Not-So-Great Hymns of the Faith: In the Garden

Today I am beginning a new (possibly weekly) feature on Head and Heart: "Not-So-Great Hymns of the Faith." The title of this feature is derived from the popular hymnal called Great Hymns of the Faith, or, in our congregation, "the red book" (as opposed to "the blue book," The Psalter Hymnal). Caution: This feature is not for the faint of heart. Somewhere along the line, I will probably pick on a hymn that is incredibly meaningful to you for some reason--it was your dad's favorite, it was sung at Grandma's funeral, it was the first one you learned to play on the piano. But we must never let our personal experiences define our worship. We must always look to the One we are worshipping and ask ourselves how He wants us to worship Him--and that may not include that old family favorite.

My main concern is whether the songs that we're singing in church really ought to be part of our service of worship. I'm not suggesting these songs should be banished from the earth; they may have their place in our lives. I actually have a pretty large library of contemporary Christian music, and--true confessions--one of my favorites is Steven Curtis Chapman. But it's one thing to be singing along in the car or as I get ready for work, and it's another thing entirely to be in the presence of God, worshipping Him with His people.

So I go back a few weeks ago to a sermon our pastor preached on Exodus 15, the song of deliverance Moses and Israel sang in praise to God upon being rescued from the Egyptian army. (I would suggest you read the text, and if you're really interested, you can probably download the sermon from the Bethany URC site and listen to it; it was excellent.) This song, inspired by the Holy Spirit, establishes a pattern for the songs we ought to be using in worship. One of the important characteristics is that the song is entirely focused on God and His great work. The only time the pronoun "I" is used is at the beginning, when the singers sing, "I will sing unto the Lord," and briefly later on in the chapter when the singers are quoting the enemy in verse 9. Another of my favorites, Michael Horton, says in A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of Christ-Centered Worship: "We do not come to church to affirm our faithfulness, our devotion, our praise, and our up-to-the-minute emotional state but to be addressed, undressed, and re-dressed by God. Only when this fact is central are we in any position to faithfully praise God as 'our reasonable service.'" So if we're going to church to worship God, the songs we sing ought to be about Him.

With all that said, the first not-so-great hymn, In the Garden, is based on the Scripture passage where Mary Magdalene meets Jesus in the garden after His resurrection. Here are verse 1 and the refrain:

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

And He walks with me,
and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

This, to me, would seem to be one of the most un-Reformed hymns we sing in our church. There is a reason it is in the red book and not in the blue Psalter. (Why we even need the red book is another question entirely.) It definitely does not follow the pattern of Exodus 15, with a focus on the almighty, great, and glorious God. The focal point in this song is the first-person "I," a pronoun that occurs (along with "me" and "we") over and over. This song is only loosely based on the account of Mary Magdelene, because there really is no mention in the Scriptures of roses or dew or, as other verses of the song describe, sweet birds hushing their singing, a ringing heart, and His voice of woe calling. (Why would Jesus' voice be woeful? He is the victorious King who has just conquered sin and death and risen from the dead.)

My next question is why would the rest of us be singing a song about Mary Magdalene's personal experience? Again, who are we there to worship? Mary and her experience? The preponderance of the pronoun "I" would lead me to believe that this is Mary's experience somehow translated to me, here in the twenty-first century. Somehow (time travel?) I'm now sharing this with her. So in this case, now I'm singing about myself in a worship service that is supposed to be devoted to God.

So when we're singing these words, what are we saying about ourselves? The sappy sentimentality of the song suggests the individual's mystical encounter with Christ. He walks with me, talks with me, and tells me I am His own. Isn't this counter to the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, that our understanding and knowledge of God is based on the Scriptures alone--not on a pietistical, mystical experience? We're present corporately in the worship service to hear God's Word declared to us by the minister, and yet we're all singing about our private, subjective experiences with Christ.

Whenever this song is selected, I actually have a hard time singing it, because the whole thing is counter to what I'm supposed to be thinking about and focusing on when I'm present in a worship service devoted to the Triune God. But the song's popularity has lasted--somehow--for almost a hundred years. Certainly God is better worshipped with songs like Exodus 15 that talk about His greatness, His power, His triumph over His enemies than with some human's subjective, mystical, and individualistic experience.

We need to think--take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ--about the songs we are singing in worship. If we truly believe that this is our act of reasonable service and gathering to worship is something that we do in faithful obedience to honor our God, then we need to be sure that the songs we are singing will, in fact, honor Him and not simply please our own musical tastes. Songs like Exodus 15 and the entire book of Psalms are God's inspired songs for His people. We have no excuse for not praising Him in the way that He desires to be praised. He has shown us clearly in His Word what pleases Him.