LORD OF LIFE LUTHERAN CHURCH
Music Notes
25 July, 2010
“Water, Blood, and Spirit Crying” This hymn text and tune is new to LSB and new to our congregation. The anonymous writer of music notes would not normally throw an unfamiliar hymn at the congregation during the midst of the summer, without preparation and without the choir’s support, but this hymn fits very well with today’s epistle lesson on which the sermon will be preached and hopefully one can easily determine this hymn’s value for today’s liturgy. Paul writes in Colossians 2: 11-14 that “In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.” Our salvation is accomplished not by our own works or even by our own ability to be faithful to Christ, but through our baptism, the Father seeing us through His Son as though we were wearing a garment of perfection as we know from Galatians 3: 26-27, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” This hymn expounds on the grace-filled sacrament of baptism.
The text was written in 1999 by Rev Stephen Starke (b 1955), pastor at St John Lutheran Church, Amelith/Bay City, Michigan. An accomplished hymnwriter, Pastor Starke has contributed about 22 hymns to Lutheran Service Book, although he has written much more. At the request of the anonymous writer of music notes, he wrote “I Always Pray for You,” a hymn based on Philemon 4-7, the theme text for the Texas District Convention last summer on which there had existed no hymn. This hymn became the theme hymn for the convention and a choral setting was even composed and sung as part of corporate worship. The anonymous writer of music notes is likewise happy that Pastor Starke will be at Lord of Life on 11 and 12 October as part of the biennial worship conference, speaking of his experiences as a hymnwriter and of what constitutes a “good” hymn. In this particular hymn one may note the vivid imagery—“Water, blood, Spirit crying” referring to baptism and justification, or “In a watery grave are buried,” an unusual comparison of the baptismal font and a tomb, or Pastor Starke’s third stanza, “Dark the way, yet Christ precedes us, past the scowl of death He leads us,” pitting a triumphant Christ against the “scowling” gates of hell. In the fourth stanza, death is “seething,” conquered only by God’s two-edged sword, conjuring images in this writer’s mind of boiling lava and nefarious smoke, possibly from an angry Icelandic volcano! Starke here has elucidated multihued shades of meaning from the Colossians text but consistently returns us to Christ, “the One [in] whose death-defeating Life has come, with life for all.” (stanza 4)
The tune was composed by Jeff Blersch, Professor of Music at Concordia University, Seward, NE, in 2003 specifically for this text. Dr Blersch was instrumental in Lord of Life’s acquisition of our pipe organ which formerly resided in Seward’s concert hall, and this writer was happy when Dr Blersch came to Lord of Life last September to present an organist’s workshop and to perform an evening concert. He will return to Dallas on 19 September where he will be organist for the Lutheran Hymn Festival at the Meyerson (don’t forget to get tickets: www.lutheranhymnfestival.org.) “Water, Blood, and Spirit Crying” will be one of the hymns sung at the hymn festival. Dr Blersch has composed a simple tune, moving primarily stepwise and avoiding major leaps except at the climax in the fifth measure; the tune is likewise in the minor key, carrying Christ’s triumph over death in a manner that likewise respects the aspects of death and hell Starke elucidates in his text.