Thanks be to God

Thanks be to God, who gives to us the victory,

A victory won in our Lord, Jesus Christ. 

Listen to this! I tell you all a mystery:

We shall be changed, in twinkling of an eye!

Trumpets will sound, the dead be raised undying.

We who die now will rise and no more die.

 

Thanks be to God, who gives to us the victory,

A victory won in our Lord, Jesus Christ. 

What now, O Death? What happened to your triumph?

And tell us now, O Death, where is your sting? 

Thanks be to God, who gives the victory final

In Christ our Lord, whose praises now we sing.

 

Thanks be to God, who gives to us the victory,

A victory won in our Lord, Jesus Christ. 

Now be steadfast, unmoving, and untiring;

Excel in working for our Lord on high.

We know our toil at last will be rewarded.

“Thanks be to God!” be our unending cry.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, January 2022, after 1 Corinthians 15:51-58

MUSIC: Tune FINLANDIA, Jean Sibelius, 1899.

 

 

The noted scripture text is assigned to the eighth Sunday after Epiphany, which technically doesn’t happen this year. I decided to jump it ahead of the seventh Sunday after Epiphany epistle reading and found (perhaps not surprisingly) that it had not received a lot of hymn treatment in any comprehensive way.