Hymn of the Week: Just As I Am, Without One Plea
Glory to God: #422

The devotion has been reprinted with permission of the author, James C. Howell, from his book entitled: Unrevealed Until Its Season: a Lenten Journey with Hymns.

Published by Upper Room Books 2021.

The book can be found here: https://upperroombooks.com/

Wonderful Words of Life
Text Arthur P Bliss 1874

Sing them over again to me,
Wonderful words of life;
Let me more of their beauty see,
Wonderful words of life;
Words of life and beauty
Teach me faith and duty.

Refrain:
Beautiful words, wonderful words,
Wonderful words of life;
Beautiful words, wonderful words,
Wonderful words of life.

Christ, the blessed one, gives to all
Wonderful words of life;
Sinner, list to the loving call,
Wonderful words of life;
All so freely given,
Wooing us to heaven. [Refrain]

Sweetly echo the gospel call,
Wonderful words of life;
Offer pardon and peace to all,
Wonderful words of life;
Jesus, only Savior,
Sanctify forever. [Refrain]

Wonderful Words
In 1874, a ‘singing evangelist” named Philip Bliss wrote a sunny, chipper hymn, “Wonderful Words of Life,” and set it to a cheerful tune with kids in mind.

These simple words and music were written to be sung by children. The purpose of this song is to promote in the child a love and appreciation of the scriptures. It speaks to and for the child in all of us. (see footnote)

Yet the child in all of us has ready access to the actual words of Jesus. It’s one thing to sing about them; it’s another to hear them, grapple with them, absorb them, and then live into them. Jesus’ words usually are shockers, words that excavate the soul, diagnose unseen maladies, name what ails us, and catapult us out of our comfort zones into radical action for Jesus. When Mark Helprin spoke of the books that are “hard to read, that could devastate and remake one’s soul, and that when they are finished, had a kick like a mule,” he could have been describing Jesus’ “wonderful words of life.”
“Sing them over again to me.” Jesus spoke sternly to the devil. Jesus spoke tenderly to those others despised, and then he uttered words of woe to the pious who weaponized the scriptures and judged others. Jesus blessed the meek, declared anger and lust to be against the law, and dared us to love our enemies. Jesus’ wonderful words of life were spoken to people he wasn’t supposed to speak to at all: Samaritans, tax collectors, prostitutes, and people with leprosy. His dinner conversations were impolite toward hosts he might have thanked. He forgave his executioners without them even asking.
We dare not forget that so many of Jesus’ “wonderful words” were uttered in the very Temple precincts where, the day before, he had alarmed and appalled authorities by driving out the money changers. What courage. Instead of lying low for a while, Jesus walked into the teeth of peril, as if to make sure we’d listen. Jesus had a lot to say, more than two hundred verses even though he knew that those plotting to kill him were prowling in the crowds. (Matthew 21:23 – 25:46).
The Pharisees didn’t hear Jesus’ words as “wonderful words,” and so they strategized “to entangle him in his talk,” asking if it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar: his ingenious reply left them stammering. Jesus’ words to God in Gethsemane were sheer agony, and on the cross he screamed his despairing God-forsakenness. “Sing them over again to me, wonderful words of life.” Then after Easter he spoke words of calming peace and asked Peter if he loved him in return.
Jesus’ stories and teaching turned the known world on its ear. Callicles’s complaint to Socrates describes equally well the power of Jesus’ words.
If you are serious and what you say is true, then surely the life of us mortals must be turned upside down and apparently, we are everywhere doing the opposite of what we should.

Do not lay up treasure on earth. The last will be first. He who would love his life will lose it. Not my will but your will be done. Sell all you have and give it to the poor. I have come to set father against son.
Our hymn says, “Let me more of their beauty see. . .words of life and beauty.” Instead of shivering or devising ways to dodge or explain away his words, perhaps we should ask to see their true beauty. For they are beautiful because they are the words of the only truly beautiful One. We try to do beautiful things for this beautiful One, and we become surprisingly but truly beautiful ourselves as we do.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notices how Moses insisted that the Israelites teach their children about the exodus from Egypt: “About to gain their freedom, the Israelites were told that they had to become a nation of educators.” Indeed, for Christianity and Judaism “freedom is won, not on the battlefield, not in the political arena, nor in the courts…but in human imagination and will. To defend the country, you need an army. But to defend a free society, you need schools.”
Jesus’ wonderful words take us free people to school. We absorb Jesus’ beautiful thoughts. And then we “sweetly echo the gospel call.” The child learns to talk by soaking in the parents’ talk. And the child then speaks inevitably as the parents have spoken, with their accents and emphases, their phrasing and expressions. Our words are to echo Jesus’ wonderful words. This doesn’t mean sugary sweet piety; Jesus never talked that way. Instead, we forgive, speak with the lonely, tell the truth, cry out in agony, and, above all, name mercy and hope as our beloved realities. Such words are “all so freely given, wooing us to heaven.”
Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale (New York: Pocket Books, 1983), 211.
Plato, Gogias, 481c, trans. W.D. Woodhead, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961) 265.
Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible, vol. 2, Exodus: The Book of Redemption (New Milford, CT: Maggid Books, 2010), 78.

Today’s video comes from the Buckeye quartet that actually grew up in my Dad’s neck of the woods, in Bellefontaine, Ohio. The Mills Brothers. They only sing two of the three verses, but you will love it!

If you have trouble viewing the video, please click HERE.

Hymn of the Week, a Lenten Journey: April 11, 2022