Look! the love that was unspoken shines with colour, power and light, love that never can be broken forging justice, putting right. Here we live in grace and wonder owning God’s diversity.
Praising shards of light that glisten with the truth that sets us free, multitudes clasp hands of friendship, all who claim humanity: nothing can divert our purpose, one in our diversity.
All our art and music woven with divinity and grace has its origin, incarnate, born within our human race, disagreement cannot break our Spirit of diversity.
So the future opens for us: galaxies beyond our glance, bound forever to each other, held by more than cosmic chance. Nothing now will fault our spirit: CELEBRATE DIVERSITY!!!
A challenge to the church to change – ‘When the church, afraid of changing’
Hymn writers sometimes ask questions of the church and then flesh out the consequences of the actions they have described. Fred Pratt Green’s - ‘When the Church of Jesus shuts its outer door’ is one such hymn (perhaps too challenging, or near to the bone, to be in Hymns & Psalms or Singing the Faith?) As we live out the time through lectionary readings from resurrection to Pentecost we have a chance to reflect on what the church is, and what it might be expected to be. Remember that Jesus death was partly a consequence of his challenging people to change their perspectives of faith.
When the church, afraid of changing, clings to glories of the past, holding fast to long lost memories, sure that it will always last, lost in time, devoid of spirit, know this truth, its fate is cast.
When the church no longer welcomes people other than it's own, when it thinks its understanding stands complete, is fully grown, love is rarely seen in action, grace is only, thinly, sown.
Jesus challenged expectation, turning tables upside down, those who once were thought as holy he confronted with a frown. When, then, will we learn the lesson, own that cross, that thorny crown?
Loving, compassionate and welcoming responses to refugees arriving in the UK across the English Channel are lighting up ways to challenge hostility with protective hospitality…..
I am grateful to Daniel Damon, a well known hymn writer, jazz musician and composer from the USA who has offered a new perspective on this text, so fitting, sadly, for our contemporary world:
hymnsandbooks 