| Lent has always been one of my favorite times of the Church year. A big reason for that is because of the hymns, as a handful of my favorites are Lenten hymns. In fact, my favorite hymn of all time is “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” number 61 in the Ambassador Hymnal. It is a hymn that is rich in theology, and I will often pray the lyrics as I sing it, as it is written as a penitent prayer. The hymn itself is divided into four verses, but the prayer within it can be divided into three petitions.
The first verse of the hymn begins with the graphic imagery of Christ’s head on Good Friday. It shows the stark contrast between the triumphal entry of Christ on Palm Sunday and the humiliation and suffering He endured on Good Friday. This serves as the first petition, a prayer of confession. This is not confession in the sense of confessing sins, but rather the sense of confessing and proclaiming our faith. As we sing and pray this first verse, we are acknowledging who Jesus is and what He endured on our behalf. He is the glorious Son of God, as He demonstrated during His life and ministry. But now, on the cross, the Son of God is weighed down by our grief, our shame, and our sin. Instead of a glittering, kingly crown, He wears a pointed crown of thorns. Instead of being surrounded by joyful praise, He is now surrounded by enemies mocking, jeering, and beating Him. And yet, though He is “despised and gory,” we joyfully call Him ours by faith because of what He did for us on that Good Friday: paying for our sins in our place.
Verses two and three make up the second petition, a prayer of repentance. They are my favorite verses of the whole song. “Mine, mine was the transgression, but thine the deadly pain,” we cry out at the beginning of verse two. The transgressions that Jesus paid for were yours. The death that He died was supposed to be yours, as the wages of sin is death, Romans 6:23 tells us. You and I deserved everything that Christ endured on the cross. It should have been you and I up there instead of Him. But Jesus’ suffering and death “was all for sinner’s gain,” which means it was for your gain. Your gain of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life. Seeing and believing what He did for us, we then fall before Jesus in repentance and faith, praying that He would “vouchsafe,” or graciously grant, to us His grace. Continuing into verse three, we give thanks for what Christ has done for us, acknowledging that there are no words in any language that will ever come close to expressing how thankful we are for His sacrificial death that won our forgiveness. As the verse continues, we pray that, no matter what happens, no matter what kind of suffering, persecution, or evil we face, He would make us His forever, and that we would never, never outlive our love for Christ.
The hymn concludes with the third petition, a prayer that Christ would continue to be always near to us. In this final verse, we pray that Christ would “be near when I am dying” and “show thy cross to me.” Whenever and however our death comes about, we pray that our eyes would continue to remain on Christ, for “he who dies believing dies safely in Thy love.” Death can certainly be a scary thing for us as we ponder it, but because Christ has conquered death with His death and resurrection, we have nothing to fear. When we who are looking at Jesus with the eyes of faith die, we do not cease to exist. Rather, we depart to be with Christ in heaven, leaving behind this sinful and broken world until Christ returns and we are resurrected with newly restored bodies, and then ushered into the restored new creation for all eternity.
As we continue through this Lenten season, I pray that you would take another look not just at “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” but at all the hymns we sing during this time of year. Meditate on them, and even use them as guided prayers. Our Lenten hymnody is rich in both convicting Law, and comforting Gospel, and I highly encourage you to include some hymn singing, and maybe even some hymn study, into your devotional routine.
In Christ, Pastor Michael Onstad
|
