Hymns (from the Greek word hymnos, meaning praise to the gods) have a long and significant history in the Christian church. Through the years, different streams of hymnody have emerged based on divergent views of tradition, the perceived purpose (i.e. to proclaim praise, express feeling, teach theology, inspire to action), voice and audience (who is speaking to who), and approach to language (using ordinary language or more formal language).
Hymns for the Times
Shirley Erena Murray, a New Zealand hymn writer who lived from 1930-2020 believed strongly that the church needed new hymns to sing. In her view, “Much of what fills our hymnbook is stale bread, once nutritional perhaps, but now furred with mould. I long for the fresh bread of relevant theological thought – crunchy, soul-satisfying stuff—the real food of faith.”
In particular, Murray (and her husband, minister John Murray) felt their New Zealand congregation needed lyrics rooted in their specific land, everyday language, place in history, and responsibility as followers of Jesus. With contemporary British hymn writer Brian Wren as her inspiration, Murray discovered a freedom to use fresh words, images, and references appropriate to her place and people.
In her many Christmas carols, she jettisoned snow-filled winter sentiment and cultural symbols of the northern hemisphere, replacing them with more appropriate—for Kiwis—Christmas references such as sunny Christmas skies. She also felt strongly that Christmas carols needed to take the incarnation more seriously. As a result, her carols are often more realistic and less romanticized than many traditional carols.
Her hymns, which were intentionally particular to her homeland, often include Māori language and meanings. Her work also includes calls to live out faith through justice, inclusion, and the care of creation.
Calling for Care of the Earth
Touch the Earth Lightly
By Shirley Erena Murray
Touch the earth lightly,
use the earth gently,
nourish the life of the world in our care:
gift of great wonder,
ours to surrender,
trust for the children tomorrow will bear.
We who endanger,
who create hunger,
agents of death for all creatures that live,
we who would foster
clouds of disaster,
God of our planet, forestall and forgive!
Let there be greening,
birth from the burning,
water that blesses and air that is sweet,
health in God's garden,
hope in God's children, regeneration that peace will complete.
God of all living,
God of all loving,
God of the seedling, the snow, and the sun,
teach us, deflect us,
Christ reconnect us,
using us gently and making us one.
© 1992 Hope Publishing Company, Shirley Erena Murray.
For 30 years, from 1966 to 1996, France conducted nuclear weapon testing near the French Polynesian atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa. According to Greenpeace, these explosions sucked all the water from the lagoon, "raining dead fish and mollusks down on the atoll," and spreading contamination across the Pacific as far as New Zealand (1,600 miles away) and Peru (4,300 miles away). New Zealand was one of the many countries that protested against this testing.
The hymn, Touch the Earth Lightly, written by Murray in 1991 was, in part, a response to this testing. Images in this hymn, such as "clouds of disaster," are both metaphorical and literal pictures of what happens when we either allow or instigate destruction on each other and the rest of the Earth.
In its verses we find reprimand, gratitude for the earth, plea for forgiveness, a cry for God's blessing on the Earth, and a hope for the coming of a peace that brings wellbeing to all creatures who inhabit God's creation. We need to grapple with each of these themes; this hymn and others like it have important applications beyond a single historical situation such as French nuclear testing.
The hymn addresses both the humans who inhabit this earth and make choices that either "use the Earth lightly" or "endanger" and "create hunger," and the "God of the seeding, the snow, and the sun." Humans have their part to do: live respectfully and make decisions that "nourish the life in our care." God's part, in this hymn, is to forgive, to heal, and to teach us ways of greater life, love, and connection so that all inhabitants of the world can thrive in sweet air and clean water.
As we find ourselves, as individuals and as a church, facing large-scale threats to the Earth, one thing the Church can do is to examine the music we sing, paying attention to what our music is saying, advocating for, and how it is shaping us.
Do the words that we sing accurately represent what we believe about the world, about God, about our responsibility, about our future? Do they give faithful voice to God's call on our lives? Do they help us to move forward with courage and perseverance or do they give us permission to absent ourselves from this world in a spirit of irresponsibility and passivity?
If we find 100 or 300-year-old hymns that ring true and clear, that is good. But in the same way that new hymns helped the church find its way through the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Pietistic movement, the Great Awakening, and other periods of church history, new songs can help us navigate our current times. Songs of justice, including environmental justice, are songs we need to sing. New songs that are rooted in our own place, time, language, and prayers for the future help us recognize that God is not just a God of ages past, but is a God of the present as well.
You can listen to the hymn, Touch the Earth Lightly, as it is set to music by Colin Gibson and sung by St Mark's Lutheran Church in Winnipeg, Ontario, here.
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Louise
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