Words to bridge the gap between faith and life…
Evening Collect: The Horn is Lifted
After Hammock, “Tres Dominé”
O God –
the empty horn is lifted;
the hollow shell is given voice;
the broken branch is whittled out
and sings.
Three persons,
my emptiness becomes Your fullness;
my earthen jar becomes Your vessel;
my bruised reed hums with Your song
in praise.
My soul
is empty, yet Your table flows with plenty.
The thrum in my heart resounds in Your space.
O God, to You this broken shell is lifted:
let it fill.
Expectation
After J.S. Bach, “Mass in B Minor: Et Expecto Resurrectionem”
We begin small:
a kernel dropping to soil
a weak and fickle seed
a broken passing moment
dust
expectantly,
expectant…
of what breaks forth
in trumpet-shower,
in polyphonic spring,
in vibrant alleluia
voices thrumming, harmony
bursting
from these broken chords
in joy!
What we sow now, broken,
soon we reap
in harvest plenty,
singing where
our tears once fell:
Alleluia!
Alleluia!
Alleluia! Expectantly.
Prayers of Intercession
After Felix Mendelssohn, “Veni Domine, Op.39”
Veni Domine, et noli tardare.
Come, Lord, and do not delay.
(Traditional prayer)
With empty horn
and plaintive voice:
Veni domine,
we cry.
Sunk in mire,
sunk in self:
Et noli tardare.
Our earth is cracked, our reservoirs dry:
Veni domine, we cry.
With rising anguish, rising hearts:
Et noli tardare.
Awaiting future harvest, while
the crops are languid in these days
O Veni domine,
we cry.
The horn of plenty has no sound
but groans of prayer,
from Spirit fuelled:
O Veni Domine, et Veni
Domine, et Veni Domine…
With dread and hope, in mounting cry:
Veni domine, O Veni
Domine –
Expectant,
at the clouds we sit:
O Lord –
Come; do not delay.
The Lord’s Prayer
After Otto Nicolai, “Pater noster, Op. 33”
Our Father –
the heavens are Your home,
earth Your tent, and yet
You are a Father. Teach
our fickle hearts, our yelling hearts,
to still, to stop
to look upon Your glory, high
and lifted up.
Our Father who our Father in
Our Father, You who are in heaven
hallowed be
Your name, Your will
be done in us, be done in dust.
This broken, fickle dust proclaims
Your high, exalted, heaven name.
Our Father – You who are
in heaven – lift
our broken prayers.
Hallowed be Your name, Your throne
be known on earth
today, as in
Your heavenglory home.
Assurance
After Giovanni Gabrieli, “Exultavit Cor Meum”
From depths,
from brokenness, the trumpet
sounds, the trumpet
sounds the new,
it sounds the dawn
of low made high.
Exalt, my heart!
My heart exalts.
My eyes will see,
my ears will hear
O Domino,
exalt my humbled knees
and hear
the polyphonic joy, the song
of humbled, broken
songs arising
from the fractured soil,
the soul
now sings
a trumpet call…
Kyrie
After Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, “Missa Papae Marcelli: Kyrie”
From earth, from soil, from hearts, from fractures
Kyrie Kyrie
From death, from fire, from quake, from anguish
Kyrie Kyrie
From drought that blocks, from self that locks
Kyrie eleison
From sin, from toil, from pride, from hate
Christe Christe
From plenty turned to nothing, starving
Christe Christe
From world rebelling, fair made foul – Christe eleison
Sing, creation. Sing, dead bones.
Kyrie Kyrie
Long for what has died to live
Kyrie Kyrie
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy –
Long for when He comes again –
Kyrie eleison.
Two women who knew the truth of a God who exalts the humble were Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel. Both were unlikely mothers, one a virgin, the other barren and ridiculed by her husband’s other wife, Penninah. When Mary heard the news that she was bearing the saviour of the world in her womb, she looked to the song sung by Hannah, the barren mother, a thousand years earlier, to express the topsy-turviness of God’s act of grace expressed in Jesus.
This poem is inspired by Bach’s setting of Mary’s prayer, a beautiful piece which my fiancée (also called Hannah) performed tonight at St Paul’s Cathedral. The movement that inspired it is the setting of these words: “He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away.” In his setting, Bach uses two recorders, an instrument used also in his Brandenburg Concerto No.4 to express the lifting up of the humble. I hope my simple words tonight can express something of this exalting grace.
Watch a performance of Bach’s piece
Esurientes implevit bonis
Look: humble Hannah is full;
Penninah goes away hungry.
Grace interweaves a broken fabric;
stillness sings with gentle voice
and fills the earth with noise.
O magnify: the humbled proud
listen as the faintest voice
is heard most resonant, the seed
most small at first soon yields a field
of plenty in this day.
What should we pray?
The whole Word of God directs and inspires us in what we should pray, including the prayer Jesus himself taught us.
(New City Catechism)
What then?
The whole story beckons:
Creation, fall, flood, a people
set apart yet crumbling.
Every moment shines
what-might-be against what-is,
entropy’s melancholy truth, and yet
this potentiality of grace.
The sorry state, the hope of otherwise,
drags knees down and elevates hearts
in hopeful, humbled prayer.
A willy wagtail, was it?
Perhaps, but no time to check What Bird Is That?
as it wags its way through lanes at lights,
a truck here turning, there a foot
compressing asphalt.
Yes,
I have seen its tail – proud tuft of feathers –
pluckily braving the afternoon rush,
and seen it hover, tentative,
just above Old Geelong Road,
as though not quite prepared to fly.
Sometimes it slips
beneath my sight, and then
it darts, as though to dare the traffic.
None destroy it, yet most – unaware –
continue changing lanes as they
would on any normal Friday.
Stationary, I see its tail
greet the traffic, weekend-bound;
such smallness seems almost defiant here.
Is grace defenceless as we drive?
No: cars resume, as green returns,
yet willy wags the tail, and faith
skips the traffic’s plight.
Confessional Hymn
After Gavin Bryars, “Cadman Requiem”
We were not there when stars were flung
wide, wide, across the vast expanse.
We were not there when hearts were knit,
when breath was breathed inside.
We were not there when plans were made,
when laws in hearts were broken.
Yet we were there to feel death’s sting
and feel the plan’s undoing.
We were there when sparks flew up
and fire scorned the fickle ground,
when sound was lost and wings spun out
and everything was falling.
Ours were hearts un-tuned to sounds
of life and perfect leading.
Ours were rebel schemes which blew
the hope out of the sky.
Though stars may fail and hearts implode:
still, still Creator God, uphold.
O kyrie eleison, Christ –
have mercy on us all.
The Consolations of Writing 