Father, we give you thanks, who planted

Francis Bland Tucker’s hymn was written for the Hymnal 1940 of what was then the Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA. He revised it for the next edition 4 decades later, and it features in many British as well as American books, from the 1951 BBC Hymn Book onwards. Its 2 stzs are a paraphrase of part of The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles or Didache, now generally agreed to be an early 2nd-c work from Syrian Antioch, incorporating even older material though not traceable to the apostles themselves. Dealing with such topics as baptism, fasting and ministry, its main interest for many lies in the samples of liturgical prayers for the Lord’s Supper. Their distinctive emphasis, now incorporated into some recent printed orders, relates the death of Jesus to the unity of the church, and his saving work to that of the revelation of God—aspects brought out clearly in the hymn. Modernising changes have been in use since the Australian Hymn Book of 1977 (=With One Voice, 1979). 2.1 formerly began ‘Watch o’er thy church, O Lord in mercy’; other variations are small, and the most distinctive imagery remains that of the final 4 lines.

When set to LES COMMANDEMENTS DE DIEU or SPIRITUS VITAE (541) the hymn is a 98 98 structure; RENDEZ À DIEU, used here, gives a more satisfying shape as two 8-line stzs. For this majestic Louis Bourgeois tune, see notes on 31.

b Norfolk, Virginia, USA 1895, d Savannah, Georgia, USA 1974. Univ of Virginia (BA 1914). The 13th child of Bp Beverley and Mrs Anna Tucker, he taught in Kyoto, Japan, and in 1916 joined the US army, working in a French hospital, and after the war studied at the Virginia Theological Seminary (BD 1920, DD 1940). Ordained in 1918 in what was then the Protestant Episcopal Ch of the USA, he was Rector of Grammer in S Virginia, 1920–25. His other parish appointments were at St John’s, Georgetown, Washington DC (1925–45) and Old Christ Ch, Savannah, Georgia (1945–67). Most of his hymns were written while he served on the revision and theological committees of the Episcopalian Hymnal 1940 and its supplements, and he was also a member of the Joint Commission on Ch Music, 1946–58. According to Erik Routley in 1979 his hymns are free of cliché, and ‘There is no better twentieth-century writing [in the USA or UK] than is to be found in Tucker’. A full tribute to his ‘many years of faithful service, [and] his glorious hymns’ is reprinted in The Hymnal 1982 Companion (1994, pp637–639), by some way the longest biographical note in that book. He also compiled More than Conquerors, a collection of 30 monthly letters written to his congregation during a long remission and recuperation from lung cancer. Baptist Praise and Worship (1991) has 3 of his texts; the A&M in 2000, Common Praise, has 5, and its Canadian counterpart with the same title (1998) 8, while 4 feature in the 2006 Evangelical Lutheran Worship and 7 in A Panorama of Christian Hymnody (2005 edn). Nos.395, 646.