Hark, the glad sound - the Saviour comes!

This goes to a fine, but difficult and obscure tune - I wanted to use the tune because I like it, but perhaps underestimated its difficulty for a congregation! Might work for baptism or for the Easter Vigil, or maybe to accompany sprinkling of a congregation - written in celebration of the dedication of a new font bowl. In the stillness before God spoke words of creation over water the Spirit was brooding in love; and the water thus hallowed is hope of salvation to a world where dry hearts wait for rain from above. As God brought them from Egypt, the people of Israel went safe through the sea where their captors were drowned. Through the river they came to the land that was promised and they drank from the rock in the desert’s dry ground. In the Jordan all righteousness found its fulfilment and Jesus was known as the Father’s dear Son; in the promise thus given is life for all people washed, watered and welcomed, with Jesus made one. Praise God who gives water to feed and sustain us, p...

I love, love, love the Advent O antiphons. But the traditional chants are not suitable for congregational use and the texts are quite long for unison speech, especially if you're saying them either side of a spoken Magnificat.  Solution: write a metrical version (yes, I know O come O come Emmanuel exists, but it doesn't have all the antiphons and it's a metrical translation of the Latin texts. This is a metrical version of the Common Worship texts.) Suitable, I hope, to sing one verse either side of a spoken Magnificat at Evening Prayer in a parish church or similar. Tune: Come thou redeemer of the earth (or any LM tune you know) O holy Wisdom from the height Whom God first spoke, who rules in might O sweetly order every land O teach us prudence at thy hand. O Adonai, the Holy Name, Revealed to Moses in the flame O Law-giver, O Israel's Balm, O save us, Lord, stretch out thine arm. O Root of Jesse, standing proud, A sign to make kings weep aloud To whom the nations humb...

(sermon preached at Christ Church, Advent 4, 22nd December 2019) On this fourth Sunday of Advent, our liturgy directs us to Mary and the part that she plays in the great cosmic drama of God with us, the salvation of the world. The prayers we have prayed as we have lit each candle on the Advent wreath have moved us at a gallop through the story of salvation history – the first candle is the patriarchs and matriarchs, the second the prophets, the third John the Baptist, and the fourth, today, Mary. The prayer Canon Foot prayed as Hamish lit today’s candle reminds us that the light we have been waiting for throughout Advent dawns in Jesus, the child of Mary. And yet our Gospel reading wasn’t about Mary at all. Those of you who were at Matins heard St Luke’s familiar story: in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a virgin whose name was Mary… But in our reading, instead, the angel goes to see someone else. The angel goes to see Joseph. Unlike Luke, St Matthew t...