HYMN FOR PENTECOST 13 The Church's One Foundation
- Gracia Grindal
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Text: Samuel John Stone (1839-1900) Tune: Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876)
1. The church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ, her Lord;
She is his new creation
By water and the Word:
From heav'n he came and sought her
To be his holy bride;
With his own blood he bought her,
And for her life he died.
2. Elect from ev'ry nation,
Yet one o'er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With ev'ry grace endued.
3. Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed.
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed,Y
et saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, "How long?"
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.
4. 'Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore;
Till with the vision glorious
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great church victorious
Shall be the church at rest.
5. Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won:
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we,
Like them, the meek and lowly,
On high may dwell with thee.
REFLECTION
When Jesus commends Peter’s confession of who he is he uses a pun on Peter’s name: on this rock I will build my church. The church has debated for centuries what he meant: does he mean Peter is the rock, or his confession? Given that Jesus upbraids Peter within minutes of his confession and calls him Satan, I tend to go with the confession. One could also interpret this to mean that those who are leaders in the church are as much traitors as saints. This great hymn of the Christian faith chooses the former. The barrels of ink spilled on the issue flow freely through the theology of the church. But there are always things in Scripture no matter how many times we have heard it that we hear as if for the first time.
I had forgotten Jesus’ comment as he praises Peter “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Jesus is filled with blessings for Peter because he is speaking out of the faith that has been given to him, not his own experience and reason. This means also that none of the rest of us can profess and proclaim Christ’s as the Son of the Living God without that gift.
Then, a little grammar issue when Jesus says on hearing Peter’s confession that yes, now I will build my church on that confession That is a different picture from our building on Christ—although Scripture has plenty of sentences that advise us to build on solid foundations, i. e. Christ. But here it is Christ who builds, as it is in the hymn. I hear an echo of Psalm 127, “Unless the Lord build the house, those who build it labor in vain.” While we are builders, we are not the chief builders, we are the servants, not the architects.
That comforts me. As does verse 3 in the Psalm which scoffs at the idea that we are in charge and that being anxious, “eating the bread of anxious toil” is silly since “he gives to his beloved sleep.” Maybe those anxious cares are what can make life in a congregation rather fractious? We want to do the right thing and work hard for Jesus, but in our way, which is not pleasing to Christ or our neighbor. Anyone who knows the “tumult of war” that can break out in congregations knows of what I speak. Maybe we need to attend to the words we speak about Christ, the Son of the Living God, and then follow him. We talk so much about leadership these days about which the Bible has little to say. The Christian life is all about following. In this exchange following is what we are to do: get behind me, Satan!
The keys of the kingdom which Jesus gives Peter, and thus the church, are not to be thought of as Peter standing at the pearly gates judging us by deciding who can come in or not, As Matthew Bruner argues in his commentary, it is the proclamation of Christ which Peter and his heirs preach that does the judging. If you can’t profess Christ, there is no way in (why would you want to enter in?), and if you do, Come in, O blessed of my Father. And so, we wait this “blessed consummation” as the hymn has it, struggling to be faithful, already one in that union which only comes from the Savior not our efforts.
HYMN INFO
Samuel Stone was the son of an Anglican priest. He got his degree from Pembroke College at Oxford, took holy orders and ended up serving with his father at Haggerstown church. He continued to write and translate hymns. Like many of his contemporaries he was taken with the high church wing of the Anglican Church, known as the Oxford Movement. This hymn grew out of the shock he experienced on hearing of Bishop Colenso's denying fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith.
Samuel Wesley, the grandson of Charles Wesley, learned music from his father. He earned a doctorate in music at Oxford University and played the organ at Hereford, Exeter, Winchester and Gloucester cathedrals in succession. He spent his life composing and working for the improvement of church music in England. He wrote books for that cause and composed the tunes for over 700 hymns. Because of its ecumenical theme this hymn can be found in most hymnals around the world today. It appears in English in the latest Norwegian hymnal.
LINKS
Cambridge College choir
First Plymouth Congregational of Lincoln
WELS Convention
Himmelborgen/Uranienborg Vokalensemble
SKRUK
It is a good time to order this series of poems on the life of Jesus. A sonnet for every day including leap year, it shows how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament prophecies and meditates on who he is and what he did using the traditional texts from what was known as The Harmony, an effort to tell the life of Jesus in one account. Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Fortress Press and others.
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