Episode

When I was a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, I attended a church called Bellefield Presbyterian Church. It was right there on the campus of Pitt. And at the time I didn’t do anything with worship, really. I wasn’t involved with worship; I was involved in composition, and I didn’t know anything about the church year or liturgical year or anything like that. But they had a service on the Thursday before Easter, and it was a Maundy Thursday service. And I wondered, “Why do they call it a Monday Thursday?” But then I realized it was actually Maundy Thursday. In any case, I went to this service, and it was a very moving service for me, and really kind of a pivotal thing in my walk of faith.

I don’t know what it was about that service, but it just really impressed upon me the weight of Christ’s work on the cross, and that this was done for me, and, yeah, it just, it was. .  . I don’t know exactly why, but I remember this: We sang the hymn “Ah, Holy Jesus,” which since then has become one of my favorites, and I was so smitten with that hymn that I went home with a bulletin in my hand, and I was gonna be playing an open mic night later that night with me on guitar and a violinist accompanying me. And I was so smitten with that hymn, that I actually went home and I transcribed some new chords for it and a violin line, and I showed it to the violinist as we got to the bar, and I was like, “We’re going to play this song!” And she was actually English and so she grew up with hymns like this and kind of knew it, and it was so great. 

We were, I mean, it was a bar, and I got up to play, I can’t remember, I played something that I had written and then I played that one. And I just remember people in the bar kind of looking at me like, “What? What is this about? He’s singing about Jesus, and Jesus suffering.” And I don’t know if they thought it was super cool or just completely out of place. But, in any case, that’s just to give you an idea of how powerful this time of the church year can be. And, if it was powerful in my life like that, you have to be thinking that there are people in your church that this can also be a really pivotal time for them. And so the things I’m just going to start off by just emphasizing, I think, the most important things about services like this.

Tell the story. You know, our impulse is to get all flowery and do all sorts of amazing things, and, you know, things that we can tell other worship directors about and they’ll think we’re super cool. But just, stick to the story. Let Scripture speak for itself. Use lots of Scripture. This, Scriptures that are used during this time of year are so powerful in and of themselves that you really don’t need to do a whole lot with them. So just really, really let the Scripture speak. Let the story speak, and let it inform people’s faith, the people that are in the pews. Let that just do its work.

All right, now on to our subject at hand. We’re talking about Thursday and Friday together because many churches don’t have, they either have one service or the other service. So in a very liturgical church, you will have a special service for each night of the week, or day of the week, I’m not sure, of Holy Week. But most Protestant churches if they are somewhat liturgical, they will usually have either a Maundy Thursday service or a Good Friday service. Now, some will have both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and we’re going to help tease that out a little bit. But I’m talking about this in the same podcast because I think that many of the same themes, there’s a lot of overlap between the two days, and so many of the themes will be carried over, depending on which one you do.

So, without further ado, let’s look at Maundy Thursday. There are really two directions that you can take with a Maundy Thursday service. One is the upper room, so that’s actually where we get the word “Maundy” Thursday, is it’s from the Latin. I can’t remember right now exactly what it is, but it’s from the Latin where Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you: to love one another.” So that’s where we get the word, and that’s the service of the upper room. It’s the kinds of things that happen at the Last Supper. And then the other direction you can take, is what’s called a Tenebrae service. And we’ll get to that one later. Let’s start with the upper room.

So the service of the upper room is really what I would call the Last Supper and the first Communion. So this is where the disciples gather together and Jesus has his last words with them. They eat for the last time, and it’s what institutes our modern Communion. So there are just lots of rich overtones going on in this story and in this service. So if you’re going to do a strictly speaking upper room type of service, there are lots of things that are very particular to that. Of course it’s going to culminate in Communion, but let’s get there later.

Let’s start with the gathering, the opening kinds of things. So I’m just going to give you a couple ideas about songs that would work for this, cause this is a service that is a very, very specific service, and so it’s a chance to use some very specific songs, rather than just straight-up Communion hymns. So, one that’s really quite nice is “Come, Risen Lord, and Deign to Be Our Guest.” It’s really quite a beautiful hymn tune, not often used, except on Maundy Thursday services. The tune is very easy to learn. It says, “Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest. Know we are your guest. . .” I can’t remember how all the words go. But it basically says, “We gather together, but you are really the host.” And it’s a great text.

Another one, if you want to get even further off the beaten path, is a Filipino song, and it’s called “When Twilight Comes,” and it’s just such a beautiful song. I love this song. Now, it’s quite a hard melody, so what I have done before is I have sung it as a solo just accompanied by the guitar, and it sets a really nice tone. And what it does is just, one service earlier, Jesus has looked over Jerusalem and said, “Oh, I’ve wept for you and I want to gather you like a chick to the mother hen.” And it continues that kind of image here, and it says, the lyrics say,

When twilight comes and the sun sets,
mother hen prepares for night’s rest.
As her brood shelters under her wings,
she gives the love of God to her nest.
Oh, what joy to feel her warm heartbeat
and be near her all night long!
So the young can find repose
and then renew tomorrow’s song.

And then it goes on to say, basically, “Gather around, friends. We’re gathering around Jesus for this last time, this evening meal.” And I think it’s a great song for a number of reasons. One, it’s just simply a beautiful song with very vivid imagery. Another, is it takes a biblical image for God that is very motherly. So there’s lots of conversations about language for God, and should we use gendered language for God, and all those kinds of things, but I think, in those conversations, the first step is to reclaim as much language as we have right there in the Bible. And in this particular case, we have images for God as a mother hen. So this is a great way to reclaim some of those more motherly types of images in our worship services.

So, once we go from the opening, there are all sorts of things you can do, but one of the things, because, at the Last Supper, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, a foot-washing is often part of that service. Now, this of course, at least in American culture, can be quite a problematic thing. People feel very squeamish about their feet, some people are very ticklish about their feet. So it’s, kind of, you have to figure out what you want to do with that. What I have done in that past, or what churches I have been in have done in the past, is often the pastor will wash the feet of someone, perhaps a child, perhaps a elder in the church, or something to that effect. Something that you’ve figured out ahead of time that this person would be okay with it, and it just shows this idea of the greatest among them is stooping to serve the others, just like Jesus did. So you can decide if you want to that, or if you want to do an actual foot-washing service, like some denominations do, where everybody washes everybody else’s feet. But regardless of how you do that, that, generally speaking, is part of the service.

And there are lots of kinds of, not specifically foot-washing, but servant type songs. So I’m thinking about Twila Paris’s “How Beautiful.” You know, it’s an oldie but it’s a goodie, and this is a time of year when you can actually use that song appropriately for the foot-washing. Another, some other ones that just talk really more about our servanthood to each other, one would be “The Servant Song,” which is “Brother, let me be your servant. . .” So this is, just basically, “Let me be your servant; you can be my servant, too.” And that we serve each other in the body of Christ.

Another one is from Africa, I can’t remember where in Africa, but “Jesu, Jesu, Fill Us with Your Love.” A little bit more upbeat than you might want for a service like this, but it could work. It happens to be my pastor’s least favorite song, so we really never do this at my church, but I kind of give him a pass on that. I feel like it’s giving every child a vegetable they don’t like. I think every pastor and every music director should have at least one song that they say, “No, I’m never going to sing that one.” Another one that works really well comes from the Taizé community: “Ubi Caritas,” which means “Live in Charity,” and there are texts in both Latin and in English, but it’s very easy to sing in Latin if you’ve never sung that. But it just says, “Live in charity and steadfast love.” It’s a really great song to sing. It’s very meditative and talks about our love for one another.

Another song that you could do. This is not so much in the foot-washing realm of things, but it’s a song called “Jesus, Greatest at the Table.” No, I’m sorry, it is a foot-washing song. It’s called “Jesus, Greatest at the Table,” and it talks about how he was the most important person at the table, and yet he still served others. That text is by Steven Starke, and it appears in some hymnals, not too many hymnals, but some. So you can look that up, for example, on hymnary.org and see if there is a tune that you like that would work for your congregation. I would also suggest that you would check out on my website, where I have a tune called TABLE GREATS, that’s the name of the tune, kind of play on “table greats,” but also “table grace”— you see what I did there? Oh, yes. So, anyways, that’s a nice tune that you could do. And once again, this is a special service, and so it seems to me fairly appropriate that you have a certain amount of solo music that is sung for the congregation, cause they’re only going to hear these things once a year. So, to do a song like that, I think is very appropriate.

All right, so what else happens at a service of the upper room? Well, of course, Communion needs to be part of this, because that’s what the, this was the Last Supper, this is what culminated for the disciples and Jesus, is this meal that they shared together. So it makes complete sense that you would have a Communion service, or Communion as part of this service. You might want to have overtones of the Seder meal, because that would have been what Jesus was celebrating with his disciples. You may what to sing the Hallel Psalms, Psalm 115 to 118, I believe, because that’s presumed to be what Jesus sang when it says, “After they sang a hymn, they went out.” It was presumed that it would have been one of those songs, because that’s the Psalms that they sang during this meal.

I have also, at a former church I did a service that I really liked a lot. It was the Liturgy of the Upper Room. So we would gather, actually, in the fellowship hall. And it was a nice service because it felt different, right? Instead of being in the kind of worship space that you’re used to, you’re in the eating space. Okay, so it already has this very built-in meal and fellowship-like character to it. And so what we would do, is we would have a service where we would sit around tables, just like you would at dinner, and we would have like six to eight people at a table. And there were a number of really interesting things about this. It was all based on Scripture, and you can download this at my website. Almost all based on Scripture, and one of the things that happened toward the end of the meal when we had Communion, is we had the echoes of the Seder where the child asks, “Why do we do this?” And then the adult answers, “Well, we do this because it means this.” 

And, so that dialogue back and forth, instead of giving that to a liturgist up front, it was done at the table. And so we had little placards on each table, and they would say that the, you know, look into the worship order because there’s going to be reading parts for the oldest person at the table and the youngest reader at the table. And so it was really quite sweet, you’d have this table, and you might have a 50-year-old, but you might have a 90-year-old, and they would be talking with someone who is, you know, young enough to be very young, but also old enough to read. And it’s just a very, very sweet thing, and you’d just hear the murmur all around as they go through this liturgy before the Communion. You hear this murmur all around the room of people reading these things back and forth. It was really a sweet service, and you can get that online and read more carefully about that.

So that’s, that’s some basic ideas, some ways to get you started on a Maundy Thursday service that focuses on the upper room. Now, let’s look at a Tenebrae service. A Tenebrae service, I don’t even know what “Tenebrae” means, to tell you the truth. But in a liturgical sense, a Tenebrae service is a service of the deepening of the shadows. So this is not the seven last words of Jesus, but these are kind of the seven last scenes of Jesus’ life. This is when he says, “Someone will betray me.” And then, then the disciples fall asleep while he’s praying. You know, it’s these scenes, and then slowly it goes to the judgment hall before Pilate, all of those kinds of things. So basically, what we see is Jesus, his life is unraveling, you know, before our eyes, we see. . . His life is not unraveling, because he’s Jesus, but what we see is that everything is just going south. His disciples are leaving him, he is being tried for things that he didn’t do, that he was innocent of, and Jesus knows the outcome of this, is that it’s going to be a crucifixion. We don’t know that yet in the story.

So, what the service of Tenebrae is about, is it’s a service of shadows and darkness. So many churches, what they will do, is they will start with the sanctuary really quite dark, as dark as you can make it and still have people able to read what they need to read. So, the sanctuary is quite dark and somber, typically there’s not a lot of music, people might enter in silence and leave in silence. Some churches will cover the Communion table in a black cloth. Others will drape the cross in a black cloth. And, the guts of the service are these seven readings that I talked about, the betrayal, desertion, and all those. And, usually what you have, you might have seven readers, but you might have just one reader. And typically you’ll have seven candles up front, and after each reading, one candle is snuffed out. After the next one, the next candle is snuffed out until all of the candles are snuffed out and the sanctuary is left in darkness. 

And, between these readings and the candles going out, silence is very appropriate, and it’s just amazing how this builds, it builds this tension throughout the service, where you hear this scene from Jesus’ final moments on earth, and then there’s just this dead silence. You hear the candle snuffer being picked up, and the candle going out, and the candle snuffer going down again. And it’s really quite dramatic. One thing I’ve done, and this is probably not in anybody’s wheelhouse, but I wrote a piece called “The Shadows,” and it’s for seven cellos. And so then, I had a musical meditation between each of the readings, and it’s a very dramatic, biting kind of piece with lots of really dissonant harmonies. And so that was really good, a good service with that. You can email me if you’re interested in that, but I doubt many people have seven cellos. I just happened to have those one year so I wrote something for them.

Sometimes the Tenebrae service is ended by people stripping the altar of all of the, you know, the cross, the Bible, all those kinds of things, so it’s completely barren. Other churches will do, maybe a bell tolling, some will do a hammer for the nails of the cross, or some kind of sound like that, like sealing the tomb or nailing the cross. So, once again, it’s a very dramatic kind of service, and one of the things that I like about the service beyond the fact that it’s so powerful, is, as a worship leader, it’s actually quite simple. Once again, you let the Scripture tell the story. You don’t have to make stuff up, you don’t really even need a sermon in that service, right? So instead of doing a lot of talking, a lot of singing, a lot of explaining, you just simply let people sit with the words of Scripture and with silence, and they can kind of feel those words of Scripture echoing in the silence.

Some possibilities for songs, cause you probably will sing some music. One of my all-time favorites is a hymn called “O Come and Mourn.” And I love to start a service like this, either a Maundy Thursday service, a Tenebrae service, or Good Friday service with “O Come and Mourn.” Because it’s, the hymn says, “O come and mourn with me awhile, O hasten to the Savior’s side.” And it’s basically just calling people to worship, but also to mourn as they see what Jesus suffers. Beautiful song.

Another one, which is just a little bit more common, is “Go to Dark Gethsemane,” and especially those opening two, maybe three services.

Go to dark Gethsemane,
those who feel the tempter’s power.
Wait with him, watch with him.

It kind of refers to the disciples leaving him during prayer. There’s lots of overtones of the Scriptures that would be read in that, “Go to Dark Gethsemane.”

A song that works well for the close of this, because we’ve heard the Scripture where Jesus says, “Stay with me. I’m going to be praying. Stay with me and pray with me.” And there’s a Taizé song called “Stay with Me,” which is just a wonderful, meditative song, and there’s a kind of a double meaning to it in a sense, when you use it liturgically. Because it’s the words of Jesus, saying “Stay with me and keep watch with me,” but it’s also saying, “Stay close to Jesus during these next few days, as Jesus suffers and as you go through the tomb and into the resurrection. Stay close to Jesus.”

So those are some ideas for Maundy Thursday. And now I’ll go to Good Friday and the kinds of materials you might want to use in Good Friday. So, Good Friday, properly speaking, is a focus on the resurrection. [Greg meant to say crucifixion.] And, once again, many people will essentially do a Good Friday service on Thursday, because it’s, whatever, it’s more convenient to do it at that time, and those kinds of things. And I think that’s fine; I wouldn’t call the liturgical police on you. But, the Good Friday service, is really focused specifically on the crucifixion. 

And I think one of the dangers, the temptations in a service like this, is to make this service, try to overdramaticize it, I’m not sure if that’s the right word. But basically, take this posture of “Jesus died, and YOU killed him. Think about that! Think about your sins and how you killed Jesus, and he was on the cross, looking at YOU, thinking about YOUR SINS!” Right? I don’t know that we need to do that much brow-beating in a service like this, for a number of reasons. One is, I think that we want to, in a worship service that is a corporate worship service, we want to think more corporately about things rather than individually. I’m not a huge fan of “Jesus was on the cross and he was just thinking of you.” That, to me, seems a little bit too personal. He was thinking about a lot of people, and he was thinking about the new creation, and all of those kinds of things, right? He was thinking about the big picture. I mean, I can’t tell you exactly what he was thinking about, but, in other words, I don’t think it was as narrow as “he was thinking about you.” 

So I think we don’t want to overemphasize that part of it. And I think really what we want to do instead is we simply want to tell the story. We don’t need to, you know, kind of point the finger at people, and try to get them whipped up to find themselves in the story. Because if you just let Scripture speak, they will find themselves in the story. They will feel the weight of their sin. They will feel the depth of Jesus’ love in a service like this. So, I encourage you just to simply tell the story. One of the ways that a lot of churches do that is with a service of the Seven Last Words. So these are the words like, “I thirst,” and there are seven phrases that Jesus says as he goes to his crucifixion, as he goes to his death. So, in a service like this, the opening could, once again, thinking of musical ideas, the opening could be “Go to Dark Gethsemane,” so that would be a good possibility. You could do another cross song, like “Beneath the Cross of Jesus,” or the Getty/Townend “O to See the Dawn (The Power of the Cross.” So anything that’s cross-focused is really quite good, especially if it’s a cross-focused song that says, basically, “Come to the cross and kneel, and ponder the depth of Jesus’ love as he bears your sins on the cross.”

As I said, people often use Seven Last Words to shape the service, and in the same way as the Tenebrae service, it creates a simple format that is also very powerful. These Seven Last Words can also be very powerful. You might want to do the readings, and the contextual readings around those Seven Last Words. You may want to have the preacher do, just little tiny vignettes, break a sermon into seven parts, and just do two, three minutes of reflection on each one of those words. Or you might just want to read it and sing a song, read it and sing a song.

Some ones that work— Oh, and I should say this. A couple years ago, at my church, I, we had a series of Jesus’ Seven Last Words, that was the Lent series. Each week we would focus on one. And so I was writing a new song for each of those Last Words. And it was actually when Covid hit, and so suddenly, you know, all of us were scrambling, trying to figure out what to do, you know. And so we took the service online, and the pastor and I, he read those Scriptures and then I sang the song. And it was nice, ‘cause it was a recap of the whole series that we had done, and all seven songs that I had composed. It was also a recap of the content of those seven sermons that he had preached. And so it made a really good simple service, and because of Covid, just the two of us sat there on the stage. He would read the Scripture, do a short meditation, I would sing a song. And just back and forth like that. It was really nice. And I’ll post a link to that underneath the podcast description.

Some songs that work quite well for this service, one would be Taizé’s “Jesus, Remember Me.” I really like this one. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” It’s the words of the thief on the cross, and so it’s, once again, the music here is taking Scripture, just letting the words of Scripture speak.

There’s a wonderful song called “Ah, Holy Jesus.” And this is the one I mentioned early in the podcast. And it just talks about, “You weren’t the guilty one. I was the guilty one, but you took the punishment for my sin.” I have an arrangement of that for piano to accompany congregational singing, and it just kind of puts a little bit more movement than the hymnal does. It’s kind of a nice arrangement, I think.

Another one would be “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.” That’s a classic crucifixion song, talking about the suffering of Jesus, and just kind of pondering the suffering of Jesus. Once again I have some materials for that. I have some descants that work really well with that. And so, I have in the past, had the organ or the piano just play what’s in the hymnal, and then have, maybe a flute and a clarinet play those double descants that I wrote, and use that as a prelude. And then come back later and sing the song as a congregational song. So that’s also on my website. There’ll be a link to that.

For the end of the service, you know, this is a very desolate service. We end with Jesus in the tomb. Once again, we know what the end of this, we know what the outcome of this will be. We know that there is resurrection in this, but, in the drama of the story, no one knows that. So it’s really quite a dramatic moment where it’s just very desolate. And so, there are some songs that might be appropriate for that. “What Wondrous Love Is This” is a good one, because it’s pondering the love of Jesus. And it’s also ends on a note of praise, that song. I’ve got an arrangement of that, a Just Add People arrangement, and I’ve also got a string arrangement of that one, if you were to sing that one. “Were You There?” is another one, and this is a classic time to use that. I had a friend who played euphonium, and he told me, “I’ve always fantasized about ending a service, it ends in complete silence, and I’m in the balcony with my euphonium. And then out of the silence I begin playing ‘Were You There?’ and then people leave.” And it’s actually really a great idea, and that’s the kind of feel that you want in that Good Friday service.

People are mixed about whether they want to leave that service in complete desolation, or if they want to have some kind of resurrection hope. This usually comes to a point when they talk about the Christ candle. Do you let the Christ candle burn from Good Friday to Easter morning, or do you snuff it out at the end of the Maundy Thursday service or at the end of the Good Friday service to signify the light of Christ being extinguished. And of course that’s for you to decide. But for now I think you have enough to contemplate, and I hope that from the things that we’ve discussed in the podcast, from the resources that are listed in the podcast notes, I hope you find something here that kind of sparks your imagination and gives you the resources that you need to plan out these services well.

So, I wish you happy planning for those services. I welcome your feedback or your questions. I would be glad to have a conversation about any of these materials or any questions that you have about this.

This has been the Greg Scheer Music Podcast, with your host, Greg Scheer, and I hope to see you in future episodes.

Now, when we talk about Palm Sunday we have to start right off the bat by talking about how awkward Palm Sunday is, liturgically speaking. So we’ve been in Lent, which is this somber time of self-reflection and extraordinary devotion, and we are moving into Good Friday and Maundy Thursday and the crucifixion of Jesus, so, obviously the very lowest point of the liturgical year. And right in the middle of all of this valley is this happy blip on the screen, where the children process with palm branches and we sing happy songs and all those kinds of things. And the other awkward thing about Palm Sunday is that we know, because we’re looking back on the story, we know that this procession is going to be very fickle, that the same crowds that were lauding Jesus on Palm Sunday, on his triumphal entry, those same people would be crying, “Crucify him!” a week later. And so, whereas the people in the original Palm Sunday didn’t have that perspective, we have that perspective. And it creates this kind of strange underbelly to whatever we do, whatever celebration that we have.

And, so how do we deal with this issue? I guess if you’re not a liturgical congregation, you don’t celebrate Lent, then you can basically treat Palm Sunday like a mini Easter. We have kind of a warm-up celebration to the big celebration of Easter. And I guess that that’s fine, but I think that that’s missing some richness that is there.

So, let’s think about this. The two directions that we can take on Palm Sunday, or on that, I should say, that Sunday a week before Easter. We can either go the direction of Palm Sunday, or we can go the direction of Passion Sunday. So if you look into liturgical resources, you’ll see that there are actually two routes that you can take. The one is Palm Sunday, where we really emphasize the triumphal entry and the joy, and all of those kinds of things. The other is Passion Sunday, which feels like a foreshadowing of what we’ll experience later in the week during the low points of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. My friend Deb Rienstra has written about this. She has an article online called “The Problem with Palms,” and it really outlines kind of this weirdness of Palm Sunday well. I’ll have the link in the description below this podcast.

So let’s start by looking at what we can do for a Palm Sunday celebration. So, if we’re going to celebrate Palm Sunday, and, you know, if you are in a normal congregation, I don’t think that you’re really going to get away with saying, “Okay, kids, you don’t get your palms this year. We’re celebrating Passion Sunday. Now sit down and be quiet and somber.” It’s probably going to be unrealistic in most congregations. So what I often recommend is actually that we start with a Palm Sunday celebration, and then shift toward a Passion Sunday type of feel. But we’ll get to that later.

So for a Palm Sunday celebration, obviously you want hosannas of all types. If you type into hymnary.org, “hosanna,” you’re going to get lots and lots of songs. Some of them are specifically for Palm Sunday. Some of them just say “hosanna.” So, for example, the Hillsong, “I See the King of Glory.” That’s one that its chorus is one— “I see the king of glory. . .” And then the chorus goes, “Hosanna, hosanna.” So even though it’s not specifically about Palm Sunday, that one is one that could work on Palm Sunday. 

Another one of course, is the tune “Ride On, Ride On in Majesty.” Now, one of the things that I like about this hymn, is that it gets a little bit at the pomp of the moment, but the foreshadowing of the passion. So it says, “Ride on, ride on in majesty, in lowly. . . ride on to die,” is what it says. It’s basically saying that this is the journey, that Jesus knows about it, and then that we know about in retrospect. So that’s a great text, a great hymn text. One of the problems with that song, I think, is that there are not a lot of great tunes that go with it. So there’s ST. DROSTANE, which is very triumphant, so very march-like, and those kinds of things. So it doesn’t really support the passion sides of that hymn text. There’s also WINCHESTER NEW, which is actually quite similar to the previous one, and it’s kind of an unremarkable tune. I think that the person who wrote it is dead, so I can say that and not feel like I’m hurting anybody’s feelings. 

Here are some ideas for tunes that might be, that you might not think about matching to that text, but I think work quite well. There’s a tune called DEO GRACIAS, which has a lot of gravitas to it. It’s a minor key, it’s the one that goes [Greg sings] “Ride on, ride on in majesty, in lowly. . . ride on to die.” So it’s kind of a medieval-sounding tune. Another one that I really like is called THE KING’S MAJESTY. It’s by someone named Graham George, and it’s a very dramatic minor melody. It feels like it was written by Ralph Vaughan Williams. And I believe that it actually comes from a movie, because it’s, the copyright is credited to Columbia Pictures. So someone can write in and give me all the details on that. But it’s very dramatic, very cinematic. So those are some ideas with “Ride On, Ride On.”

Let’s see, some other things that you could do, if we want to start branching out from the center. I mean, I don’t need to tell you about “All Glory, Laud, and Honor” and those kinds of things. You know all of those songs. But, so let’s get a little bit off the beaten path. So we can go in kind of a Jewish or, what would you say, Klezmer kind of groove with “The King of Glory Comes.” That’s, but the text is by Jabusch is his name. And that’s a good one. It’s the. . . [Greg sings.] That one is quite good. I like that one a lot. I have written a different text to that, which goes “Hosanna in the highest. . .” And then it’s got some very specific Palm Sunday verses. So you can look that one up on my website. 

The thing that I like about that is that it’s a tune that people know, and it’s also a tune that you can stretch during a palm processional. So sometimes, when you’re planning music for a palm procession, you really don’t know how many kids are going to be there, are they going to form double lines or single lines, are they going to move fast or slow. It’s really one of these conundrums, these practical conundrums of leading worship on Palm Sunday. But that is one that goes chorus, verse, chorus, verse, so you can do all sorts of things to stretch it out or to trim it back. So that’s something to keep in mind for that one.

Another variation on that is another one that I did, which, I kind of, at a certain point, said, “Well, maybe I should just leave that Jewish tune alone, and think about using my text or some kind of variation on that text that I wrote, the Palm Sunday text, and do a more traditional hymn-like tune.”

Hosanna in the highest.
Hail the one who saves us
O blessed is the one who brings
The kingdom of heaven.
Who is the King of kinds, the Lord God Almighty?
God’s reign is coming
Hosanna in the highest. . .

I think that one is quite learnable, and then also serves as a good Palm Sunday, palm procession song. One issue with teaching songs like this, on the spot on Palm Sunday, is that Palm Sunday only happens once a year. And so this is one of these liturgical problems that we have, is that, whereas normally we can introduce a hymn, say, some of the hymns that I suggested, during Lent. You can introduce that the first week of Lent, and then sing it the second week of Lent, and then give them a week off, and then bring it back the fourth week of Lent. And so by then, it’s kind of become something that they are familiar with. 

The problem with some of these once a year celebrations, like Palm Sunday and Ascension, and those kinds of things, is that we get one shot to do the songs. And so if you’re going to teach something new, you might think about having your choir or your praise team lead it, maybe lead significant chunks of it before you ask the congregation to come in. Or, plan to do it every single year for the next three to five years, and then people will start to say, “Oh, this sounds familiar.” And then they’ll say, “Oh, they’re playing my favorite song!” Anyways, think about that, as I, I’m going to tell you all these new songs that you can do on Palm Sunday, but just kind of go easy on your congregations with these things.

Another song a little bit further off the beaten path is one from South Africa called “Sanna, Sannanina,” and it’s kind of a playful take on the words “hosanna.” It’s kind of like, think like a children’s game of the word “hosanna.” So it’s “Sanna, sannanina, sanna, sanna, sanna.” It’s fairly clear what you’re saying when you’re saying that, that you’re saying hosanna in a different language. And, so that song appears in a number of hymnals, and I have created a version of that that actually works as a Sanctus. So, “Holy, most holy Lord. . .” So if you are a fairly liturgical congregation that sings a Sanctus during your worship, then think about that. You can find that in published form in the Presbyterian Glory to God, #597. I also have a version for piccolo.It’s for piccolo and djembe, and you can also kind of blend in congregation. And this is another way that you can take a song and really extend it with different instruments.

Staying in the global theme, there’s another one that I really like. It’s from Guatemala, and it’s “Holy Is the Lord.” And it’s, has a verse that says, “Hosanna, hosanna.” And it’s a beautiful piece. It appears in a number of hymnals. I think that number might be two. So it’s not super common. It’s in the book that I edited about a decade ago called Global Songs for Worship, and I think it appears in some other ones after that. Now that one, again, I have a rendition of that for choir and flute, and I’ve added, when I’ve done it in the past, I’ve added some simple Latin percussion to that. And so that would be one that if you want to introduce that song, you could introduce it by having the choir sing it, and then the next year have the people sing it. And actually, that’s not so Palm Sunday specific that you can’t use it at other times in the year.

And so those are some ideas of things that you can do that are a little bit, a little bit different twist. And I really like those global songs, because, once again, you can add or subtract to them a little bit more easily than you can with a hymn. Another thing I like to do: I always try to push the idea that global music is not some kind of weird thing that we do as some kind of experiment, and then we’re done with it and we move on. But instead I try to enmesh it in the fabric of my congregation’s worship life. So one way to do that is to put some of these global songs in medley with other songs. And I’ve found some that work really well for me. 

So, for example, “The King of Glory Comes,” that we talked about, you could use that one, or the Guatemalan “Santo,” which is also, both of those are in E minor. That Guatemalan one goes, “Santo, santo, santo, santo, santo es el Señor.” So either one of those that’s in E minor, they work very well in medley with “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna” in the key of G. Often it’s written in A-flat, but there are a number of published versions in G. So that has often been my whole palm procession, is one of those global songs and then “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna.” Another one that works with “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna,” is Carl Tuttle’s “Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna to the King of kings. . .” Right? So that’s kind of an old-school tune, but to pull that out once a year is not a bad thing at all, and especially when it’s in medley with something. I’ve used it as a chorus with “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna,” where we just go back and forth between those two.

Another thing, another medley that can work is the South African “Sanna, Sannanina” combined with “All Glory, Laud, and Honor.” They’re both in B-flat, so they just kind of blend right back and forth to each other. So something I’ve done is, for congregations that know “Sanna, Sannanina,” I’ll just start singing that, and that will be the bulk of our palm procession. And I’ll time that out until we’re basically done, and then I just segue right into “All Glory, Laud, and Honor.” And that makes a real regal start, you know, the organ can come in, and all those kinds of things.

So those are some ideas about how to do a Palm Sunday service. Now, let’s look at Passion Sunday services. So, Passion Sunday is, and you can look this up online for the lectionary readings and all that of Passion Sunday. But, like I said, it gets more foreshadowing of the crucifixion. So, what do we do for Passion Sunday? I’ll give you some ideas about things that have worked well for me in the past.

One, Psalm 31 is one of the standard Psalm lectionary texts for Passion Sunday, Psalm 31. And I really like Wendell Kimbrough’s setting of Psalm 31 called, “In You Lord, I Refuge Take.”

In you, Lord, I refuge take.
Let me not be put to shame.
Turn your ear and quickly make
Safety for my trembling frame.
You’re a rock and fortress strong.
I am lost and cannot see.
For your name’s sake, lead me on.
In your hands my soul redeemed.

Very easily learnable. I have a setting of that with a flute, flute descant, and a choral arrangement of that, a simple choral arrangement, which works pretty well. So, once again, using your choir or your praise team or your instrumentalists to introduce a song is a good thing. But that’s one, Psalm 31 by Wendell Kimbrough, that’s one that I think can work all year long. Another lectionary reading for Palm Sunday, I don’t think this is a Passion reading, but it’s a Palm Sunday reading, is Psalm 118. 

And so, something that I do if I’m going to emphasize the Palm Sunday side of things. Sorry to just get back into Palm Sunday for a minute, but that, Psalm 118, is both a reading for Palm Sunday and a reading for Easter Sunday. And there are all sorts of great versions of this. A couple that I have liked a lot over the years, Michael Joncas, “This Is the Day.” A really beautiful, very simple, simple arrangement of this. “This is the day the Lord has made. . . ” And like a lot of Catholic songs, Catholic lectionary songs, it has a very short, quickly learnable melody, and then the choir or cantor will take the verses. And so it’s a nice format, because the congregation can do this new song, and just can, just on the spot learn it. It’s like an eight-bar melody, and then the leaders will take care of the rest. So that’s really nice.

Taizé’s “Psallite Deo” is another one that’s really nice. Like a lot of Taizé songs it’s very simple and austere, mostly a capella, light instrumentation. Another one that I like comes from the Lutheran world, Patrick Geary, “Rejoice and Be Glad.” You’ll find that one in Psalm Songs for Lent and Easter, volume 2. I like that one a lot. So those are Psalm 118 ideas.

Another thing for Passion Sunday that I’ve done, and this is kind of a big idea, so I’m going to introduce it to you, and then I will let you explore it if you see fit. So something that I did a number of years ago at my previous church, Church of the Servant, I created a service that was based on the Passion readings from Matthew. So, basically, and I really like to do this: I like to take Scripture and then superimpose it on top of the liturgical structure. So for example, in this particular setting, almost all the words were drawn from Scripture itself. So for example, the greeting at the beginning of the service briefly explained the triumphal entry and gives a little context to the palm procession. The confession part of the service evokes the cleansing of the Temple. The assurance after the confession centers on Jesus’ remarks about wanting to gather Jerusalem as chicks under her wing. So, each one of these things, and then it gets into, in this particular service, we actually did a dramatic reading of the Passion story from Matthew, instead of a sermon. And that Passion reading was interposed with songs and liturgical elements and all of those kinds of things. It becomes very, very powerful, by the time where you get to the part where the people are crying for Jesus to be crucified, and you give that to the congregation. It’s a very powerful moment. So I will have links to those things online. You can see the bulletin that we used, the printed worship order that we used, and you can hear a recording of parts of that service. I will leave links to that.

So, Palm Sunday, Passion Sunday. I hope this has given you a few things to think about, a few ways to kind of get into this and kind of move beyond just the straight-up “All Glory, Laud, and Honor” and then you’re done, sort of thing. I hope this helps you have a richer celebration this year at your Palm Sunday, Passion Sunday service. Like I said, we will continue this Holy Week series with a few more episodes that will center on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, and Eastertide. Until then, this is Greg Scheer for the Greg Scheer Music Podcast.

So today we’re going to talk about, mostly about songs of the cross, and we’re going to include some things for choir. So if you have a choir and you’re wondering what to do during Lent, then stay tuned. We’re going to talk about some different things.

So, let’s start with “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” This is not a cross song; what I often do in Lent, is I start with more, songs of devotion and songs about Christ’s nature and our reliance on Christ in the beginning of Lent, and then focus, really, more and more on the cross as Lent goes on. I think that’s a good way to do that, and it slowly brings into focus the cross, and we get into Holy Week, and there’s a lot of impact there.

So, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” is a very, very well-loved hymn. What’s interesting is that Charles Wesley, who wrote it, his brother John was his editor, and John said, “No, this is, this is too intimate. We shouldn’t publish this.” And it was only published I think after his death, maybe, maybe after a number of years, but it’s one of his most beloved texts, but his brother John felt that it was too intimate. And it’s really interesting, you know, we don’t usually, well we shouldn’t really call Jesus a lover, our lover, because that has sexual connotations, but to say “Jesus, lover of my soul” is a different thing. And many people connect with this text.

There are a number of tunes to go with it, and that’s one of the things about this text that is unfortunate, is that there’s no tune that has just locked in with it. There’s the tune, I think it’s called MARTYN— “Jesus, lover of. . .” Oh, how does it go? Anyway, it’s in 6/4 time, and it’s not my favorite of them, but it’s a lot of people’s favorite, so it’s kind of surprising. So kind of check that out with your church if you’re going to do that.

The other one is a Welsh tune, ABERYSTWYTH. I can never pronounce the Welsh tunes because they have way too many Ys in them. But that’s the one— “Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly. . .” I think that is just a beautiful tune, but it’s a minor tune, and so a lot of people, really, they feel like it’s too morose. So you kinda have to check that out. Into that fray I added my own version. And this is a choral version that’s published by GIA Music, and the tune goes “Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly. . .” It’s really quite an easy anthem, so you should consider trying that out with your choir during Lent. That’s a good one.

Now, let’s move on to more cross-specific songs. The classic is “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” It’s an Isaac Watts text, and you just don’t get a better hymn text than this. It’s just beautiful the way the verse one leads into two, into three, and then in four. The first verses are observing the cross, when I survey, when I look at the cross. And it’s just contemplating Jesus and his sacrifice for us. And then verse four is this beautiful verse of response that responds and says, “If Christ can give all that to me, then certainly I can give my life to him.” What’s really interesting is the traditional tune for that only has five notes. Count em. . . So you get the point, only five notes. But with just five notes, it’s just such a beautiful tune. I don’t know how the tune is so beautiful with just so few notes.

So of course, there’s no reason not to sing that just as a hymn, but you can also do the Chris Tomlin version, which adds the “Oh, the wonderful cross. . .” It’s got a nice chorus that is added to that, so that’s another option for “When I Survey.” And you can try some creative things, especially if you’re in a blended setting. You could have your organist or pianist lead the traditional version of the verse, and then have your praise team take over during the chorus, and sing the Chris Tomlin chorus of it. You can go back and forth like that. All sorts of things that you can do with just very few resources like that.

Another thing to be aware of is the Gilbert Martin choral arrangement. It is just magnificent. If your choir has not sung this then you really need to sing it. It’s just spot-on, really sings well, it’s just, oh, it’s just lovely. So the Gilbert Martin arrangement of “When I Survey.”

Now, interesting, I actually think that the tune, I can’t remember the name of the tune. . . I think the emphasis is a little bit off in these words. “When I survey,” it just doesn’t work quite right for me. And I really like the tune O WALY WALY, “The Water Is Wide.” That, you remember— “The water is wide, I cannot get o’er. . .” Right? So that tune, and we use it for lots and lots of hymns as well. But I like it for this text: “When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died. . .” Doesn’t that fit nicely?

So, something that you can do— I do this a lot— is I’ll take a song that I really want to pound out over and over during the season, but I know that I just can’t sing it every single week as is. So I’ll take it, and I’ll vary it each week. So I might do the traditional one week, I might do the traditional with the Chris Tomlin chorus the next week, I might do the Gilbert Martin choral arrangement the next week, and then just do a folk version. And this is a way of kind of, when we use different tunes, it’s not just to confuse people or irritate them, although that sometimes does happen. . . I led this one time in a church, and this guy walks up to me after the church and says, “Thanks for ruining my favorite hymn.” Like, I don’t know, do I say, “You’re welcome”? So it’s not always going to be a win. But I think the good side of what happens when we do different tunes, is that we hear the words in a different way, right? So we put a different frame on the words and we experience it in a different way. And I think that’s really important that we do that.

Another cross song, if you have a choir. It’s funny, John Stainer’s song, “God So Loved the World,” you know, it’s a classic, but it’s kind of tired, right? You know, a lot of, not many choirs would do that because it’s like, every choral library has it. You have the Hallelujah chorus, you have— I guarantee. Just go and look in your choir folders and you’re going to find John Stainer’s arrangement, or setting, of “God So Loved the World.” And I was, I kind of felt that way about this, and one year I just kind of said, “Okay, it’s a classic. I should do it.” And I sucked it up and I did it, and boy, there’s a lot of music in there. I really, it’s just really quite a beautiful song. So, this is one that if you have that in your choral library I’d encourage you to go look for that.

And then, another one: “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed.” There are lots of Jesus bleeding songs that you can use. And you kind of have to gauge your context, right? So you, in your context something like “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” might not be the right song. And I understand that “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed” is quite melodramatic, it’s quite graphic. I do think that every church should sing this, you know, once during Lent. And the beauty of this song is that there’s a lot of ways to sing it. So, there’s the traditional tune, I think the tune is called HUDSON— “Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die. . .” So it’s a little more of a. . . little more upbeat and sturdy, and that’s the one that many people know. There’s one by Bob Kauflin, I can’t recall offhand how that goes. There’s one by Annie Quick, which is really, I just like this version a lot. I’ll just play a little bit of it.

Alas, and did my Savior bleed,
and did my Sovereign die?

I just completely butchered that, but you can see how it goes. It’s kind of a Irish kind of sound, and you can put just a hand drum— boom, chida, boom, dum, boom— and it’s really beautiful because it takes. . . Most of the other versions are quite sweet, and kind of melodramatic, and this one is just very muscular and almost dance-like, and I really like what it brings out in the text.

There is a great choral arrangement by Deborah Govenor, an arrangement of “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed.” And of course I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about my own setting of “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed,” to the tune of MARTYRDOM— “Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die. . .” So it’s that tune, MARTYRDOM, you probably know that tune. And so, my choral arrangement, you can go to my website, and you can find it there. Just type in, “Alas, and did my Savior bleed,” and then you can find it. There will also be links to all of these resources below the podcast, so you can just kind of click through to all those things.

One of the things that I have done a number of years, and specifically with “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed,” some of these tunes that have been around, or texts that have been around for a long time, and have gathered lots of tunes to them, I’ve done a whole series during Lent. So I did a whole series where each week of Lent, we would do a different version of “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed.” And so, what I would often do, what I often do when I do this kind of thing, a series like this, is I’ll write a, you know, I’ve called it different things over the years: a liturgy lesson, a bulletin blurb. But, you know, if you have some kind of publication that people read, or just put it in the bulletin itself where people are, you know, have the worship materials. And you write a little overview of the song and its history, and, you know, points of interest, points of devotion, things that people can be thinking about with that. I’m actually going to have a link in this podcast, to when I was at Church of the Servant, I did this during Lent, so you’ll have a link to the Liturgy Lesson that I wrote. Because it’s a very interesting story, and so it gives you an idea of the kinds of things you can do.

Don’t forget that at hymnary.org, if you dig in to the hymn record, you often will find notes on the hymn, and many of those are very well-written, and you can just pluck those out. That’s what they’re made for— you can pluck them out, put them in your bulletin. You don’t have to write anything yourself. You can give people an overview of the hymn, and I think that’s often a real big win, because not everybody is going to love a hymn that you choose, but when they read about it, then they suddenly have more of an affinity for it.

So, lots of cross songs, lots of blood songs, lots of devotion to Jesus songs, lots of good ideas that you can use for Lent. I think that by the, now that we’re finished with this series, the biggest problem that you’re going to have is too many resources. And I hope you don’t get overwhelmed with all these, but I hope that for each of these episodes you can find just a few songs, a few variations on a theme that might work for your congregation.

Thanks so much for staying with me, and I look forward to chatting later.

So, you know, a person that is not very liturgical could just poo-poo the whole thing, and say, you know, “That’s just ridiculous. I love God all the time.” Well, and that’s true. I’m sure it is. But in the same way that you might take a vacation with your wife, and that is a way of, kind of, rekindling your love and your passion. In that same way, we do those kinds of things in our relationship with Christ.

So Lent is a time when we do that kind of thing. And people often give up something, because that kind of deprivation of whatever it is, it’s a, those things can often be crutches that you do to comfort yourself. So every time you’re feeling stressed, you, you know, eat those kinds of things. So when you give up your kind of go-to food or your go-to drink or whatever the thing you’re giving up, then it’s a way of reminding yourself that Christ is to be our all in all. And, I have done this on a number of years, and it’s just been a very, very powerful thing to go through a whole season thinking about this. And some people will go through the whole season having given something up, and then they will fast for three days at the end of Holy Week. And, I remember an Orthodox friend saying one time, because they cook these yeast breads on Sunday morning of Easter. He says when you walk into the church and you smell those breads wafting up from the kitchen, he says it’s like no smell you’ve ever encountered in your life, because you’re so hungry, you’re so ready to celebrate and to break your fast.

I think my favorite thing that someone gave up for Lent was recorded music. It was fantastic. She gave up listening to any recorded music during the whole season of Lent. And she said it not only changed her devotion to Christ but it also changed the way she listened to music. So she was so eager to go to even student recitals where they’re just playing, you know, songs that you’ve heard a thousand times. It was like a big deal because that was the only music that she was hearing. So really that Lenten discipline is really about being hungry and making sure that our hunger is for God.

So, what does this mean liturgically? So, well, I’ll tell you one thing that it means for me liturgically, what I do in worship. One of the things I really like to do during Lent is to sing a capella. And, in fact, The Hymn Society often encourages a Sunday which is an a capella Sunday. And the reason that we would do this is that we get so connected, so focused on all the bells and whistles of worship. We want a band, we want the organ, we want the choir, we want all this stuff, right? And if that isn’t there then we get all cranky. But, I think that there is a layer of entertainment that happens in worship, that isn’t necessarily bad in and of itself, but I think that we sometimes need to step back, take it away, and just kind of have the purity of an austere worship service, of just the voice, and having that carry it. And there’s just an austere beauty to just the voice singing. So I do a lot of a capella singing during Lent.

Another thing that you’ll find is that you often are going to beef up your confessions. So if you’re a church that does a confession each week, you will often, this will be a little bit oversized during Lent because it’s a time of penitence and discipline. So what kinds of things might you want to do during a confession? We talked last time about Psalm 51, and that’s a fantastic place to start.

There are plenty of songs. I’m just going to choose one to look at today, and it’s “Purify My Heart.” It’s by Jeff Nelson, and for copyright reasons I can’t do the whole song, but it goes like this:

Purify my heart.
Cleanse me with your holy fire.

You know, you get the idea, so it’s by Jeff Nelson. It’s called “Purify My Heart.” I really like that song. It’s kind of an old-school praise song, but because it’s a ballad I think it works well. It continues to hold up over time. One thing that I did recently is I wove together a confession with that song. I like to do this— fairly often I will have people sing their confessions. And, there are a number of reasons to do this. One, is because when you sing something it engages your emotions in it more than it would if you just recited it. And this is one of the big reasons that we sing is because it enflames our hearts and stirs up our passions, and when you combine that with God’s Word, then it brings a new level to our love of the Word and our love of God.

So, I like to have that. . . Oh, and then I was going to say the second reason. The second reason is that I like to reinforce the idea that music is just, not just music. It’s not just some kind of wallpaper, it’s not just people simply flapping their jaws because that’s what they do when they go to church. Everything that you do, all the music that you sing, that you play in church is doing something. It’s helping you confess. It’s helping you proclaim Scripture. It’s helping us respond to Scripture. You know, there are all sorts of things, but if you look at it, every single song that you do in a service is going to be doing something. It’s very important that we understand that.

So, one of the ways that I reinforce that, in our bulletin, it says, “Call to confession, Confession, Words of Assurance.” And so what I’ll do is I’ll let those titles stand, and then I’ll have a piece of music in, for example, the confession. So it’s bringing home the point that we’re not just singing a song, we’re confessing. And so in this particular case, the call to confession, for example, the pastor, the liturgist will stand up and say, “We seek to do good, but our wills are weak, our motives are mixed, and our hearts are impure. Let us return to our God, the refining fire, who will burn away the chaff of our lives, leaving only what is holy.”

Purify my heart. . .

And often, I will be, actually playing underneath this, just as a way of kind of binding it together. So, I’ll go to the words of assurance.

“People of God, the prayer of our hearts has been answered. Jesus Christ has died to forgive our sins, and rose again to give us new life. Our faith has made us whole. And let us live lives worthy of the grace we’ve been given.”

Purify my heart. . .

Now, I just completely butchered that. Sorry. But, you see what can happen then, is that the liturgist is speaking over this light guitar, and then the people come back in to sing. And it really creates a really good spirit in the room as we do this. So that’s confession.

Now let’s move on to some other things. Another thing that we’re thinking about during Lent, is, how do we conform ourselves to Christ? How do, the whole idea is that we’re walking with Christ through the latter part of his life. And we are walking, this journey is ultimately going to take us to the cross, and we know that in following Christ, we also follow him to the cross. And that’s, that’s one of the, we talk about Christ-likeness, and one of the ways that we achieve Christ-likeness is giving of ourselves, is in giving of our lives, is how we, part of how we imitate Christ.

So what kinds of songs work for that? I’ve got two in mind, and these are classic response songs. One is “May the Mind of Christ, My Savior,” and then the other is “I Surrender All.” Now, the original versions I’m sure you know:

May the mind of Christ my Savior
live in me from day to day.

I don’t have the music in front of me, so I’m not going to play it on guitar. And then “I Surrender All:”

I surrender all,
I surrender all,
I surrender all. . .

I’m butchering this. Sorry. You know that song. Well, I have two songs that I have written that are based on those songs, that, if you are kind of growing tired of using “May the Mind of Christ, My Savior” and “I Surrender All” as things that you can respond to, songs of dedication, then here are some possibilities. The first one, “May the Mind of Christ, My Savior,” goes like this:

May the mind of Christ, my Savior
live in me from day to day.

So, it kind of turns this song into kind of, more of a folk song. So, if you’re in a more contemporary church, this would be a really good option for you to do a song like “May the Mind of Christ, My Savior,” a song that really responds to the Word, and says, “Yes, I want to be like Christ, I want to conform to the image of Christ.” Now, I just created a YouTube video of that song. So not only will a link appear in the podcast episode description, you can go to YouTube, there will be a link on the podcast, too, and you can go to YouTube, and you can learn how to play that song, so you can learn this fancy lick. Because who doesn’t want to learn a lick like that?

Now, the other one is “I Surrender,” and my version is also a little bit more contemporary.

I surrender all to you.

So, you hear how it kind of. . . So you could do this with a praise band. You could do it with just solo guitar. And it’s a song of devotion. It could be done right after a sermon. It could be done at the very end of a service. And, this is a great way to send people out, is to have them dedicating their lives to Christ. I also made a YouTube video for this, “I Surrender All to You,” and you’ll find the link in the podcast episode description. And, so, and that just kind of unpacks how I play that. You can download the music from the website.

The final thing that we’ll talk about is a piece that I wrote, I took an existing hymn by James John Cummins, and it’s called “Jesus, Lord of Life and Glory,” and I’ll just sing the basic melody:

Jesus, Lord of life and glory,
Bend from heaven your gracious ear.
As we wait for you, adoring,
Friend of helpless sinners, hear:
By your mercy, oh, deliver us, good Lord.
By your mercy, oh, deliver us, good Lord.

So this one, once again, the music is at my website. And there are a couple different versions of this, I just want to make you aware. The reason that I think that this is an important song, kind of going back to the beginning of this podcast, where we’re talking about the sense of journey that goes along in Lent, this one goes through a number of verses, so it says, “From the depths of nature’s blindness, from the hardening power of sin,” and then it always says, “In your mercy, O deliver us, good Lord, in your mercy, O deliver us, good Lord.” And verse 3 is about temptations. Verse 4 is, “When the world around us is smiling,” it’s talking about when things are good and we begin to be lured away, “In your mercy, deliver us.” And then “In the weary hour of sickness, and at the time of dying,” so this is one that really covers the whole of life, and says, always comes back to, “By your mercy, deliver us, O Lord.” So it’s a really good one. I have a lead sheet and piano music at my website, and GIA Music publishes a choral anthem of this that I wrote. The choral anthem is G-8892, “Jesus, Lord of Life and Glory.”

So these are a number of resources that you can use, and a number of things to think about as you come into Lent. I really hope that this has opened up some good doors for you, and I look forward to continuing this next series in the near future.