If Ye Love Me – Thomas Tallis

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth

John 14: 15-17a KJV

The English master composer Thomas Tallis (1505?-1585) was engaged in the royal courts as an organist and composer principally of choral music during Renaissance period. Tallis was among the earliest composers of choral works in English, rather than Latin, following the edict of King Edward VI [1], whose intention was to make the elements of the emerging Protestant religious service accessible to English speakers. If Ye Love Me [listen] is an early example of the English Anthem, mostly homophonic (one syllable to a note) and composed in ABB form, in which the second portion is repeated. If Ye Love Me, composed 1565, is a mainstay in the sacred choral music repertoire and on the very early portion of the spectrum. 

While the synoptic gospels provide an accounting of events, John is focused on the nature of God in human form and on his love.  Nowhere is this love more evident than in John 14.  Here, during The Last Supper, Jesus is speaking intimately with his disciples.  I don’t have any more to teach you, he says, and you are no longer my followers, but my friends.  And I am leaving you.

Verse 16 provides the first mention in John of the Holy Spirit, God’s provision for an ongoing presence of God in our lives once Jesus (God in human form) has departed, thus making the verse one of the most pivotal  passages in the Bible.       

We, you and I, are armed with 2000 years of retrospect and probably several decades of Sunday School.  We know what is going to happen at the Last Supper and beyond.  Jesus has the power of omniscience.  He knows that his earthly path is soon over, that the journey with his fellow travelers is soon to end, and that he is on the precipice of a very unpleasant ordeal.  The disciples, by contrast, have not these advantages and are completely unequipped for the occasion, thinking that tomorrow will be another day with the Teacher, and now wondering, “If you are leaving me, how am I to go forward?”

If Ye Love Me speaks most clearly if we, like the disciples, can turn our attention to God in human form speaking to us with a great and heavy heart, trying once more to help us.

with Filippa Duke