"When I Survey the Wondrous Cross"

This three-hundred-year-old hymn written by Isaac Watts in 1707 was a staple in Sunday morning worship when I was growing up in the Free Methodist Church. It never ceases to move me with conviction and holy awe. Not a hymn you can sing unless you really mean it, it makes you feel small at the foot of the Cross in exactly the way any human being should feel in the presence of Almighty God.

When I survey the wondrous Cross

On which the Prince of Glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,

Save in the death of Christ, my God.

All the vain things that charm me most,

I sacrifice them to His blood.

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?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small.

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

To say I miss the historic hymns in our worship services today would be a major understatement. To say I grieve their loss like the absence of a loved one would be the truth. I fear I will never see them again in corporate worship this side of heaven, short of a radical revival of true worship in our times.

I could go on and on about all the reasons why these wondrous hymns got marginalized to the point of near extinction--perhaps to the annoyance of people who could be my children. But it isn't because there was anything wrong with the hymns that they suddenly were packed away in mothballs and lugged to the basement after surviving for centuries. I believe they, like my deceased parents, are as alive now as they ever were. All I have to do is open a hymnbook in my collection at home: a collection culled over time from my parents' favorite antique store haunts, tucked in with other hymnbooks that I actually held in my hands as a child first learning to read. It was the weekly singing of hymns that not only helped me learn to read music but that helped me to read, period, and that helped me to understand grammar and poetry, all of which I love to this day.

People who think that the old hymns were boring either didn't know God or didn't know the hymns like I heard them. When I was in high school, every month that had a fifth Sunday had a Sunday-night hymn sing. We would run out of time in an hour as people called out their favorite hymns, and we could only sing the first and third verses and chorus even to get through them all. In between the favorites, people popped up and gave testimonies. Dear old Dan Burtch, who cleaned the sanctuary praying up and down the pews every week, always had something fresh to say. Somehow in those days before everyone was "plugged in"--and tuned out--we had a sense of community that made true worship so real that, if you weren't right with God when you came through those doors, you would be by the time you left. It was everybody's favorite service. It wasn't boring; it was one of the most exciting rituals of my young life. And all I can do now is dream of what it will sound like one day in heaven, singing "When We All Get to Heaven"--only we'll already be there.

I look back on those days wishing I could lift the scrim of time and reappear in those hard

wooden pews holding the hymnbook in my hands or sharing it with the person next to me. I loved just thumbing through all the pages we never sang, while the old-hymnbook smell of nutmeg and fallen leaves wafted up into my face. I wish I could tell my adolescent self to cherish every single one of those moments as if it were my last--and not to take for granted the holy, homespun poignancy of the piano and organ playing in synchrony without any other deafening instrumentation. I wish I could tell myself to record the fullness of sound as the walls rang out with the entire congregation singing at the top of their lungs in four-part harmony.

I would tell myself to remember for the rest of my life that no human being ever created an instrument as good as the one God created in the human voice. I would vow never to lose the almost palpable, rugged consciousness of God in His House in a way I seldom feel in public anymore. I wasn't constantly distracted by a worldly, celebrity spirit as "important" people checked their professional-image pulse or looked over their shoulders to see who was impressed with the way they oohed into the microphone. No one had a microphone except the song leader. No one was performing. There wasn't a praise band. And I think that's the way it should still be.

     Certainly, every generation should add its voice to the hymns of the faith, but when all we have is our own voice, we soon grow tone deaf, and I believe that's where we are today. And when that voice knows more of our decadent culture than it does of Scripture, it has no power. Many churches today have not only cut themselves off from the roots of their faith; they have also distanced themselves from the truths of Scripture, especially those about the blood of Christ and the Cross. Unsurprisingly, with the disappearance of the hymnal, songs about the Cross have virtually disappeared also. Oh, we may sing jazzed-up ditties, but we have lost the ability to worship the Lord in contrition and awe. We have been conditioned instead to conjure up a pep rally, equating noise with the presence of the Holy Spirit. But for all our noise, our worship may not rise above the ceiling. No distraction of bombast can mask the need for old-fashioned conviction at the foot of the Cross.

If we ever find our way back to innocent, simple, sincere, and homespun worship, it will start with surveying the wondrous Cross. Of all the hymns about the Cross that we used to sing when I was growing up, perhaps the most glorious of all is this one: "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." I do not know how a hymn that has resounded for over three hundred years has all but disappeared in my lifetime. But I do know that it is not because this hymn has lost its power. The power of the Cross never wavers. On the contrary, it not only transcends time; it pierces through the unique spiritual darkness falling across the globe today. When was the last time we sang any of these thrilling songs about the Cross: "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood" (which I want sung at my funeral), "Blessed Redeemer," "At the Cross," "Lead Me to Calvary," "Near the Cross," "The Old Rugged Cross," and "The Cross, It Standeth Fast--Hallelujah!"? I can't even finish this list without my eyes filling with tears.  

To think that even the Titanic went down in 1912 with people singing a hymn--"Nearer, My God to Thee"--which, despite some who dispute the truth of this, remains the testimony of witnesses who reported hearing it--how far have we drifted across the icy seas of faith to have settled for so little that has nothing to do with worshiping God and everything to do with worshiping self? We might almost say that our heritage of hymns, as massive and memorable as the Titanic, has gone down as senselessly and as tragically, to rest uneasily upon an ocean floor two and a half miles below the surface of everyday life. Weeping silently for its drowned world, this maiden ship has offered up a few treasures, to be sure. Here and there we sing an occasional hymn with a guilty awkwardness for not knowing the words even to "Amazing Grace." The failure is so deep, cutting to the very core of who we even are as a church universal, that we have to speak out before even the memory of this mighty Ship of Grace is lost to Christendom forever.

Do you have an old hymnal lying around the house? If not, can you browse your local antique stores to find one? Just opening one and reading the fire of devotion of these pilgrims of faith in days of yore will stir your soul to new depths and lift your spirit to new heights. Your mind will be filled with the beauty of symmetry and poetry as the great truths of our historic faith rise up alive and well as if written with your own personal troubles in mind. Will you take this journey together with me, even reading one hymn a day as part of your devotions? You will not be disappointed!