Category: worship

Good Friday hymn – Tortured, beaten…

So often our Good Friday hymns soften diminish the horror - ‘glorious scars’, ‘wondrous cross’. I wrote these words as a reaction…

Tortured, beaten, scarred and tainted,
Not a picture deftly painted,
More a tattered, battered being,
Torn, disfigured, stark, unseeing.

Muscles twisted, strained, contorted,
Body dangling, bruised, distorted.
Life blood drying, sun-baked, stinging,
Hatred, bitter hatred, flinging.

Crowds insensate, tempers vented,
Full of anger, discontented.
Curses scattered, insults flying,
Spurned, derided, God is dying.


Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)	
Words © 1997 © 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.

8 8 8 8 Trochaic
CLONMACHNOISE



A hymn for Holy Week – Rising gloom surrounds the story

Rising gloom surrounds the story,
Jesus moves towards the cross,
here Jerusalem is waiting,
favour swings from gain to loss.

Crowds had swarmed in adulation,
many came infused with hope.
Every person sought an outcome,
nothing seemed beyond his scope.

Zealots called for liberation, 
sinners waited on his word,
children ran with palms to meet him,
felt affirmed by what they heard.

Other people simply bustled,
thought their lives beyond reproach,
when the Lord came riding humbly,
hardly noticed his approach.

In the temple, tables turning,
those in power were disabused
as he showed the way to worship
for the poor, despised, abused.

Choices faced him in the garden,
prayer was dry, betrayal lurked;
while his closest friends were sleeping,
human evil waited, worked.

What is left? some trumped-up charges?
Self-conceit? Religious hate?
Here the Christ still stands before us -
time for judgement ... crosses wait.

Andrew E. Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2006 © 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.
8 7 8 7 
ADORATION (Hunt)

Palm Sunday Hymn – As Jesus came riding

As Jesus came riding along on a donkey, 
the pavement was holy, he hallowed the ground.
The stones will cry out if the people are silent, 
a day filled with joy and with praising is found.
	
Then those who had followed and those who came after
sang loudly while waving their palms in the air;
these palms they laid down on the ground like a carpet, 
some joined celebration, while some stood to stare.
	
Then loud the hosannas that rang round about him, 
this man of humility, heading for death;
and would we sing with them, hosannas and praising,
or cry for the cross that would take his last breath.
	
And now in this moment the trial and the testing
for you and for me, and for each and for all, 
is sharing God's sacrifice, selflessly loving, 
to stand beside Jesus, respond to his call.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 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.
12 11 12 11
STREET OF LAREDO

Vision – based on Ezekiel 37: 1-14

Vision – based on Ezekiel 37: 1-14

And I looked as I led worship 
and saw the dried and brittle bones 
of the scattered few before me 
and there was no life.
Too old, 
too desiccated, 
too worn out, 
or lived out 
ever to be able to stir again.

And I wept as I looked 
and prayed for answers, 
but my heart told me 
it was too late; 
the life had gone. 
There was acceptance 
of an unchanging future; 
the stillness of lethargy 
and emptiness of spirit.

And I looked again 
and saw my prayers 
were not to empty air 
for a breath of God 
moved among the weary; 
new energy began to stir; 
movement was discernible 
and purpose was born again.

And God had shown me, 
in spite of all my doubts, 
that hope is never completely dead 
and there can be new life, 
even in old bones.

© Marjorie Dobson published on Worship Cloud

Used with permission.

This is our mother – Mothering Sunday hymn

This is our mother, the source of all being,
sharpening starlight, then raising the dawn,
singing forth sunshine, then playing with laughter,
scattering teardrops, in passion newborn.

Mother of oceans, so careful with splendour,
ground of creation and centre of life,
love in abundance, all caring, all seeing,
counter to conflict, now staying our strife.

This is our mother, the God of our parents,
source of the hope that has brought them to be,
present to hold us, then leading us onward,
loving, renewing, and setting us free.

Andrew Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2006 © 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..
11 10 11 10
Tunes: WAS LEBET WAS SCHWEBET; EPIPHANY HYMN