Here I Am Lord

I, the Lord of sea and sky

"Here I Am Lord" is structured as a theological dialogue between divine initiative and human response, making it a remarkably rich text for Lutheran liturgical use. The stanzas articulate the divine address: God is identified as Creator ("Lord of sea and sky," "who made the stars of night"), Sustainer, and Compassionate Shepherd who sees human suffering, weeps over it, and acts redemptively. The imagery of breaking hearts of stone and giving hearts for love alone draws directly on Ezekiel 36:26 and the Jeremiah 31 new covenant promise, grounding the text in the prophetic tradition that Lutheran theology reads as Law's preparation and Gospel's fulfillment. The refrain then enacts the human vocation called forth by that divine love: availability, trust, and embodied service. In Lutheran theological terms, the stanzas function with a dialectical Law-Gospel movement. The opening acknowledgment of people who "dwell in dark and sin" and who "turn away" carries genuine Law weight — the human condition is named honestly, without sentimentality. But the divine response is not condemnation; it is costly compassion: "I have wept for love of them," "I will give my life to them." This is Gospel in prophetic register, anticipating and theologically resonant with the Incarnation and the cross. The third stanza's eucharistic overtones — "Finest bread I will provide / Till their hearts be satisfied" — open naturally into sacramental proclamation, making the text effective at Communion or in Epiphany contexts where the sending mission of the church is emphasized. Ecumenically, the text navigates the Catholic sacramental imagination and the Lutheran vocation theology (Beruf) with unusual grace. Luther's theology of vocation — that every baptized Christian is called and sent into the world as God's instrument — finds direct expression in the refrain's surrender: "I will go, Lord, if you lead me." The text does not require any Catholic-specific doctrinal presupposition to function powerfully in Lutheran worship; its prophetic call-and-response structure is, if anything, more at home in Lutheran preaching about baptismal vocation than in many specifically Lutheran texts. Worship planners should note that the God-voice in the stanzas invites careful proclamation — ideally by a cantor or choir — while the congregation's refrain becomes a corporate act of recommitment.

History & Background

"Here I Am Lord" was written by Daniel L. Schutte in 1981 while he was a Jesuit scholastic studying theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California. The text was inspired primarily by the prophetic call narratives of the Hebrew Bible, most directly the commissioning of Isaiah in Isaiah 6:1-8, where the prophet hears the divine question "Whom shall I send?" and responds "Here I am; send me." Schutte gave voice to both sides of that divine-human dialogue, casting the stanzas as the first-person speech of God and the refrain as the human response of availability and surrender. The hymn was first published by North American Liturgy Resources (NALR) and subsequently became a flagship text of OCP (Oregon Catholic Press), where it has remained one of the best-selling hymns in the English-speaking Catholic world. It appeared in virtually every major Catholic congregational resource from the 1980s onward, including Gather, Breaking Bread, and Worship. Its accessibility, dramatic dialogue structure, and emotional directness propelled it across denominational lines, and it was adopted into Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopal, and Presbyterian hymnals with remarkable speed for a contemporary Catholic composition. The hymn's ecumenical trajectory accelerated through the 1990s and 2000s as it appeared in the Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), the United Methodist Hymnal supplement, Glory to God (PCUSA, 2013), and numerous ecumenical collections. It is frequently used at ordinations, installations, baptisms, commissioning services, and Epiphany-season worship across traditions, cementing its status as one of the most widely sung hymns composed in the post-Vatican II era.

Hymnal Appearances

Evangelical Lutheran Worship — 574
Gather 3rd Edition — 686
Gather 4th Edition — 710
Glory to God — 69
Worship IV — 656

Bulletin Note

Preaching Connection

When the prophet hears "Whom shall I send?" and answers "Here I am," he is not volunteering from abundance — he is responding to a love that has already claimed him; this hymn enacts that same movement from divine compassion to human vocation, making it a natural musical partner to any sermon on Isaiah 6, the Baptism of Our Lord, or the theology of Christian calling.

Catechism & Confessional Connections

The Definition & Command of Baptism Small Catechism — Holy Baptism

Themes

call and vocation prophetic mission divine compassion baptismal sending human response incarnation service Epiphany ordination and commissioning availability to God care for the poor eucharist

Look Further

Search Hymnary.org for "Here I Am Lord" ↗