God hung and died upon the cross
God hung and died upon the cross,
and there he suffered wild abuse,
the ones who held religious power
had offered an oblique excuse:
denying love their greatest crime.
We see this echoed in our time.
For when we worship week by week
while poor are trampled, made more poor;
when those in need are turned away,
or sent off to another shore;
our silence signs complicity
and signals our iniquity.
But if we walk beside the ones
that others curse, berate and blame,
share in their stark reality,
their ridicule, pernicious pain;
then know that God has walked this way,
with them we'll live another day.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) based on 1 Peter 2: 19-25
© 2015 © 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: ABINGDON
Tag: Good Friday
HYMNS – HOLY WEEK TO EASTER BY MARJORIE DOBSON
HOLY WEEK TO EASTER - All these are from UNRAVELLING THE MYSTERIES, along with poems and other readings.
HOLY WEEK – Thursday to Friday
Afraid and alone and worn out with his praying
Afraid and alone and worn out with his praying,
his friends sleeping soundly and all unaware
that out in the darkness arrest was approaching,
and Jesus was frightened and full of despair.
Accused and alone and awaiting the judgement,
surrounded by enemies out for the kill,
with none to defend him and friends who'd betrayed him;
yet Jesus stood resolute, silent and still.
Abandoned, alone and in agony dying,
the torture and pain brought a cry of despair.
For then, as the crisis of death was approaching
for Jesus, it felt as if God wasn't there.
Now dead and alone, they would bury his body,
those friends who found courage to deal with his death.
A stone sealed the tomb and with soldiers to guard it,
his enemies thought they'd seen Jesus' last breath.
Alone in a garden, a woman was weeping.
In spite of precautions, the body was gone.
But then through her tears, she could hear her name spoken
and Jesus is living. The story goes on!
Marjorie Dobson (born 1940)
Words © 2019 © 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: AFRAID AND ALONE 12 11 12 11 (Ian Sharp) or THE ROAD AND THE MILES TO DUNDEE
GOOD FRIDAY
First the cheering, then the jeering
1 First the cheering, then the jeering-
crowds can change their minds at will.
First they hail him, then condemn him;
aim to please, or aim to kill.
2 First the anger, then the whipping,
clearing out the Temple court.
First the traders, then the money-
space for prayer cannot be bought.
3 First the perfume, then the poison-
money should not go to waste.
First anointing, then annoyance-
do not judge her deed in haste.
4 First the trusting, then betrayal-
Judas seeking cash in hand.
First he loved him, then provoked him,
daring him to take a stand.
5 First the kneeling, then the serving,
showing deep humility.
First bread breaking, then wine sharing-
'Do this as you think of me.'
6 First the garden, then the praying-
sweating blood, then traitor's kiss.
First the trial, then denial-
Peter, has it come to this?
7 First the nails and then the hammer
piercing flesh and splitting bone.
First the sighing, then the dying-
Jesus on the cross, alone.
8 First the grieving, then the praying,
agonizing through your death.
First we share your desolation-
while you wait to take new breath.
Marjorie Dobson (born 1940)
© 2005 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
Tune: STUTTGART 8 7 8 7
EASTER SUNDAY
No soldiers and no body - (particularly suitable for Mark's gospel account.)
1 No soldiers and no body,
an empty linen shroud
and women with a story
they dare not tell aloud.
So, put away the spices
intended for the dead
and wait with fear, as they did,
to see some way ahead.
2 And did the story end there,
the last words torn away?
No final resolution?
What happened on that day?
What changed the gloom to glory?
What cancelled out their loss?
How could there be a victory
beyond that bloody cross?
3 Before the day had ended
the rumours ran around
that Jesus was still living,
no body could be found.
Authorities denied it,
said that the guards had fled,
but they feared most the story
'He's risen from the dead.'
Based on the break in the writing of Mark 16, where the fragment of writing has been torn away
Marjorie Dobson (born 1940)
© 2008 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: SALLEY GARDENS 7 6 7 6D
Come in the morning
Come in the morning.
Come see the dawning.
Come to the garden -
life has broken through.
1 Jesus, dead and buried.
To his grave they hurried.
Anxious women found that
life had broken through.
Chorus
2 Soldiers could not keep him
for they were found sleeping
and the tomb was open -
life had broken through.
Chorus
3 Peter, unbelieving,
left, still full of grieving.
Nothing would convince him
life had broken through.
Chorus
4 Mary, greatly shaken,
thought he had been taken.
Heard his voice that told her
life had broken through.
Chorus
5 Where there was despairing,
grief and horror sharing,
now there is a rumour
life has broken through.
Chorus
6 So God's word is spoken,
when our hearts are broken
there will come a time when
new life will break through.
Chorus
Marjorie Dobson (born 1940)
© 2008 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: 6 6 6 5 and Chorus 5 5 5 5
Tune: DANCE TO THI DADDY 6 6 6 5 and refrain
Lent & Holy Week – Looking ahead – A calendar will call us…other hymns will follow on this blog
A calendar will call 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,
reminder that the fire of love of God 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 humanity 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
Good Friday reflection
Reflection
This event is almost inconceivable for me. You see, I do not believe in a vindictive God who sacrifices his Son. I do trust, through faith, in the incarnation – God being human. Hands that flung stars into space to cruel nails surrendered. A baby in a manger, ‘the Word made flesh’. But if this is our starting point then it is God who hung on a cross on that first ‘good Friday’. I cannot cope with some vast plan of salvation that requires this carnage. What I can understand is a God of love, from whose love we can never be separated (Romans 8, 38)
So where does that leave us? For me Jesus embodies God’s love in totality. Ultimate, complete and utter love has to be totally selfless and this is what I see in Jesus. It is the sort of love that challenges all hypocrisy, injustice and indignity to which we are exposed and which we still experience. But there is a problem here. The moment we start to love those whom others do not, or cannot, love we become a threat to them. We either have to acknowledge that love and ally ourselves with it, ignore it, or oppose it. We are inherently selfish. Humanly we seek our own preservation. That is a biological imperative. So when Jesus challenged the powers, those around him by challenging their economy – the overturning of the tables of the money-changers, the emphasis on the importance of the widow’s tiny monetary gift, pausing to heal a woman, deemed unclean, who pressed on him in the crowd, when he had been called to heal the daughter of a leader of the synagogue – in all these ways it felt as if he was a threat to the culture and religion, the very economy of the people. This threat was to their very being. And how they behaved was no different from how we, in similar situations, behave. They behaved, literally, naturally.
And Jesus response was the only possible response of complete and utter, unconditional, all-inclusive love: that is forgiveness – ‘forgive them for they (literally) know not what they do’!
And the cross becomes wondrous, not as some great theological bargain, or the culmination of a cosmic plan of sacrifice, but in the revelation of the nature of total love that we are called to emulate.
And the world is shrouded in darkness, inevitably for in darkness we cannot see, if God is dead this really is the end. And this is why theologians, then and now, you and I, seek to explain away this horror. Yet Jurgen Moltmann, some years ago in a book which still deserves to be read, The Crucified God, sees the cross to be the test of all that deserves to be called Christian, rather than the resurrection, for here we see God’s utter love and willingness to be vulnerable, as we are vulnerable, even unto death in order to be one with us. And the scandal and uniqueness is that gods are not meant to die, wondrous God, wondrous love indeed!
In simple, suffering love – Easter Vigil
In simple, suffering love
a man looks down, on all the world
as empathetic tears drench cheeks that child-like,
once had filled with laughter.
The shadows lengthen,
heighten the beam’s intersection,
as muscles, taut with strain crack, as a whip,
and feel the course of pain.
Finished? Is it finished?
But still the thunder grumbles
and lightning slashes dark and cloud.
A drift of rain disperses yet a diminishing crowd.
© Andrew Pratt 2024
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