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Rev Dr Terry Wall's sermon on the extraordinary Colin Gibson plus David Bell's video


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02 March 2023, 22:03

Auckland Anglicans celebrate Colin Gibson’s hymns

“… for your Father in heaven makes the sun to shine upon the good and the evil, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”  Matthew 5:45           (Lectionary: Matthew 5: 38-48)

Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Parnell

A sermon preached on Sunday 19th February, 2023 – Epiphany 7 by the Rev. Dr Terry Wall

One of the perennial questions we find ourselves asking is: what language shall we choose to speak of the grace of God?  What language will most effectively speak of the mysteries that we encounter deep in our lives? We tell stories in which we trace the hand of God – so narrative is an option. Some like to devise systems that capture what they see as patterns of providence – so they turn to philosophy. But by far the most effective language to represent God’s ways in the world is that of poetry.

Poetry employs language in a concise and economical way.  It reaches for language enriched by figures of speech. Poetry intensifies meaning and is often capable of holding layers of truth in a single phrase. The language of poetry refines reflection and expresses it in fresh and surprising images. Rather than explaining, poetry evokes, suggests and imagines deeper realities.

It is easy to forget that Jesus was a poet: the gospels record many instances of Jesus using poetry to convey insight and wisdom. In the passage we heard read from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew has Jesus stressing the continuity of his message with that of the law and the prophets. God’s law remains valid – and Jesus wants to draw out the heart of the law, its intention and its spirit. Matthew depicts Jesus as a Torah observant Jew. Rabbinic teaching insisted on kavvanah, right intention as essential in prayer and in actions related to the law.

Paul is in this tradition when he writes: ‘If I give away all my possessions … but do not have love, I gain nothing.’ (1 Corinthians 13:3)

In this teaching Jesus seems to be saying that the law is not a ceiling beyond which we need not go. Rather, for Jesus, the law of God is a floor upon which we stand, a minimum which invites us to be more generous. ‘If anyone strikes you on your right cheek - offer him the other.’ The poet Jesus here is employing the figure of speech synecdoche, where part stands for the whole.

If someone attacks you, remain non-violent.  ‘God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good.’ Here the poet Jesus is employing metaphor, where God’s grace is represented as the sun. ‘If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out.’ Surely here the poet Jesus is employing hyperbole – exaggeration not to be taken literally. Jesus often turns to simile: ‘The kingdom of God is like …’ The poet says things not easily said in prose.

Today I have been invited to speak about one of our most prominent Kiwi hymnwriters, Colin Gibson, who died in Dunedin in December at the age of eighty-nine. Colin joined the staff of the English Department at the University of Otago in 1947. He was an eminent academic and retired in 1999 after twenty years as professor of English. From 1958 Colin was organist and choir master at Mornington Methodist Church in Dunedin. It seems that Colin Gibson was one of those most gifted persons who wrote both hymn texts and hymn tunes – equally at home in the world of literature as in the world of music.

Early on Colin became dissatisfied with what he was invited to sing in worship. Our life in this land was missing. Our contemporary concerns related to hunger and inequality, war and the environment were absent. Women, he discerned, were not mentioned in most of the hymns that were being sung. Could our struggles to develop just relationships between the cultures of this land find a place in hymnody? How could we sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?  Whole worlds of Christian discipleship were not present in the inherited hymnbooks from Britain. Colin became determined to attempt to correct this and turned to write hymns that we could sing, with our accent, with our images, and with our experience. He also devoted considerable time to encouraging others who were beginning to share these concerns. I will try to help you hear him in his own words.

Commenting on hymnwriting, Colin observed: “I want to help people ‘say’ what they could not say otherwise.” And then he went on, “what an enormously difficult form it is, actually to write in such a tense, tight style … it’s rather like writing a sonnet with those constraints.”  (‘Colin Gibson – Hymnwriter Extraordinaire’, Music in the Air Summer 1998 p. 23) And what of inspiration? “There are times when the germ of a text – a word, a phrase, a theme – arrives like a mysterious letter left in the mailbox by an invisible postman… Just occasionally the primal idea unfolds like some wonderful flower, inevitable, logical, purposeful, as if it had a life and intention of its own, requiring only that the composer or the writer makes way for it, the servant and not the inventor.” (‘Now where did that come from?’  Colin Gibson Music in the Air, Summer 2005 p. 8)

To illustrate this, let’s listen to what Colin wrote about the origins of the hymn, ‘In this Familiar Place’. (AA72) He was on sabbatical in England and attended evening worship in a small, cold, stone chapel in the village of Freeland, a few miles from Oxford. With worship led by an incompetent lay preacher and even more incompetent organist, the tiny congregation sang, prayed and worshipped together. Walking home in the rain Colin writes, “I realised, almost in a moment of revelation, that we had been with friends (new friends), that God had been worshipped in this little place as sincerely and devoutly as anywhere I had known … that we had been loved and accepted and brought into the presence of Christ.” “The text came first.”  “The melody almost immediately after.” (Music in the Air, Summer 2005 p. 9)

The hymn that we sing this morning is ‘These hills where the hawk flies lonely.’ (FFS 63) The writer seeks to locate our discipleship, our being church, in this land, in this context. Images are piled up evoking the topography, the flora and fauna of Aotearoa. Remarking on its composition Colin writes, “I thought of the restless and often depressing world in our city streets, of our European and Maori cultural heritage and the contributions to all our lives of new waves of migrants – some of them enriching our religious landscape with their own cherished and often ancient faiths. I thought of the ‘old ways’ competing with jostling ‘new ways’ in the exciting, vibrant mix which is contemporary New Zealand.” (Music in the Air Summer 2005 p. 10)

Colin’s hymns contain memorable images of Christ, notably ‘dolphin Christ’ which reminds us of grace, and leading, and being at home in our place, but also suggests being endangered! Colin has written about the Christ who is indignant and angry in the face of exploitation and exclusion. His hymn ‘Let justice roll down like the river – let justice begin with me’ (AA 85) speaks of particular issues and specific required responses. Alongside all of this there is humour with serious intent in some of his hymns. At times he sees Christ as clown. In one hymn text he envisages Christian faith placing him in a bath, giving him a warm, complacent feeling.

            Lord, snatch the stopper from the bath in which I lie,

            Just dreaming in a golden dream of heaven bye and bye;

            There’s too much scope for pious hope in all I think and do,

            But it’s feet on the floor and out of the door if I would follow you.

The great themes of incarnation, cross and resurrection are present and explored in his writing as you would expect – but he wanted them anchored and lived here, in our place. 

Colin Gibson pondered the question, is there any evidence that singing hymns and religious songs about justice has any real effect on the world around us? In an article, he offers a tentative and hope-filled answer:

“At the very least, they may sensitise a congregation to the real social and other issues in the world around them. To choose one or more of them to be sung in the liturgy is to set a peg in the ground. They may give expression to and reinforce a congregation’s sense of values. They may open up debate and challenge fixed positions; they may persuade their singers to embrace a justice-oriented position. They may attract the attention of young people, their modernity, their relevance or their passion; they may serve to focus the singers’ minds on a topical theme developed in the preaching. They may inspire someone or a group of people to go into action beyond the walls of the church. They may encourage faith and hope by the vision of justice and the assurance of ultimate vindication set out in their lives.” (‘Songs of Justice: The New Zealand Tradition’, Music in the Air Summer 2010 p. 9)

Finally, Colin at one stage in an essay mused on what it means to be human.  Here are just some things among others that he wrote:

To be human is to be a creator, one who makes things out of nothing

To be human is to be a creature delighting in play

To be human is to be a compulsive storyteller

To be human is to be in a permanent condition of discontent

To be human is to be curious about our own personality!

(Touchstone February 2023 p. 7)

We give thanks for the legacy that Colin Gibson has left us. As poet and composer Colin wrote for an ecumenical audience that today extends around the world.  His poetic and musical gifts will serve immeasurably to renew and enrich the community of Christ.

The video was published when Colin was given an extraordinary world-wide honour from the Royal Schools of Church Music, RSCM,  a lifetime achievement award.
https://youtu.be/Zi16sl2riaY

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