Common Ground Song 57 ‘I come with Joy’
Words: Brian Wren © Stainer & Bell Ltd / Music traditional
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVGjrMgiH5U
Featured image: ‘Breaking bread together’ from learn.e-limu.org

Our church (St Peter’s in Bramley) jointly decided that this year, one of our priorities is to look at what ‘complete unity’ in the Church might look like. There are many places in the Bible where the essential unity of all who follow Jesus Christ is stressed, both despite and because of our many differences. For the period of Lent (but starting today on the Sunday before Lent), we are having a sermon series based on the Church of England’s ‘Pastoral Principles’ (I will be preaching two of them). These Principles are about finding a positive way to engage with other people who share a faith in Christ, but are different in some obvious way. That might be cultural or ethnic background, class, gender or sexuality, or just personal preference for styles of worship – something that sadly continues to cause argument and division in some churches.

This question of unity comes most sharply into focus in the service of Holy Communion (or Mass, or whatever you prefer to call it). As we share the broken bread or individual wafers that have been consecrated together, we recognise that there is something, or rather someone, who holds us together with bonds stronger than any attempt at division can break. Brian Wren’s hymn puts this into words very clearly. ‘As Christ breaks bread, and bids us share, each proud division ends’.

That unity is not just sentimental, it is practical. As the Mass ends with the dismissal (in the Church of England service, “Go in Peace to love and serve the Lord”), we go our different ways for the week but remembering that unity as we serve Him in our many ways. To quote Wren again, ‘Tother met, together bound, by all that God has done, We’ll go with joy to give the world the love that makes us one’.

N.B. The recording linked above is set to the same tune as used in Common Ground, which is called ‘Dove of Peace’ and described as an American folk melody in 6/8 time. But I had previously come across the song in the ‘Sing Praise’ hymnbook, where it is set to an English tune called St Botolph in 3/4 time. I prefer the latter.