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)
Tag: cross
Holocaust Memorial Day – When words are spent – a new hymn
When words are spent and grief destroys compassion,
or fear of war throws shadows like a cross,
God melt our hearts and fire imagination,
that we might sense the pain within each loss.
This loss can blind our eyes and freeze our feeling,
can numb for us the pain of holocaust,
for memory fades, to leave just words revealing
a horror far beyond all human cost.
God open in our present generation,
a depth of human empathy to feel
humanity that bridges every nation,
that only love and hope and grace can seal.
Andrew Pratt 10/1/2023
Words © 2023 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: 11.10.11.10
Tune: INTERCESSOR
https://www.methodist.org.uk/our-faith/worship/singing-the-faith-plus/posts/holocaust-memorial-day-2023/
Auschwitz – Birkenau – the end of the line
At the census in the city – We welcome Christmas Day
1 At the census in the city,
at the crossing place of life,
where the homeless and abandoned
share the scars of human strife;
mid the rubble and the ruins
shedding God's prophetic light
see, a star is softly shining
through the horror of the night.
2 In the cross of shifting shadows
see a mother and her child,
see the wetness of his features,
freshly born, so not yet filed.
In a world of cold statistics
yet another mouth to feed,
for the parents' love holds tension
with a calling, crying need.
3 So from Bethlehem in history
to this present place and time,
God has entered human anguish,
sung in tune to human rhyme;
yes, the baby that we welcome,
yes, the Christ of Palestine,
are as one, we seal remembrance
in a feast of bread and wine.
[signature of love's design.]*
4 For the ruin of the manger,
this prefig'ring of the cross,
offers Christ as our relation
in our chaos and our loss,
puts the Christ into the present,
places God in human hands,
tests our loving and our living
here in this and every land.
*for use when there is no communion
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2003 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
Tunes: BETHANY (Smart); ABBOTS LEIGH
ASH WEDNESDAY/LENT – A calendar has called us to share with Christ in Lent & Tangled in prejudice
A calendar has called us A calendar has called us to share with Christ in Lent, to walk within the darkness: some drawn, yet others sent; and here we sense contrition, an ashen cross we bear: a sign for our remembrance, God’s love is everywhere. In many different places God's people bear the strain of human expectation as cruel norms constrain; for each convention sealing another person's fate, forgive, release, give freedom before it is too late. We witness acts of hatred dressed up as self-defence, where vengeance is the motive hid deep in self-pretence; great God, forgive those moments, when hate and human pride lead to the domination of those we might deride. As Christ you suffered torment, the torture and the hate, yet on the cross forgave them, the ones who sealed your fate, so as we kneel confessing complicity, we pray, great God, forgive our cruelty when selfishness holds sway. Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) Words © 2020 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: 13 13 13 13 Tune: CRUGER Tangled in prejudice, lost in presumption Tangled in prejudice, lost in presumption, locked in our judgments, so sure of our ground; others are sinful, but we are the righteous, this is the truth we are sure we have found. This is our blindness and now we must own it, owning suspicion of those we deride; painting them wrongly, unjustly with hatred, side-stepping honesty, trying to hide. For like the Pharisees' we are self-serving, gaining our wealth from the ones we oppress; sometimes we bring down the ones who would challenge, this we have done and now this we confess. In this confession we seek your forgiveness, God who has touched both the broken and frail. We were thought strong, but we plead for compassion, we, the successful, have found we can fail. Yet you astound us, 'your sins are forgiven', words that have echoed down into our time. How can we warrant such scandalous mercy? Only through grace can you offer this sign. Andrew Pratt (born 1948) Words © 2011 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: 11 10 11 10 Tune: EPIPHANY HYMN; IN THE BEGINNING GOD PLAYED WITH THE PLANETS
EASTER – GOOD FRIDAY – Caught in the raging gale of death
Click the link – EASTER TRILOGY – GOOD FRIDAY
Also see – https://www.artserve.org.uk/
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