Long shadows fell across the floor – the first Christmas
1 Long shadows fell across the floor,
the sign of early morning light,
as Jesus gasped a human breath
and stars were fading from the night.
2 His parents waited for this dawn,
a dawn of love, of faith and grace.
But could a little baby boy
be God born in this horrid place?
3 The angels heralded such hope:
that God is very real and near,
and in the person of the Christ
love entered life and cast out fear.
4 We hear the angel song again,
today the story is re-told,
that in that squalid manger bed
our God was laid and love took hold;
5 Took hold of every willing heart,
began to build with child-like hope
a way of loving and of life
to challenge narrow human scope.
6 But then as now the season passed,
the seeming fairy tale had gone.
Sophistication countered truth.
In childlike hearts, hope lingers on.
Andrew E. Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2004 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
Tune: WAREHAM
Tag: Jesus
On a Galilean hillside – hymn inspired by Mark 6: 30-34
On a Galilean hillside – July 21st – Mark 6: 30 – 34
1 On a Galilean hillside
stood a crowd with wondering eyes,
captivated by the mystery,
framed by mountain, sea and skies.
2 Jesus stood, and with compassion,
met their gaze and understood
depth of pain, and human anguish,
evil challenging their good.
3 What he said defied their senses,
challenged values, yet affirmed
those whom life had spurned or battered,
lifted them above the herd.
4 Now we stand, impassioned, waiting
for a word to cure our ill;
but he challenges complacence,
love is ours to share or still.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2002 © 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 Trochaic
Tune: WRAYSBURY (Hymns & Psalms 141)
A Hymn for Lent 2 – All the pain and hurt and horror
Mark 8:31
8:31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
Hymn: All the pain and hurt and horror
1 All the pain and hurt and horror,
loss, denial and mistrust,
hovered round as Jesus waited
for his friends to re-adjust.
Lost within misunderstanding:
thought that love was just a dream,
knew that it would be so easy,
they're confounded by Love's scheme.
2 Jesus taught that love would conquer
only through integrity,
that the way his life was pointing
tested his humanity.
Jesus felt that Peter's challenge
undermined his purpose here,
spoke quite harshly, underlining,
made his need both plain and clear.
3 Death was now the final action,
Jesus spelt out to his friends.
To them this was not expedient,
not the way Messiah ends.
Love would be denied if actions
led to violence or defence,
Jesus, lamb led to the slaughter,
death the cost of Love's expense.
Andrew Pratt 8/2/2012 Words © 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
Tune: LUX EOI
Metre: 8.7.8.7D
We strain to hear the voice of God – hymn Epiphany 2
Hymn: We strain to hear the voice of God
We strain to hear the voice of God,
this God who knows us inside out,
a whispered voice of gentleness
that never seeks to force or shout.
Christ's voice was heard in Galilee
by those who had the ears to hear,
he challenged hypocrites with truth
while sinners, sensing love, drew near.
His crazy, crafted way of life,
gave little hint where it might lead,
and yet the people followed him,
each word of Christ met hidden need;
for he addressed with present sense
a desert way of wilderness,
or else the intellectual task
within the city's busyness.
'Come follow me', hear Jesus say,
to those who answered to his call;
and in our present time and place
may we respond and give our all. Amen.
Andrew Pratt 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: 8 8 8 8
Tune: GONFALON ROYAL
Second Sunday after Epiphany, 1 Samuel 3: 1-10 (11-20), Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18; John 1:43-51
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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