Disentangling (and reclaiming) the hymns of the Lord’s Table

As I go through this series, I continually mention my new(ish) role as our church pianist (since January of 2021). I mention this not as a point of pride, but because functioning in this role has been incredibly healing for me. It has also been hugely instrumental in re-building up my faith after a period of “deconstruction.” The word “deconstruction” has come to mean so many things – and negative things – to so many within Christianity and evangelicalism, and it’s a word I don’t love to use. I am using it here in order to link to a prior post. I think that a better word is perhaps “disentangling.” It’s a book that Jinger {Duggar} Vuolo used a lot in her book, Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear. I love this word “disentangling,” because it really captures the painstaking and often confusing process that so many like myself have gone through. “Deconstruction” (particularly WITHOUT any “reconstruction”) can carry a context of demolition or destruction. No one really “deconstructs” a building. You use a sledge hammer or a wrecking ball. Rather, disentagling involves separating one thing from another, one thread from another. It involves pulling a thread to see where it goes. It involves pulling threads out of knots. Sometimes, before you finally get something fully untangled, you end up pulling a thread and creating a knot that was never there, that then you have to work out. But enough with the metaphors, because that’s not ultimately what this post is about. This post is about hymns.

Hymns and Guilt

Those who have followed my blog for a longer period of time may remember that there’s a lot of guilt for me wrapped up in hymns. For a long time, I found myself “triggered” by certain hymns.

Particularly in regard to hymns, the triggers were as varied as the hymns themselves.

A hymn might remind me of a place I wanted to forget. The hymn Have Thine Own Way, Lord would take me back to Bible College #3 where that song was played on the organ as the invitational for every. single. church and chapel and special service. It made me feel nauseated.

A hymn might remind me of a ritual or ordinance, such as the squeamish feelings I associated with the Lord’s Table whenever I heard There is a Fountain or Nothing But the Blood of Jesus.

Or the hymn To God Be the Glory…

Hymns and Growth

A few days ago, my mom told me she had seen a lot of growth in me, particularly over the last few years. And she’s right.

We like to think about how sunshine and fresh air makes plants grow, but resistance (wind and rain) are just as crucial for plants to grow hearty and strong. A hymn is like wind for me.

Our music director / worship leader stepped into her role a few years before I stepped into the role of church pianist. The collaborative relationship we share is incredibly unique and precious to both of us. While she is about six months younger than I, I very much consider her to be an older sister in the faith and in music.

She is passionate about hymns, especially old hymns that are full of great doctrine that we tend to miss in some of the more contemporary music popular in churches. But she is also FOR me and my spiritual growth. As she has continued to add modern and contemporary arrangements of hymns into our service repoitoire, she hasn’t dragged me along by the hair. She has been thoughtful and understanding, and often has sent me arrangements before purchasing them. I know that much of this has more to do with my thoughts on the composition itself and my ability to learn it, but there’s a thoughtfulness that sets me at ease – even as I look upon an arrangement of a hymn and fight those triggering instincts.

I still remember where I was standing in my house, swiffing the dining room floor, when she sent me a Lifeway Worship arrangement of The Solid Rock. While this particular hymn has ALWAYS been a huge favorite of mine, and never a trigger, I still teared up while listening to it.

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;

Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

It meant more to me then because I had embraced a fuller understanding of what those words meant: that I AM righteous because of the work of Jesus.

Which brings us back to the Lord’s Table…

Hymns and Grace

I could fill many posts of hymn after hymn that we have added into our service rotation that I’ve been able to untangle from the triggers and embrace in freedom and grace. But in particular, I want to highlight a few that have been extra special because we have used them in Lord’s Table services.

The first is the hymn When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. This particular Lifeway arrangement begins with a guitar introduction (which I try poorly to mimic on the piano). The arrangement is both somber and powerful, although we tend to take it slower and perhaps even more somber than they do on the recording.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

The song ends with a dramatic hold on the words, “Love so amazing, so divine…” and then returns to softness in the words, “Demands my soul, my life, my all.” 

I admit, as much as I loved the arrangement when I first began playing it, I struggled with those last lines – particularly that word DEMAND. In a way, it went against what I now understand about God and what He did for me:

These words, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all,” can be misunderstood as one being in debt – a debt we have to pay back out of our own human effort. In the context of the Lord’s Table, it can seem like a call to “make sure you feel bad enough” (Jen Wilkin) about Christ’s sacrifice. Or, as Jinger Vuolo put it so well in her book, “I used to think of Communion as an act of accountability. I thought God gave it to Christians like me to make sure we weren’t sinning too much.”

If this isn’t the case – that the Lord’s Table isn’t about me feeling bad enough, then what is the DEMAND? If I am not in debt to God, then what DOES He demand of me? I believe that is answered in the phrase that my pastor so often uses for what others might call “saving faith.”

Unlike the demand to work off a debt, “This surrendered trust also requires a release of my own attempts at redemption – attempts to appease the divine or show myself righteous before others. . .

God’s righteousness cannot be humanly achieved. My own goodness is an inadequate object of trust. I need the righteousness that must be credited through surrendered trust in the God who alone is worthy of such trust.”

My husband has often likened this “surrendered trust” to jumping into a river of God’s grace. Your only act is to jump – to wholly give your soul, your life, your all – to the river, trusting that it will take you the right direction. It’s a surrender that holds nothing back. And it’s a release, rather than a burden.

_____

Continuing upon this theme of debt and surrender, another song comes to mind that we introduced on Resurrection Sunday, 2021. I’m not sure if we have ever actually sung this for a Lord’s Table service, but Resurrection Sunday is definitely a time when our thoughts are turned toward the Cross (and the Resurrection) on a deeper level. This particular arrangement from Sovereign Grace changes some of the lyrics and adds a new chorus:

Turn your eyes to the hillside
Where justice and mercy embraced
There the Son of God gave His life for us
And our measureless debt was erased!

These beautiful words capture so much…justice and mercy embracing, and our measureless debt being erased.

Jesus, to You we lift our eyes
Jesus, our glory and our prize
We adore You, behold You, our Savior ever true
Oh Jesus, we turn our eyes to You

When I began to have this perspective shift – AWAY from my being in debt to God and TO praising God for the righteousness He has given to me – I found it so much easier to view the Lord’s Table as a celebration instead of a risky game of Russian roulette.

Hymns and Gratitude

As my fingers have learned countless (okay, it’s 30, not countless) new accompaniments of hymns I’ve known from my childhood, my heart has been disentangling them from the meanings ascribed to them in legalistic environments. The words have washed over me afresh and given me a new perspective – a perspective of gratitude:

Gratitude for what Christ has done for me…

gratitude for a true understanding of God’s grace…

gratitude that I am no longer in debt to God…

gratitude to be in a place and working with a worship leader that still sees immense value in the hymns of old…

gratitude for music arrangers such as Dan Kreider at Grace Music and the team at Lifeway Worship who rebirth these old songs into a thing of beauty…

gratitude for the gift God has given me to be able to play the piano and worship Him in this way…

…and gratitude for the frequent reminder in the Lord’s Table of all of these things.