1. Bread is broken
as your people are gathered:
you were broken
that we may be made one.
Let your dying
be the ground of our living;
Lord of our broken lives, come, make us whole.
2. Wine is poured out
as your people are mingled,
your life-blood shed,
sacrifice for our lives.
Let your draining
be our cup of salvation
Lord of our thirsting lives, the living Vine.
3. Jesus, Lamb of God,
bearer of all the world's sin,
show your mercy,
show your mercy on us.
Jesus, Lamb of God,
bearer of all the world's sin,
Saviour and our redeemer, give us peace.
4. Agnus Dei qui
tollis peccata mundi,
miserere,
miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei qui
tollis peccata mundi,
dona nobis pacem, pacem.
Words: Copyright © David Lee, June 1997
Tune: Summertime: George Gershwin
For: Revd. Stephanie Watson.
The words are written specifically for the tune Summertime by George Gershwin, as a simple solo, with no accompaniment. The idea sprang from a Celtic poem in The Open Gate (p72) by David Adam of Lindisfarne (published by SPCK/Triangle in the UK).
The use of a Gershwin tune in church worship, especially in the Eucharist, needs to be handled sensitively with congregations. Its appropriateness (or not) will vary with their backgrounds and preconceptions. Nevertheless there is precedent: this very tune has been used by the late Canon Michael Perry (Jubilate Hymns) for his setting of Psalm 137 Babylon, by the rivers of sorrow.
The full text is probably too long for liturgical use. So it is perfectly acceptable, desirable even, to use just one or two parts of its three distinct subsections:
Contrasting Christ's brokenness against our wholeness:
Unless a grain of wheat ...
John 12:24.
In worship, we gather to become
a healed, united community of different parts: the body of Christ.
Line 6: "be the ground ...". The double-meaning of ground ("foundation" and wheat being ground down into flour to create bread) is deliberate.
Similarly, contrasting Christ's being emptied,
drained and abandoned against our fulness.
Our cup runs over, in contrast to his.
This deliberately resonates with Ezekiel chapter 23
and its foreshadowing of the Gethsemane agony "let this cup pass from me"
.
Line 7: Various gospel allusions:
never thirst again
, I am the Vine
.
"bearer of all the world's sin": Not an ideal singing line for this tune. Other options: "bearing all of the world's sin", "bearer of the world's evil" or "bearing all the world's evil".
Line 7: Allow "dona" to span the first three notes of the tune.