Tag: palms

How soon Palm Sunday prayers and praise – a Palm Sunday hymn

How soon Palm Sunday prayers and praise – a Palm Sunday hymn

1	How soon Palm Sunday prayers and praise, 
	that could have held love's fusion, 
	were spun around: the same ones cried
	aloud for execution.
	
2	Such loud hosannas! Yet our praise 
	has many different faces; 
	how soon our love is turned around, 
	we lose our airs and graces.
	
3	And see how those who waved their palms 
	with shouts of exaltation
	at once had changed both minds and ways 
	to bless annihilation.
	
4	How soon commitment melts or fades, 
	and hope becomes illusion;
	and so our love transmutes to hate, 
	our order to confusion.
	
5	God help us at this present time
	to act without pretension,
	to hold on fast to gracious love, 
	to live out your intention.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
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
Metre: 8 7 8 7 
Tune: DOMINUS REGIT ME

Palm Sunday hymn – No royal robes

No royal robes, but donkey riding 

1	No royal robes, but donkey riding,
	the Christ, our King, had come to town,
	Jerusalem came out to meet him.
	Would gold or thorns compose a crown?
	
2	The people spread their palms before him, 
	they wondered what this day would bring:
	as Jesus, humble, riding quietly
	brought contrast to the praise they'd sing.
	
3	The ones who'd shared these years had answers, 
	but even they could get it wrong. 
	So many tensions, tangled, threaded 
	brought notes of discord to their song.
	
4	But soon the world would be confounded, 
	the tables turned, the structures torn,
	till only those fired by God's spirit 
	could meet this crisis, be reborn.
	
5	And if within imagination 
	we walked within that crowd today, 
	would we withstand the world's derision, 
	to stay with Christ, or turn away? 

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
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: 9 8 9 8
Tune: ST CLEMENT