Holy Innocents’ Sunday – 28th December – A hymn of lament recollecting Herod’s intention to kill all the young children to rid himself of his perception that Jesus, ‘King of the Jews’ was a threat to his rule.
1 The Prince of Peace has come to earth,
we celebrate Messiah’s birth,
and yet the news is hung with fears,
and all the world is wrung with tears.
How long, O Lord, must children cry?
How long, O Lord, must children die?
2 In Ramah voices once had wept,
in quiet children died, not slept,
and Rachel wandered comfortless
consumed by death and deep distress.
How long, O Lord, must children cry?
How long, O Lord, must children die?
3 And in a later time a place,
a squalid stable formed the space
in which a little boy was born
that all the powers of earth would scorn.
How long, O Lord, must children cry?
How long, O Lord, must children die?
4 The Prince of Peace has come to earth,
we celebrate Messiah’s birth,
and yet we slaughter once again,
will death and carnage still remain.
How long, O Lord, must children cry?
How long, O Lord, must children die?
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2014 © 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 8 8 8 8 8
Tune: MOZART
Tag: children
Good God what are we doing? – a hymn in a time of war and remembrance of Hiroshima
Good God what are we doing? – a hymn in a time of war and remembrance of Hiroshima
Good God what are we doing
upon this harrowed earth,
with children starved, or banished,
a hell has to come to birth?
And even now the mid-wives
see nurtured babies die,
while politicians hunker
and hide behind a lie.
If God is good the image
that we uphold and bear
is marred beyond cognition,
humanity lacks care.
A spark of holy presence
becomes a fading shard
while hopeful grace is damaged,
love’s clarity is barred.
Good God forgive indifference
that lets our children die,
raise up again a spirit
of grace beyond a sigh,
until we cradle babies
and nurture them with love,
until war’s hawks are banished,
peace settling like dove.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2026 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: 7.6.7.6 D
Tune: PASSION CHORALE
Extravagant horror – a world at war with itself
Extravagant horror, beyond our conceiving,
the rain of this terror confounds our believing,
the thunder, war’s lightning, once deaf’ning, then blinding,
has sculpt human madness, to hell we are sliding.
Humanity harbours such hidden aggression,
the need to reap vengeance to counter oppression,
the screams of the innocent, tears of depression,
white noise of the agony, warfare’s obsession.
And now hope is lost, there is no compensation,
no sense of relief for each people, each nation,
some milit’ry folk will admire each citation
while leaving the children in wild conflagration.
© Andrew Pratt 30/9/2024
How long O Lord?
1 How long, O Lord, how long
must carnage blight our age?
How long before all humankind
let love disarm their rage?
2 The streets still run with blood
as dust distils the light;
while buildings clouded by the pall
of smoke are hid from sight.
3 Our children huddle, dead,
the world seems blind to wrong;
when will your people heed your word?
How long, O Lord, how long?
Andrew E. Pratt (born 1948)
© 2006 Stainer and 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: SM
Tune: TRENTHAM
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)
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