Category: Easter

This towering edifice – inspired by Mark 13:1-8

Temples now and then – This towering edifice of shining glass – inspired by Mark 13:1-8

1	This towering edifice of shining glass
	which speaks of power, of status and of class.  
	will one day fall, a glittering shower of shards, 
	will flutter like the children's house of cards.
	
2	These temples of our vanity and pride 
	like expectations of the crucified 
	will lie in dust and rubble that we raze, 
	not like the Christ who, later, God might raise.
	
3	We need to hear that sharp prophetic cry 
	reminding of the ones we would deny. 
	Self-righteous hypocrites will meet their end.
	Neglected people find in Christ a friend.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2012 © Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Metre: 10 10 10 10
Tunes: CHILTON FOLIAT; GO FORTH

God’s commandments link together – hymn for Easter 5

A hymn for the fifth Sunday of Easter – ‘God's commandments link together’

1	God's commandments link together 
	justice, mercy, love and grace; 
	elements to guide the framing 
	of our laws within this place.
	Yet the laws and legal judgments 
	that we form through human thought, 
	all too easily diminish 
	values that the Christ had sought.

2	As we follow in his footsteps
	as disciples, let us find, 
	ways to live in peace together, 
	ways that bring God's grace to mind;
	ways of gracious peaceful living, 
	that might spread throughout the earth,
	ways of God's audacious giving:
	let the spirit find new birth.

Andrew E Pratt.
Words © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk .
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL
Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior
application to Stainer & Bell Ltd
Metre: 8 7 8 7 D
Tune: BETHANY

Hymn: It seemed as though the Lord lived still

It seemed as if the Lord lived still

 

It seemed as if the Lord lived still,

expressed his will, the lame could walk,

and all assumed the blind would see,

the silent ones would start to talk!

Yet all they saw when looking round,

were Galilean fisher folk,

a zealot and some other men,

some hazarded it was a joke.

 

So Peter had to put them right,

the crucified, the buried dead,

the very Christ, their God was raised,

yet now they acted in God’s stead.

And everywhere the spirit blows

the living Christ and God’s own grace

is manifest by human means

in every later time and space.

 

Plain ignorance and human zeal,

had nailed their God, had knocked love down,

but that could never be the end,

and love still lived to wear the crown.

So everywhere God’s people meet

through prayer and action God is there,

and even in this time and place

our lives can tend and bring God’s care. 

 

Andrew Pratt 17/3/2012

Words © 2012 © Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd

Tune: BEFORE THE THRONE StF 717

Metre: DLM

True Resurrection – a reflection

This is the day of resurrection.

In our narrative, just three short days ago, hatred had free reign.  And now, as the sun crept over the horizon on yet another day, change was in the air. Heralded by the sound of a voice, the calling of a name, the offering of peace, the breaking of bread, change was waiting in the wings.

 

Hatred has had free reign through this year since we celebrated this festival last. And now as the sun creeps over the horizon on yet another day change still pervades the air. Silence and fear mix with the calling of a name, candles are lit, peace is hoped for, bread is broken, people pray, change is in the wings.

 

What do you do after a death?

Lost voices echo over the gulf of death and shake us, for though silenced, they will never be lost.

 

Actions, simple actions, will make memories real. My father’s hands, those of your mother, the painted nails of your daughter, the knuckles of my son – all familiar – all echoed in our own hands, bringing us up short. And tears, unexpectedly, sometimes inappropriately, flow and we lose control.

 

Then someone points out the significance of words which still stay with us, the occasions when we heard them informing what we say and how we act.

 

This is the day of resurrection, of re-creation, of persistent love.

 

Some hold this as an historic event easily, a matter of faith. Others feel it is beyond belief. Yet what happened in those days, miraculous or not, is mirrored in our own experiences, yesterday, today, perhaps tomorrow. This was a day that changed lives, offered a new perspective. Mary heard her name being called and the disciples walked into a new future. All that Jesus had said and done lived on for and in them. He changed attitudes and informed actions. But he had died.

 

Love, however, had not been destroyed. If you can have faith in a literal bodily resurrection hold onto it, it is a gift of grace. But whether you can, or not, reflect with me for a moment on how the first disciples kept Christ alive even beyond crucifixion, resurrection,  Ascension.

 

Acts 2

44 All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds[j] to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home[k] and ate their food with glad and generous[l] hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

 

Christ was raised and lived on in the love and kindness of ordinary people like you and me.

 

Love, real love, cannot be destroyed, for there is nothing in all creation that can separate us from God’s love. That’s what matters and our ongoing love, our persistent loving kindness, is evidence of resurrection NOW!

 

That is real:

When we greet with loving kindness those who have betrayed us;

When we make peace with those who have let us down;

When we meet apparent strangers, yet learn their names, and call them in loving kindness;

 

Then Christ is alive.

  Christ is alive when persistent loving kindness is alive in your life and mine!

Good Friday reflection

Reflection

This event is almost inconceivable for me. You see, I do not believe in a vindictive God who sacrifices his Son. I do trust, through faith, in the incarnation – God being human. Hands that flung stars into space to cruel nails surrendered. A baby in a manger, ‘the Word made flesh’. But if this is our starting point then it is God who hung on a cross on that first ‘good Friday’. I cannot cope with some vast plan of salvation that requires this carnage. What I can understand is a God of love, from whose love we can never be separated (Romans 8, 38)

So where does that leave us? For me Jesus embodies God’s love in totality. Ultimate, complete and utter love has to be totally selfless and this is what I see in Jesus. It is the sort of love that challenges all hypocrisy, injustice and indignity to which we are exposed and which we still experience. But there is a problem here. The moment we start to love those whom others do not, or cannot, love we become a threat to them. We either have to acknowledge that love and ally ourselves with it, ignore it, or oppose it. We are inherently selfish. Humanly we seek our own preservation. That is a biological imperative. So when Jesus challenged the powers, those around him by challenging their economy – the overturning of the tables of the money-changers, the emphasis on the importance of the widow’s tiny monetary gift, pausing to heal a woman, deemed unclean, who pressed on him in the crowd, when he had been called to heal the daughter of a leader of the synagogue – in all these ways it felt as if he was a threat to the culture and religion, the very economy of the people. This threat was to their very being. And how they behaved was no different from how we, in similar situations, behave. They behaved, literally, naturally.

 

And Jesus response was the only possible response of complete and utter, unconditional, all-inclusive love: that is forgiveness – ‘forgive them for they (literally) know not what they do’!

And the cross becomes wondrous, not as some great theological bargain, or the culmination of a cosmic plan of sacrifice, but in the revelation of the nature of total love that we are called to emulate.

 

And the world is shrouded in darkness, inevitably for in darkness we cannot see, if God is dead this really is the end. And this is why theologians, then and now, you and I, seek to explain away this horror. Yet Jurgen Moltmann, some years ago in a book which still deserves to be read, The Crucified God, sees the cross to be the test of all that deserves to be called Christian, rather than the resurrection, for here we see God’s utter love and willingness to be vulnerable, as we are vulnerable, even unto death in order to be one with us. And the scandal and uniqueness is that gods are not meant to die, wondrous God, wondrous love indeed!