The song in discussion is Hope is Here. Which one? We need a bit more information since the words in the title are a combination of very popular words. It is by Tim Hughes & Nick Herbert. It has a secondary title in bracket (Jesus Saves). Key is B major. It is 21st century, copyright 2008.
This song will probably engage with your ideological standpoint much more than other songs. This song – lyrics, music – can make you think what church is or should be. Different people might well respond in very different ways. Depending on what kinds of responses, I sometimes ask myself – Really? Is this song about that? You might have your own response to this song, and might react Really? to what opinions others might have about this song.
With the many opinions about this song, you find there is either “more church” than we know, and / or there is a lot of church that we prefer not to know or associate with. Here is explaining a little bit more:
- Myself included, there are a lot of churches out there and the way they do their liturgy / worship service / singing is way beyond what we like or prefer, and sometimes we will encounter the ways people do worship is something we have not even thought of because we don’t even share their assumptions.
- A lot of this is to do with our basis of our faith, and, secondly, you might not think it possible, there are a lot more people who are more existentially and spiritually oriented than biblical oriented. A lot of them are Bible-believing – in the sense that the first and primary spiritual authority on our life is the Bible – myself included. But we do like the affirmation of truth in the here and now – it’s not a requirement or prerequisite of our faith, or our ability to believe, but when the affirmation comes, we celebrate it big.
There’s probably way too much you don’t agree with what I say. You probably stop reading my blog from now on.
I am not saying you need a spiritual re-orientation prior to looking further into this song Hope is Here. We are here today, with our belief, and this is based on teaching that has been developed and tested through hundreds of years:
- Throughout these years, there had been major debates of what and who God is, who Jesus is in relation to us and God the father, what a church is with respect to God, Jesus, those who are believers and those yet to believe, and the world we are in. In a lot of these times of major debates, there would be some degree of upheavals.
- And in the days where far fewer people were able to read, where there was no way to reproduce printed materials, your manner of telling people about something sometimes need to be given a lot power, sometimes to the extent that the manner to communicate that message is far powerful than the message itself.
- It’s like you go through days of planning for a birthday party, getting in contact with old friends and distant relatives, and the event itself lasted an hour. The manner that you organise the party far outweighs the time everyone spent together. Of course everyone appreciates and was so thankful for the effort you put in. But the event required the manner of organisation you did.
- In a sort of a similar way, sometimes spiritual kind of stuff required a manner of communication that looks over the top, in order that at the end we get the right message.
So, is Hope is Here using a manner of communication that’s over the top that the message it conveys? I am going to suggest yes. Why?
- The lyrics is full of energy, it’s like on the edge of bursting out.
- The lyrics is a mix of assertion, acclamation, but also “telling”, in the sense of telling the gospel, what Jesus has done because of who he is.
- The lyrics has a mix of “personal”, “corporate” and “the world”.
- The “personal” aspect is the hope, love and salvation God blesses us individually with.
- The “corporate” aspect is that all the attributes of this blessed life is only best lived out with people also already blessed by God.
- The “world” aspect is that the statements in the song is incomplete when we acclaim it to ourselves; these statements bear full meaning when they are uttered to the world so that more people know about God and can begin to experience his new blessed life because we are living that life personally and with others.
I still haven’t talked about the music – it is highly dynamic, syncopated. This melodic structure is relentless. There aren’t many long-enough “gaps” between phrases, and almost all phrases start on a pick-up beat, on the 3rd-and-a-half beat. It’s almost like you got to get ready on the first beat of the bar to start the new phrase on the 3rd-and-a-half beat.
MUS 001 shows the opening.
