Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
First off, I wanted to say that the season for our church choirs to begin is drawing near. Next week I will have detailed dates about when each ensemble begins, but until then, I would love anyone and everyone in the congregation to truly consider being a part of our Chancel Choir, Bells of Praise, REJOICE Worship Team, and our various children's choirs. Please contact me with any information or inquiries.
As I mentioned last week, the Lectionary recently embarked a multi-week exploration of Jesus as the Bread of Life. Spoken primarily in his own words, it shows us that the celebration of Holy Communion is an irreplaceable, necessary portion of our worship, applicable to us today just as it was over 2000 years ago.
I also briefly discussed the challenge of keeping an extended worship focus engaging and interesting for the congregation. Not only is it difficult to do musically, but it is taxing for the Pastor as well to keep the messages from becoming repetitive. One source of flexibility present is within the rest of the Lectionary readings. This week, the Old Testament reading is from 1 Kings, where the prophet Elijah is in the wilderness in fear of his life. Elijah feels he is the only one remaining who is doing God's work, and that all others have betrayed him. Queen Jezebel even sent out assassins to chase Elijah. While in the wilderness, Elijah heard the word of the Lord. Despite the language from God to Elijah being rather brutal, the message that we should take from it is that God renewed Elijah's passion for life and his God, resulting in Elijah heading back into the world and reclaiming his rightful place.
PRELUDE
Gather Us In- Jeffrey Honoré
Jeffrey Honoré is the Director of Liturgical Music at St. Matthias Parish in Milwaukee, WI, where he was the recipient of the Vatican II Award for Distinguished Service in 1999. Several of his choral and organ works have received wide publication, including his wonderful arrangement of the hymn "My Life Flows On In Endless Song" (which you will hear Chancel Choir do some time this year).
As has been a common theme with our organ music lately, this arrangement of the Marty Haugen hymn is in three parts. The inner and outer parts feature the tune in a solo stop with a dance like figure surrounding it. The middle section is slower, and contains fragments of the tune in the string section of the organ (on the Zimmer organ at St. Paul's, that is two stops).
OPENING HYMN
Gather Us In
Marty Haugen has been writing lovely hymns, tunes, liturgies, and choral anthems for GIA Publications for over 25 years now. In that time, he has presented musical workshops and conferences around the world, and has served on many boards for hymnal planning and collection.
Gather Us In is a rather interesting hymn. Most hymn tunes are designed in a way that they remain in one tonal center using what are called "diatonic" pitches, meaning, the main seven scale degrees (ie. do, re, mi, fa, etc...). The tune for Gather Us In throws the diatonic pitches out the window in the second measure with the appearance of a C-natural. Haugen employs a technique using the parallel major and minor scales, allowing for a wide variety of harmony.
Despite these radical (for a hymn tune) shifts in harmonic center, Gather Us In is surprisingly singable, due to its accessible range and repetition of certain melodic and rhythmic figures. This helps the text, which describes each and every member of a worshiping community, come through cleanly.
HYMN OF THE DAY
O God Of Every Nation
Elijah was redeemed by God while he was in the wilderness. For a man who hit rock bottom, only the Word of God could bring him back, and the reassurance he got was exactly what he needed at the time. The primary message of this hymn is for those of us who need our own reassurance. Stanza one is a prayer to God to unite us as a people, people from every race and land. Stanzas two and three continue this petition, citing all the things that we need redemption from, whether it is greed, war, racism, or ignorance.
The closing stanza looks to the future once God's work is done. Like Elijah must have seen the sun rise as his faith was restored, the sun rises with the dawn at the conclusion of this final stanza when we all see the way to love and peace.
OFFERING
Steal Away- arr. Harry T. Burleigh
The verses to this African American spiritual could have been said by Elijah during his time in the wilderness. "My Lord calls me, he calls me by the thunder. The trumpet sounds within my soul," certainly sounds like a redemptive experience.
While it can be spun to fit well with the preaching text, its true meaning is contained within the refrain, "Steal away home, I ain't got long to stay here." Like many songs from this tradition, there is a desire to go "home" with Jesus. Despite the horrific lives lived by African slaves in the early 19th century and before, as the generations went by, a culture of hope and triumph prevailed. All over the spirituals you will see examples of hope and thankfulness following those of despair (ie. "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, Glory, Hallelujah!).
Harry T. Burleigh, before William Dawson and later Moses Hogan, was one of the most prolific early arrangers of these spirituals. You will hear throughout the work how he colors the words being sung through the piano accompaniment.
COMMUNION HYMNS
Let Us Break Bread Together
The conclusion of our Hymn of the Day talks about the sun rising on the dawn of a new day. This spiritual picks up right where that left off, "When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun, oh Lord, have mercy on me." The "despondent joy" as I mentioned in Steal Away, is present here as well.
The author of this spiritual, like many others, is unknown. It is likely that it was created spontaneously. As it was passed down through oral tradition, it evolved and eventually became the version we know now.
How Small Our Span Of Life
After passing away in 2007, the world lost a wonderful preacher, theologian, and hymn writer in Herman G. Stuempfle. This hymn is a fantastic example of his work. Here we see an expansive text contrasting the length of our lives with the eternity of God. The language in stanza two of time and space is wonderfully evocative. These two spans of time are crossed by Christ when he left the infinite span of heaven to come to Earth and redeem our mortal lives. The concluding stanza thanks God for the guiding pathway (the one he gave Elijah) he gives each of us.
Blest Be The Tie That Binds
If you are a frequent partaker in the theater, you may know that this
hymn plays a very crucial part in Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize
winning play, Our Town. The words certainly are reflective of a small
community with close ties.
John Fawcett, the author of this text, was a British pastor and
theologian. The story behind this hymn is both interesting and
inspiring. Pastor Fawcett was a much loved pastor in the very small
English town of Wainsgate. He had a growing family and his meager
salary was hardly sufficient for supporting them. In 1772 he received a
call to one of the largest Baptist churches in London, and chose to
accept. However, the reaction to his leaving was so strong and fervent
that he elected to stay. In commemoration of this, he crafted this
hymn, whose first stanza reads,
"Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. The unity of
heart and mind is like to that above." It has gone on to become one of
the paramount hymns of Christian love and unity.
POSTLUDE
Improvisation on LLANGLOFFAN
As I have mentioned before, I spent a week in July at the Conference on Worship, Theology, and the Arts. One of my main areas of study was that of organ improvisation. One thinks of improvisation as spontaneous music making, but without some type of form, the "spontaneous" music will fall flat due to lack of structure and organization.
Thus, an improvisation should at least be thought out slightly in advance in order to create the structure necessary for a coherent piece of music. When improvising on a hymn tune, it makes it that much easier, since a good portion of the music is already written for you. The tune will be combined with a repeating subject featuring smaller fragments of the tune, and will hopefully create a piece of music that sounded like it was written down well in advance.
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