As the "Hope, Assurance" section opens, 1022 is "God, bless the hands" by Marty Haugen, set to John B. Dykes' (†1878) tune MELITA (cf. "Eternal Father, strong to save"). It's a disaster response hymn, first calling down God's blessing on rescue workers, then seeking comfort for the victims ("Save us ... from sinking sands"), and finally, bidding Him "teach us to live in harmony with earth and river, sky and sea," calling their preservation "holy work for human hands." I guess leaving that in God's hands just isn't the thing anymore. 1 tack.
1024 is "Here on Jesus Christ I will stand", Kenyan (i.e., Swahili) words and music "adapted" by Greg Scheer (b. 1966). You have a choice of singing the refrain in Swahili or English, with an all-but-unreadably tiny footnote explaining the pronunciation (only the copyright blurb is in smaller type). To the extent I can read it, it doesn't so much offer help as identify the problem: Swahili is difficult for English speakers to pronounce. There's a rhythmic figure repeated throughout this hymn that I would say might be challenging for the folks at Shepherd of the Cornfield Lutheran Church, but it gets repeated so much that they might just get it by the end. I wish there were more to the refrain, though. It repeats the same line three times, a wasted opportunity to deliver more content for building up believers. For making me squint at an unhelpful footnote, 1 tack.
1026 is "In the midst of earthly life" by Martin Luther, set to its original, 13th century melody, MITTEN WIR IM LEBEN SIND. I think this may have been the hymn I had in mind when I stated, way back when, that there was maybe one hymn in this entire book that I really cared for. So, all right, I've spotted a handful of other gems since then, but this is still the one "Wait. This wasn't in ELW? What's wrong with these people?" moment so far in this supplement. For once, we see a gesture valuing the Lutheran heritage of hymnody. The translation is a fresh one by Susan Cherwien, in which I find no harm. 1 tack for omitting the accompaniment.
1027 is "Don't be afraid" by John L. Bell (b. 1949) and Graham Maule (†2019), set to Bell's own tune. It appears to be written for an unaccompanied, three-part ensemble or choir with the low part coming in only on even-numbered phrases; or maybe the accompaniment is omitted. I bet that accompaniment might be important, given the way the first and third phrases start with an off-the-beat rhythmic figure. It's a tiny, uber-simple, light-pop ditty that lasts about 10 seconds and so, once again, challenges me to imagine how it would function in a worship service. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to imagine why it needed two lyricists. Between them, they apparently couldn't think of a way of identifying by name who is speaking, which may be a drawback to putting God's supposed words in the congregation's (or choir's, or solo ensemble's) mouth. 3 tacks.
1028 is "When eyes that we once knew as keen" by John Core (†2017), set to the Scottish melody CANDLER, which really sounds like a Scottish melody, all right. It's a hymn about dementia, from the point of view of the loved ones looking on – again, a case for which I not only see a need, but have even tried my own hand. I think the tune might be a little too peppy for the tone of the poem, but I suppose something may be said for it going toward the purpose of stanza 4, which observes that memories of music are among the last to go. There is a touching quality to this entire poem, but if I had to quibble – and you know me – I might suggest that it's overly preoccupied with the earthy and specific details of what the caregivers of people with memory loss are experiencing, and touches but lightly on what it's asking God to do about it. I would prefer to see it push more strongly in the direction of relying and depending utterly on God. 1 tack, for omitting the accompaniment.
1030 is "Death be never last" (first line: "We walk in light of countless faces"), words and music by Ray Makeever. It's kind of an All Saints hymn, or Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, or what have you. Some of the syntax rankles with me, like the last two lines of the refrain: "Saints be now the truth divining: Death be now but never last." What a time to be obscure. Stanza 2 takes a little more time out from speaking quite clearly, with my grammar sense unable even to make out a complete sentence in it. So the fact that this is probably the best lyric by Makeever I've seen so far isn't exactly high praise. Among other issues, the accompaniment is omitted. 3 tacks.
1031 is "In God alone" (my soul can find rest and peace) by the Taizé Community, with music by Jacques Berthier (†1994) and lyrics in both French and English. I'd quote the four-line lyrics in full if I weren't a tiny bit afraid of the copyright bogeyman, but it would only be to get across just how repetitive this brief hymn is, each phrase merely turning the words of the first phrase around in a different order. And I guess (without any score text to offer as evidence) that it must be meant to be sung over and over, to the point of hypnosis, because there's so little to it and it would be over so quickly otherwise. So much of this book seems to be devoted to an idea of worship, historically foreign to Lutheranism, in which music is either relegated to 10-second fits here and there among acres of spoken prose, or developed into an enthusiastic mantra while the speaking goes on. I think there are precedents for both options, in other religions; but not in Lutheranism, where hymnody is a key element in the laypeople's exercise of the priesthood of believers wherein they richly, deeply, thoroughly teach and confess the faith to and among themselves. Whatever way this Taizé stuff is going to play, it will be to the detriment of that tradition. Sparing it only for not outright teaching falsehood, 4 tacks.
1032 is "Lift up your heads" (all you bowed low) by Briehl, set to Highben's tune WEST LEESTAD, with a nice first-stanza-text-painting gesture at the end of the first phrase. It's a Word and Sacrament hymn, describing (though without overtly naming) baptism, absolution and eucharist, then stating that "the Spirit here abides," where "here," to those who have ears to hear, means "in the means of grace." Just a couple of nits to pick. One is stanza 3's description of bread and wine that, I feel, really needs to come right out and say that it's Jesus' body and blood, to put to rest the persisting and relapsing opinion that it isn't. The other is in stanza 4, where the phrase "loos'ning sin" had ought to be "loosing sin." There's just a difference, you know? For these quibbles and for omitting the accompaniment, 2 tacks.
1034 is "When it seems the day will end", words and music by Justin Rimbo (b. 1980). I'm struggling to figure out what this hymn is about. It rings somewhat of a hymn about the literal end of day, particularly in stanza 1; more figuratively, of some kind of affliction, whether mental or physical, and possibly death, in stanza 3; and of stanza 2 I can make neither head nor tail, other than feeling impressed by the phrase "we are dead and born again" (simul justus et peccator?) until the succeeding line, "and with you we enter in," throws me off again. The refrain is the least helpful part of all, and seldom have I been more frustrated by this book's (and ELW's) convention of not capitalizing divine pronouns so that I can't even categorically say who the "you" addressed in this hymn is. Also, the accompaniment is omitted. Also, there's an echo effect in each phrase of the refrain. I'm happy to see the work of someone almost a decade younger than me represented in a hymnbook but, at the same time, I wonder at the taste or criteria of the selection committee. 4 tacks.
1035 is "Though the earth shall change", another hymn supposedly based on Psalm 46, by Rolf Vegdahl (b. 1955) and Tom Witt (b. 1957) and set to Witt's rather uninspired tune WE WILL NOT FEAR. And again, I can't help asking why it took two lyricists to write this hymn's single, eight-line stanza, which has only one rhyme in it, and what we're supposed to do with it in the context of a worship service. As noted multiple times in this post alone, there is more than one possible answer to the latter question but they're all disturbing to someone who cares about hymnody and its place in Lutheran life. 3 tacks.
This section of ACS got off to a slow start, but it ended up amassing 30 tacks. That makes 256 tacks in 135 hymns, which makes the book about 190 percent tacky so far. The question is becoming less and less "will it go down toward zero by the end" and more and more "will it slope to infinity?"
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