Category: Theology

The Good Samaritan …and then some…a hymn

The parable of the Good Samaritan points us to an unexpected neighbour (Luke 10:25-37). Elsewhere Jesus explains that whenever we greet the least of our neigbours we welcome him. And what if instead of seeing the Samaritan as the model of Jesus we turn the parable around…that it is Jesus in the person of the one left injured? It is not just angels that we entertain unawares…

1 Anonymous you come among the nations,
outside the door of synagogue or church,
and what you say will shake the world’s foundations,
will make the sinner sing, the righteous lurch.

2 You come with grace, not seeking any favours,
except a cup of water for your thirst,
and those dismissing you with other ravers
will find that they are last and others first.

3 The ones who offer you a share of shelter,
or visit you when you are locked inside,
who pause a moment on life’s helter-skelter,
will be rewarded for their lack of pride.

4 The ones who care, not simply for your beauty,
who hold you in the sickness of your age,
who walk with you beyond the call of duty
are ones who share the true Messiah’s stage.

5 ‘You clothed me in my nakedness and squalor’,
said Christ to those who fully understood
that love cannot equate with pound or dollar,
is found in acts of simply doing good.

Andrew Pratt, Words © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, http://www.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: 11 10 11 10
Tune: INTERCESSOR

Amos 7: 7-17 A pertinent passage… a pertinent hymn… a Prophet and a plumb-line

1	The prophet saw a plumb line simply hanging 
	to sign God's love amid the sons of men, 
	then, with the women, everyone is singing
	that God will never turn away again.
	
2	Yet Amos blew the whistle on God's people, 
	a prophet in a time of greed and need, 
	self-righteousness as high as any steeple, 
	spoke of abandonment of law and creed.
	
3	The powers that be would have him leave the country, 
	yet Amos stood as firm as any rock, 
	the words that he had spoken, quietly, humbly,  
	had power to break the proud, to shake and shock. 
	
4	The judgment was quite plain, for God had spoken, 
	a time for present challenge and for choice; 
	and as words echo through a world still broken, 
	we hesitate to praise or to rejoice.

Andrew Pratt, Words © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, http://www.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: 11 10 11 10
Tune: INTERCESSOR




 


Used By Permission. CCL Licence No. 0000
Copied from HymnQuest: Copyright Licence Users' Edition
HymnQuest ID: 14320
CCLI#: null

Rwanda and Asylum and the Methodist Church

If you should wonder at the response of the Methodist Church to the deportation of people to Rwanda please read this letter from our President and Vice-President in April – https://www.methodist.org.uk/about-us/news/latest-news/all-news/response-to-the-government-s-plans-to-offshore-asylum-seekers-in-rwanda/?fbclid=IwAR0UM-UYjX4zHqMX9o8eZzykTS2aCyKzK6xeA_AmUFbkiH2caEkzG-X9Zjc

Hymns as an evolving genre

There are times in all our lives when we question what is happening and when our faith is challenged and shaken. What happens when we reach the point where it feels as though our faith makes no sense.  For many in contemporary society this seems to be the case. Perhaps circumstance leads them to this point. For others there is the sheer illogicality of believing in something intangible, metaphysical. What then? We cannot force belief on someone, it simply doesn’t work. Fred Pratt Green frames the theme like this:

When our confidence is shaken 
in beliefs we thought secure;
when the spirit in its sickness 
seeks but cannot find a cure: 
God is active in the tensions 
of a faith not yet mature. 
Fred Pratt Green Copyright Stainer & Bell Ltd

In this circumstance faith is incomplete. We do not have the full picture. Arguably, where God is concerned we never can have the full picture, in which case we need to be open to the fact that faith, in Sydney Carter’s words is framed by a creed which is never fixed or final.  I raise a question in the following text:

How can we live at one with God, 
inspired by Christ the living Word, 
infused with all the Spirit's power 
when life is twisted and absurd?

[…] to grasp by faith, to act in love, 
while nothing fixed or final stands.

Put another way:

When life juggles with our learning,
with the things we thought secure, 
then it seems the artist’s palette
spins and faith becomes obscure.

In the wash of different colours, 
as we seek for shape and form, 
others paint their faith by numbers 
forcing God to fit some norm.

But when life has torn the canvas, 
when the numbers twist and slip; 
then we need to find an image 
that will help our hope to grip:

holding us, when we're past holding,
grounding when we're insecure,
till we find a faith, not drifting,
still dynamic, free, yet sure. 

All the above Andrew Pratt unless otherwise stated, verses copyright Stainer & Bell Ltd.