Common Ground Song 68 ‘Jubilate, everybody’
Words & music: Fred Dunn © Kingsway’s ThankYou Music
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwSKZeg-8Y0
Featured image: Jazz band at Yarbugh church © ‘Chris’

This song is one I know very well, having sung it from my earliest days as a practising Christian in the early 1980s. I probably first sang it in the context of a student Christian Union meeting. Like many worship songs, or ‘choruses’, of that time, it has very simple words (in this instance a paraphrase of a couple of verses from Psalm 100), and is intended to be sung repeatedly rather than just once or twice through.

For me, the most important phrase in these few lines of lyrics is ‘come before his presence singing, enter now his courts with praise’. If we do not enter church (or any other Christian gathering) feeling ready to praise God, then we will get less out of that gathering than if we come prepared, maybe already giving thanks to God and singing in the silence of our hearts. For worship does not start with the ‘opening hymn’. Rather, we should come prepared, ‘warmed up’ and expecting to give our whole selves in praise.

The musical direction in the setting included here is ‘boisterously’ – not a word often seen in a hymn book, but it reflects the nature of Christian worship when freed from a traditional (denominational) church setting. It does not really matter if everyone keeps in time with each other, or sings in exactly the same key, or even whether you pronounce ‘jubilate’ with a hard ‘j’ or as a ‘y’ (yod) sound. The word is Latin for ‘rejoice!’ (plural: addressed to the whole gathering). The point is to express the joy of being in God’s presence together. Feel free to stand, clap, raise your hands, dance, wave ribbons, play jazz instruments as in the photo – whatever expresses your joy!