May 5, 2013: The Sixth Sunday of Easter

May 5 2013

Hymn: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

The English Baptist minister Robert Robinson wrote this hymn about 1758 and had it published a year later. Methodist hymnologist Carlton Young notes that hymn was originally four stanzas long, but, hymnal editors in the eighteenth century eliminated the final “apocalyptic climax,” a pattern which has been followed to present day. The fourth stanza reads as follows: “O that Day when freed from sinning, I shall see thy lovely Face;/Clothèd then in blood-washed Linnen [sic] How I’ll sing thy sovereign grace;/Come, my Lord, no longer tarry, Take my ransom’d Soul away; Send thine Angels now to carry/Me to realms of endless day.” In the hymn, it is helpful to know that “Ebenezer” means “Stone of Help,” as found in 1 Samuel 7:12, and a “fetter” is a kind of chain or manacle. The tune NETTLETON is an American folk hymn, named after the famous nineteenth-century evangelist, Ahasel Nettleton. Young writes, “The hymn’s strong evangelical themes and its singable and rousing tune have made this one of our most beloved hymns.”

Hymn: Blest Be the Tie That Binds

This hymn, whose original title was “Brotherly Love,” was written by Baptist minister John Fawcett to be used after a sermon. The text was comprised of six stanzas, four of which we’ll sing today. The fifth stanza, unpublished in The Presbyterian Hymnal (1990), reads: This glorious hope revives / Our courage by the way; / While each in expectation lives, / And longs to see the day.

Hymn: Have Thine Own Way, Lord!

From the Psalter Hymnal Handbook: Periodically distressed after being unable to raise money to go to Africa as a missionary in th elate 1890s, Adelaide Pollard attended a prayer meeting in 1902 and was inspired after hearing an older woman pray, “It really doesn’t matter what you do with us, Lord—just have your way with our lives.” Pollard went home and meditated on the potter’s story in Jeremiah 18 (the same image is also in Isa. 64:8) and wrote the consecration hymn “Have Thine Own Way, Lord.” Repeating the worlds “Have thine own way,” each stanza emphasizes the believer’s harmony with God’s will. This is a deeply personal prayer that culminates in a strong plea that others may see Christ in the believer through the power of the Holy Spirit (st. 4).