Sweet Peace – Peter P. Bilhorn

Sometimes, a song is born through various episodes over an extended period, and such is the case of Peter Philip Bilhorn’s “Sweet Peace (The Gift of God’s Love)” in 1887. The two incidents that bookended Peter’s hymn began with one that we would readily say was sweetly suggested to Peter, but the second one that transpired months later was at the opposite end of the spectrum, something so horrible that it would cause nightmares. Evidently, the second one was what Peter really needed to prompt his hymn’s conclusion, a work that was inspired by his thoughts of Christ shedding blood (and shown in the painting Penitent, also known as Christ Bearing the Cross, by Niccolo Frangipane, in 1574). Does the nightmarish reality of what Jesus experienced really hit us the way He intended, and does that spur us devotionally forward? My response to Him is submission and sacrifice, but mine – unlike His – is on the other side of the crucifixion event. I need not die and endure the horrible as He did, and as my sin would otherwise cost me. He did it for me, and that great divine heart of His transports me into His own sacrifice and then onto a joyous, eternal plane – an upending of death into life.

 

Peter began this musical journey in New Jersey and then completed it in Illinois. He took part in a camp singing event that ended one evening with a friend suggesting that he write a song to suit her voice better; she casually remarked that ‘any sweet piece’ would do, a phrase that Peter copied down, intending to indeed meet her request by respelling piece into peace. Only the music and the new hymn’s title emerged following that episode, however. Months later, as Peter accompanied Dwight Moody and others on a train ride in Illinois, the train tragically hit and killed an old woman, whose blood covered a ditch alongside the tracks. As Peter and one of his companions (Daniel Whittle) considered what they’d just witnessed, thoughts of Jesus’ last hours crossed their minds, and how His death gave us ‘sweet peace’, an atonement that no human could acquire on his own. With these thoughts in mind, Peter wrote the words to this hymn on the concluding phase of the train trip. Peter’s thoughts in his hymn’s verse two are of Christ’s ‘death’, with ‘cross’ juxtaposed to ‘peace’. It’s not just peace, but sweet peace, a two-word expression that comes from deep within the soul that has first viewed the bloodied Messiah and realized His sacrifice’s import. Not even the horror of such a scene – crucifixion is often called one of the most gruesome methods of execution ever inflicted on humanity -- can blot out the thrill and the rapture of what He did three days later. Mangled bodies can be regenerated, even if flogged and nailed to a piece of wood, or hit by a train. 

 

Perhaps those two otherwise unrelated incidents that Peter beheld in New Jersey and in Illinois were not so inconsistent after all, but rather necessary to remind Peter of what Jesus did at Calvary and then later at the tomb of Arimathea. We don’t know what might have been said at the funeral of the woman hit by the train near Wheaton, Illinois in 1887, but perhaps it could have helped grief-stricken family to compare her death to the Lord’s, and then to be reminded that He rose in glory. One’s exit from life doesn’t have the last word. He does. Indeed, Jesus gave Himself up (Matthew 27:50/John 19:30), showing that He was in control of that episode. Sickness and pain and even death won’t trample my hope. His path to Golgotha had to be awful, so that His rising could demonstrate Divinity’s superiority over even the vilest penalty that could be imagined. Death cannot ever hold you and me, because our God has muted its evil voice. What more needs to be said? 

 

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990; and 101 More Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1985.

 

See here for brief information about song’s story background: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/s/w/e/e/t/p/sweetpgg.htm

 

See information on the author here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/b/i/l/h/bilhorn_pp.htm

 

See information on the picture here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Niccol%C3%B2_Frangipane_Penitent.jpg …The author died in 1600, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1931. …found inside this document -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus

 

Praise the Lord Who Reigns Above -- Charles Wesley

No one could have missed what this poet-songwriter was saying when he composed “Praise the Lord Who Reigns Above”, one of the thousands of works by Charles Wesley, an Englishman almost without peer in his phenomenal output. (See the flag of Wesley’s native England here.) His fundamental message was written in the hymn’s opening-title words. And, looking at some of the ancient texts of the songbook that his faith’s forbearers used, one could say that Charles was not afraid nor too proud to borrow a little from what preceded him. Good words flowed from the psalmists, Charles undoubtedly said to himself. So, it was not an accident that Charles got some spiritual and songwriting wind from one of those poets, catching the soul’s devotion that he recognized and decided to repeat in his own version of one of those, perhaps one that God’s own Son and His apostles might have voiced.

 

The word praise appears 10 times in Wesley’s four original verses, and that doesn’t capture all the other words that Wesley used to add some variety to how this praise could be offered. While Charles’s first verse says ‘praise’ four times to emphasize the theme of giving God credit for who He is and what He alone has been capable of doing, this 18^th Century writer was able to find alternate methods for offering God what He deserves in the following three verses. Praise is still on Charles’ lips in those verses another six times, but he adds words and phrases like ‘publish’, ‘spread’, ‘trumpet’s martial sound’, ‘proclaim’, ‘dance’, ‘raise’, ‘advance’, and ‘move’ in verse two alone to diversify the various ways to offer God the adulation a worshipper feels He deserves. Verse three continues this expansion of praise unto Him, with references to instruments other than the human voice – ‘harp’, ‘timbrels’ and ‘cymbals’, and ‘string’ -- telling us who pay attention that Charles thought Godly acclaim was unbounded, and to ‘celebrate’ with the ‘heart’s music’ could take many forms. Verse four was Charles drawing all living things into this orbit of praise to Him, as ‘every creature’ and ‘all things’ give it up for His glory.

 

Charles evidently thought and felt the same as the anonymous author of Psalm 150, as this 18^th Century offering seems to echo many of the same phrases, ideas, and structure present in that psalm; so we can hypothesize that Charles may have been drawing from his open bible and that specific passage for his inspiration. It also seems, to those who have examined the history of hymnody as it unfolded in old England after medieval times, that Wesley was consciously following in the footsteps of Isaac Watts from a generation earlier (in the late 1600s to early 1700s) with his own version of many psalms reworded. Indeed, besides the four verses that Wesley apparently wrote to parallel Psalm 150, another version of Charles’ hymn includes an unattributed verse that appears to be a rephrase of Psalm 97-98, thus carrying on the tradition that Watts and Wesley used in many of their works. It’s a way of saying with intentionality – and striking at the stoic and unbending nature of strict traditionalists – that God isn’t stuck on how you and I praise Him, that the exact words of the ancient Psalms aren’t absolutes. Instead, the keynote is that one word – praise. Whatever you and I do, make certain it is directed vertically. Not much else needs to be said, if we pay attention to how Charles directed his own heart, and ours too, centuries later. Thankfully, God is still making hearts in the same way as He always has.             

 

See here for some information about the hymn’s origin: https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/history-of-hymns-praise-the-lord-who-reigns-above

 

See the original verses here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/p/l/w/r/plwreign.htm

 

Read about the author here: https://hymnary.org/person/Wesley_Charles and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wesley

 

See here for information on the flag image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_England.svg …This work has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible: The copyright holder grants any entity the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law….found inside this document -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England

 

Holy, Holy, Holy (Hosanna) -- Peter Scholtes

What would it be like to encounter a seraph? (See here St. Francis' vision of a seraph, entitled Stigmatization of St Francis [fresco attributed to Giotto; [1267–1337].) We know what one might say, even if its appearance might be something quite unfamiliar, apart from the six wings that Isaiah (6:3) noted were on the seraphim he observed. Peter Scholtes echoed these seraphim calling out “Holy, Holy, Holy” in 1966. It was part of Peter’s determination to bring God into the community where he lived that made him take the words of the seraphim and repeat them, so that they might ring more clearly in the world of 1966 South Side Chicago. How could what angels said to Isaiah be relevant to a culturally diverse neighborhood where Peter’s church resided, and where he tried to minister through a youth choir in a basement? Some people might have thought the rhythm style that Peter chose to accompany the seraphim’s words was rather unusual, maybe even a bit irreverent. It suggested that God could hear people in unconventional ways. Is God conventional? And, is the God of Isaiah’s time connected to other times? Peter answered that in the lyrics he pulled from both bible testaments.

 

Peter probably would have answered ‘no’ to the above question about God’s supposed predictability, when he put together his version of what the seraphim said. He appeared to Isaiah in a vision, after all, a method that God uses with not just anybody. He had a mission for Isaiah, one of prophecy. ‘Deliver my message’, God essentially said. It began with a reassertion of God’s nature, as testified by His servants -the seraphim. God is love, and is also holy. That was not something confined to the 7^th/8^th Century B.C. (700s/600s), as Peter’s words help us recall when he repeated what the crowds said about Jesus Christ when He entered Jerusalem (Matthew 21:9/Mark 11:9/Luke 19:38/John 12:13); with words like ‘Hosanna’ and ‘blessed is the One’, Peter reminded the people in that Chicago basement and in the surrounding community that God has not been confined to one time, nor to one place, and certainly not to just one people. With this kind of diversity, Peter surmised that God should not be restricted to one type of music to accompany the words about Him. The Missa Bossa Nova that Peter used was his way of connecting a Catholic mass with a bossa nova rhythm that would be familiar to those Chicagoans of 1966, though it originated on another continent (in Brazil). To some traditionalists in Christendom, this syncopated samba mingled with American jazz while singing ancient words to laud God was probably a bit too out-of-the-box, at least at first. You can listen for yourself (see the link below), but perhaps Peter was really just using what his observation of Jesus had already taught him. He upset everyone’s applecart with His methods, but did He stop? No, His was a resolute conviction (Luke 9:51).

 

Nothing was going to stop Jesus’ message, and that’s still true today. Only discomfort and stubborn natures can suspend temporarily what He wants done. He’s already spoken loudly in so many ways – like through His creation and through the bible -- that only the spiritually deaf, blind, and unrepentant would reject Him. ‘Bossa Nova’ in Portuguese means "new wave" or "new trend/knack", and that certainly spoke of Jesus. Even people today, particularly of other faiths, still cannot fathom or accept that this God would allow Himself to be sacrificed for our sins. With such utter power, and even after the crowds hailed Him as king, why would Jesus have to die? If you have ever tried to relate to people of a different culture, perhaps you have felt the divide that seems like it cannot be bridged. Is there anything that connects all of us, that overcomes the babel we use with each other? Human nature does indeed connect, and Jesus knew that – that’s why He came, to be like us. All of us humans have needs, which only a Divine Provider can meet. So, don’t let a different style get in the way of communicating a message that’s got a common foundation. Jesus had a different style, but He was still God, still love, and still holy. Now isn’t that something to celebrate with a bit of samba and jazz?        

 

Read about the song/album background here: https://vulcanhammer.org/2013/03/04/peter-scholtes-theyll-know-we-are-christians-by-our-love/ (hear the song here beginning at 15:30 in the distinctive bossa nova beat) and here: https://hymnary.org/person/Scholtes_P

 

Read about the author here: https://pscholtes.com/obituary.htm

 

See more information about the image here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giotto_-_Legend_of_St_Francis_-_-19-_-_Stigmatization_of_St_Francis.jpg …The author died in 1337, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1931.