The end of my training for priesthood helpfully coincided with the pandemic which meant that our Easter School, which was a big deal and was supposed to be a week away completely immersed in the mystery of Holy Week, was conducted entirely via Zoom. To be honest, as much as I understood that it had to be done this way, and was hugely grateful for all the hard work by college staff to make it as special as it could be, I was gutted.
It may seem silly, self-absorbed even, that I felt bereft of a ‘proper’ Easter School, but it had been something we had been working towards since day one of our training and it felt like a rite of passage had been watered down. As it was, the teaching sessions worked out okay and the worship throughout the week was faithful too, but as we neared Good Friday, I really felt like we were being robbed.
Many of us were given things to do during the various acts of worship and prayer offices, and I was asked to sing at some services; one of which was the Good Friday Liturgy, at which I was to sing ‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord’. I was to sing it unaccompanied from the stillness of my study into the homes of fellow ordinands and the college staff, you might think it less nerve-racking but it was quite the opposite!
I rehearsed several times and was happy with how it sounded, just another ‘performance’, nerves aside, all was well. On the day however, I was hit by a huge wave of emotion, in fact it was a visceral feeling throughout my body as I sang the song. The hairs on my neck and arms stood on end when I sang the line that repeats in every verse “Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble”.
In that line is the reality of my simple faith, sometimes it causes me to tremble! But that trembling doesn’t come from a place of fear, rather it comes out of the mystery and sheer ‘awesomeness’ of what Christ did for us and is for us.
The song is widely understood to be an ‘African American Spiritual’, probably sung by those enslaved and working on the cotton plantations and I am profoundly struck by the faith of those people who were dealt the most heinous hand. They may well have forsaken a faith in God; how could God allow this inequality, this barbarism? But they did not, instead as they worked, they sang, literally worshipping as they worked, singing of their Saviour, the one who knew their suffering and hardship, the one who knew because in his nailing to the tree, he comes alongside all who suffer.
But I suspect they sang it also because of the promise it offers, “were you there when God raised him from the tomb?” it goes. And didn’t they need the hope of that promise, the promise that after the nailing to the tree comes the rest of the tomb and from that rest comes the new life; the promise that is for everyone.
Jesus is with us all when we suffer, and not from a distance but right there on the spot. Our wounds are his wounds, our pain his pain and our sorrow his sorrow. But as the song reminds us there is hope, and out of the bleakness comes new life. This is the promise of Easter.
This African American Spiritual has been such a blessing to me since that Good Friday when I stood alone in my study and sang it, and the truth is that I was not alone, there were of course others in Zoom space, but I was not alone, because with Him I never am!
May we all have a blessed Eastertide, and may the mystery and awesomeness of the Lord that causes us to tremble, tremble, tremble, ever be our strength and our hope.
Paul
Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree? Were you there when they nailed him to the tree? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when God raised him from the tomb? Were you there when God raised him from the tomb? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?
(first published in William Eleazar Barton's 1899 Old Plantation Hymns)
(https://www.classical-music.com/articles/were-you-there-when-they-crucified-my-lord-lyrics)
