As I worked on Cardiphonia’s Songs for the Supper project, I wrote lots of sketches before settling on “O Lamb of God” as the one I’d record “for real.” I recently got a chance to complete and record a few of the other ideas. The first is “The Body of Christ.”
In many churches, passing of the communion elements is accompanied by the words “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven” and “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation,” to which the recipient answers “Thanks be to God.” Here are those words in musical form. I imagine the song being used as a meditative refrain that the congregation can sing while passing the communion elements, similar to Taizé’s “Eat This Bread.” I plan to write Taizé-style descants as well. The first blog reader who schedules this song for a service and requests the descants (with a few days’ notice) gets them for free!