Thoughts – Page 5 – hymnsandbooks

A REFLECTION AS ADVENT BEGINS

Some churches, on the Sunday before Advent, celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. It offers a high spot before we descend into the darkness as we prepare for the coming of the Light of the World at Christmas. The more I think about this, the more strange it seems.

Once the Kingship of Christ made sense. I loved to sing ‘Majesty, worship His majesty’. Now it seems a bit out of kilter with what we read about Jesus. Let me reflect for a moment.

We read that 2000 or so years ago bureaucracy uprooted people. Foreign troops occupied a country. Native politicians and religious leaders juggled their own privileges and prejudices with advancement and preferment. And common people became pawns to be taxed, manipulated according their economic value to the ruling class. People counted, and needed to be counted.

Times don’t change it seems.

If we take the story literally Mary and Joseph were subjects of a census.

Set aside for a moment the Magi and shepherds, the angels and the star. ‘Long way from your home’, a baby was born. Within a short time, days? More likely a year or two, that baby was threatened as babies have been, and have been killed, in our own time, in our so called civilised world. Politics demand that difficult decisions have to be made.

Difficult decisions: so often a euphemism for oppression, diminution or judicial killing.

Majesty? A child threatened with death in the arms of his parents seeking asylum in another country. Not Majesty as we would recognise it, not a life-style choice.

If we believe that this child was God born among us, this is no majestic king, victorious, but a vulnerable baby trusted to parents fleeing persecution and death. And it challenges me to see Christ this Christmas, not in the palaces of the powerful but, more likely in the vulnerable and persecuted.

Remember that this baby grew up to be a man. Entrusted to those young vulnerable parents he was later to say ‘the son of man has nowhere to lay his head’. He understood poverty and homelessness. Then when he says, ‘whatever you did for the least of these, you do it for me’, he knew what it was like to be least in society. No wonder, in the title of an Anglican report some years ago he had a ‘Bias to the Poor’; not to ‘Lord’ it over one another.

Our God trusted human parents to care for him, and lived out an example for humanity to follow his example of trust, reliance and care in relationship to each other. ‘Love one another’.

So as we move toward Christmas let us hold onto something of the reality of the Biblical story, a story that is is awe-inspiring. This is much more than a time for children dressing up and playing games. More a wake-up call for us all, to realise that whenever we visit the prisoner, welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, provide water for the thirsty we again meet Christ, see God in those we greet… It is a wake-up call, a reminder that we find God-head, not in the powerful or majestic, not in the robes and honours of politics or religion, not in places of domination or repression, but in vulnerability and love. Truly within us and among us.

May God in Christ bless us all.

Andrew Pratt (originally written for the Mid-Cheshire Circuit of the Methodist Church 27/11/2023)

Why earthquakes? – a reflective poem

If God created all that is,

then earthquake, wind and fire

are just as much laid at God’s door,

the stakes could not be higher.

I questioned once, and just like Job,

the answer was unclear.

It seems existence on this globe

is allied to our fear.

Without a moving, fragile crust,

this earth could not bear life;

no mountains, canyons, rivers seas,

we’re balanced on a knife.

These earthquakes challenge love and hope,

can undermine our grace,

yet this our existential need:

to build love in this place.

Reflection on reading the Bible

All of us are valued by God…a hymn…This goal of equality

All of us are valued by God – Matthew records these words of Jesus:
 
10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.
30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted.
31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

And a hymn…

This goal of equality laid out before us,
where each one is valued and no-one denied,
is given, through loving, to those who will listen,
yet, while we should welcome, we often deride.

We look at our neighbours and judge by appearance:
the colour of skin or the cadence of voice,
the cut of a jacket or youthful confusion,
while prejudice beckons our ultimate choice.

Yet love would compel to see Christ clothe our neighbour,
the ragged and ugly gain elegant grace;
enabling discernment, refined understanding:
the future is present and all have a place.

Andrew Pratt Words © 2001 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; 12 11 12 11
Tune: ST CATHERINE’S COURT

Transcendent tunes…The music of the spheres?

I was sitting in a fellowship group some years ago. We took turns at leading it. On one occasion a member of the group chose some music. I’d not heard it before – Saint Saens 3^rd Symphony, the Organ Symphony. I closed my eyes and found myself transported by the music to, what I can only describe as, a spiritual plane. In my mind I was somewhere other than the simple room in which we were sitting. And for me, this was worship.

At the centre of worship is the expectation of meeting with God, that which is other than ourselves. It is incomprehensible that such a meeting should leave us untouched. Years later I used this same music with images of nebulae from the Hubble Telescope to imagine and reflect on creation. My intention was to engender something transcendent and, for me, that is the essence of worship. Every act of worship should be predicated on that possibility, the expectation, of just such an encounter.

But what music should I choose? Just what music is sacred?

On another occasion, in another place, I wanted to introduce the topic of spirituality in music. As the group were assembling I played a piece by Giacinto FrancescoMaria Scelsi. He was Italian and best known for composing music based around only one pitch as in his Quattro pezzi su una nota sola (‘Four Pieces on a single note’, 1959, you can find it on YouTube). To me it seemed discordant. A person walked in and simply exclaimed, ’what beautiful music’! Not all music has the effect that you expect!

I was asked on one occasion which Rolling Stones’ track could be used for someone’s father’s funeral. My response, partly facetiously, was ‘anything but Sympathy for the Devil’. They had asked because the music of the Stones linked them immutably with ‘Dad’. For them, for this moment, it was right, appropriate, religious to my mind. But we are conservative and held captive to tradition.

A few weeks ago the person leading worship in our local Methodist Church chose to use: Richard Bewes, hymn based on Psalm 46[1] ‘God is our strength and refuge’. This is set to THE DAMBUSTERS’ MARCH. For many the tune will make us think of Lancaster Bombers breaking dams with bouncing bombs in the Ruhr in the Second World War. For some that precludes the use of this tune.

But should it? Just what music is sacred? Albert Blackwell in The Sacred in Music[2]suggests that no music is inherently religious, or secular. Our feelings in relation to music come, not from the music itself, but from the things which we associate with it, images linked to it, the occasion when we heard it, the words sung to it. So the music of a hymn, as much as the words, can produce feelings which are positive or negative.

It appears that, for the most part, the editors of the Methodist Hymn Book (1933) were conservative rather than innovative. Following the Great War there was a great need to regain the equilibrium that had been lost. There is comfort to be found in those things that are familiar and safe. Edwardian and Victorian music predominated, rather than the contemporary music of the 1930s. While that is understandable it is also a block to progress in the field of hymnody, textually and musically. Anyone who has tried to use Erik Routely’s ABINGDON to ‘And can it be’, for which it was written, rather than SAGINA, which is too triumphant for the meditative open lines, will have felt that resistance.

Past experience and present context will enable one person to gain a sense of the ‘other’ from music that will leave a different person cold. What works for one may be intensely unhelpful for another. Different learning styles, traditions and expectations frame our ability to participate, or prevent such participation. How often do we take this into account when we lead, or curate worship, when we choose music? Perhaps we should think on that when we select our hymns, or the music, recorded or otherwise, used in worship. And even silent prayer is, perhaps sometimes better left silent, than accompanied by music which may bring to mind unhelpful associations, or which may jar; veiling that religious atmosphere which it is our task to engender.

Is it sometimes right that we simply hear God’s still, small voice?

Rev Dr Andrew Pratt – originally published in the Methodist Recorder for ArtServe

[2] Blackwell, A., The Sacred in Music (1999) Lutterworth Press.