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Sunday, August 23, 2026 

by Joshua L. Mazur, Director of Music 

Hymn 525: The Church’s One Foundation 

What is the Church? Is it a building? An institution? A denomination? A collection of people who happen to believe similar things? This Sunday’s Gospel gives us a more profound answer. When Peter confesses Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Christ responds with a promise: “On this rock I will build my church.” 

That promise stands at the heart of one of the church's most beloved hymns, “The Church’s One Foundation.” Written in 1866 by the Anglican priest Samuel John Stone, the hymn begins with a declaration that leaves no ambiguity about where the Church finds her identity: “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” Everything else follows from that. The Church does not ultimately rest upon clergy, musicians, buildings, programs, traditions, personalities, or even the strength of her members. All of those may serve the Church, but none of them can sustain her. The Church belongs to Christ because Christ created her, redeemed her, and continues to preserve her. 

Stone wrote the hymn during a period of considerable controversy within the Anglican Communion. Questions about biblical interpretation and Christian doctrine had produced fierce disputes, and Stone responded by writing a series of hymns based upon the articles of the Apostles’ Creed. The Church’s One Foundation accompanied the article confessing belief in “the holy catholic Church” and “the communion of saints.” That origin helps explain why the hymn refuses to romanticize the Church. 

Stone knew perfectly well that Christians disagree, institutions falter, and the visible Church can sometimes appear anything but united. One stanza speaks candidly of the Church being distressed by divisions and false teaching. Yet the hymn does not despair, because the Church’s unity is finally deeper than the conflicts of any particular age. She has: “one Lord, one faith, one birth.” The language echoes St. Paul’s vision of the Church as one Body united in Christ. Our unity is not something we manufacture. It is something we receive. 

The tune has its own story. AURELIA was composed by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, grandson of the great Methodist hymn writer Charles Wesley and one of the most important English church musicians of the nineteenth century. Like John Goss, whom we encountered last week in connection with Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven, Wesley spent his career working within the English cathedral tradition and advocating for higher standards in church music. Interestingly, AURELIA was not originally composed for Stone’s text. Wesley wrote the tune several years earlier for another hymn. Stone’s words and Wesley’s music were subsequently brought together, and the association became so successful that today the tune is known principally through The Church’s One Foundation. 

This is a good example of something we have been learning through Spotlight on Hymnody: hymns are texts, and tunes have lives of their own. A hymn text may be sung to several tunes, and a tune may carry several different texts. Sometimes, however, generations of Christians discover that a particular marriage of words and music simply works. AURELIA and The Church’s One Foundation are one such marriage. 

Musically, the tune gives Stone’s text a breadth and confidence that suit it remarkably well. The melody rises and falls in long, noble phrases. There is movement in it, but little agitation. Even when the text speaks of persecution, division, and struggle, the music seems to insist that something beneath all of it remains secure.  

That something is Christ. 

This hymn is especially fitting for this Sunday’s appointed Scriptures. In the Gospel, Jesus asks His disciples the question upon which everything turns: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Only then does Jesus speak about building His Church. The order matters. The Church begins not with herself, but with the confession of Jesus Christ. St. Paul develops that vision in Romans. He urges Christians to present themselves as “a living sacrifice” and reminds them that, though they possess different gifts, they are one body in Christ. Some teach. Some serve. Some exhort. Some give. Some lead. Yet none exists independently of the others. That is the Church Stone describes. Many members. Many gifts. Many generations. One Body. One Lord. One foundation. 

Even the story of Moses in Exodus contributes to this picture. God’s purposes unfold through an extraordinary collection of people: Hebrew midwives, a desperate mother, a courageous sister, and even Pharaoh’s own daughter. Each plays a different part in a story whose full significance none of them can yet see. The Church often looks much the same. We rarely know the full significance of the small acts of faithfulness entrusted to us. We simply offer our particular gifts and trust that God is building something greater than any one of us can see. 

As you sing The Church’s One Foundation this Sunday, listen especially to the pronouns. The hymn does not sing primarily of me and my. It sings of her, we, and one. That grammar itself teaches us something about Christianity. We are not merely individual believers who happen to worship in the same room. Through Baptism, we have been joined to something larger than ourselves: the Body of Christ, extending across nations, generations, and even the boundary of death itself. And beneath that enormous, imperfect, beautiful communion remains the one foundation that cannot be shaken: 

Jesus Christ our Lord. 

As you sing, consider this question: 

What gift has Christ entrusted to me for the building up of His Church?