Jesus used a lot of parable in His teaching, especially when He was addressing the random crowds that so often gathered around Him yet seemingly found it all too easy to miss the real point of what He was saying. He was determined to get through to people. Some years ago the Revd. John Pearce, who was then Rector of Limehouse in London’s East End, spoke at a conference, where he made the point that for many inner-city people with poor educational backgrounds and limited life experience, even some of Jesus’s own parables might need retelling in a different idiom.
He illustrated his point with a particular example. Everybody knows the famous passage where Jesus portrays Himself as the Good Shepherd, who guards the sheep in His fold and leads them out into fresh pastures and keeps them safe from the depredations of the wolf. John pointed out that most of the people in his parish had never seen a shepherd and many would not even have seen a sheep. This was, of course, before the huge Docklands gentrification of his area. What was he to do?
He looked around the parish and saw something which he felt could teach people the same lesson that Jesus was doing. He observed a class of junior schoolchildren trying to cross the busy East India Dock Road. They were a disorganised rabble, far too spread out, lagging behind each other and taking no notice of the dangerous traffic all around them. They totally ignored their teacher, who was right at the back, vainly trying to round them up and get them into some kind of safe order. She was clearly the bad shepherd.
By contrast he saw another junior class crossing the same road on their way to the park. Their teacher was at the front, leading an orderly line of pairs who followed her without hesitation and all got over quickly and safely. Here was a teacher whom the children trusted and respected. The good shepherd. Is this para-parable offering us something new? Maybe.
But now for something old. We have at last emerged from limiting our singing to the straightjacket of our hymn books, whether old or new, and we now have many modern writers whose work can be readily transferred to a screen and stand easily among the old faithfuls from Ancient and Modern and the English Hymnal. Most of these oldies have been loved and cherished for generations and can be relied upon to teach sound Christian doctrine – who God is, what He has done in the past, what He did for us on the Cross and when He rose from the dead, and what He is doing for us right now. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, There is a green hill far away, Now thank we all our God, Great is Thy faithfulness and O Jesus I have promised come readily to mind as excellent examples of these well-known and spiritually uplifting crown jewels. They must never be jettisoned.
But there are one two of the old hymn books which have sadly all but disappeared from our worship - to our great spiritual impoverishment. They are the Victorian hymns that express the heights and depths of Christian emotion - joy for our salvation, sorrow for our sins and a heartfelt thirst for a closer walk with God. Most of them appear in Golden Bells or the CSSM chorus books. You may well find them gathering dust in a vestry cupboard or on a shelf in a corner, unopened and unappreciated.
In recent years emotion has had a bad press among Christians, who should apparently, so we are old, be concentrating upon the facts of their salvation rather than upon how they feel about them. This attitude hardly accords with the teachings of Jesus in the Beatitudes, let alone the spirit of the many of the Psalms or the lovely first Epistle of John. We should surely be willing to lament our sins in our singing and let our voices go rip in our wonder and joy at being saved by the Blood of Christ and given an eternal hope through His Name.
Some of the more memorable Golden Bells offerings are Simply trusting every day, O happy day that fixed my choice, Out of my bondage, sorrow and night, Standing on the promises, and Cling to the Bible. Most are accompanied by some very rousing tunes, a lot of them far more singable and congregation-friendly than some of the more tuneless modern dirges. What is being suggested here is simply that we should not consign these Victorian gems to the scrapheap, but remember that they fired worldwide missionary endeavour which took Christ to Africa, Asia and some of the remotest places in the world. The Anglican Communion is still reaping their rewards today in the powerful Gospel witness of our churches in Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and Myanmar, to name but a few.
