Psalm 139:13-18; Genesis 32:3-21; Revelation 14:12-20
Monday 20 July
Reading today’s passages, I am immediately reminded of two of my favourite hymns. The first is Bernadette Farrell’s (born 1957) setting of Psalm 139, O God, you search me and you know me; and the second is Julia War Howe’s (1819-1910) Battle Hymn of the Republic, Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, the second line of which is taken from Revelation 14.
Raised in West Yorkshire, although Bernadette Farrell is Roman Catholic, she has also done a power of work with Anglicans (through the Retreat Association), Methodists (through the Pratt Green Trust) and Baptists (through the Baptist Union). CH4, the fourth edition of our own Church of Scotland Hymn Book, has seven hymns by Bernadette, including the equally excellent Christ, be our light (Longing for light, we wait in darkness).
Julia Ward Howe was not just an hymnographer, but a writer, author and poet as well; whose work, among other social causes, promoted abolitionism and female suffrage. Where Bernadette Farrell has been so ecumenical, Julia’s spiritual journey actually led her away from orthodoxy as an Episcopalian to embrace Unitarianism. There can hardly be a hymn book compiled by any Christian denomination today, though, that doesn’t include this hymn of hers; and one of the reasons for this has to be the use within it of incredibly vivid Biblical imagery. ‘He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored’, which is taken not just from our New Testament reading but Jeremiah 25:30-31 as well, is just one example of this.
A peace activist (and Bernadette Farrell’s setting of Psalm 122 – see CH4 83 – has a chorus of
Shalom, shalom, the peace of God be here
Shalom, shalom, God’s justice be ever near)
Julia’s hymn was written after a meeting with Abraham Lincoln in the White House in 1861, when a friend challenged her to come up with better words for the then popular song, John Brown’s Body’. She certainly managed to do that. Her other most famous piece of writing in modern times is something she wrote in 1870, and which I think makes an effective prayer.
Let’s use it now, when in doing so you might like to reflect on how very different the impending encounter between Jacob and Esau in our Old Testament reading might be without the expressions of genuine remorse Jacob is planning. Let us pray:
Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World
Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the battle field. Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before.
Arise, then, Christian women of this day ! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears ! Say firmly : We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace,
(Julia Ward Howe)
Amen.