By Jane M. Gardner
presiding evangelist
New Zealand consistently ranks among the top ten most peaceful countries in the world. It may not be surprising that an author and a composer from that country have made a lasting impact on Community of Christ through hymns dealing with peace and justice.
Shirley Erena Murray is the most represented hymnwriter in Community of Christ Sings, and Colin Gibson has composed tunes for many of her texts. Theirs was a lifelong friendship and collaboration.
Murray grew up in the Methodist tradition but became a Presbyterian when she married the Rev. John Stewart Murray, a moderator of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand. She is a fourth-generation Kiwi of Scottish heritage, born in Invercargill, New Zealand. She says that she began writing hymn texts to help her husband, who expressed frustration in trying to find hymns relevant to the messages he wanted to preach.
New Zealand consistently ranks among the top ten most peaceful countries in the world. It may not be surprising that an author and a composer from that country have made a lasting impact on Community of Christ through hymns dealing with peace and justice.
Even with this strong Protestant background, Murray is considered at the forefront of the ecumenical movement within hymnody.
Later in life, Shirley and John were interviewed about the place that hymnody had in their long lives. Their kindred spiritedness, mutual respect, and love for each other bubbled up near the end of the interview when John remarked, “We have to learn how music lifts our hearts and points the way.” Looking to Shirley, he said, “As a preacher, of course, I’m saying you’re more important than I am.”
To which Shirley replied with an impish grin, looking directly into the camera: “Oh yes, hymns have always been far more important than sermons!” (interviewed by Ron Klusmeier for Broadview.org).
Murray’s songs in Community of Christ Sings include: “For Everyone Born,” “Come and Find the Quiet Center,” “As the Wind Song through the Trees,” “Touch the Earth Lightly,” and “No Obvious Angels,” just to name a few.
Shirley considered many hymns to be sentimental, obscure, or obsolete. Her task as she saw it was to write about everyday experiences, locally, nationally, and globally. Along these lines she wrote:
I appreciate and relate to precise and clean language as opposed to flower and fudgy. I am, in knitting parlance, a plain rather than purl sort of writer. I like language with crunch and bite that gives a jolt of reality.
Her hymns are full of jarring words, not often found in hymn texts, such as “gun,” “bomb,” “leftover,” “poverty,” “soup-kitchen people,” and “prison.”
Shirley’s middle name, Erene, is the Maori form of Helena, derived from the Greek word for peace (eirene). It was from this beginning that she lived into her passion for justice. Perhaps her involvement in Amnesty International and the eight years she served in the Labor Party Research Unit of Parliament gave her deeper experience with human-rights issues. She has written many texts that connect Jesus, the human being, with all kinds of marginalized people.
A wonderful illustration can be found in “Leftover People in Leftover Places,” CCS 275. In many publications this hymn is subtitled: “The Least of These.” There is a close scriptural link to the text in Matthew 25:34–40, where the king lists leftover people as the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned. It goes on to say that when we minister with those living with these types of challenges, we are ministering to him. Murray’s hymn says that we take part with the leftover people in God’s upside-down kingdom.
This hymn represents a persistent voice for all those on the edge of the church and society.
This hymn represents a persistent voice for all those on the edge of the church and society. It was sung at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York, New York, USA, during a morning worship that included voices from around the world.
We are blessed to have Shirley Erena Murray’s articulation of justice for the poor, peacemaking, equal treatment for women, care and respect for children in all places, urban problems, Earth stewardship, respect for the disabled, and the plight of refugees to help us navigate God’s “upside down kingdom” with fresh, relevant, and theologically profound words.
She points the way to bring our worship into the streets of reality.