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Sermon for Evensong
- 30th June 2013
You may remember a few years back a Diocesan initiative to find
the 10 most popular hymns .
I can't remember if it did
but one hymn which probably featured fairly high up the league
is one of the ones from our service tonight - " Just
as I am " - a hymn sung to two well-loved tunes. But
just as the old saying goes, " It takes two to tango",
so for a good hymn I think you need, yes, a good melody, and
preferably a good harmony(!), but also good words. Where the
two meet, words and music - we can be transported to another
plain.
The hymn " Just as
I am " has been the subject of a misconception. The
writer Charlotte Elliott owed her conversion to the Revd Dr Caesar
Malan. That is not disputed. It is said that Dr Malan asked her
a question about her Spirituality, which, at the time, she deeply
resented. But, as we know, God moves in a mysterious way and
some weeks later Charlotte went to Dr Malan and told him that
she now had the earnest desire to really be a Christian, and
she asked him to tell her how to come to Christ, adding that
she supposed she would first have to try and make herself more
worthy of Him, to which Dr Malan replied, " Come to Him
just as you are". I think that is very apt, Christ loves
us 'warts & all' .I think of St Paul, who by all accounts
was an absolute rotter before his conversion, but Jesus used
him, and the world owes so much, it still does, to the teachings
of that one man.
To the experience of Charlotte
Elliott naturally enough, has been ascribed the writing of the
hymn " Just as I am ". Those four words 'Just
as I am' which begin every verse, appearing to be the repetition
of the truth she learned that day.
Quite possibly, Dr Malan's
words did recur to her, and so became the refrain to the hymn,
but the actual occasion of its writing was different.
Dr Moule, a former Bishop of
Durham, a relative of the Elliott family relates that Charlotte
Elliott's brother the Rev H.V Elliot was planning the building
of St Mary's Hall at Brighton, as a school for the daughters
of clergymen, and it was decided to hold a bazaar in aid of the
fund. Charlotte was then forty-five years old and suffering from
ill-health, so while there was a big frenzy of excitement at
her home as preparations were made for the bazaar, Charlotte
herself could do nothing. The night before the event the thought
of her uselessness kept her awake in sorrow, until she began
to question the reality of the whole of her own Spiritual life.
The next day, the day of the
bazaar itself, when all the rest of the family were gone, as
Charlotte lay on the sofa in great weakness, these doubts and
fears returned with fresh force; and she decided she needed to
fight this battle once and for all. Gathering up, therefore,
the great truths which were the foundation of her faith - her
Lord, His love, His power, His promises - she picked up pen and
paper, and simply wrote from the heart, those wonderful lines
beginning...:
Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy Blood was shed for me.
And that thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come.
And what a light Charlotte's
circumstances shed on another verse:
Just as I am, though tossed
about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings within and fears without,
O Lamb of God, I come
But back to the Bazaar;. after
a while her sister-in-law came in to tell Charlotte how things
were going; and, after reading the hymn, asked - as well she
might! - for a copy.
So out from that quiet room
of suffering these words came, to bring their message to thousands
and to be of untold blessing to the world!
No wonder that her brother,
the Revd H V Elliott, wrote in later years, " In the
course of a long ministry I hope I have been permitted to see
some fruit of my labours; but I feel far more has been done by
this single hymn of my sister's ".
Amen.
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