If you are unfamiliar with this hymn, brace yourself.
Context: I am currently taking a class called Liturgical Church Music Administration, which is basically a practical application course for all us poor lambs who are about to head out into the great grown-up world of ecclesiastical music. It's a put-on-your-helmet-and-buckle-up sort of class. I like it.
One of our recent assignments was to write a church newsletter blerb about a hymn (a.k.a. "hymn story") explicating a hymn of our choice in an easily comprehensible manner. As a few of my friends and I recently began memorizing Water, Blood, and Spirit Crying, my choice wasn't difficult. This hymn is one of my all-time favorites (right up there with God's Own Child, I Gladly Say It), so please, humor my sharing it. The following is my newsletter blerb, plus the hymn itself and a link so you can hear it.
Water, Blood, and Spirit Crying (Lutheran Service Book 597)
"To
look for God we need look no further than the cross." Stephen Starke, the writer of Water, Blood,
and Spirit Crying, prefaces his explanation for its text with these words. Starke based this hymn primarily on 1 John
5:5-8, illustrating the profound significance of each of the three witnesses it
mentions (water, blood, and Spirit) with rich and vivid imagery.
The
theme from John 10:10 bookends this hymn (stanzas one and five): "I came that they may have life and have
it abundantly." Christ's
"death-defying" and "death-defeating" Life has come, and it
has come for all - that means for us!
The three witnesses of the title work faith in us and continue to
strengthen us.
Stanza
two (emphasizing water) recalls our baptism with the powerful image of
our Old Adam - our sinful nature - being buried in a "wat'ry grave"
at the baptismal font. Rather than
drowning in the death that was meant to hold us eternally, we rise with Christ,
and are ferried by his saving Life across "death's raging flood,"
just as Noah and his family were spared in the ark from the Flood in Genesis.
Stanza
three (emphasizing blood) evokes images from Psalm 23. Here we sing of how Christ leads us safely
past death's fierce scowl to the life-sustaining feast of his Body and Blood in
the Lord's Supper. Truly, our "cup
overflows" (Ps. 23:5) with the grace he gives us in this sacrament.
Stanza
four (emphasizing Spirit) depicts God, our life-giving hero, unsheathing
the two-edged sword of his Word - the Word that does exactly as he purposes,
and does not return empty (Isaiah 55:11). His Spirit is in and with his Word, and
through his Spirit, he breathes life into us who are dead without him.
Ending
with stanza five, we see these three witnesses brought together again - the Word and Sacraments! In the words of Stephen Starke, "The
precious means of grace - Holy Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the Word of God
- indeed testify to all that God has done for us and for all by Christ's death
on the cross, by which He brings life to our dying world, defying and defeating
death itself!"
The
tune (FILTER) and its harmonization in the Lutheran Service Book, both composed by Jeffrey
Blersch, are as rich and vivid as the text. The hymn's dark edginess focuses the energy of
the words we sing: we hear the water, blood, and Spirit crying out the witness
they bear! As the redeemed children of
God, sprinkled in the blood of Christ, we confidently march past Death's scowl
and into the Life won for us on the cross!
Starke
quotes are from his blog, starke Kirchenlieder.
Listen to the hymn: CPH.org (a full MP3 is available there).
Hymn Text: Water, Blood, and Spirit Crying (Lutheran Service Book 597)
1. Water, blood, and Spirit crying,
By their witness testifying
To the One whose death-defying
Life has come, with life for all.
2. In a wat'ry grave are buried
All our sins that Jesus carried;
Christ, the Ark of Life, has ferried
Us across death's raging flood.
3. Dark the way, yet Christ precedes us,
Past the scowl of death He leads us;
Spreads a table where He feeds us
With His body and His blood.
4. Through around us death is seething,
God, His two-edged sword unsheathing,
By His Spirit life is breathing
Through the living, active Word.
5. Spirit, water, blood entreating,
Working faith and its completing
In the One whose death-defeating
Life has come, with life for all.
By their witness testifying
To the One whose death-defying
Life has come, with life for all.
2. In a wat'ry grave are buried
All our sins that Jesus carried;
Christ, the Ark of Life, has ferried
Us across death's raging flood.
3. Dark the way, yet Christ precedes us,
Past the scowl of death He leads us;
Spreads a table where He feeds us
With His body and His blood.
4. Through around us death is seething,
God, His two-edged sword unsheathing,
By His Spirit life is breathing
Through the living, active Word.
5. Spirit, water, blood entreating,
Working faith and its completing
In the One whose death-defeating
Life has come, with life for all.
