I wrote this hymn to meet a need in my parish church, S. Michael and All Angels, Christchurch, N.Z. The parish also has a primary school, the oldest in the city. At services of baptism, whether for the church or school community, I noticed we never sang hymns about baptism. Instead, the organist usually played an interlude as people gathered at the font or returned to their seats. Our vicar, the Venerable Peter Williams, said he found most baptism hymns either too didactic or sentimental, so he preferred to use simple resurrection hymns. I felt this short-changed the congregation, particularly at school masses. In my view the rite of baptism could mean so much more if the people had the opportunity to sing a simple baptism hymn immediately beforehand. This was even more important in a high church tradition, which placed greater emphasis on sacraments and on the ritual dimension of religion.

The music, gently evocative and poignant, is by Jane Simpson and Peter Low. It works both as a unison piece and in SATB parts. Here, the women sing the verses and the men hum. The refrain, where God bathes the world with love, is sung together in parts. The time signature changes from 4/4 time to the more dance-like 3/4 time. There is a strong plagal cadence at the end.

The opening prayer, ‘Creator of the universe, hover over us’ (vs.1) is drawn from a baptism prayer in one of the oldest surviving Christian traditions, the Coptic Church:

‘Creator of the waters, Maker of the universe,
we call upon Thy holy and eternal power …’

The priest breathes upon the water in the font in the form of the cross, saying: ‘Sanctify this water and this oil that they may become a laver of the new birth, Amen.’ *

The feast in verse 3 is both the communion, which in the early church was received by the newly baptised at the next opportunity, and is also a metaphor for the coming of God’s kingdom through Christ. The declaration that ‘We sit as royal people, as prophets, priests and kings’ echoes the affirmation in I Peter 2.9, that Christians are baptised to priesthood. Baptism is therefore a sacrament of ‘realised eschatology’, a pledge here and now of God’s blessings to be laid hold of. This verse ends with insights of 20thC liberation theology about God’s freedom to all the oppressed.

The last verse draws on one of the earliest passages in the NT, written about 20 years after Jesus’ death, that in Christ all divisions of nationality, race, age, sex, or social or civil status, are broken down (Gal 3.28). It affirms the new creation brought about by living ‘in Christ’ (II Cor 5.17).

This hymn is suitable for services where either infants or adults are baptised.

© Jane Simpson (2002)

* Archbishop Basilios, ‘Baptism, Liturgy of’, in The Coptic encyclopedia, vol.2, Macmillan, 1991, p.341.