Woman in the Night: Meaning, History, and Theology
"Woman in the night"
- Written
- 1982
- Category
- Hymn
- Tune
- Standard Tune
- Status
- Verified
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Story
Woman in the Night is Brian Wren’s 1982 hymn tracing women’s encounters with Jesus from the Nativity through healing, discipleship, the cross, and resurrection witness. The represented United Methodist setting uses Charles H. Webb’s 1987 tune HAIZ.
Overview
Woman in the Night is Brian Wren’s hymn about the women whose encounters with Jesus form an essential thread through the Gospel story. Rather than remaining at the Nativity, the text moves from the mother of Jesus through women who are healed, questioned, taught, restored, and commissioned, and finally to women who remain present at the cross and become witnesses to the resurrection.
The hymn’s central pastoral claim is that the good news of Jesus creates freedom for participation and witness. It brings figures who can be marginalized in retellings of the Gospel to the foreground and asks the whole congregation to join their song. Healing, learning, testimony, courage, and resurrection witness are treated as parts of one discipleship story.
In worship, the hymn can serve services on the ministry of Jesus, women in Scripture, discipleship, healing, liberation, Holy Week, Easter, or Christian witness. Its scope is therefore much broader than Advent or Christmas, even though its opening scene begins with Jesus’ birth.
Historical Background
Brian Wren wrote Woman in the Night in 1982. Hymnary dates the text to that year and records copyright in 1983 by Hope Publishing Company. The text was associated with Wren’s 1983 collection Faith Looking Forward, a period in which his hymn writing frequently explored how inherited Christian language could be renewed through attention to justice, human dignity, and voices less visible in conventional worship repertory.
The hymn is structured as a sequence of Gospel scenes involving women. The United Methodist Hymnal form contains eight short stanzas and a refrain. The sequence begins with the birth of Jesus, then moves through the woman healed after long illness, the Samaritan woman, the woman who anoints Jesus, Mary and Martha’s household, women who travel in Jesus’ company, women who remain near the crucifixion, and women who come to the tomb and bear resurrection witness. This structure makes the hymn a compressed narrative of Jesus’ life and ministry seen through women’s participation rather than a single-scene Christmas meditation.
For The United Methodist Hymnal of 1989, Charles H. Webb supplied the tune HAIZ, composed in 1987. The hymnal prints the text in 5.5.5.5 meter with refrain and gives the musical copyright as 1989 The United Methodist Publishing House. The represented HymnInfo record is best identified with this United Methodist pairing because the uploaded contributor data names Webb and the hymn’s standard UMH instance uses HAIZ.
Other hymnals have paired Wren’s text with different tunes. Alfred V. Fedak’s NEW DISCIPLES, composed in 1989 and copyrighted by Selah Publishing in 1990, became a prominent later setting and appears in hymnals such as The Book of Praise, Worship and Rejoice, and Glory to God. Chalice Hymnal uses Jim Stanton’s ELIZABETH, while other collections document still other settings. These later pairings should not be confused with Webb’s HAIZ in the represented United Methodist version.
Wren revised the text in the mid-1990s; Glory to God identifies the version it prints as 1982, revised 1995, with the corresponding copyright notice. The represented 1989 United Methodist form predates that revision. That distinction matters because HymnInfo’s text field should not silently substitute a later revision for the edition implied by the record.
The exact represented text remains copyrighted. The 1989 hymnal explicitly identifies the words as © 1983 Hope Publishing Company, and Brian Wren is still living as of 2026. The text is therefore protected in both the United States and the Philippines. Because the uploaded lyrics field is a string containing a fragment of copyrighted text plus placeholders, the corrected record uses an empty string rather than reproducing or reconstructing the remaining stanzas.
Biblical Foundations
Luke 2:6–7 provides the opening Nativity scene, locating Jesus’ birth in Mary’s bodily labor and the vulnerability of the newborn child. From there the hymn deliberately broadens its biblical field rather than staying with Christmas.
Matthew 9:20–22 supplies the woman whose long illness is met by Jesus’ healing response, while John 4:28–30 shows the Samaritan woman becoming a public witness after her encounter with Jesus. Luke 10:38–42 contributes the household of Martha and Mary, where Mary’s place as a learner at Jesus’ feet becomes an important discipleship image.
Luke 8:1–3 is especially significant because it explicitly names women who accompanied Jesus and materially supported the ministry. The Gospel passion and resurrection narratives then bring women to the cross and the tomb; John 20:11–18 gives Mary Magdalene the role of announcing that she has seen the risen Lord. Together these passages support the hymn’s larger claim that women are not peripheral to the Gospel story but participants, disciples, supporters, and witnesses.
Verse Explanation
The opening movement begins with Mary and the birth of Jesus, placing the incarnation within the physical vulnerability and labor of a woman.
The next movements turn to women who meet Jesus during his public ministry: one receives healing after prolonged suffering, another engages him in theological conversation and becomes a witness, and another expresses costly devotion in the face of social judgment.
The middle of the hymn then widens the picture of discipleship. It recalls a woman who takes the place of a learner, as well as women who accompany and support Jesus’ ministry rather than remaining confined to expected social roles.
The closing movements follow women into the passion and resurrection narratives. Their faithful presence persists when hope appears lost, and their journey to the tomb becomes testimony to new life. The repeated refrain gathers these scenes into a congregational invitation to share the freedom and witness made possible in Christ.
Theological Reflection
The hymn’s theology is rooted in the liberating character of Jesus’ ministry. The Gospel scenes it recalls repeatedly show Jesus receiving, healing, teaching, and commissioning women in ways that resist social exclusion and restore agency. Freedom in the hymn is therefore not an abstract political slogan but a Christological claim about what happens when people encounter Jesus.
A second theme is discipleship. The women represented in the hymn are not merely passive recipients of compassion. They listen, question, support the ministry, remain present in suffering, and bear witness. The text therefore expands the congregation’s imagination of who counts as a disciple and how discipleship can take the forms of learning, service, courage, testimony, and faithful presence.
The resurrection gives the sequence its final theological horizon. The Gospel tradition entrusts women with some of the earliest resurrection witness, so the hymn’s movement culminates in proclamation rather than sentiment. The congregation is invited to join that witness, making the refrain a communal response to the freedom and new life associated with Christ.
Church Impact
Woman in the Night has documented circulation in a relatively small but diverse group of modern hymnals. Hymnary currently indexes the text in eleven hymnals, including The United Methodist Hymnal, The Covenant Hymnal, Chalice Hymnal, The Book of Praise, Together in Song, Worship and Rejoice, and Glory to God.
Its editorial use crosses Methodist, Presbyterian, Disciples of Christ, Covenant, Canadian, Australian, and ecumenical contexts. These appearances show sustained interest in a hymn that foregrounds women’s encounters with Jesus and connects those encounters with freedom, discipleship, and witness. They do not, by themselves, establish equal frequency of congregational use in every tradition.
The hymn has also generated multiple musical settings, which is evidence that editors and composers continued to find the text worth re-presenting for different worship communities. Its particular contribution is to gather several Gospel women into one narrative arc, allowing congregations to sing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus through stories that are often treated separately.
Musical Notes
The represented tune is HAIZ, composed by Charles H. Webb in 1987 for the United Methodist use of Wren’s text. The United Methodist Hymnal prints the pairing as no. 274 in c minor, with a 5.5.5.5 stanza pattern and refrain, and identifies the music as © 1989 The United Methodist Publishing House. A visually inspected reproduction of the UMH page confirms the author, composer, dates, tune name, meter, and copyright notices.
The musical form separates the compact narrative stanzas from a congregational refrain, which allows individual Gospel scenes to accumulate while the whole assembly answers together. The United Methodist Hymnal Music Supplement notes that stanzas may be sung by solo or small-group voices at a slightly slower tempo than the refrain, which is then sung by all.
A major later alternative is Alfred V. Fedak’s NEW DISCIPLES, composed in 1989 and copyrighted in 1990. Glory to God and several other hymnals use that setting, while other collections document additional tunes. No ChordPro material is added here because the represented Wren text remains copyrighted and therefore fails the lyrics-inclusion gate; HymnInfo should not reproduce protected lyrics merely to map or publish chords.
Application
- Use the hymn when teaching a series on women in the Gospels, tracing how different encounters with Jesus reveal healing, learning, service, courage, and witness.
- Pair the hymn with Luke 8:1–3 to highlight the often-overlooked women who traveled with Jesus and supported the ministry.
- Use John 20:11–18 to connect the hymn’s final movement with Mary Magdalene’s resurrection testimony.
- Invite congregations to examine whose voices are regularly centered or overlooked in their own retelling of the Gospel story.
- Use the hymn in services on discipleship, liberation, healing, Holy Week, Easter, or Christian witness rather than limiting it to Christmas because of the opening stanza.
Discussion Questions
- Why does the hymn begin with Jesus’ birth but continue through ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection?
- What do the Gospel women in these scenes reveal about the different forms discipleship can take?
- How do healing, learning, service, courage, and witness relate to the hymn’s theme of freedom in Christ?
- Why is Luke 8:1–3 important for understanding women as active participants in Jesus’ ministry?
- How might this hymn challenge a congregation to notice people whose roles in the biblical story or in church life are often overlooked?
Teaching Tips
- Introduce the hymn as an eight-stanza Gospel sequence rather than as a Christmas hymn focused only on Mary.
- Assign different Gospel passages to small groups and ask each group to identify what the woman or women in that scene do, receive, risk, or proclaim.
- Use Luke 8:1–3 to show that women accompanied and supported Jesus’ ministry in addition to appearing in isolated healing narratives.
- Explain that the represented United Methodist tune is HAIZ by Charles H. Webb, while later hymnals frequently use NEW DISCIPLES by Alfred V. Fedak.
- Because the text is copyrighted, use a licensed hymnal or authorized reprint for congregational singing rather than reproducing the full words independently.
Sources
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Hymnary.org — Woman in the Night text authority; Brian Wren, 1982 date, 1983 copyright, Scripture links, and hymnal circulation
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Hymnary.org — The United Methodist Hymnal 1989 no. 274; represented HAIZ setting, Charles H. Webb, c minor, meter, and copyright notices
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Woodland United Methodist Church — March 8, 2026 worship PDF reproducing UMH no. 274; visually inspected for the HAIZ score heading, credits, dates, meter, and copyright notices
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Hymnary.org — Glory to God 2013 no. 161; 1982 text revised 1995, NEW DISCIPLES setting, and later copyright information
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Hymnary.org — NEW DISCIPLES tune authority; Alfred V. Fedak, 1989, meter, key, and 1990 copyright
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Hymnary.org — Brian A. Wren person authority; education, ministry, publications, and hymn-writing career
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Columbia Theological Seminary — Directory entry for Brian A. Wren, Professor Emeritus and 2000–2007 Conant Professor of Worship
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Indiana University Jacobs School of Music — Indiana University mourns loss of former dean Charles Webb; death date and academic career
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United Methodist News — Methodist prodigy became a maestro; Webb’s Methodist church service and Hymnal Revision Committee work
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World English Bible Classic — Luke 2
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World English Bible Classic — Matthew 9
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World English Bible Classic — John 4
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World English Bible Classic — Luke 10
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World English Bible Classic — Luke 8
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World English Bible Classic — John 20
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U.S. Copyright Office — How Long Does Copyright Protection Last?
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Lawphil — Republic Act No. 8293, Sections 213–214, Philippine copyright term
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Lyrics
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This hymn is not currently marked as public domain in the HymnInfo database. To respect copyright, the full lyrics are not displayed here. HymnInfo still provides historical, biblical, and theological study notes where available.
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This hymn is not currently marked as public domain in the HymnInfo database. To respect copyright, the full music sheet is not displayed here. Please use a licensed hymnal, authorized publisher, or approved sheet-music provider.
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