Marking the page
Hymns are powerful things. When I meet with a family before a funeral to discuss the arrangements for a service, I always ask if there’s any particular scripture passage they would like read, and if there’s any particular hymns they would like sung. Only once has a family suggested a scripture passage, but every single family has had some hymns in mind. 9 times out of 10, one of these hymns is the 23rd psalm, either in the metrical version, or in Henry MIller Baker’s “The King of Love My Shepherd Is” adaption.
I took these pictures at the Masonhill Crematorium this afternoon, where the majority of our funerals take place. To think how many mourning thumbs have touched that spine, to consider the hundreds of voices singing “goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” amidst the pain of death, to preside at many of these services, lifting my voice to the hills, is a gift and a privilege I do not take lightly.
Thanks be to God, for the mark of a sustaining psalm.
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A retired Presbyterian colleague once said to me, despairing at the contemporary worship songs and “extemporaneous” (yet predictable) prayer beloved of most of my generation of ministers, that at times he just longed for worship that had more than 15 minutes of history behind it.
Never is that more true than at times of loss and uncertainty, be it personal or communal. It is then that the contemporary unending quest for the novel is suspended in the desire for sustaining contnuity… But if we are not careful and do not weave the old into the new, the ancient into the modern, people will not have these traditional resources to draw upon, leading to some of the banal funeral services that I have had the misfortune to attaned. Thank you for this touching and insightful post.
Amen.
I’m going to copy and print this for my D.Ed.Min project journal, Adam, if OK w/you – I’m reading/reflecting/observing on the topic of Worship, music and religious education.
Thanks – I hope – for the OK – I’ll either keep it anonymous or attribute it to you – mike morgan is my advisor, David Hawkins, Mardee Rightmeyer on my peer group c’tee.
What a beautiful entry!
that really is quite amazing
For further blogging on the subject of funeral hymnody see http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=005035
Great post, in fact I referred to it on Sunday morning… I was leading services on the psalms and it was a good illustration at one point in the discussion (and we sang this psalm)about the enduring nature of the psalms… how they give us words when we have no words of our own.