Ralph Vaughan Williams 1872 – 1958

Ralph Vaughan had a keen ear for the music of England, collaborating with the folk-song collector, Cecil Sharp, he turned some of their collected folk-song material into tunes that we know and love today. There are too many to list but among them, they include Kingsfold, Forest Green, Monk’s Gate, and Shipton. Of his own original compositions, Down Ampney, Sine Nomine and Salve Festa dies are still widely used today. The new English Hymnal, into which these tunes found their way, was the brainchild of Rev Percy Dearmer, who wanted to rid the Anglican Church of turgid 19th-century hymn tunes and felt that Vaughan Williams, then in his early 30s, was the musician to help him. Dearmer cleverly reeled Vaughan Williams into the two-year project by assuring the composer that the project would only take two months. Initially, reluctant Vaughan Williams later admitted that his work on the English Hymnal had been ‘a better musical education than any amount of sonatas and fugues'. Crucially, it was tunes that Vaughan Williams discovered in the preparation of the English Hymnal that inspired the Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis (1910), Dives and Lazarus (1939), and passages of the opera the Pilgrims Progress (1951). The hymnal itself set new standards and brought fresh sounds to the English-speaking world. Ralph Vaughan vowed that the new hymn book would contain only ‘tunes of worth’. He was particularly dismissive of Victorian tunes with their sentimentality and ‘Germanic nature’. In the end, he was obliged to appease critics by adding an appendix of Victorian tunes well known at that time, He called it the ‘the chamber of horrors’.

None of this, it would appear has anything to do with our passage today, but, I believe there are some interesting connections. Our passage from Luke’s gospel is about a judge who will not listen to the appeals of a poor widow. Widows had no voice in the ancient world as they had no male to speak for them. They were ignored and thought too unimportant to pay attention to. All this can be said of English folk music at the time of Vaughan Williams. Folk music was the poor relative of proper continental orchestral music which was the mainstay of the British musical calendar, but Vaughan Williams wanted to discover a genuine English voice and looked at the lowliest and most humble of musical forms and found riches beyond his dreams. He listened to the poor and was rewarded with music that in his hands was transformed into the masterpieces like the ‘Lark ascending’. The same is true of small voices when taken up by God they become his material with which he shapes the world around us.

Troubled Times

The Parable of the Persistent Widow, as this short parable is often called, reflects the concerns of the small, vulnerable Christian communities in the early days of the Church.

These were times when these communities were often under attack from outraged religious groups, whether pagan or Jewish seeing their way of life and even their businesses threatened by this new upstart faith.

Just read the accounts in Luke’s second book ‘The book of Acts’ about the situation the Church faced in Jerusalem, Ephesus, Philippi, Antioch, Corinth, and Colossae. Christians were imprisoned, executed, outlawed, and ostracized from polite society.

In this situation, the leaders of the early Church needed to reassure their small communities that God had not abandoned them and that the promises of a new age dawning had not been false.

Persistent Prayer

Luke reached back into his store of parables told by Jesus and gave us two parables on faithful persistent prayer. The kind of prayer the Church would need to sustain itself through this testing time.

The parables, as they often do, depend on the contrast between two extremes. Here we have the unjust Judge compared to the Just God and the self-righteous Pharisee compared to the humble tax collector. The message the parable teaches us is that we pray not to a distant deity unconcerned for us but to a loving Father who hears our prayers. We come to Him not to demand our rights but to receive his love, waiting on Him, trusting Him for our every need.

Good Justice?

The first of these parables sketches for us two figures who I think represent the situation of the Church as Luke understands it. Here is the vulnerable small Church community struggling to survive in a hostile world. As they raise their voice in prayer they ask themselves does God hear, does God care, or is God like this Judge, unconcerned with the suffering of the poor? To them, at this moment God seems more like the unjust Judge who ignores their pleas for mercy.

Jesus wishes to compare the judge to whom this poor widow appealed to the Father God to whom we pray.

Bad Judge!

Jesus tells of a judge who, ‘Neither feared God, nor cared about men’ in other words he had no respect for the law, nor did he respond to the needs of those who came before him. Further, he took his time, delaying his judgment, maybe because he was waiting for some kind of bribe!

Faced with a judge like that why bother to ask, or as Jesus implies, faced with a God like that why bother to pray? Faced with injustice, and suffering in the world, many are tempted to ask, “Why pray?”

Prayer and Protest

The portrait we get of the Widow is very interesting. It appears that she was quite a feisty lady!

The full meaning of the parable is not apparent to us because it is hidden in the Geek original.

The Judge complains that the widow has blackened his name by raising such a fuss about the injustice done to her. The phrase translates as:

“Yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so she will not beat me down by her continual coming” Luke 18:5

In the Greek original ’Bothering me’ is translated as: “because she has given me a black eye, I will give her justice!” That could mean she has blackened his name or literally has assaulted him! This points us to an important dimension of faith – it is active. It does not merely wait on God to act but goes out to create a new world, by protest if necessary!

The Apostle Paul was certainly very active in protesting his rights as a citizen of the Roman Empire and appealed to the Emperor for Justice. The Church too eventually achieved recognition as a ‘Religio Licito’ a legal religion, permitted and recognised in law.

The Church has always been and should continue to be a Protest movement seeking justice and truth through the renewal of each one of us and of society as a whole. St Francis of Assisi protested against the corruption of the Church and preached a gospel of renewal.

Luther likewise started a movement we today call the Protestant Reformation because it has its origins in his call for the Reformation of the Church.

The Faith that sustains us.

The parable of the persistent widow gives us an insight into the faith that sustained the early Church. It was a faith sustained by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The God who we know in Jesus Christ came preaching God’s Kingdom of justice and peace, and the life he lived was consistent with the words he preached. He cared for the sick and suffering, the vulnerable in society, and he reached out to the unloved and unlovely. Finally, he suffered for us, offering himself in our place, the Just Judge who actually pays the penalty that is due to us! As the hymn so wonderfully puts it, ‘Love and justice mingle, truth and mercy meet. This was the God in whom they placed their faith. A faith that not only persisted in prayer but protested for justice.

The early Church survived the fiery trial and handed on to the next generation this living faith rooted in prayer, praise, and protest, seeking always to establish God’s Kingdom of Justice and peace on Earth.

The Father God to whom Jesus put his faith in the darkness of his own time of trial was the God who even in an unjust world hears the cry of the suffering, a God who in Jesus Christ has already responded with his ‘Yes’.

The question that Jesus asks of those who hear the parable is a question for every generation of the Church as we in our turn are asked to hand on the faith of Christ as we have received it.

“When the Son of Many comes, will He find Faith on Earth” Luke 18: 8

Could it not also be said of Vaughan Williams that he heard the voice of the poor and had the faith to turn that humble music into the praise of God?

Rev. Simon Brignall

In faith, we continue in prayer for Rory and Clare.

Prayer for Ukraine

God of peace and justice we pray for the people of Ukraine today,

and the laying down of weapons.

We pray for all those who fear for tomorrow, that your spirit of comfort would draw near to them.

We pray for those with power over war and peace, for wisdom, discernment, and compassion to guide their decisions.

Above all, we pray for all your precious children at risk and in fear, that you would hold and protect them.

We pray in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Amen

Rev Simon Brignall