include such luminaries as Bach, Mendelssohn, and Meyerbeer, such stalwart hymnodists as Careless, Beesley, and Gabriel, and LDS greats like Alexander Schreiner, Leroy Robertson, and Robert Manookin.

Differences in the Hymns

Some of the hymns mention taking the bread and water; some don’t. Some are in third person, some in second person, and some in first person. “I Stand All Amazed” is downright passionate; “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” ends with a call to action. The hymns can be quite different from each other, and still be part of the sacrament service.

The only rule that is consistent among all the hymns is that they are about the sacrifice of Christ and what the atonement means to us who sing the hymn. And the only constant among the popular hymns is that they are easily singable on first hearing.

Is there any room for more sacrament hymns? Of course. While most of these hymns are rather old, some were written in the last fifty years C which for a hymn is downright modern.

At the same time, there is also room for more hymns that touch on the core theme of Christ’s atonement, but then go in a direction that does not lead specifically to taking the sacrament.

Bread of Life and Living Water
By Orson Scott Card

Bread of life and living water,
Passing now from hand to hand,
Will unite each son and daughter
In the path their Father planned.

As we take the sacred token
Of the Shepherd who was slain,
All our hearts are newly broken
For our part in Jesus’ pain.

All our sins can be forgiven
By the giver of the gift,
Master of all earth and heaven:
He will span that hopeless rift.

Look with love at one another:
None are strangers in this place.
Every sister, every brother
Has come home through Jesus’ grace.

This hymn starts with the sacrament, as if the trays were being passed while we sing. Of course this is not the pattern that we follow, but I doubt the congregation will be troubled by such an obvious anticipation. The idea is that this hymn shows the pattern of what we should think about during the sacrament itself.

What the hymn asks the congregation to think of while taking the sacrament is, first, that they are sons and daughters of God, brought together according to his plan. Then they should have a keen awareness of their own sins, for which Christ suffered. Third comes the realization that the seemingly hopeless rift between sinners and their Father in heaven can be bridged by Christ.

Finally, the hymn asks the singers to look at their neighbors in the congregation and remember that in partaking of the sacrament we can’t be strangers to each other; we are all prodigals returning home to a forgiving Father.

Not Alone

It is that last turn of thought that this hymn exists for. I don’t think any other in the hymnbook has such a clear reminder that we do not take the sacrament alone, and that all of us are equal before the Lord. To me, this idea is very important C just like the fact that in the temple, all of us participating in the ceremony are dressed in identical clothing, so that there is no rich or poor in the temple congregation.

(This is why I wish we could do away with having the presiding officer at the meeting always receive the sacrament first; it troubles me that the custom has arisen for any individual, no matter how lofty his office, to have primacy in the symbolic reenactment of the atonement of Christ, the one time in our church lives when we should surely be completely equal.)

The next hymn starts with the same idea C our fellowship as Saints C and moves backward through the same storyline, always seeing the atonement through that lens.

The hymn presents a few challenges to the composer. If the first two syllables of the last line of each stanza are pickup notes, with the downbeat of the next measure on the third syllable, then they scan perfectly.

But if the downbeat of a measure falls on the first syllable, we have a problem, because in the last stanza (“Has come home through Jesus’ grace”), to have the word “has” be accented actually changes the meaning and tone of the line C as if someone had just said that he has not come home.

One solution is not to put a downbeat on the first syllable. Another is to revise the line:

Every sister, every brother
Welcomes you to Jesus’ grace.

Or:

Every sister, every brother
Knows the joy of Jesus’ grace.

I prefer the original version, of course. But if a hymn’s musical setting demands a change (remember “Yoo-hoo unto Jesus”!), then you make the change.

Here’s another hymn that might be suitable for the sacrament.

We Gather Here As Loving Friends
By Orson Scott Card

We gather here as loving friends.
For harm we caused, we make amends.
All wrongs we suffered, we forgive.
Our Savior showed us how to live.

As strangers once we walked alone,
Till he said, Come and follow me.
The wanderers he made his own
Are sisters, brothers now to me.

Together in the Savior’s name
We drink this water, eat this bread;
Before the Lord we are the same:
All ransomed by the blood he shed.

O Lord, we want to be thy saints,
To help each other learn and grow,
To share the burdens life presents,
To witness of the truth we know.

This may well have moved beyond the purpose of a sacrament hymn and might serve better as the opening song for sacrament meeting. Just because it mentions the bread and water does not mean that it can only be sung directly before the sacrament is blessed and passed.

Everything depends on the music. If it has that sweet quality I referred to, then it could be a sacrament hymn. But it would not be inappropriate for it to be more cheerful and sprightly, in which case it could begin or end the meeting.

The composer would need to make sure there was a clear stop after the first line. This is vital, because if the first two lines of the first stanza are sung without a clear division between them, the meaning is absurdly changed: “We gather here as loving friends for harm we caused.” We need to feel the period after the word Afriends@!

The next hymn is about Christ and includes the atonement, and could be a sacrament hymn. But it is not about taking the sacrament (neither are “I Stand All Amazed” and “Upon the Cross of Calvary”).

Morning Hymn
By Orson Scott Card

Will this morning show the way
That leads us from this dreary scene
To him who knows our hidden worth,
Whose blood can make us clean?

Will this evening when we pray
Be joyful at the good we’ve done
For love of him whose mortal birth
And death have made us one?

Will tomorrow be the day
When in a glorious burst of light
The Savior comes again to Earth
To end the reign of night?

Even though we would sing this hymn in church meetings, it really represents things we might pray when we first get up in the morning on any day, not just Sunday.

And the third stanza takes us from morning and evening of this particular day to the longing for the day of the coming of the Lord ... which could come at any time (“as a thief in the night”).

Grammarians will whimper at having “evening” be the subject of the verb phrase “be joyful” in the second stanza. But a person of good will should have no trouble instantly grasping the meaning: We are asking if the evening will be a joyful occasion because of the good we’ve done. (There must be a few allowances for the exigencies of form.)

The last of my atonement hymns would only work as a sacrament hymn if it was given exactly the right setting. Why? Because it is cast as a dialogue between a sinner (the ordinary Church member) and the Savior. In the first half of each stanza, the sinner asks a question; in the second half, the Savior answers.

Sinner’s Hymn
By Orson Scott Card

Of thy glories, my Redeemer,
What is sweetest in thy sight?
Is it your place by Father’s throne?
The kingdoms he has made your own?
            These are sweet, says my Redeemer.
              Sweeter still shall yet be shown
              When sorrow brings your sins to light:
              Repent, my friend; I shall atone.

Of thy suffering, O Savior,
What was heaviest to bear?
The splintered cross? The piercing thorn?
The savage nail? The bitter scorn?
             None of these, replies my Savior.
             Sharpest of the pains I’ve borne
             Is how you sin and do not care,
             With all your covenants forsworn.

See my sins, beloved Brother,
All the misery I’ve spread,
The cruel, lying words I’ve said
I can’t repay, my hope is dead.
           All these sins, replies my Brother,
           I have named with tears I’ve shed.
           I’ve paid the price to set you free.
           My name is yours now: Come to me.

Because this hymn is essentially dramatic (i.e., it is dialogue, not narrative or monologue), it would be one of the most unusual hymns in the hymnbook. I almost put it in the category of “church music that can’t be hymns.”

What turned the tide for me was hearing what composer Mark Mitchell did with these words. In an email, he said of the text: “It reminds me of a French carol, with the question‑response form.”

Since my idea of a French carol is “The First Noel” or “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella,” I have no idea what he’s talking about. But I don’t have to C he’s the composer, not me. The Question portion of the hymn he set in a minor key, saying, “I think we could use a few more hymns in minor, and this one seemed a good candidate.”

For the Response, the obvious move would be to return to a major key; instead, he goes to a different mode entirely, neither major or minor, “to give it a different flavor from the question section C a little mysterious.”

Here is the sheet music of his setting:

click to enlarge

To hear an MP3, click here:

Negotiations and Compromises

In his version, he changed the last line of the hymn from “My name is yours now: Come to me” to “My name’s now yours: Come unto me.” Why? “The original doesn’t seem to fit with this melody quite right,” he says, “which sometimes happens and is impossible to foresee without the tune being written before the words.”

That is the kind of thing that composer and lyricist always have to negotiate back and forth. For me, as a singer, I can’t tell what he thinks wasn’t “quite right” with the words as they originally were; I think they fit the music perfectly well. And the revision negates a choice I deliberately made, which was not to use the phrase “Come unto me.”

The voice of the Savior in this hymn is not “biblical” (though I do use the word “forsworn,” which has a 17^th-century feeling to it). The fact that I used the contraction “I’ve” reflects the decision to let the Savior speak in contemporary English. Mitchell’s revision adds another contraction C “name’s” for “name is” C but it’s a nonce contraction, not a standard one like “I’ve,” and it feels contrived to me.

And I really think it’s a mistake to put the strong word “come” on a couple of pickup eighth notes and the first syllable of the mere preposition “unto” on the strong accented downbeat of the third ending.

I’m hoping that in negotiations between the two of us about that last line, his slight feeling of discomfort with the original line will be trumped by my very strong aversion to the awkwardness of the revised one.

At the same time, I was embarrassed to see what he had to do with the beginning of the third line of the Question C the difference between the first stanza, where “Is it your place” has the first syllable on the downbeat, and the the other stanzas, where the first syllable is a pickup note with the second syllable accented.

Despite my having known that the lines had to follow exactly the same pattern of accents from stanza to stanza, somehow this one slipped past me.

Rewrites May be Necessary

Here is a place where I definitely want to rewrite the offending line to make it scan properly and avoid the need for having the stanzas’ music be different. The new line could be, for instance, “Your place beside our Father’s throne?” The Question in the first stanza would thus be:

Of thy glories, my Redeemer,
What is sweetest in thy sight?
Your place beside our Father’s throne?
The kingdoms he has made your own?

This actually increases the contemporary feeling by removing the verb from a fragmentary continuation of a question (perfectly acceptable even in formal spoken English). So no harm is done to the text, while the music remains uncompromised C all the notes are sung every time.

I think that Mitchell’s music is quite successful in transforming an iffy text into an unusual but compelling hymn. I believe congregations might very well come to value this hymn because of its mystery.

Could this be a sacrament hymn? The music certainly achieves the necessary “sweetness.” It is absolutely about the atonement. And when you consider that in the sacrament prayer, the priest speaks of the communicants’ purpose “that they do always remember him, that they may have his spirit to be with them.” In a way, this hymn’s dialogue between communicant and Christ suggests what it might feel like to “have his [Christ’s] spirit” be with us.

There is no need for any kind of revolution in sacrament hymns! But there is also no need for hymns that cover exactly the same ground as the sacrament hymns we already have. Not every attempt to find something new to offer to the sacrament service will be acceptable. But I think the attempt is worth making.

Back to an Old Theme

That’s really the end of my treatment of this column’s topic. But in Column 6: Topical Hymns, I broached the subject of hymns about gossip. After pointing out the inadequacy of all the current hymnbooks’ attempts at dealing with this important topic, I set out to deal with other topics, but treated gossip only with a joke.

I realized in church a couple of weeks ago that I had given myself a challenge and I would be a slacker if I didn’t make a serious attempt at a hymn about gossip. But in writing it, I tried to follow my own advice about how to do it properly:

There Is No Secret
By Orson Scott Card

There is no secret from the Lord,
No place where sin can hide.
The Lord will see us perfectly.
The door is open wide.

In vain did Cain deny his deed;
And why did Jonah flee?
Whom God has bound is quickly found,
| Though buried in the sea.

Nor does he need our lips to tell
When others break his law.
God does not bless those who confess
Their neighbor’s secret flaw.

His love is pure, his vision sure:
Our hidden heart is known.
Oh let him in, forsake thy sin,
And be no more alone.

There is humor in this hymn, or at least a lightness of tone. It is created by the content (the reminder of Jonah’s story), the tone (the irony of “God does not bless those who confess their neighbor’s secret flaw”), and even the form: The internal rhyme in the third line of each stanza actually suggests the limerick. There are also nonce rhymes in odd places: vain/Cain, pure/sure.

Notice, though, that this is a “gossip” hymn only by indirection. The main thrust of the hymn is that we are all utterly known by God. We have no secrets from him, and if we welcome and affirm his vision of our hearts by repentance and confession, we can have his companionship C “be no more alone.”

But in the third stanza comes the reminder that since God already knows our neighbors’ sins, it is redundant for us to point them out. The only hint of punishment is “God does not bless” gossipers.

Still, the message is there, and it’s offered with humor, so it might actually be received by the people who most need to hear it.

Composing music for this hymn would be a challenge. Certainly it can’t have any of the solemnity of a sacrament hymn; but it’s not a rousing, enthusiastic hymn like “There Is Sunshine,” either. The music can’t in any way hint that there’s something menacing in the phrase “There is no secret from the Lord.” It needs to feel simple and declarative.

Since the rhyme and rhythm exactly fit the music to “There Is a Green Hill Far Away,” you can try singing it to that music and see how it feels. If you sing it quickly enough C which changes the tone of the music! C it’s not a bad fit until the last line, where the music is too “down” C too contemplative C for the words.

I wrote this hymn so recently that I have had no chance to reflect on it and decide whether I even like it myself. But I’m afflicted with the habit of taking up my own challenges. Whenever I tell writing students that some particular choice is a mistake or a flaw or “doesn’t work,” I then feel compelled to write something that will prove that I was wrong, or at least that exceptions are possible.

(This is why I once wrote a story in first-person present tense, narrated by some who had just committed suicide, thus violating three “rules” I had strongly told to a class at Elon College only the week before.)

So if this hymn is a bad one, please remember that I never set myself up as someone who knows how to write good hymns C just as someone who wants to, and is trying to figure out what a good hymn is made of.

Post your comments C but not your own hymn texts, unless you wish to surrender copyright! C here on Meridian. And don’t send hymn texts to me! I’m not a music publisher.

However, if you’re a composer and wish to set one of my hymns to music, don’t ask for my permission first. I hereby grant you permission to use my hymn text free of charge in your own musical setting, as long as you don’t publish or sell the result.

In other words, you can perform your hymn as much as you want. But the moment you want to publish it or record it or charge for it, then we need to talk — I’ll need to hear your hymn and decide if I approve of it before you can publish, record, or charge for the combined work. I can be reached at http://www.nauvoo.com or http://www.hatrack.com.

And if I deny permission, then you can simply write your own words to fit the music you wrote. You won’t lose a thing.