A hymn about priesthood

Called to worship, called to service,

called to bring God’s presence near;

called to preaching, prayer and blessing

speaking peace to conquer fear.

Thirty years of joys and sorrows,

priestly service gathered here.

 

We have walked where Christ has called us,

borne our cross and suffered pain.

To God’s call we have been faithful,

and in loss have found our gain.

For indeed our God is faithful,

and we give our thanks again.

 

Called to tell salvation’s story,

brought in safety through the sea;

brought into the new creation,

from the weight of sin set free.

Called to speak of God’s forgiveness —

at our voice let sorrow flee.

 

Here we stand where earth and heaven

meet in praise and offering;

here we make Christ truly present,

hearts and lives the gifts we bring.

Where our hands share blood and body,

hearts and souls and voices sing.

 

In this house of prayer and teaching,

where our songs of praise arise,

Lord, receive our great thanksgiving

joy that echoes to the skies.

All for God and all with gladness,

which our service sanctifies.

(Tune: Regent Square)

The thirtieth anniversary of the ordination of women to the priesthood is being marked by services in almost every cathedral, and as part of my day job I was organising ours. We wanted to use the hymn written by Rosalind Brown for the tenth anniversary, and the one written by Ally Barrett for the twentieth; and the Advisor for Women's Ministry invited me to complete the set with a new one for the thirtieth.

I wanted to capture some of what it is to be a priest (of any gender) and respond to the readings we'd chosen: the song of Miriam, the women in Romans 16, and the sending of Mary Magdalen as apostle to the apostles. But as I planned our service and looked at what other cathedrals were doing, I was also struck by the lament expressed by many women: for those who had worked and prayed for women to be priests but died before they could see it, for those called to be ordained whose vocations were denied and denigrated, for those priests whose ministry has been shadowed by hostility and pain. So, in contrast to the earlier hymns by Brown and Barrett, I wanted to name some of this pain and draw out the ways that priesthood requires us to take pain and turn it into praise.