What hymns?

I spent a lot of time dealing with psalm-singing because it is nearly universally neglected these days. I can also say that hymn-singing is neglected these days. Most Evangelical churches sing praise and worship songs, and African American Baptist churches sing a mix of praise and worship songs and Urban Contemporary Gospel. Hymns are infrequently sung. With the exception of one church, the African American Baptist churches I've been a member of sung the same few hymns over and over such as "Amazing Grace," "At the Cross," "Blessed Assurance," "Blessed Quietness," etc. I never sang "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" until I was in my early twenties, and I had been a baptized member of a church since I was six years old! As I lamented the absence of psalm-singing, I must also lament the absence of hymn-singing.

As I came to think of reformation in African American Baptist worship some years ago, I was eager to learn a definition of a hymn. I automatically assumed that a hymn was any song in a hymnal, and the only hymnal I was familiar with at the time (1999) was the New National Baptist Hymnal, which has a good number of traditional hymns such as "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," and hymns by Newton, Wesley, and Watts. As I thought about the meaning of a hymn, I knew that the apostle Paul could not have meant those when he commanded the Church to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. I asked a friend of mine who was Russian Orthodox and working on a Master's degree in music; she also directed a choir at a Methodist Church here in the Lansing area. She told me that a hymn was a biblical text set to music. With that, I knew that most hymns in hymn books are not hymns!

After this, I was done with my own assumptions. I finally went to the bible, and I found that the word "hymn" is used a few times in NT. Other than Paul's use in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, Matthew and Mark use the verb form of hymn in their accounts of the Lord's Supper. In Matthew 26:30 and Mark 13:26, the writers state that Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn after the supper. Well, I knew that because at my home church we ended our Lord's Supper service with those words from the gospels. We sang "Glory to his Name." I learned from commentators that Jesus and the disciples sang from Psalms 113-118, the Hallel. No one disputes this. Here in the gospels to sing a hymn is to sing psalms. It is interesting that translators of the 1599 Geneva Bible translate hymn as psalm in Matthew 26:30. The only other use of the verb form of hymn is found in Acts 16:25, where Paul and Silas sing "praises" in the prison at midnight. Again, the translators of the Geneva Bible translate "praises" as "psalms," and most commentators agree that Paul and Silas sang psalms. If we use the Scriptures to interpret themselves, then, we have a good argument that hymns and psalms are interchangeable terms.

For those unconvinced with this argument, at least, you can agree that a hymn must be addressed to God, or Jesus Christ that is biblical; a hymn must express the true character of the Trinue God and his marvelous works. Where do we find such? I'll address this in the next blog.