Mark 11:9

CHRIST THE SUBJECT OF SONG

‘Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.’

Mark 11:9

I. In the New Testament Jesus Christ is the subject of all songs. The Virgin Mary’s, Zacharias’s, Simeon’s, Anna’s, that beautiful hymn of the Church on St. Peter’s deliverance (in the fourth chapter of the Acts), the abrupt bursts of praise which break out here and there in the Epistles, up to the chants of the Revelation, all, without one exception, have Christ as their theme.

II. Let us now pass to our Prayer Book Service of Song.—Praise is the chief part of all the worship of Almighty God. The more that one grows in true religion, the more will he see Christ filling the Psalms. The Special Psalms are emphatically full of Christ Then the Venite, ‘O come, let us sing unto the Lord,’—and who is the Lord?—‘let us heartily rejoice in the Strength of our salvation.’ More than half the Te Deum is distinctly addressed to Christ, and the rest to God as Christ’s Father. The Benedicite, by its mention of Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego, leads the mind to ‘the form of the fourth, which was like the Son of God.’ The Benedictus is nothing but Christ; and the Jubilate is a Jew’s anticipation of Christ’s universal reign. The Magnificat is Christ’s own mother’s language of her Son. And the Cantate is Christ and His Church’s victory. The Nunc Dimittis is the eye upon Jesus now; and the Deus Misereatur is the eye upon Jesus presently. The climax of our general thanksgiving is ‘the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ.’ And in the Holy Communion, if the first Doxology be to the Father, it is for the gift of the Son: and in the second, the same thought is expanded, and Christ is blended with the Father’s glory. In Baptism, it is the soul grafted into Christ for which we thank. In Marriage, it is because the union is the type of the mystical oneness betwixt Christ and His Church. And in the Burial Service, the Resurrection of Christ is the warrant of the thanks which rest upon the hope that, when He shall have accomplished the number of His elect, and hastened His Kingdom, then that we, with all those who are departed in the true faith of His holy name, shall have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in His eternal and everlasting glory.

So, from generation to generation, the Church rolls the tide of song, ‘Hosanna!’