HYMN FOR PENTECOST 18 Forth in thy Name I go
Text: Charles Wesley (-1707-788) Tune: Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
1 Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go,
my daily labor to pursue;
Thee, only Thee, resolved to know
in all I think or speak or do.
2 The task Thy wisdom hath assigned,
O let me cheerfully fulfill;
in all my works Thy presence find,
and prove thy good and perfect will.
3 Thee may I set at my right hand,
whose eyes mine in-most substance see,
and labor on at Thy command,
and offer all my works to Thee.
4 For Thee delightfully employ
what e'er Thy bounteous grace hath giv'n;
and run my course with even joy,
and closely walk with Thee to heav'n.
REFLECTION
This account in Matthew of Jesus sparring with the Pharisees and scribes is one of the odder ones. What are we to make of the man and his two sons? When Jesus poses the question of which son was the good one, they all know it was the one who said no but then went. We understand the human psychology and emotions here very well. What does that have to do with this parable, true as it is to human behavior?
What Jesus is getting at in the parable is not quite so easy. Is the son who says no, but then later goes in obedience to his father’s command, like the tax collectors and prostitutes? It sounds like it. Not that all tax collectors and prostitutes are saved or damned. It is because they believed in him that they receive eternal life.
This is another lesson in the hierarchies of the heavenly kingdom. The first shall be last, the last first. The Christian faith is very weird as religions go. It is not about gods like the Greek gods, vain and petty, interested in us only because of some slight they perceive from humans. The Christian faith is about the weakest, the least in heredity and wealth. It is for the poor fishermen like Peter and Andrew, the simple peasant girl Mary, to whom God gives faith. And when they believe, as we see in Acts and early church history, they change the world. The aristocrats--who can be saved when they believe--come late to the party. It is their slaves and soldiers who get it first.
They get it because God has come as one of them. So no one is favored on acccountof their worldly status ; it is whoever believes. And on hearing the good news and believing it, they go forth to spread the gospel and change the world. And so our hymn “O let me cheerfully fulfill;/in all my works Thy presence find,/and prove thy good and perfect will.” Anyone who believes and follows this Lord becomes a professor of the faith and spreads it abroad. It is our duty and delight to do so.
HYMN INFO
This is one of Charles Wesley’s most beloved hymns, ranked among the top twenty. Wesley, the 18th of Samuel and Susannah Wesley’s nineteen children, was born prematurely, and thought to be dead when he was born. His father was a a clergyman in the Anglican church; his mother, Susannah, a force to be reckoned with. A woman with an unusually good education for the time—she knew Latin, Greek and French--she made sure her children learned, teaching them for six hours every day. Rightly, she is called the Mother of Methodism.
When Charles went off to school at Westminster, he had been well prepared by his mother to speak Latin, the only language allowed in the classroom. Charles excelled; after six years he went to Oxford where he studied for the next nine years, earning a Masters Degree.
Spiritual conditions at school were tepid so Charles and his brother John formed a club dubbed the Holy Club by others. Members gathered daily. Because of their regimen of early rising, Bible study and prayer, and weekly communion, plus their active work ministering to those in prison, they became known as Methodists.
In 1735, Charles and John, both ordained into the Anglican ministry, felt called to be missionaries to Georgia, Governor Oglethorpe’s colony. They sailed to America with Moravians whose piety impressed especially John. While he was malingering from violent seasickness, they were singing hymns, which made him curious about what they were singing. John learned their hymns in German and translated some into English.
The brothers continued to work with the Moravians. In 1738, Peter Böhler, their leader, urged Charles to look more deeply into his own soul. In May 1738, Charles, while reading Martin Luther’s book on Galatians, had an experience of conversion. “I labored, waited, and prayed to feel ‘who loved me, and gave himself for me.'” Not long after that he came to assurance and “rejoiced in hope of loving Christ.” A few days later, at the Moravian chapel in Aldersgate, his brother John, on hearing Luther's commentary on Romans, found his heart to be "strangely warmed."
Two days after his conversion, Charles wrote his first hymn, "O for a Thousand Tongues" which has traditionally been the first hymn in every Methodist hymnal. From that time on it is thought he wrote at least ten lines of poetry a day, ending up with almost 7,000 hymns to his credit.
This hymn was written to be sung before work. Wesley believed the Christian faith had to do with more than Sunday and wrote hymns to be sung through the week and before work. This first appeared in 1749 with six stanzas, but these were abridged to the text we have today. There have been some changes of language, especially the original “And prove thy acceptable will.” The change most widely accepted is “and prove Thy good and perfect will.” The most widely used tune is Canonbury taken from Robert Schumann’s Nachtstucke, Opus 23.
LINKS
Chet Valley Hymns
The Compton Organ
Release Topic
NB:
For those planning for Bible study during the coming new church year you might consider the book Jesus the Harmony. It has a poem for every day of the year and Bible references for each poem that put Jesus in what has been called "the red thread of salvation." Many have been using it for daily devotions; others in group Bible studies.
Click here to check it out. https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Harmony-Gospel-Sonnets-Days-ebook/dp/B08L9S4Z1T/ref=sr_1_3_nodl?dchild=1&keywords=Grindal&qid=16145
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