1 He could have walked the easy road
to fortune and to fame.
He knew he could work miracles,
to heal the blind and lame.
He could have fed the starving poor
with fish as well as bread.
But Jesus knew that life held more
and chose God's word instead.
2 He could have trusted angels' wings,
up on that Temple tower.
To save him from a fall to death
was well within God's power.
The people would have marvelled then
and guessed this was God's son.
But Jesus would not take the test
to prove he was that one.
3 He could have taken full control,
the world lay at his feet.
He only had to say the word:
his rule would be complete.
The mountain view had caught his breath..
Power was a word away.
But Jesus turned back from it all
and God had won the day.
Marjorie Dobson (born 1940) based on Matthew 4 vs 1-11
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: 8 6 8 6 8 6 8 6
Tune: KINGSFOLD
Tag: Marjorie Dobson
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
A towel and a basin? – Marjorie Dobson’s hymn for Maundy Thursday
1 A towel and a basin?
This caused them great unease.
Their Master, now a servant?
The Christ upon his knees?
In washing feet made dirty
out on the city street,
he showed the power of action
where love and duty meet.
2 Yet Peter made his protest
and missed the point again,
till Jesus told him gently
that he must share his pain.
They hardly understood him,
although his words were clear
and soon his wise example
would be wiped out by fear.
3 But later they remembered
and took his words to heart:
in sacrifice and service
they gave the church its start,
and we who follow after
take up the task today,
to show, in love and service,
we also walk Christ's way.
Marjorie Dobson (born 1940)
Words © 2012 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
This hymn is available in Marjorie's most recent collection of worship items: Unravelling the Mysteries and also Hymns of Hope and Healing, both available from Stainer & Bell Ltd - click here
More of Marjorie's hymns will follow here.
What can we sing in a distorted world? – Written for ArtServe and originally published in the Methodist Recorder (March 2024)
What can we sing in a distorted world?
Language and music are taut and strained. How can we compress into a phrase a modern pieta, or a father cradling body parts?
What can we sing?
We stand in the rubble of a distorted world where dust never settles, light filters through, flickering, faulted. Shadows lengthen.
Creation is cloaked by human action, or indifference.
And, again, what can we sing?
Perhaps we should be silent?
It has been said that there can be no poetry after Auschwitz. And we turn up on Sunday morning to offer praise and thanksgiving or, expecting a still, small voice, a gentle stroll beside still waters. Have we forgotten? Perhaps. Or are we too young? Since October the seventh our slumbering memories have been re-awakened. And what do we sing? At times like these I wonder at the inability of our Christian churches to lament. Its absence in these times should shock.
I turn to two Psalms, one communal; one individual.
Psalm 137
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
The nearest we get to these words, a reprise of Boney M singing ‘By the rivers of Babylon’. Notice they never use verses 8 and 9:
Happy shall they be who pay you back
what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!
Like a hybrid car shifting gear they move to something more comfortable: May the words of my lips and the meditation of my heart…’ They want something deemed ‘acceptable’.
Think of the horror of war, images that can’t be broadcast for what they portray. What would we feel? Might we not want vengeance? This Psalm says that such emotions are legitimate, human. How can we admit this in our churches? We need to know that we are still held by God when we have witnessed acts of deepest hatred and want to hit back, to wreak havoc.
But a warning. The Psalmist grasps this yet it can never be a justification for repeating the horror, simplistically, ‘because the Bible tells us so’. An ‘eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ should be consigned to the past.
Psalm 22
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’.
This is personal, now. The cry we hear from the cross, from the lips of Jesus, words of a Psalm uttered in desperation in the throes of death: words just for Good Friday? They are strong enough for a hymn writer to pen: ‘the Father turns His face away’. And sometimes it feels like that. Yet God does not turn away, will not leave us in distress. Nevertheless, we may still feel the reality of personal desolation. If the Psalmist felt this emotion, and Jesus expressed it, then it is common to humanity and not to be condemned. It is cry of wretchedness though not a matter of doubt, rather of supreme faith. That is the foundation lament, a certainty of the presence of God with us in spite of all, even in persecution or impending death. We only complain when our expectations are not met – a train is late, food has gone mouldy, a friend lets us down. In faith we have expectations of God, God with us, always, in every circumstance or situation. Yet sometimes we feel desolate, abandoned, as though God has gone away. And then we too can lament, we can groan from the depths of our being. And at such times we utter the deepest, most sincere prayer we may ever voice, ‘God help me!’ This is no blasphemy, but a heartfelt, visceral cry of need undergirded by a subconscious sense that when all else is absent, there is a name on whom we can call.
So what music, what language, can we borrow, can we use? Perhaps Gorecki’s Third Symphony? Or a hymn like this? – ‘When loneliness oppresses me’ from Hymns of Hope and Healing/Unravelling the Mysteries sung, maybe, to KINGSFOLD?
1 When loneliness oppresses me;
when darkness fills my soul;
when grief and weeping overwhelm
and none can make me whole;
in angry fear I call to you.
When will you hear my cry?
This heavy burden on my heart
must lift, or else I die.
2 When close companions melt away,
afflictions have no end,
I cry for help to empty air,
darkness my only friend.
O God, why have you left me here?
When will my troubles cease?
If you refuse to hear my prayer,
how will I find release?
Hymn - Marjorie Dobson
© Copyright 2012 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, www.stainer.co.uk. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
January – a poem at the turning of the year by Marjorie Dobson
January
(the month is named after the Roman god, Janus, whose two faces looked in opposite directions and who was the god of doors, or openings.)
At the turning of the year
that two-faced Roman god
looks longingly back,
yet urges us forward
into the unknown.
We stand at the threshold,
knowing we must face
the unknowable,
yet lingering and clinging
to what we leave behind.
The changing pace of time
may fill us with dread
when anxieties overwhelm,
or danger threatens,
or the future has predictable limitations.
There may be hope in days ahead,
promises to be fulfilled,
vows to be made,
new life and new directions
glittering with expectation.
But the two-faced god
pays no regard to pain or pleasure,
simply stands like stone
gazing impassively
in both directions.
Thank God, the God we know,
holds past and future
in living, loving hands
and takes on flesh
to prove the truth of that involvement.
Marjorie Dobson © Stainer & Bell Ltd 2019 from Unravelling the Mysteries
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