As a concurrent cross-cultural experience, "Siyahamba" may offer particular challenges to congregations in the United States, challenges that may not be present in Western historical cross-cultural artifacts. "Siyahamba" originates in an oral culture and uses a cyclic musical form that differs from the stanzas of Western poetry. It is to this particular cross-cultural challenge that I wish to turn.

Sequential versus Cyclic Song Structures

Sequential songs. These maintain a train of thought over several stanzas, and develop an idea, bringing it to a climax or logical conclusion.³⁶ This may be achieved in several ways. A hymn on the Trinity may devote each of its first three stanzas to an aspect of the concept, and conclude with a doxological stanza of praise that lifts up all three facets in unity. "Come, Thou Almighty King" is a classic example. A more recent Trinitarian hymn is Jeffrey Rowthorn's "Creating God, Your Fingers Trace," which refers to the work of the members of the Trinity as "Creating God," "Sustaining God," "Redeeming God," "Indwelling God," omitting the classic formula, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Or a hymn may follow the progress of a passage of Scripture. See the familiar setting of Psalm 23 from the Scottish Psalter, "The Lord's My Shepherd," or, for a New Testament example, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night," based on Luke 2. Both of these follow the narrative as presented in the King James Version. A more recent example is Timothy Dudley-Smith's paraphrase of the Magnificat in Luke 1, "Tell Out My Soul," derived from the translation found in the New Jerusalem Bible.

A sequential hymn may tell a story. Hymns have always told part or all of the life of Christ as musical ballads. The medieval hymn, "O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High," is a fine example. "O Sons and Daughters" takes the singer through the passion, resurrection, and post-resurrection events of Christ's life. The stanzas of the African American spiritual, "Were You There," focus on the progression of events during Christ's passion. Sydney Carter's "Lord of the Dance" is a more recent example of a hymn that tells the story of Christ's life in a ballad form around the metaphor of dance.

Some hymns describe an attribute of God, or praise God, but conclude with a final stanza of petition. Petitions often employ subjunctives, or imperative verbs—for example, note the petitions (italicized) in the final stanza of Charles Wesley's famous hymn, "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling":

Finish then thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us find thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in thee.

A more recent example is the Japanese hymn "Here, O Lord, Your Servants Gather" by Tokuo Yamaguchi, with a translation by Everett Stowe. The first three stanzas elaborate the theme of John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," while the final stanza is a series of petitions with the imperative verbs "grant," "help," and "send." These petitions to God serve as a climactic conclusion to a sequential hymn.

Other hymns elaborate on a specific teaching of Christ, and then bring the idea home by applying it to the lives of persons today (a hermeneutic approach). The African American spiritual "When Israel Was in Egypt's Land (Go Down Moses)" concludes in some hymnals with a hermeneutical stanza:

O let us all from bondage flee, (Let my people go.)
And let us all in Christ be free, (Let my people go.)

The classic Christmas hymn "Once in Royal David's City," written for children by Cecil Frances Alexander, a children's educator and the wife of an Anglican minister, has a strong hermeneutical sense:

Jesus is our childhood's pattern,
Day by day like us he grew;
He was little, weak and helpless,
Tears and smiles like us he knew;
And he feels for all our sadness,
And he shares in all our gladness.

Some hymns drive their point home with a final stanza, or closing emphasis, on heaven as the goal of Christians. This eschatological approach was a technique often applied by Charles Wesley. See, for example, the final stanza of "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling":

Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love and praise.

In the eleventh century Bernard of Clairvaux closed a hymn with a reference to heaven (translated from the Latin by the nineteenth century poet Edward Caswall):

Jesus, our only joy be thou,
As thou our prize will be;
Jesus, be thou our glory now,
And through eternity.

Hymns about communion often do this, referring in the final stanza to the celestial banquet in which all Christians will share, with Christ at the head of the table. Cesareo Gabaraín's communion hymn "Sheaves of Summer" ("Una Espiga") captures this spirit beautifully in its final stanza:

En la mesa de Dios de sentarán.
(At God's table we will sit.)
Como hijos su pan compartirán.
(As God's children we will share his bread.)

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