Three Lenten songs express the same astonishing wonder of a Lord who willingly suffers and dies.
For centuries, Christians have observed the forty-day penitential season of Lent, meditating on the suffering and death of Jesus Christ before his resurrection on Easter Sunday. The hymns of faith written for this contemplative season solemnly expound on God's love for his people, a love so great he sent his only Son, Jesus, to suffer an agonizing death on the cross to save us.
Three of the many Lenten hymns stand out for their lyrical, almost childlike wonder of Christ's deep love for us, his dependent children. These hymns, written in three different centuries, three different countries, and three different faith experiences, echo the question, "What kind of love is this?"
My Song is Love Unknown was written by an Anglican priest in England in 1644, What Wondrous Love is This was discovered in the Blue Ridge mountain camp meetings in the 1800s, and When I Behold Jesus Christ was written by a converted Coptic Orthodox Ethiopian teen in the 1960s.
Despite their diverse backgrounds in time, location, and religious traditions, these three Lenten songs express the same astonishing wonder of a Lord who willingly suffers and dies. Each depicts a wondrous love unknown outside of Christ.
The earliest of the three hymns, My Song is Love Unknown, was written by Anglican priest Samuel Crossman in 17th-century England. Crossman published this poignant meditation on the Passion of Christ in his book The Young Man's Meditation (1664). It appeared for the first time as a hymn in the Anglican Hymn Book in 1686.
A "wonderfully moving Passion-tide hymn" tells the story of Christ's passion from Palm Sunday through the crucifixion. Crossman titled the selection, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. 6:14.)
It opens by asking the astonished question, "Who am I?" to be the object of the incomprehensible love of God in Christ, who came to earth to "take frail flesh" to die on the cross:
My song is love unknown,
My Savior's love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I, That for my sake
My Lord should take frail flesh, and die?
Lutheran scholar Fred L. Precht said this hymn has a "strong, naive directness and charm beyond ordinary comprehension." This poignant hymn takes us from Palm Sunday through Good Friday and echoes awe of Christ's love – the profoundly deep and incomprehensible love he demonstrates through his willing suffering and death. In the hymn, we hear that Christ's love is unknown outside of him and is a love so great as to make the loveless lovely.
It wasn't until the early 1900s that this hymn was given the exquisite melody, Love Unknown, written by English composer and church musician John Ireland (1879-1962). Ireland's haunting and beautiful melody lifted the song out of obscurity and is captured beautifully in this lilting flute and clarinet duet with the St. Martin's Church choir. This childlike wonder permeating the song of Christ's passion is a good meditation for Holy Week.
Across the ocean on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a folk song from an 1811 camp meeting songbook in Lynchburg, Virginia, also expressed the astonishing, wondrous love of Jesus Christ. The simple, lyrical song tells of the incredulous wonder at God's love in Christ, each verse repeating a trio of lines emphasizing Christ's outsized love and suffering for a sin-sick soul:
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this, that caused the Lord of bliss
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
when I was sinking down beneath God's righteous frown,
Christ laid aside his crown for my soul, for my soul.
The singer questions the astonishing love of Christ, who emptied himself of absolute joy – his "bliss" – to bear the dreadful curse of death on the cross because of his love for our souls. He laid aside his crown as King of Glory to save our drowning souls (Phil. 2:6-9).
We don't know who wrote the hymn, but we know it was part of a collection of songs sung during the Second Great Awakening, 1795-1835, a time of religious revivals for all people, Black and white, throughout the antebellum South. It gained wider popularity when William Walker published it in his 1840 hymnbook, The Southern Harmony.
The third verse mirrors Revelation 7:9-10 by proclaiming the inclusivity of God's love for his people who gather from every nation, tribe, people, and language to worship before God and the Lamb.
To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing.
To God and to the Lamb who is the great "I AM,"
while millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing,
while millions join the theme, I will sing.
One hundred years later, crossing back across the ocean to North Africa, the hymn "When I Behold Jesus Christ" became one of the most beloved Lenten hymns for Ethiopian Christians. The hymn was written by Ethiopian Almaz Belhu in the 1960s when she was just sixteen. It is said she submitted the hymn—text and tune—to a hymn competition, where it won a spot in a Gospel book of hymns.
The text is relatively simple and repetitive, inviting the singer to consider the profundity of Christ's love for his people – that the sinless Savior was "tortured and tried," then "bled and died" on the cross at Golgotha – to redeem mankind. The repetitive question, “What kind of love is this?" invites worshippers to contemplate the overwhelming love of Christ, a sacrificial love unknown outside of his life, death, and resurrection, demonstrated not for the righteous but instead for a sin-sick world (Rom. 5:8)
The tune, also written by Ms. Almaz Belhu, carries the text in a lovely, lilting melody that echoes the sincere simplicity of My Song is Love Unknown and What Wondrous Love is This.
Throughout the Lenten season, these hymns are good companions to Christ's passion, hauntingly proclaiming his deep love to his people, "the love-less," so we might "love-ly be."
Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King,
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend,
In whose sweet praise
I all my days would gladly spend.
Christine Weerts and her husband, Luke, live in Selma, Ala. She holds a bachelor’s in music from Butler University and a master’s in religion from Concordia University Chicago. She is music and missions director at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, begun by Black Missionary and Educator Rosa Young in 1922. In addition to writing about hymns and planning community hymnfests, she is currently writing about the history of Black Lutherans.
