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Individuals have particular traits and achievements that spark a particular response. New buildings and anniversaries are less obviously unique. As regards anniversaries, for example, the obvious things are soon said. To caricature them, not entirely unfairly, they are: "Thank God for yesterday. Thank God for today. God help us tomorrow. Amen!" The challenge is to find a theme suitable for an anniversary year without churning out repetitious generics. Here is one such attempt. In April 2002 I completed a hymn for the fiftieth anniversary of Clairmont Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Georgia, not far from my home. Because the church needed a text that could be immediately sung, I chose the tune Diademata in the poetic meter known as "short meter double" whose syllable count is: 6.6.8.6:6.6.8.6. For this meter, in today's North American culture, one or two stanzas would seem insufficient, while six, or even five, would be too many. Accordingly, I chose to work with four stanzas. Because Christ is the Head of the church, its center and reason for existence, the hymn focuses on Christ, rather than on the church that praises Christ. For Clairmont Presbyterian Church—as for many others—the Bible is of central importance. Hence, the hymn contains four titles or word-pictures of Christ, directly or indirectly drawn from the Bible. Two (shepherd and prince) are distinctively male, while the others (teacher and nurse) can be understood in male or female terms. Teachers can be of either gender, and though nurses are still most often female, many men now work in the nursing profession, my brother and son-in-law among them. In choosing these titles I aimed to write a lyric acceptable to the commissioning court, while possibly encouraging singers to move a step beyond their first perceptions. My writing process and choice of language reflect both aims. It is important to begin with a title that is impeccable and familiar. Thus, the opening stanza praises Christ the Good Shepherd. In the ancient world, kings are often called shepherd, and the title signifies a shepherd's absolute power over the sheep. The point (not always grasped in liturgy and preaching) is that good shepherds use their power to love their sheep and protect them, while bad shepherds terrify and "fleece" the flock. Israel knows both bad shepherds (Ezekiel 34) and God's promise to be a good shepherd (same chapter), which—for Christians—Jesus fulfills (John 10:1-16). In Luke 15:1-7, the shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep without oversight and goes in search of the hundredth. In a middle Eastern context, the number one hundred signifies completeness or perfection—as it does today in Islam—which is why, in Eastern Christian traditions, Luke 15:1-7 is called the Parable of the Incomplete Flock. Christ has other sheep, beyond our own parochial fold, and intends to gather them all (John 10:16). Knowing Jesus' table fellowship with social outcasts, we can be sure that many of the "other sheep" are people we would rather not meet, and opponents or enemies with whom we need to be reconciled. Thus:
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