Mark Gruber-Lebowitz of Baltimore is among thousands of Christians moved by the Jan. 21 sermon of an Episcopal bishop asking President Donald Trump to have mercy on vulnerable people — but not in the way some people are moved.
The difference? Gruber-Lebowitz was inspired to write a hymn, “When We Speak Truth to Power,” sung to the historic tune called “Lancashire” (think “Lead On, O King Eternal”).
The opening lyrics speak directly to Bishop Mariann Budde’s request for presidential mercy — a request that has subjected her to scathing criticisms, including a new resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives to condemn her sermon as “political activism.”
The first stanza of Gruber-Lebowitz’s hymn reads:
When we speak truth to power our God is glorified,
In acts of holy boldness, the Lord of all takes pride.
We’re called to seize the moment, to move beyond our fear,
And speak the way of Jesus to those who need to hear.
Mark Gruber-Lebowitz
A member of Grace UMC in Baltimore, Gruber-Lebowitz has written 51 hymns, including six Christmas songs and eight sung Eucharist liturgies over the past five years. He’s given away all his hymns to friends, clergy, music directors and bishops.
“My delight comes from seeing and hearing the hymns sung,” Gruber-Lebowitz said in a telephone interview. “I grant permission for my hymns to be used in worship, asking only that I be informed when they are to be used so that I can pray for them when they’re sung.”
Gruber-Lebowitz, a retired educator, started out to become a United Methodist pastor like his father. He entered UMC-related Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., in 1984, serving as an assistant pastor at a Washington-area church. That year conservative activists convinced General Conference, the UMC’s highest legislative body, to enact a prohibition on homosexual people being ordained as clergy.
“I adored my pastoral work, but I struggled with my orientation,” Gruber-Lebowitz said. “After my first full year in seminary, I decided I was faced with a life that was either going to be very lonely or built on lies.”
He chose to leave seminary and return to his educational career in 1986. Three years later, he met Sheldon Lebowitz, with whom he has been partnered for 35 years, the last 15 as a legally married couple.
Yet Gruber-Lebowitz still felt a pull toward ministry. “God never stopped reaffirming my call,” he said.
He retired in 2017 after serving as an elementary school teacher, a school administrator and an education specialist. For a time in the 1990s, Mark and Sheldon were members of Foundry UMC in Washington, D.C., where then-President Bill Clinton, a Southern Baptist, and then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, a lifelong United Methodist, often worshiped.
“We sat behind them in church,” Gruber-Lebowitz said. “It was a thrill to pass the peace of Christ with them.”
However, when health issues made it difficult for the couple to continue driving from Baltimore to D.C. each Sunday, they looked for a congregation closer to their Baltimore home. In 2019, they settled at Baltimore’s Grace UMC, a member of LGBTQ advocate Reconciling Ministries Network.
“I’m rarely thinking, ‘Today’s the day I will write a hymn.'”
Then came the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Because of the public gatherings quarantine, the couple watched church services online. One Sunday morning they watched their former church, Foundry, close a service with Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.”
“They were singing ‘love divine,’ but in my brain I heard ‘In this time of isolation,'” Gruber-Lebowitz said. “Ninety minutes later I had two verses.”
From then on, the Holy Spirit has inspired his hymn-writing, Gruber-Lebowitz said.
“I’m rarely thinking, ‘Today’s the day I will write a hymn,'” he said. “The Spirit surprises me when I least expect it.”
Gruber-Lebowitz doesn’t compose music, which is why his hymns are set to familiar tunes in the public domain. This practice takes care of copyright issues as well.
Composing the Bishop Budde-inspired hymn, “When We Speak Truth to Power,” went faster than anything he’d written before, he said. “I’m picky. Sometimes it’s a week or more before I’m satisfied with what I’ve written. But I finished ‘When We Speak Truth to Power’ by Thursday morning after the bishop’s sermon on Tuesday.”
Gruber-Lebowitz said the hymn reflects his and his spouse’s concerns about the first edicts of the new federal administration, particularly immigration restrictions and LGBTQ discrimination.
“We saw these acts (President Trump’s executive orders) as truly horrifying,” he said. “We’re concerned about immigration, and we have to wonder about the future of our marriage.”
Then Bishop Budde asked the president to have mercy on the nation’s vulnerable, frightened people.
“I was so inspired by the bishop’s boldness, and she said it in such a gentle way, with no pyrotechnics,” he said. “I was moved that a hard message could be presented so gently, and yet it’s what the church is meant to be.”
The hymn’s third stanza reads:
As immigrants are threatened and told they don’t belong,
And trans folks are diminished, their truth dismissed as wrong,
The voice of Jesus beckons as through all time it’s done,
“Go welcome in the stranger; find me in everyone.”
Although he posts his hymns on Facebook, Gruber-Lebowitz said interested people are welcome to email him for copies of “When We Speak Truth to Power.”
“Thanks to COVID, most churches livestream their worship services now,” he said. “I’m able to watch my hymns being sung, and that delights my soul.”
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Trump at the National Cathedral: We’ve already fought this war | Opinion by Mark Wingfield
Basham and others link criticism of Budde to threat of female preachers
At prayer service, Episcopal bishop calls on Trump to show mercy