If sung on Good Friday, have a soloist or choir sing the hymn unaccompanied at the end of the service.Change the words to match the theme of each week’s service during Lent and sing the hymn at the same spot in each service.There are a number of ways this hymn could be used in the Lenten season:
Otherwise, feel free to take liberties with the melody and rhythm. If the congregation sings the entire time, support it with some piano or light guitar. Selah has a very popular version of this hymn using this soloist-choir combination. The choir can also come in on each “tremble” underneath the soloist. If you have a soloist sing the piece, consider having you’re a choir singing “oohs” behind in harmony to provide a foundation for the soloist. Sing the whole piece a cappella, or begin a cappella and slowly bring in light piano in the second verse and build throughout. This is a tune that needs not much more than the human voice to bring out the power of the words. Glory, glory!” This is definitely an appropriate ending for an Easter morning service, but also transitions beautifully into songs of praise if you begin with this hymn. In the last verse, instead of responding to the question with “Oh sometimes, it causes me to tremble,” some versions respond with “Sometimes I feel like shouting glory. Other commonly used verses include “when they pierced him in the side,” and “when the sun refused to shine.” However, depending on how you use the song in a service, or when it’s used during the Lenten season, you could ask questions about being in the garden, at the courtyard, etc.
The standard verses read: “Were you there…when they crucified my Lord, when they nailed him to the tree, when they laid him in the tomb, when He rose up from the grave” (also, “when God raised him from the tomb”).
One of the beautiful things about this hymn is that the text can be changed quite freely to fit your need during a service. For we know that the journey of Good Friday ultimately ends with an open and empty tomb, where the earthquake causes us to tremble in awe and praise. We lift our voices with our brothers and sisters, our voices filled with mourning, but also with hope. And so as we sing this hymn, we gather with Christians around the world, remembering. Geography, time, culture – none of these hinder our togetherness in the body and blood of Christ. We are brought together because of our trembling and our tears, but also because of our knowledge of why our beloved Savior had to die. We join the crowd huddled on the sides of the streets, or at the foot of the cross, or in front of a sealed grave. And yet, the words of this hymn invite us to take a journey through the last days and hours of Christ’s life. In a culture that tells us that we should get what we want and what we’re entitled to, and that we ought to live our happiest, best life, it definitely goes against the grain to dwell on something sorrowful. Stanzas 1-3 on Good Friday stanzas 1-4 during the Paschal Vigil or at Easter sunrise services. ('Tree" in stanza 2 refers, of course, to the cross, but it was undoubtedly significant to black slaves who witnessed lynchings.) With distances of geography and time removed, we become part of that great body of people who come trembling to the cross of Christ for salvation. Just as modern Jews identify with the Hebrew slaves in Egypt at their Passover Seder ("When I was in Egypt"), we are encouraged in this text to identify with the witnesses to Christ's death and resurrection. Were you there when the sun refused to shine? Were you there when they pierced him in the side? The spiritual's earlier roots include a white spiritual known in Tennessee as "Have you heard how they crucified my Lord?" Additional stanzas are available from oral and written tradition: An African American spiritual that probably predates the Civil War, "Were You There" was first published in William Barton's Old Plantation Hymns (1899).