resurrection – Page 3 – hymnsandbooks

One week on from Easter Sunday, a hymn with echoes of the story: ‘Such enchantment, sudden strangeness’

One week on from Easter Sunday, a hymn with echoes of the story: Such enchantment, sudden strangeness...

1	Such enchantment, sudden strangeness,
	Power and love, by God, distilled;
	Then they recognise his presence,
	By his words their fears are stilled.
	'Peace be with you', Simon Peter,
	John, you need not be afraid;
	'Peace be with you', doubting Thomas,
	Don't be anxious or dismayed.

2	In the garden he saw Mary,
	Talked with her, unrecognised;
	Naming her drew back the curtain,
	Opened tear-stained, blinded eyes.
	Others walking to Emmaus
	Talked, depressed, their sadness showed,
	Till at last, their journey ended,
	Broken bread their Lord disclosed.

3	Fishing, from a boat, some saw him,
	They had trawled, had felt forlorn;
	Recognition added savour
	To their breakfast at the dawn.
	As we go about our business
	Bring enchantment to our lives;
	Open eyes that we might know the
	Love from which our peace derives.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)	
Words © 2000 © 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.D
Tune: HYFRYDOL

Easter hymn – We cannot speculate, or glance

An empty tomb is just empty. It took a meeting with Jesus to convince a woman, then a group of men that Jesus, who had died on a cross, was alive. It is still difficult to believe. Yet after two thousand years, whatever we believe, as Geoffrey Best has written on Facebook, ‘…in this (hi)story is the revelation of the very nature of God, a God who takes all that we throw and absorbs and transforms the dead and deadly into life abundant .... if we let it!’ Amen!

1 We cannot speculate, or glance
into the well of history.
Nor can we look beyond this time
with any sense of certainty.
We only have our faith and hope,
to make us stand, to help us cope.

2 Great God we grasp at straws of faith,
of things we hope will point to you.
We read the ancient texts and scan
those distant myths to make them new.
And all the time we live between
these metaphors and what is seen.

3 The past is gone, we cannot hear
more than an echo down the age.
And what is still to come we fear;
we see each other's pent up rage.
Yet what we need is close at hand,
your present love in every land.

4 True resurrection brings to bear
the things that heal, create, unite.
Love launches its triumphant praise
and builds on joy and will delight.
The former things are passed away,
dead night transformed to brightest day.

Metre: 8 8 8 8 8 8 Tune: ABINGDON
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.

Art © Andrew Pratt 2022

Always missing, never grasping – hymn for the Third Sunday of Easter

Always missing, never grasping, 
hope amid this shifting sea, 
coast and haven seem remote now, 
too far off to harbour me.
Yet those fishermen are telling 
news that I can't comprehend, 
news that Jesus is still living, 
hasn't met his final end.
	
But I saw his body hanging 
silhouetted like a sail, 
blood was draining, rigor rising,
movement quietened, life gone pale. 
Now they say that sail is filling, 
spirit billows drive him on, 
Christ is cresting all disaster, 
life returns and death is gone.
	
Yet unless I see the bow wave, 
feel the tiller in my hand, 
sense the tautness of the lanyard, 
I can hardly understand.
Source of wind and wave, my sailor, 
give me faith to grasp this news, 
you are living, death defying, 
heaven, earth and joy will fuse.

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 D
Tune: LEWIS FOLK MELODY

Watercolour from *Words, Images and Imagination* © Andrew Pratt

Rev Dr Inderjit Bhogal, former President of the Methodist Conference – Easter message

From Rev Dr Inderjit Bhogal, former President of the Methodist Conference, and shared with his permission and encouragement:

“The gospel does not go from crucifixion to crucifixion. It goes from crucifixion to resurrection. Anything that goes from suffering to suffering contradicts the gospel. The Nationality and Borders Bill currently before Parliament is a case in point. It treats already suffering people with more suffering and humiliation. It treats people as deserving and undeserving refugees. The criteria to determine refugee status is not fleeing suffering but the means of travel and routes taken. Sending people seeking sanctuary to Rwanda is inhumane, cruel, morally bankrupt and theologically nonsense. It demonises harmless people, dehumanises human beings, sanctions hatred and hostility. It takes people from crucifixion to crucifixion. We need safe routes for all refugees, from anywhere in the world. Government has a duty by UN Refugee Convention to provide safe care and hospitality for all refugees. Justice, mercy and humility, not injustice, cruelty and humiliation for all the crucified people of the world. This is the challenge of redemption, resurrection, restoration.”

Easter Day

Easter

Rainbow Cross

Suffocating night 
smothering, 
obliterating
the broken bloody body 
hammered hard, 
staining scarlet 
that cross 
of rough-cut wood

and thunder crashed 
the doom of death.

Then darkness fractured, 
light splintered, 
fragments of colour 
shot out into the brilliance 
of a multi-coloured Easter morning 
in a green garden.

And an empty cross 
rainbow-wrapped, 
images the promise 
of the death-defying dawn 
of new hope.

Marjorie Dobson © 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.
From Unravelling the Mysteries, Stainer & Bell Ltd., 2019.

Quite early one morning © Andrew Pratt

A strange new day

This is the day
when perfume remained unopened,
spices were no longer needed,
cloths and sponges were unused.

This is the day
when stone was no barrier,
soldiers abandoned guard duty,
grave clothes and tomb were empty.

This is the day
when the unexpected became reality,
a man asked awkward questions,
uttered unlikely proclamations.

This is the day
when bewilderment ruled,
fear was ever-present,
obedience the only option.

This is the day
when women left hurriedly,
uncertain and warily,
to tell a strange story
to an unbelieving audience,

For they did not know it,
but this is the day
when everything changed:
death was defeated,
new life was beginning,
hope overwhelming despair.

This is the day
of resurrection.

Marjorie Dobson © 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.
From Unravelling the Mysteries, Stainer & Bell Ltd., 2019.

Come in the morning

Come in the morning.
Come see the dawning.
Come to the garden –
life has broken through.

Jesus, dead and buried.
To his grave they hurried.
Anxious women found that
life had broken through.
Chorus

Soldiers could not keep him
for they were found sleepiing
and the tomb was open –
life had broken through.
Chorus

Peter, unbelieving,
left, still full of grieving.
Nothing would convince him
life had broken through.
Chorus

Mary, greatly shaken,
thought he had been taken.
Heard his voice that told her
life had broken through.
Chorus

Where there was despairing,
grief and horror sharing,
now there is a rumour
life has broken through.
Chorus

So God’s word is spoken,
when our hearts are broken
there will come a time when
new life will break through.
Chorus

Mary Magdalene

My name is Mary,
common enough in my time
to need to be identified by place, or family.
Mine is such a name.
They call me the Magdalene.

People call me other names.
Some claim I was a prostitute,
perhaps because the town whose name I bear
is famous for that trade.

Others question my sanity
and ask why it was necessary for that exorcism
of troubling devils to be performed.
They probably call me mad.

The other followers, male, of course,
know me as ‘one of the women’,
useful for everyday tasks, but mainly disregarded.

So on that day -
when all hope had drained after his execution,
the future seemed bleak and empty
and even the tomb appeared to have been raided
and his body stolen –
it was hardly surprising that the men ignored me,
ran back to the city and left me to weep alone.

The voice was kind and questioning
and I sobbed my story, not expecting help.
But it came, in one word.
‘Mary,’
from one who spoke my name as if it mattered.

My name is Mary.
His name was and is and always will be,
Jesus.

Safe, locked inside that upper room

Safe, locked inside that upper room,
too scared to let the truth be known,
disciples had to see their Lord
before that truth could be their own.

And Thomas, still so full of doubt,
would not believe the tales they told
till Christ appeared, to show his wounds -
then his conviction made him bold.

Yet doubts and fears returned again.
Once more they locked themselves away
until the Holy Spirit came
on that inspiring, vital day.

The truth is now a living fact.
The love of God can never die.
So bold apostles stood their ground –
their living Lord is not a lie.

We have not seen, but we believe
and we must witness by our faith
to living truth we have received,
awakened by the Spirit’s breath.

Poem: When what we thought was mystery

When what we thought was mystery
is rooted in the common place,
and God is found in those who love,
and those we love by grace;
then we have grasped the Christmas story,
reached its heart, beheld its glory.

When scourge and cross are recognised
in images from round the earth.
When we admit complicity
and gauge compassions' dearth;
then we have grasped the Easter story,
reached its heart, and felt its glory.

When love and justice magnify
and even mercy has no end;
when hostages find liberty
and enemies are friends;
then we have grasped the Spirit's story,
reached its heart, expressed its glory.

Andrew Pratt © 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.