Common Ground Song 67 ‘Jesus Christ is waiting’
Words / Music: John Bell & Graham Maule © WGRG / Iona Community
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CSzEviUc_o
Featured image: Street Pastors © Fulwood Free Methodist Church

This coming Sunday, our newly relaunched church choir will be singing an old Easter hymn, ‘Now the green blade rises’. It speaks of the hope out of despair that Jesus’ disciples experienced at his death and resurrection, and how that same hope can be ours when our own hearts are ‘wintry, grieving or in pain’.

That hymn is not in Common Ground. But John Bell has taken its tune, with his own harmony arrangement, for his own take on the same theme of hope out of despair. He draws on various Gospel ideas for inspiration (for instance, Christ who came to serve and not be served, the parable of the heavenly banquet to which outsiders are invited, and his various healing miracles).

Jesus is pictured in various actions, beginning with ‘waiting in the streets’.  Is ‘waiting’ an action?  In Christian theology, yes.  Waiting can be about anticipation, praying into a situation knowing that God will move when it’s the right time to do so and not before.   The waiting here, though, is linked with loneliness, and we ask him to make us ‘fit to wait on him’ – a subtle pun on two meanings of ‘waiting’ in English. Are we the sort of waiters who stand around idle and lonely, or the sort of waiters (as in a restaurant) who work tirelessly to satisfy the needs of others who are hungry?

The other actions of Jesus are much more energetic: raging, healing, dancing, calling. Raging at life’s injustices, healing in response to need, dancing in triumph when goodness wins out, and calling for more people to follow his example.  All these are seen in his life, indeed all are seen in his actions in the Temple: raging at the money-sellers, healing those excluded from the temple because of their disabilities, calling ‘on the last and greatest day of the feast’ (when surely there was dancing) for disciples to follow him, but also of course waiting on God in prayer.

What unites the words of the verses are that all these actions take place ‘in the streets’ – in the public realm, not in our private prayer rooms and chapels but where the need is and where our actions are visible.  And that in each verse our response is to say “Listen, Lord Jesus, I am … too”: we share Jesus’ concerns and seek to copy his actions.

The Street Pastors found in many city centres (or similar groups such as Street Angels) are doing just that. They wait on the street all night for anyone who might need their help, whether they are cold, drunk, have lost their keys or their boyfriend, are homeless or hungry, or just need a shoulder to cry on. In each of those people is God’s image, and the Street Pastors are there to serve them.

I think the choice of tune – ‘Noel Nouvelet’ – is just right.  Its minor key suits the theme of dealing with injustice, but at the same time it has a lively dance rhythm (it originated as a French carol tune) and goes with the image of Jesus dancing and calling in particular.  The verses should be varied in pace and volume when sung – slower and quieter for ‘waiting and healing’, faster for ‘dancing’, louder for ‘raging and calling’.

Text adapted from a previous blog post in 2021 (lost online when I transitioned to a new provider)