Pastorgraphs: “Emmanuel’s Veins”
My
Daddy loved church music of all kinds, running the gamut from the
ancient “shaped note” Sacred Harp to the “new work” of the
Stamps-Baxter Music Company, who produced paperback hymnals each year
for “singing conventions". We regularly attended singing conventions
at the Yazoo Courthouse on Sunday afternoons, the old Jackson
Auditorium (some lasting all night), to impromptu neighborhood
get-togethers in the family living room. Then there was the quartet
music of the Blackwood Brothers and Statesmen whose concerts were a
major item on our calendar. And last, but not least, were the old
standards in the church hymnal, especially “Amazing Grace”.
As
a teenager out of school for the summer or on winter break, I rode
with my father on his dry cleaning routes through the Delta. Those
day-long trips with just Pop and me provided “quality time”. We talked
about almost everything under the sun: politics, religion, values,
and tales of him growing up in what seemed another century. We were
also comfortable with silence.
Then suddenly, Pop would begin singing as he drove.
“There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins.
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stain.”
The
influence of my father’s faith expressed in the music he loved
impacted my life in ways I am still discovering. As Garrison Keillor
would say, his voice, like mine, was “good enough” but certainly not
professional. Our cousin Harold Jenkins (better known as Conway Twitty)
got the real vocal talent in our family, although everyone has some
degree of musical aptitude. But Pop was not afraid nor ashamed to break
into song to express the faith that obviously lived deep within him.
While many teenagers would be embarrassed by such acts by their
parents, I never was uncomfortable when my Daddy sang his faith. If
anything, it made me want to find for myself this kind of “Faith of
Our Fathers”.
A modern parable played out over the last couple weeks that brought Daddy’s singing back to me.
It
happened when Dr. Kent Brantly (the first American doctor infected
with Ebola) gave a blood transfusion to Nina Pham, the nurse who
became infected treating Thomas Eric Duncan. In the words of another
old hymn, “There is Wonder-working Power in the Blood”. If I had
Ebola, or any deadly infectious disease, I would want a transfusion
from someone who had survived the disease, because their blood would
likely have antibodies that might help my immune system fight off the
infection. Apparently it helped Ms. Pham.
That
is exactly what the Bible teaches. My Judeo-Christian heritage
teaches the power and importance of the blood. In the Old Testament
Jewish tradition, the sacrificial blood of a lamb “atones” for a
person’s sins. In the New Testament Christian tradition, Jesus became
the sacrificial Lamb of God whose blood was shed to atone for the sins
of all who accept his sacrifice.
William Cowper (pronounced as Cooper, 1731-1800) suffered great bouts
of depression for which he was institutionalized. In the depths of his
despair, Cowper experienced a “transfusion” of Christ’s loving,
life-giving blood that led him to pen his greatest poem/hymn, “There
is a Fountain”. He wrote:
“E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
and shall be till I die.”
Rev.
Robert Robinson penned the hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” in
1757, about the same time as Cowper’s “There is a Fountain”. Both hymns
refer to the same Fount motif in the Bible. Our Fount of Blessings
Project (MyFount.com) was named for the Robinson hymn and is a metaphor
for the abundant streams of mercy flowing from the Fount.
Bringing
the story full circle, Cowper and his friend John Newton, a former
captain of slave ships who wrote “Amazing Grace”, compiled their songs
into a hymnal at Olney, England. These “Olney Hymns” became the basis
of the Sacred Harp Hymnal, from which my father learned and loved to
sing as a lad in his backwoods Calhoun County, Mississippi church.
From
Abraham to Jesus to William Cowper and William “Pop” Jenkins, to
anyone whose “sin-sick soul” needs healing, “There is a Fountain
filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins, and sinners
(especially me) plunged beneath that flood (transfusion), lose all
their guilty stain (impurity).”
Thank you O Lamb of God,
In Christ’s Service,
Bill Jenkins
From The Quote Garden:
“The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;
And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.
Washed all my sins away, washed all my sins away;
And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.”
~ William Cowper (1772)
Photo: My father, W. L. “Pop” Jenkins, holding me in front of his Snow
White Cleaners van in Yazoo City, Mississippi (1948).
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