Surprising victory at the FA Cup Final

The most surprising thing about tomorrow’s FA Cup Final will happen before the first touch of the ball.

It’s the sight of 90 000 football fans (and some of the 11 million watching at home) singing along to a Victorian hymn, Abide with me. It’s a familiar tradition—but a peculiar one. And maybe it has something to teach us.

This year, the singing will be lead by the “Songs of Praise FA Cup Fans choir”—made up of a representative of each of the 64 clubs who made it to this year’s third round of the FA Cup. They will join a long succession of artists to have performed the hymn since 1927, when it was first included in the pre-match programme in honour of King George V and Queen Mary. The royal couple were spectating that year and Abide with me was known to be one of their favourite hymns.

The moment continues to be one of great emotion, as the roar of the crowd joins with the stirring melody of the brass band. But in today’s secular Britain, what is the enduring power behind this tradition? Is it little more than a relic from England’s Christian past?

Shared Community
According to Professor Barry Richards, of the University of Bournemouth, the power the Abide-with-me-moment lies in “the experience of being part of a unified social group”. Simply meaning: a good sing-song brings us together. It’s certainly what the first organisers intended: back in the 1920s, “community singing” was the latest fad.

The power of singing to draw us together and create a sense of community is no accident. In a church context, hymn-singing is something which God has given us to help us build one another up. It’s wonderfully encouraging to look round as we stand on a Sunday morning and see our brothers and sisters in Christ singing of the same truths, the same saviour, the same faith. No wonder Paul instructs us to speak “to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19).

Where is death’s sting?
Singing certainly has the ability to draw people together: but how does such a seemingly morbid hymn fit with the FA Cup Final—an otherwise unmistakably lively sporting event? Why not update to something more cheerful?

Professor Richards writes: “There is something especially … meaningful about invoking an experience of inclusive community in this explicit confrontation with death and mourning”.

In other words: it’s reflecting on the subject of death that draws us so powerfully into a community. Death reminds us of our shared humanity. After all, we will all die one day—and we’ll all be faced with the hurt of having the ones we love die, too.

Our fraught relationship with death, glimpsed for two minutes before kick-off, shows that deep down, we’re wired for eternity.

On the face of things, this doesn’t really make sense. Death isn’t something which makes us uniquely human—animals die too! Instead, perhaps it’s the fact that humans find death so undeniably difficult that is part of what makes us uniquely human—because God has made humankind in his own image (Genesis 1:27), and has given each of us an immortal soul. Death wasn’t part of his original creation design—it’s a painful consequence of living in a world marred by sin (Romans 6:23).

Our fraught relationship with death, glimpsed for two minutes before kick-off, shows that deep down, we’re wired for eternity.

Hope in the face of death
The irony is that the hope we all long for in the face of death—the hope that’s on offer to each teary-eyed, excited, bawling football fan singing their hearts out at Wembley stadium tomorrow—is explained right there in the words penned by Henry Lyte:

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

A model for Christians
Our singing on Sunday morning can be just as exciting, just as moving, as the singing on Saturday evening. It ought to be more so, given that we all profess to believe that the words coming out of our mouths are true. But so often it doesn’t feel that way. Why?

Maybe we need to embrace hymn-singing as “community singing”: not a one-to-one monologue between me and my maker, but an impassioned worship from Christ’s redeemed community to our Saviour.

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