God of Grace and God of Glory -- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Harry Emerson Fosdick was inaugurating a new chapter in his Christian walk in 1930, and so he crafted a poem-song to commemorate the occasion. “God of Grace and God of Glory” was a prayer that Fosdick voiced, or perhaps one might even characterize it as a dream or vision that he hoped would come to fruition at the brand new Riverside Church building in Manhattan (see its flag here), New York where he was beginning anew at the age of 52. Fosdick was no stranger to controversy, and he had undoubtedly prayed countless times for the fortitude to press on in the face of criticism. The song he and the members of Riverside sang that day launched a history of what Fosdick and others would do at this new structure. They saw themselves in a unique position to influence events not just in the local neighborhood, but worldwide. One might say it was a vision worthy of the magnitude of the Creator whom Fosdick and others sought to serve.      

Harry Fosdick was not one to back down from disagreement or shrink from going where he thought God’s will directed him to go. His mid-life ‘crisis’ had just occurred in the previous few years of the 1920s before he composed “God of Grace…Glory”. He was a liberal-progressive minister at a Presbyterian church in the 1920s, although he had initially ministered as a Baptist during the first 10-15 years of the 20^th Century, including as a chaplain in France during World War I. Because of his views – that one’s Christian faith could evolve, and ‘modernize’ – he was the target of fundamentalist Presbyterian critics. He authored several defenses of his position, but he also decided to move to another church, returning to his Baptist roots, in the Manhattan borough in New York by 1924. By 1930, one of that church’s members (John D. Rockefeller) funded the construction of the Riverside church, where Fosdick began a new ministry. Harry foresaw Riverside as a resource for the metropolitan community – a place to serve the social, educational, and worship needs of its people. In the following decades since its dedication, the Riverside Church would be the scene where various social, political, and religious issues both nationally and internationally, were addressed publicly. Fosdick must have noted this possibility, not only as part of his personal inclination, but as a happenstance of Riverside’s location – next to Columbia University and in the heart of New York City, and therefore an intersecting point for the social and political figures of the nation and this Christian community. ‘…Wisdom….Courage’, as written in the refrain in Fosdick’s poetry, were indeed two commodities that he could see the Riverside Church would need in abundance. War, racism, and worldwide health issues were just some of the topics of conversation discussed there over the coming years.    

Riverside’s history, perhaps due at least in part to what Harry Fosdick helped inspire, provokes a number of questions. What should a church be saying to its community? Should it ‘fit in’ or challenge the citizens to stretch themselves? Should Christians be comfortable and served by the ministerial staff, or should the community also be admonished to spread His kingdom? Would you or I agree or be comfortable with all that happens at Riverside? Maybe not, but they are intersecting with the world about them, undeniably. God can pour his power on people, as Harry writes in his first verse, and offering them grace and help in the world in which we all live must be His will, agreed? Jesus did no less. That’s how he got to talk to them. Let’s get conversations started.        

See more information on the song discussed above in The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006. 

See a biography of composer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Emerson_Fosdick

See here information re: the church where the composer ministered:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside_Church

Surely the Presence of the Lord -- Lanny Wolfe

Surely the Presence of the Lord -- Lanny Wolfe

It might alternately be called ‘Floyd’s Song’ because of the circumstances surrounding its genesis. That’s the subtitle that Lanny Wolfe gave to the words and the music for something he wrote back in the 1970’s (about 1977) for an event where he and his group were waiting to join in a celebration. Sure, Lanny and his friends had been asked, so their attendance at the church building dedication was not a surprise, but when Lanny heard a small but distinct voice tell him some words for a new song, that was unexpected (or, was it really?). “Surely the Presence of the Lord” was born on the spot as the Lanny Wolfe Trio prepared to sing, and the way it’s been used since then makes one think God must have had more than one episode in mind when he whispered the words to the composer that day.

Lanny Wolfe was certainly struck by how “Surely the Presence of the Lord” worked its way into his being the very first time, perhaps because of the multiple incidents over the following decades in which it played such a memorable role in his and others’ lives. The minister’s name at the church in Columbia, Mississippi was Floyd Odom, and he’d invited Lanny and his group to sing as the members of the church there marked the completion of the church building. So, Lanny must have thought that Floyd was the reason for the song’s origin - -without that moment and the gathering of joyful people eager to thank the Holy One for His work, maybe the song would not have come about. Indeed, Lanny tends to remember lots of the Trio’s songs with subtitles that say they are some person’s song…perhaps his way of saying that songs inhabit us personally, not just events or places in time. Lanny says the song’s words came quickly, such that he didn’t have the chance to run through any chords or even tell his fellow musicians, Marietta Wolfe (his wife at the time) and Dave Petersen, what had just popped into his head. So, he taught it to them the same moment the assembled church members heard it, with just the notes and flow of the song in his head. Lanny says it worked because there were people there, not just pews and stain-glassed windows. He wanted to be in them, not the building. And, that’s been the song’s recurring theme in at least four other episodes in many different circumstances, which Lanny relates in the book More Than Wonderful that he’s put together to tell his song stories.

 

The other episodes range from a personal one-on-one Midwestern U.S. incident in which someone’s life was in danger, to a megachurch in China where the song was a celebration sung in many languages. It’s been transmitted to countless people on a television broadcast, but also used in private family gatherings to shepherd a dear family member into eternity.  How varied are our people-centered experiences, but how common is the foundation that we believers have? That’s what Lanny Wolfe is communicating in the words he composed that day in Columbia, Mississippi. He’s present where His people are, be they just one or two, or perhaps many thousands. And, he comes during our many emotions. Just like Job, I can worship even though beaten down (Job 1:20), or I may instead be in a festive spirit like David (2 Sam. 6:16-21), though it offends others. I just know He’s inside. Who could contain what is surely there, Lanny says?   

Biographical information on Lanny Wolfe is from this website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanny_Wolfe

See this site to obtain the book “More than Wonderful”, where the story to the song is found: http://lannywolfe.com/

   

Christ the Lord is Risen Today -- Charles Wesley

Was he thinking of the root word ‘found’ when he sat down to write a poem one day in 1739?  Perhaps he was even thinking of this six-letter word in more than one sense, if one considers the context of the premiere of “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” that Charles Wesley (shown here) composed for Easter. He wrote thousands of hymns in his lifetime, ranging across various facets of his faith. This one is a little window, perhaps, into what he felt inside soon after his conversion.   

Wesley and his brother John were not novices to the Christian faith in the 1730’s, for they had grown up with a father who was an Anglican clergyman and they had initiated the Methodist movement while still in college in the 1720’s in England – wisps of a faith waiting to blossom. In 1738, the Wesley brothers evidently had a revolutionary experience at an Aldersgate Street church in London, whereupon they committed themselves deeply to ministry for Christ’s church. Charles Wesley was 32 years old and wrote with a new energy from that point on, a new depth that was apparent to those who knew of his experience from the year before. It was in the light of this event that Charles wrote this hymn’s words, with maybe some extra inspiration from a site that was about to be used for the first time as a church. A deserted foundry was the site, and Wesley’s “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” was the hymn for that occasion. Could there have been a more appropriate foundation for a foundry service than this hymn? Charles wrote words that he must have felt were rooted in deep truths. And, this building had once molded and produced metal casts like iron, used to ensure the structural integrity of things, like churches. And, Christ concluded his sermon on the mount with an admonition about what foundations mean for us here on earth, using an analogy that we can easily understand. Did these any of these thoughts cross Wesley’s mind as he pondered his salvation and wrote a poem that survives nearly 300 years later? (We can ask him later!)  

Nothing is more foundational in Christianity than Easter. Is it ironic that a foundation for my life began with a death? Or, that my destiny to ascend to heaven is rooted in something that happened here on earth? That’s what Charles Wesley’s words say, in effect.  Though Wesley apparently wrote only seven of the ten (or perhaps eleven total) verses of the hymn, all of them convey this central theme – my life is tied inescapably with His. He rose after death. That’s all I need to remind myself, especially when I’m feeling mortal. He’s alive, no older today than He was on the first Easter. That’s what’s waiting. Someone other than Wesley apparently added this word to the hymn, but he probably felt it crying out from within as he wrote – Alleluia!    

       

Information on the song was obtained from the books  “Amazing Grace – 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions”, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, 1990, Kregel Publications; “The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs”, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, 2006, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; and “Then Sings My Soul”, by Robert J. Morgan, 2003, Thomas Nelson, Inc.   

See this site for brief biography of composer, and 10 verses of the song:

http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/c/t/l/ctlrisen.htm

For a longer biographies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wesley

http://www.hymnary.org/person/Wesley_C

Information on the song’s history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_the_Lord_Is_Risen_Today