The Very-Near Word of God
“We give thanks to the Father [for you], who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”
The contemporary British artist Dinah Roe Kendall paint striking images of Gospel scenes that reimagine the stories in a modern — if stylized — setting. In her depiction of the Good Samaritan here, we see a posteriors of a business man and a cleric — both smartly attired — in hasty retreat, while the one who tends to the wounds of the man along the road — whose clothing and goods are scattered along the way — is African, and seems to be dressed as a coolie: a member of a colonized, marginalized, and otherwise invisible group. Yet here, he is fully visible: his face, glowing with gentle compassion. It is his gentleness, and the helpless suffering of the man on the road, that are in view. All else recedes into the background.
The word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
— Deuteronomy 30:14
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and, that we may receive what we ask, teach us by your Holy Spirit to ask only those things that are pleasing to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the same Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.
God of Grace and God of Glory
Here is a contemporary setting of a near contemporary hymn: the Baptist minister Harry Emerson Fosdick penned these words in 1930. In the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, Fosdick fell firmly in the latter camp, being deeply committed to social theology. This commitment is evident in the lyrics of the hymn, which point to the “ancient church’s story” as the source of “wisdom and courage” for the facing of this hour, the living of these days, etc.
The tune is Welsh, CWM RHONDDA, and more commonly associated with the hymn of the 18th C revivalist William Williams, “Guide me O, Thou Great Jehovah.” The whole setting has been appropriated and adapted by the band of Revolution Church of Kansas City, MO, in the album “Hymnmorphosis:” an attempt to retrieve some of the into accessible contemporary settings.
Peeling back these layers, we find a dialogue between the centuries: Williams’ heartfelt plea for personal divine intervention is echoed in Fosdick’s invocation for the empowerment of the Church; Fosdick’s social theology, then, is modulated into a revivalist key by Revolution’s “hymnomorphic” appropriation. Such rich dynamics are present with every retrieval — though usually and mostly concealed.
