Come Kneel Before The Cross
1. come kneel before the cross
and mourn with me a while
in sorrow and sadness know God’s love.
the lashes on his back
the mocking taunts he bore -
the cost of his love for us.
2. the thunder of God’s wrath,
death’s merciless embrace,
willing, the guiltless pays the price.
my life forfeit in sin
can now begin again
bought by his sacrifice.
3. Have we no tears to shed?
Can we not comprehend
our precious salvation dearly bought?
O Lord come change our hearts
and set our lives apart
Holy to sin no more.
sar 2011
Too glum? Maybe, although there's nothing wrong with inciting 'godly sorrow' (ref. 2 Corinthians 7:8-12). I think the concern with this song is the sorrow is unintentionally misdirected. It leads us to horror in the face of violence, not the horror of our own sin (i.e. our raging at God, our cowering in terror from God, our constructing a life to avoid God). Asking us to mourn the manner in which Christ died is an oblique way to honour the righteousness of Christ and/or shame the God-hating heart of humans. The overall effect is that we pity Christ on the cross. I'm not into that, sorry.
ReplyDeleteI think Anon is being a little harsh there - you've got plenty of signposts away from suffering per se to us as the cause.
ReplyDeleteMy answer is, I can still remember the melody from a song we never sang at church in 1991. And this is me, musical oaf, remembering. A Geoff Bingham song, in a minor key: 'Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by, is it nothing to you I am God?' etc. Haunting. It was immediately panned by the other two members of the music-selection-team-that-only-met-once as too sombre so it missed the cut. I've never sung it, except in my head as I mangled the melody line on a clarinet. But that's twenty years ago, and I can still feel the pathos.
In other words, don't write it off. If you get happy with the words (in the technical, rather than emotional, sense!), see what Philip can do. I doubt he'd write a snappy march tune for it!
I like it. I don't think mourning is the only thing we should do in reflection on the cross but it's still a justified response. I don't agree with Anon - I think the suffering servant passage in Isaiah leads us in this kind of reflection "crushed for our inquities...the punishment that brought us peace...by his wounds"
ReplyDeleteI like those last lines "O Lord come change our hearts, and set our lives apart, Holy to sin no more". Maybe you should repeat that all the way through, as the chorus :)
ReplyDelete