Come Let Us Worship: A Song For Trinity Sunday (Or Any Sunday!)

1st Section
Come let us worship
Come let us bow down
Come let us sing for joy

Lift up your hands
Lift up your voices
Lift up your hearts to the Lord

2nd Section
For he brings us freedom, he brings us hope
To earth from heaven above;

And he comes with grace, he comes with power
He comes with healing love

3rd Section
Jesus Christ, we worship you our Saviour;
Jesus Christ, we worship you as Lord,
With the Father and the Holy Spirit.
We lift up your name,
lift up your name,
Lift up your name in all the world… Singing,

Holy, Holy, Holy is the Father;
Holy, Holy, Holy is the Son;
Holy, Holy, Holy is the Spirit;
What a wonderful God,
Wonderful God,
What a wonderful God you are.


Introduction
At some point during the week between Ascension and Pentecost, I found myself humming a simple tune, and mentally adding the words ‘Come let us worship’. Before long, in my continued contemplation of the tune and words, I discovered that a new melody was presenting itself, and this time the words ‘Jesus Christ we worship you as Lord, with the Father and the Holy Spirit’ had become attached to the new melody.

Procrastinating from the other work I was intending to do that morning, I sat down with my guitar, and began to write. It became evident fairly soon that I was writing a new song for Trinity Sunday. The whole song took about 25 minutes to write, and if ever I have felt as though I simply ‘received’ a song as a gift, this was it! The process of opening myself to the words and melodies that were arriving was like breathing strong, fresh and cold air – the kind you breathe up mountains or by the coast. It was invigorating.

When the song was finished (at least, provisionally so…) I sang it to my wife Sara, and then a few other friends to get a sense of whether it grabbed them. Each of them found that it was very easy to remember – the melody was simple and catchy, and the words just seemed to belong with the melody. So, aside from a couple of melodic clarifications suggested by Sara (herself a singer and songwriter), the song was completed and ready to offer to a worshipping congregation. It was taught to the congregation of St Mary Magdalene’s Church, Holloway on Sunday 18th May 2008 - Trinity Sunday.

Below are a few reflections on the implicit and explicit Trinitarian motifs – both lyrical and musical which inhabit the song. We’ll begin by exploring the lyrical motifs, and then examine the musical motifs, before drawing some theological conclusions.

Trinitarian Lyrical Motifs
Song Structure
Many contemporary worship songs are written with lyrical couplets with some rhyming scheme. In doing so, they are usually building upon a long history in poetry of rhyming couplets in verse. However, ‘Come Let Us Worship’ depends much more on triplets.

The song has three sections. Many contemporary songs have three sections – usually a verse, a pre-chorus, and a chorus. (Some also have a ‘Middle 8’ – which serves as a brief interlude from the dominant scheme of the song.) The verse and chorus are usually roughly equal in length (duration) and the pre-chorus is generally shorter, and serves as a bridge along which we may pass from verse to chorus. However, each of the three sections of ‘Come Let Us Worship’ are roughly equal in length (the third is slightly longer – and more closely resembles a chorus). The song is directly linear – it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rather than returning to an alternative verse, the song simply repeats in full – maybe twice, maybe three times. (If wanting to conform to a Trinitarian pattern!)

Each section contains two parts, and each part is comprised of a lyrical triplet. In the first section, each line of the first triplet begins with the exhortation ‘Come let us…’. Each line of the second triplet begins with the exhortation ‘Lift up your…’. The second section has two lyrical triplets each beginning with the indicative ‘He brings’ or ‘He comes’. The final section has two parts – each with a pair of lyrical triplets!! (Although the first lyrical triplet is a slight cheat – as only the first two lines begin ‘Jesus Christ’.) The phrases ‘We lift up your name’, ‘Holy, holy, holy’, and ‘Wonderful God’ are each repeated three times in the final section.

Explicit Scriptural Motifs
The first section begins with a traditional call to worship – lifted almost directly from Psalm 95 (also known as the Venite – meaning ‘come’ – and used almost daily in traditional Anglican worship). The injunction to ‘bow down’ and to ‘sing for joy’ picks out phrases from Psalm 95, verses 1 and 4. This section continues with further injunctions to lift up ‘hands’ (1 Tim. 2:8), ‘voices’ and ‘hearts’ to the Lord. During this first section, it is only with the final line that we become aware of who we are being instructed to worship – ‘ to the Lord’. The second section continues by describing the characteristics of ‘the Lord’. But it is only in the third section that ‘the Lord’ is revealed as ‘Jesus Christ… with the Father and the Holy Spirit.’ In this manner, the song echoes the ongoing self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ and through the developing Scriptural witness.

The second section is a lyrical exposition of the characteristics of Christ revealed in the Gospels and the letters of the New Testament. Christ brings us ‘freedom’ (Gal. 5:1) and ‘hope’ (Eph. 1:12, 2 Thes. 2:16). He comes with ‘grace’ (John 1:14), ‘power’ (Matt. 3:11 & 11:20) and the love that is manifest in healing (for example the raising of Lazarus in John 11, or the healing of the synagogue-leader’s daughter and the haemorrhaging woman in Matthew 8-9).

This section rehearses in song that great truth revealed in the Gospels – that Christ is sovereign over heaven and earth. That is to say, his power, rule and scope of influence are not limited simply to ‘heaven’, traditionally conceived as God’s dwelling place – but are also seen exercising their authority on earth, in our corporate and individual lives. And so our hope, has come to earth (where God has made us, his creation, to live) from heaven, where his rule is perfectly realised. Consequently, these two spheres – heaven and earth – are held together by God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ. And God’s perfect rule of heaven has now begun to flood the earth with love, power and justice. So that one day, ‘the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.’ (Isaiah 11:9)

The second section celebrates the life of Jesus, and the rule of God seen in his ministry among us. As we celebrate these gifts of freedom, hope, grace, power and healing love that come to us in Christ, we remember that these gifts are not confined to those who interacted with Jesus during his earthly life, but also have been witnessed by each of us who have been called by his name. And so as we reach the climax of the second section, and move into the third, we find that we are bound to call out on that name by which we have been saved – the name of Jesus Christ.

The third section describes Jesus Christ as ‘our Saviour’. In doing so, it is making a clear connection between the Lord Jesus Christ and ‘God our Saviour’ as described by the New Testament writers (Luke 1:47; 1 Tim. 1:1, 2:3; Titus 1:3, 2:10, 3:4). This connection is made even more strongly in Scripture when Zechariah prophetically speaks of Jesus as ‘a mighty saviour’ who is raised up by the God of Israel. (Luke 1:69 – part of the Benedictus.) Jesus Christ is also described as ‘Lord’ – an early Christian confession, made on numerous occasions, but notably by Thomas ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20:28) and also by Paul, as a creedal confession invoking salvation (Romans 10:9). This first part of the third section concludes with a three-fold commitment to ‘lift up your name’. As the hymnody of Israel concludes with the injunction to ‘praise the name of the Lord, for name alone is exalted [lifted up]’ (Psalm 148:13) so this triplet exhorts those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord to similarly exalt (lift up) his name.

The second part of the third section begins with a classical Trinitarian confession ‘Holy, holy, holy’, echoing the cry of the angelic hosts in both Isaiah 6:3 and also Revelation 4:8. The confession is that together, Father, Son and Holy Spirit truly are a ‘wonderful God’.

Trinitarian Musical Motifs
The musical motifs may be said to be both implicit and explicit – depending on your grasp of musical theory – but it does no harm to highlight them specifically.

Key & Chords (Part 1)
The song was written in the key of G major (although I subsequently transposed it down a tone into the key of F to make the melody more accessible to female singers). The root chord of this key is G major – and is comprised of three notes: G, B & D. This is also known as a major triad. These basic notes of the major key are worth remembering as they feature later on as part of the ‘Trinitarian’ structure of the melody. In the key of G, there are only two other chords that conform to the same structure as the root chord. They are the chords of C major and D major (known as the 4th and the 5th chords of the key according to their place on the scale). They conform in that each of the notes that make up the chord (C, E & G and D, F# & A respectively) share exactly the same interval – the number of semitones – between each note as the root chord. These three chords form the foundation of the song.

Melody
The tune of the song climbs gradually from the start to the finish. The first note of the melody, in the first of the three sections, is a G. In fact, the first section revolves around this G – although the melody departs from the G, climbing above and also falling below, it always returns to the G. So the final note of the first section is also a G. The second section climbs the scale, and hinges around the B – which you’ll remember is the second note of our G major triad: G, B & D. However, there is an ambiguity in the melodic structure of the second section. Although I have just claimed that it hinges on the B, it actually spends a large amount of time departing from and returning to the C – one semitone above the B. Which note then does the melody really depend on? Part of the ambiguity is caused by the fact that the B note, were it the root of its own chord (triad) would necessarily be a minor chord (or ‘sad chord’) in the key of G, whereas, as mentioned above, the C would be the root of a major triad (a ‘happy chord’). And so the second section has a sense of joy, but also of sorrow. The third section of the song sees the melody climb once again, and this time it unambiguously hinges around the D note – the third note of our major triad in the key of G. The melody stays very close to the D for three lines, before dropping back down to the G and climbing with determination back to the D for the climax of the melody. In this sense, both the end of the third section, and also the whole song, may be described as a ‘Song of Ascent’.

Key & Chords (Part 2)
There is something more to be said about the use of chords in the song, for as has been noted above, the second section has a degree of ambiguity about it in relation to the melody. This can also be said of the chords used. The second section begins with a minor chord – Am7. This is okay, as the second chord in the key of G should be minor. However, it also features twice a chord that shouldn’t be there at all! Each melodic phrase of the second section ends with a Cm7 chord – introducing a note, Eb, into a song in which it should have no proper place, being as it does not occur in a G major scale. The C chord we are already familiar with – it is a ‘happy chord’ and has occurred frequently by this stage of the song. And so its subversion by the occurrence of a C minor chord introduces an element of tension – a note of sadness is struck in the midst of an otherwise happy song. The reason for this will be elucidated below.

Some Theological Observations
Creator, Redeemer, Reconciler
It should be evident by now, that in some way, the song traces a pattern of Scriptural revelation, moving from the worship of Israel in the first section (with its heavy dependence on the Psalms) to the angelic cry of Revelation in the third section. The second section focuses so closely on the personal characteristics of the person of Jesus ‘the Lord’, that it sits as a ‘gospel’ in between the first and third sections. It would be easy from this to fall into an approximate scheme which correlates the first section with the Father, the second with the Son, and the third with the Holy Spirit. But of course, this would be to imply a kind of theological Modalism (not the same as musical modalism!) whereby the one God is simply revealed in three different forms or threee different modes of operation and interaction. This is not an adequate Trinitarian doctrine to apply to the song.

All three persons of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are invoked and worshipped in every section of the song. Rather, the song sits more closely to a Barthian scheme of seeing God’s operations as Creator, Redeemer and Reconciler in each section. And so, the first section calls creation to worship the Lord who has redeemed and its reconciling it to himself; the second section speaks of the work of redemption through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth which by ‘grace’ and ‘power’ brings ‘healing love’ to a fallen creation in need of redemption, and ‘hope to earth from heaven above’ to a world that need reconciling to its Creator; and the thirds section rejoices with a doxological song of praise as it both revels in, and anticipates a yet fuller reconciliation to the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this way, the life of the true God penetrates each section of song, and yet is recognised and identified in the personal self-disclosure of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Eschatological & Eucharistic Leanings
Very briefly, the song prompts us to recognise, anticipate and join our voices in the eternal song of heaven ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’. The song’s second section rehearses the saving work of Jesus. As noted above, the melody and chords introduces an ambiguity in this section, as the unexpected C minor chord speaks of pain and sorrow. This section, with its notes of both joy and sorrow, its major and minor chords which speak of new life, but also of death; resurrection, but also the cross. This reminds us that our eschatological focus has already begun in history. The end, the coming of God’s kingdom, began with the resurrection. Our eschatological focus is enhanced with the Eucharistic themes: we ‘lift up our hearts to the Lord’, we rehearsed the saving work of God, we join the company of heaven in singing ‘Holy, holy, holy’. This song would be fitting at a Eucharist, where ‘as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, [we] proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’ (1 Cor. 11:26)
Amen, Come Lord Jesus.




Graham Hunter
Trinity Sunday
18th May 2008