This page is provided so that you can hear the tunes of items which we use in church. Mostly they are written by the vicar. Please note that they are copyright - we are very happy to give permission to you to use them, but we would like to hear about it. Please include any use on your Christian Copyright Licence returns.
Down this page:
- the words,
- the story,
- the sheet music,
- media player.
Christ our Passover has been sacrificed
Christ our Passover has been sacrificed
Christ our Passover has been sacrificed,
so let's celebrate the Feast:
not with leavened bread made from wickedness,
using malice as its yeast.
Let's be purified
by his truth inside,
by lives which are sincere.
Christ is ris'n today,
so we join to say:
Alleluia! Christ is near!
Christ, once raised from death, now can die no more:
death has lost its final claim.
When he died to sin, he died once for all,
now he lives for God's own name.
We are dead to sin
and alive in him:
so death holds no more fear.
Christ is ris'n today,
so we join to say:
Alleluia! Christ is near!
Christ is truly raised from his earthly grave
as the first of those who sleep.
Death came by a man, so another man
brings our raising from the deep.
For in Adam all
are condemned to fall,
but Christ shall then appear.
On the last great day
we will rise and say:
Alleluia! Christ is near!
Words and tune copyright © John Hartley 2007.
Based on the Easter Anthems.
Story behind the song
This song arose when a member of the COIN Music list asked if anyone knew any responsive versions or modern-language versions of the Easter Anthems. So in rather a hurry I wrote a metrical version to a well-known hymn tune, which can be found here. A friend pointed out that this one wasn't one of my better efforts (he was right), so never one to let a challenge rest, I wrote this one.
The "Easter Anthems" (which can be found here) appear in the Book of Common Prayer as a special celebration of Easter: the eight spoken couplets are from three short bible passages - 1 Cor 5:7b-8, Romans 6:9-11, and 1 Cor 15:20-22. It seemed natural to try to make a three-verse song: one verse to each of these short bible passages. Each of them finishes with an acclamation, although I'm not quite sure the acclamation is quite right yet.
I'm very grateful to friends on the Christian Songwriting Organisation e-mail chat list for critiques of this song leading to various improvements.
As to the tune, I've always thought the tune of "Now the green blade riseth" is very clever, and I suppose this one is partly inspired by that. There are a number of obvious consecutive fifths at various points in the song - strangely, they don't seem to matter. (It would be possible to choose one of the three endings and use it for all the verses instead of varying the endings as I've indicated.)
John Hartley.
Windows Media Player. When you click the left-hand "play" button your computer should have started to play the tune. If it didn't, you might be able to get the tune by clicking here, or by right-clicking the link, choosing "save target as", saving it onto your computer, and then opening it with a music-playing program.
Please remember that a midi file of a tune isn't supposed to be a state-of-the-art musical arrangement - it is only supposed to give a basic idea of how the tune goes. Any reasonable organist / keyboard player / music group could make it sound far better.