Tune: "Song 1" by Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625).
O Father, who once claimed me as Your childBy washing me in water and the Word,
Do not reject me, though, by sin defiled,
I need each day, each hour, to be restored.
By my baptismal cross, creed, prayer, and name,
Forget not me; remember not my shame!
O Christ, who gave Your body unto death,
The same my hungry lips as food receive;
How stronger than the stone You lay beneath—
Your promise, sworn and solemn, I believe.
By this put off from me the corpse of sin
And feed the new, immortal life within!
O Spirit, breathed out by the Crucified,
Breathe over me, the fire of faith ignite;
And with the blood and water from His side
Daub me; Your threefold witness now unite
That with the Church, His body, I shall be
One flesh, one blood with Christ, eternally!
3 comments:
For those of us who do not read music, the music was a pain. It took me twenty minutes to put the music into the music program so I s=could listen to it while I read the hymn.
Other than that, I like the hymn!
Always with the backhanded compliments! Thanks, grumpy!
Since no one asked, the impetus to write this hymn came from receiving the Lord's Supper this past Wednesday evening. In my prayers during the reception, I was trying to express something like this: "Lord, by Your body put off from me the body of sin and deliver me from the body of death," and "Let your blood so circulate in me that my Baptismal grafting into Your body may be strengthened and renewed."
Before I put pen to paper, however, an additional need occurred to me, that I also tried to squeeze into these three tight stanzas: that Baptism's sprinkling of Spirit, water, and blood is not just a one-time event in a Christian's life, but a source of continual blessing because by it, we get God as our Father. Moreover, it is only in Baptism that we appropriate the cross (traced on our mind & heart), the Creed (confessed during the rite), the Lord's Prayer (prayed ditto), and our Christian name (sealed in the name of the Triune God). Therefore it is futile to argue that Baptism is not "absolutely necessary," since no Christian would/could go without these distinctly baptismal gifts.
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