Go to Dark Gethsemane
Text: James Montgomery, 1820
Tune: REDHEAD, Richard Redhead, 1853
or GETHSEMANE (Monk), William H. Monk, 1861 (adapt. of a 1553 Christopher Tye tune)
Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see, watch with him one bitter hour,
Turn not from his griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.
See him at the judgment hall, beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
O the wormwood and the gall! O the pangs his soul sustained!
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss; learn of Christ to bear the cross.
Calvary’s mournful mountain climb; there, adoring at His feet,
Mark that miracle of time, God’s own sacrifice complete.
“It is finished!” hear him cry; learn of Jesus Christ to die.
Early hasten to the tomb where they laid his breathless clay;
All is solitude and gloom. Who has taken him away?
Christ is risen! He meets our eyes; Savior, teach us so to rise.
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2 comments:
More powerful words. Reading all these hymns has made me grateful that my mother took me to Wed. night lenten services for those many years, and also for all the Maundy Thursday services I've attended.
One woman, raised in our church, about age 45, has been attending, with her husband on Wed. nights this year. For the first time ever. She said she didn't know how nice those services were. She has been blessed.
How good to have had roots!
Hi, P.S. I'm glad whenever anyone "gets it" about the rhythm and drama of Holy Week, but I do agree with you that having that heritage is a blessing. I learned this particular text (minus the fourth verse) MANY years ago as a child. My parents bundled us children off to weekly choir rehearsals with them, and we'd sit and do homework or just read right there in the room as the adults rehearsed. They had a particularly dramatic, memorable anthem to this text that they prepared at least every other year. Like many other anthems, by the time I was in high school and could join the choir, I pretty much knew this piece! It was an "old friend." (Still is.)
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