The story of Charles Wesley’s hymn ‘Come, thou long-expected Jesus’, published in Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord in 1744, tends to reference his consciousness of poverty and prayer for the coming of the Kingdom of God, and his reflection on Haggai 2.7, which reads (in the Authorised Version):

And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.

More modern translations tend to suggest that the ‘desire’ of the nations is their treasure – and it is certainly an arguably better understanding of Haggai’s text alone, given that the context makes it all about the splendour of the re-built Temple, the silver and the gold for which belong to the Lord. The Hebrew is חֶמְדַּת (hemdat), the construct form of חֶמְדָּה (hemdah), which does have a root meaning of ‘desire’ or ‘that which is desirable’. The Church historically has read it as a messianic promise; it is Christ who is truly desirable and desired; his reign which will free us.

As well as the Biblical inspiration, there is a fairly obvious reference to Book I of St Augustine’s confessions in the plea that the coming Jesus ‘let us find our rest in thee’.

So much for the text, but what of the music. And, indeed, which music are we thinking about? The hymn has been sung to the tune ‘Stuttgart’, and more often nowadays to ‘Cross of Jesus’, but I have been listening on this occasion to a setting of Wesley’s text not as a hymn but as an anthem, by contemporary American musician and theologian Marty Wheeler Burnett (I believe the setting was completed in 2018).

Honouring the strophic nature of the hymn, the original melody to which she sets the text is essentially repeated in each verse, with variety provided in texture and dynamic; it opens with a solo in a high voice, and there is a corresponding low-voice solo later in the piece, with other sections harmonised in a gentle though not simplistic style. The melody flows at a reasonable pace, perhaps reflecting the joy of the Christian proclamation that the Kingdom of God is already among us more than the yearning desire for His glorious further revelation and our justified rest. The final cadence nevertheless delivers some foretaste of that promised rest.

Might there be, in the intervening verses, some taste of the ‘fears and sins’ from which the reminds us He is to ‘release us’? I find that quite subtle, but it is there.

As we progress through the season of Advent with this anthem in our ears, what will disturb our peace? And what might we do to disturb our own (and perhaps, gently, and with love, others’) complacency? It is, after all, His ‘all-sufficient merit’ and not ours that might ‘raise us to His glorious throne’.