Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Jesus, in your life we see you’ by Basil Bridge. Each of the three verses addresses Jesus. In the first verse he is addressed as the one who in his earthly life used physical touch to bring hope and healing and his words to set captives free, but who in the end suffered rejection and death. In the second and third verses he is addressed as ‘Risen Lord’, but the risen lord who retains wounds of the cross in his body as a sign that he continues to share the sufferings of the present time, including (as listed here) greed, exploitation, addiction and heartbreak. The final verse asks him to use us in his service and offer his divine compassion to those in need; although as John pointed out in introducing the hymn, it doesn’t explicitly pray for Jesus to act and heal people.
The hymn is set in the book to the Welsh hymn tune Ebenezer, though John used a Russian tune called Stenka Razin (who apparently was the leader of a unsuccessful 17th century peasant rebellion in Russia). Personally I preferred the Welsh tune, perhaps because the minor key fits the theme of suffering.
Yes, as I said in introducing the hymn, I wish Basil Bridge hadn’t *only* asked Jesus to use us in showing his compassion, but had gone further and asked him to do what he did in the Gospels. I can’t help wondering if Basil Bridge is here a victim of the “demythologisation” programme of theologians such as Bultmann? It seems to me that Jesus offered more than just “divine compassion” to the suffering in his generation.
But as for the tune, I find the four flats of the tune “Ebenezer” hard to play whilst singing at the same time, and I was quite pushed for time when trying to sing the hymn, so I decided to opt for a tune that was simpler to play. No particular comment on the merits of a minor key were implied, and I didn’t know the Russian history to which Stephen refers.