When Christ's own body comes to table

When Christ’s own body comes to table,

When all God’s children gather there,

The grace of sacramental living

Is given freely, everywhere.

 

Now bread we break and wine we offer,

Though not our own, but Christ’s we give.

In nations found the whole world over

God’s people take this feast and live

 

In every place, at every table,

Our Lord presides at every feast.

No gates, no walls are there to hinder

All those who seek, from great to least.

 

As now we gather, we look forward

To days to come, when we shall see

Our Christ alone at one great table 

To serve God’s children, loved and free.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, September 2021, toward World Communion Sunday

MUSIC: Tune ST. CLEMENT, Clement Cottewill Scholefield, 1874.

 

 

Not much to say besides the aim for something that points somehow to why World Communion Sunday might matter.

We welcome you, O Christ

We welcome you, O Christ our Lord;

            We lift our praise in one accord.

We give you thanks in everything;

            We honor you as now we sing.

 

Yet your own word has called us out;

            The very welcome that we shout

Is called in question – doubt, indeed – 

            By how we turn from those in need.

 

The hungry stranger at our door,

            The one who scrubs our dirty floor,

The migrant, homeless; yes, our call

            Is always to receive them all.

 

While we your church have argued loud

            For power, for strength, for status proud,

You welcome these whom we’ve reviled

            As once you welcomed one small child.

 

Recall us to true welcome, Lord, 

            That all in you may be restored

To health and hope in everything,

            And we true praise to you might bring.

 

 

Text: Charles Spence Freeman, September 2021, after Mark 9:30-37.

Music: Suggested tune ROCKINGHAM, Second Supplement to Psalmody in Miniature, 1783; harm. Edward Miller, 1790.

Still fighting through the dry spell, turning to the week's scripture reading became the next step. A simple reading of the Mark passage will make clear this is no paraphrase, but a response from a world seemingly more distant from Jesus's call to welcome than ever. Those represented in the third stanza are but a small sample of those to whom our welcome must extend, if we are truly seeking to follow what Jesus teaches here.