Hymn Of The Week: September 14, 2020, Part 2 of 3
Hymn of the Week:
Brethren, We Have Met to Worship
Glory to God #396
Text George Atkins/Askins 1819
Music Columbian Harmony
Brethren, We Have Met to Worship
Askins or Atkins?
Brethren, we have met to worship and adore the Lord our God.
Will you pray with all your pow-er while we try to preach the word?
All is vain un-less the Spirit of the Holy One comes down.
Breth-ren pray and ho-ly man-na will be showe-ered all a- round.
Sis-ters, will you come and help us? Mo-ses' sis-ter aid-ed him.
Will you help the trem-bling mourn-ers who are strug-gling hard with sin?
Tell them all about the Sa-vior. Tell them that he will be found.
Sis-ters, pray, and ho-ly man-na will be show-ered all a-round.
Is there here a trem-bling jail-er, seek-ing grace and filled with fears?
Is there here a weep-ing Mar-y pour-ing forth a flood of tears?
Breth-ren, join your cries to help them; sis-ters, let your prayers a-bound!
Pray, o pray that ho-ly man-na will be scat-tered all a-round.
Let us love our God su-preme-ly; let us love each oth-er too.
Let us love and pray for sin-ners till our God makes all things new.
Christ will call us home to heav-en; at his table we'll sit down.
Christ will gird him-self and serve us with sweet man-na all a-round.
This week, let’s look at the individual stanzas of this rich and multi-layered hymn.
Stanza 2. Sisters… This stanza includes the reference of Moses’s sister. There are at least two possibilities in this allusion: Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, and a prophetess who first appears in the book of Exodus. Miriam led the Israelite women in song with timbrels and dance following their escape from Egypt and the crossing of the sea (Exodus 15:20-21). This could also be a reference to an unnamed sister of Moses (was it Miriam?), who assisted in his escape as an infant in a papyrus basket where Pharaoh’s daughter found him and adopted him as her son (Exodus 2:5-8).
Stanza 3 concerns the jailor from the New Testament. There are several allusions here. The first two lines are either an allusion to Paul’s incarceration in a Philippi jail where he witnessed to his jailers or the imprisonment of Paul and Silas in Acts 16:22-33. The reference to “weeping Mary” is pregnant with possibilities. Is this a reference to Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, who wept for him upon his death (John 11:33)? Or is this a reference to Mary Magdalene, who stood outside the tomb of the risen Christ, weeping (John 20:11-13)? Though not explicit in Scripture, may we assume that Mary, the mother of Christ, wept at his crucifixion (John 19:25-27)? The answer is “YES!” We do not have to choose one, but may affirm all three.
Stanza 4. Let us Love our God supremely. The eschatological emphasis in this stanza, typical of final stanzas of hymns from this era, is unmistakable. All of the stanzas are tied together by the abundance of manna, which forms a two-line refrain. There are numerous references to manna in the biblical witness drawn from Exodus 16 as nourishment for the starving, wandering people of Israel. The final stanza transforms this image from “holy manna” furnished in the desert to “sweet manna” served by the heavenly Christ to his faithful throughout eternity, a reference with a eucharistic overtone.
The number of stanzas varies, sometimes only two or three, but rarely include the original five, and subtle textual substitutions are common in more recent hymnals. The Chalice Hymnal(1995) and The Covenant Hymnal (1996), for example, title the hymn, “Christians, We Have Met to Worship.” Several hymnals omit the original stanza 2, which also begins with “Brethren . . .”.
NEXT WEEK WE WILL UNPACK THE TUNE TO THIS TIMELESS HYMN!
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
“Appalachia’s Lost Hymn: And Why Churches Should Still be Singing It!” Appalachian Magazine (October 18, 2017, n.p.).
George Askin, Obituary. Provided in correspondence with Richard Hulan, (29 May 2019).
Carl P. Daw, Jr., Glory to God: A Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2016).
