GREAT GOD, YOUR LOVE HAS CALLED US HERE

No one present at a Maundy Thursday service with foot washing and the commemoration of the institution of the Lord’s Supper or the making of deacons at which Brian Wren’s hymn Great God, Your Love Has Called Us Here has been sung will need convincing that the hymn holds a claim to be one of the finest contemporary compositions. It was used as the offertory hymn at my ordination as a deacon, where its call to service seemed to fit beautifully. Originally written under the title Lord God, Your Love Has Called Us Here, the text was soon revised and published in various hymnals, including New Church Praise (1975), Mainly Hymns (1980), and Faith Looking Forward (1983)  —  with the latter being Wren’s first American publication of the hymn. It remains, largely unchanged, in many contemporary hymnals authorised for use today.

Running through Wren’s hymn is a relentless honesty — an uncomfortable reckoning with who we truly are, both as individual persons and as persons-in-community, in the presence of God. It is this piercing clarity, woven through every line, that marks it as one of the finest contemporary hymns; its greatness lies not only in its poetic craft or theological depth but in the way it invites us to confront our fragmented humanity while throwing ourselves on the mercy of God’s grace.

The hymn, written in 1973 and dedicated to Erik Routley, the pre-eminent hymnologist, Wren’s initial mentor in hymn-writing, and composer of his preferred tune for this hymn, reflects Wren’s mastery in reimagining the tradition of hymnody for contemporary contexts while remaining faithful to its roots. Echoes of Charles Wesley’s And Can It Be? can be observed throughout, but Wren’s text ventures beyond the limits of the personal salvation imagined in Wesley’s classic to include the broader, tangled web of social sin. Wesley’s “chains” of individual bondage to sin — “imprisoned spirit lay / Fast bound in sin and nature’s night”  —  are expanded by Wren as “inner chains of broken trust and chosen wrong,” “social forces swept along,” and “powers and systems close confined.” This shift broadens the scope of confession to include the systemic and structural dimensions of human fallenness; it draws us into a deeper contemplation of the world’s sins and ills and our complicity within them.

This expansion of theme is one of the hymn’s great strengths. It refuses to offer a shallow or sentimental view of human nature; instead, it confronts the reality of sin with an unflinching gaze, holding together the personal and the communal, the internal and the external, in a complex and layered way. The hymn tells the truth — not a simple, comfortable version of the truth, but the truth as it is, messy and challenging. As Oscar Wilde famously observed, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” His seemingly simple statement, with characteristic irony, communicates something profoundly true. 

Behind the hymn lies such honesty, and it intensifies the encounter with grace. By illuminating the shadows we would rather ignore, it reveals the startling depth of God’s love for us. In the third verse, the hymn shifts from this hard-edged self-awareness to the tender, almost shocking intimacy of God’s love: “We strain to glimpse your mercy seat, and find you kneeling at our feet.” Drawing on material in John 13-17 known as the Johannine Farewell Discourses, Wren draws together the themes of God’s love and servanthood. Here, the transcendent is brought near; the almighty God stoops to wash the feet of “half-free, half-bound” creatures. This juxtaposition — the God who is both transcendent and immanent, greater than great and closer than your jugular vein — is captured with an economy of words and striking immediacy, challenging us to reflect on the implications for our own behavior and faith.

The hymn also invokes something of an eschatological vision. However, it does so with a profound sense of the “not yet” of God’s kingdom: the themes of exile and return, of yearning for a homecoming that is both anticipated and incomplete. The love of God calls us here, but it calls us to a table where the bread is broken and the wine is poured out — symbols of a grace that meets us in our present state and calls our attention to taking action in our current living contexts while holding on to the inconceivable plenitude of divine salvific intent:

Suffer and serve till all are fed, 

and show how grandly love intends

to work till all creation sings,

to fill all worlds, to crown all things.

Musically, Wren’s preference for Erik Routley’s tune Abingdon further enriches the hymn’s texture. By choosing a melody less familiar than the now-conventional Sagina, Wren defamiliarizes the themes of Wesley’s hymn, encouraging us to hear, feel, and live them afresh. The music reinforces the tension within the text; solemnity is balanced by a sense of forward movement, echoing the interplay of confession and hope that runs throughout the hymn.

Perhaps the hymn’s most remarkable quality is its ability to hold competing truths in creative and realistic tension. It neither sugarcoats nor despairs; instead, it presents a realistic but hopeful portrait of human life in the presence of God. The act of gathering before God is depicted as one of vulnerability, but it is the vulnerability of love. We bring not only our worship but our hidden shame, our divided hearts, our complicity in various sins and ills. And yet, this exposure does not end in condemnation but in grace. The hymn holds out the promise of transformation — a transformation grounded not in our own merit but in the overwhelming love of God, who meets us in our brokenness and calls us to new life:

Great God, in Christ you call our name

and then receive us as your own,

not through some merit, right or claim,

but by your gracious love alone.

This tension between vulnerability and grace is one of the hymn’s most striking features. It captures the paradox of the love of God: that it is both utterly free and profoundly costly. The love of God, as Wren depicts it, is not a passive benevolence but an active, pursuing goodwill that reaches into the depths of our despair. This is love that bears the weight of the world’s sin, love that kneels to serve, even to the point of enduring the cross. By placing this love at the forefront, the end, and the heart of the hymn, Wren invites us to consider the radical implications of being loved by such a God: How might the love of God in Christ transform our relationships and our engagement with the networks we inhabit in the world?

The hymn’s theological depth is matched by its pastoral sensitivity. The realities of human suffering and the complexities of faith are made plain. Great God, Your Love Has Called Us Here offers an evocation of hope that does not gloss over our pain or injustice. The hymn’s realism does not lead to despair but to a deeper trust in God’s redemptive purposes; for “love is making all things new.”

At the same time, the hymn challenges us to move beyond a passive reception of grace. The love of God, as Wren portrays it, is not merely something to be received but something that compels a response. It calls us to embody that love in our own lives, to participate in God’s work of healing and justice. This is a love that demands something of us — a love that sends us out into the world to serve and to reconcile, even as we remain dependent on God’s grace:

Great God, in Christ you set us free

your life to live, your joy to share.

Give us your Spirit’s liberty

to turn from guilt and dull despair

and offer all that faith can do

while love is making all things new

The eschatological dimension of the hymn reminds us that this work is not yet complete. The kingdom of God has been inaugurated but not fully realized. We live in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet,” between the promise and fulfilment of love making all things new. This tension is reflected in the hymn’s imagery of the table — a place of communion, of broken bread and poured-out wine, where we glimpse the coming kingdom even as we long for its consummation. The table is both a site of grace and a call to action; it is a foretaste of the feast to come and a reminder of the world’s deep hunger for justice and peace.

The enduring power of Wren’s hymn lies in its ability to speak to the heart of what it means to be human in the presence of God. It acknowledges our frailty and our failures, our hopes and our fears, and it places all of this in the context of God’s unwavering love. This is a hymn for the weary and the hopeful, for those who long for justice and those who need mercy, for a church called to be both penitent and prophetic. It is, in every sense, a hymn for our time and for all time.