[ o glad songs of death by graham kendrick ]

Say 'No' to one-dimensional worship, urges Graham Kendrick.

It might appear quite bizarre in the alphabetical index of one of our contemporary praise and worship songbooks: Abba Father; All hail the Lamb; All heaven declares;... Ah, lovely appearance of death. Curiosity would demand turning to the song concerned, surely an unfortunate typographical error! Shock might turn to disbelief on reading a full six verses of poetic text that developed in detail what the first line introduced - a celebration hymn about a corpse!

It took me some adjustment when I first came across this lesser-known Charles Wesley text in an 1845 edition of the Methodist hymn book which I had obtained from an antiquarian bookshop. I had read in a biography of the esteemed gentleman a view that he was preoccupied with the notion of dying and keenly anticipated his own departure to a better world. Was this a morbid obsession, a psychological imbalance in the mind of a genius?

As I scanned through the six verses (brief by his standards), I found nothing of the kind. In fact I was reading the most refreshing and positive attitude to death that I could remember coming across.

How blest is our brother, bereft
Of all that could burden his mind
'How easy the soul that has left
This wearisome body behind!
Of evil incapable, thou,
Whose relics with envy I see,
No longer in misery now,
No longer a sinner like me.

250 years later, the language and concepts might render the hymn difficult to use, but despite the advances of medical science and dramatically increased life expectancy (at least for the privileged), one reality remains unchanged by time; every one of us will die. Why canÕt we sing about it? One or two contemporary songs about death and dying would not go amiss in our repertoires.

Death is only one of many themes largely missing from our musical vocabulary. Scanning the subject index of the same volume I found a breadth which we could well use to challenge our narrow selectivity, and not just that of the songwriters. To a large degree the songwriters simply reflect the themes which characterise the teaching of the churches to which they belong. Here are just a few samples from the index: judgement, heaven, hell, suffering, receiving into membership, antinomianism (a heresy of the day which was destroying many believers), fear of God, salvation of the Jews, salvation of the Moslems, four hymns for mariners, marriage, the millennium, New Year's Day (15 to choose from), omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience, peace persecution and perseverance, blessing on preachers, a hymn of blessing to use when entering a house, travelling, temptation and 22 about the Trinity!

I have yet to find a bible which contains a subject index to the book of Psalms such as is commonly found in hymn and songbooks. Such an index would surprise many of us with its breadth and diversity. For a sample of what might be listed I quickly scanned the first 25 or so Psalms and found: warnings against associating with evil people, resolve to meditate upon the Scriptures, descriptions of the fate of the wicked, God's contempt of nations which conspire to rebel against him, warnings to earthly rulers to fear God, expressions of confidence in God despite overwhelming opposition, despondency when God is silent and answers to prayers seem delayed, themes of justice for the poor and oppressed, struggling to understand the apparent success and prosperity of wicked people, atheism, a description of Godly person, anticipation of heaven, the beauty of nature, trusting God as opposed to military power and the providence of God.

I often hear the opinion expressed that the content of worship services has become too proccupied with experience to the detriment of doctrine. Compared to the more cerebral approach of 20 years ago there has undoubtedly been a major swing in this direction, and the challenge now is to achieve a balance between worship 'in spirit' and worship 'in truth'. However, it occurs to me that there is also a danger in focussing upon too narrow an area of experience.

'Experience' songs tend to concentrate on experiencing the love of God, the presence of God, and the power of God. Yet authentic Christian experience includes much more than these, which is where the sample from the Psalms hits a loud note of realism. Our praise and worship should not become mere escapism, a cosy world of warm comforting concepts and funny fuzzy feeling to help us forget. The Psalms never do that, rather they begin in the stark realities of human experience, never hiding from who we are and what the real world is, but then taking us up into who God is and into anticipation of what the world will be when his kingdom comes and his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.