September 23, 2012: The Seventeeth Sunday after Pentecost (175th Anniversary)

Sept 23 2012

Choral Call to Worship: The Old Hundredth Psalm Tune

William Kethe published this metrical version of Psalm 100 in 1561 and again in 1562, where some textual changes were made. LindaJo McKim writes, “In the original text, stanza 1, line 3, read ‘him serve with fear’ but the Scottish Psalter (1560) changed the word ‘fear’ to ‘mirth’ because the biblical psalm contains the phrase ‘Serve the Lord with gladness.’” Ralph Vaughan Williams arranged the text and tune for choir, congregation, orchestra and organ for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey in June 1953.

Hymn: Our God, Our Help in Ages Past

Isaac Watts wrote this hymn as a metrical version of Psalm 90:1-5, and had it published under the title “Man Frail, and God Eternal.” John Julian, a famous musicologist, once wrote that the hymn is “undoubtedly one of [Watts’] finest compositions and his best paraphrase.” Much like our Choral Call to Worship, this one serves to remind us of the strength and assurance God has provided to us in the past, and that which God will provide in the future.

Hymn: God of Past, Who by Your Spirit

Hymnwriter, composer, conductor, and professor Milburn Price wrote this hymn for the 150^th anniversary of the First Baptist Church in Greenville, SC, then paired it with HYFRYDOL. He writes, “The text was crafted in a three-stanza structure that opens with a stanza looking to the past, followed by one that addresses the challenges of the present, and then concludes with the third stanza that looks to the hope of the future.”

Anniversary Hymn/Anthem: Celebrate the Church’s Story

From the time that we as a staff and worshipping community began to consider our 175^th anniversary, Dennis continued to say that this would be a chance to look to the future as much as it would be an opportunity to reflect on the past. With that thought in mind, I began writing the text that originally began, “Celebrate our church’s story.” However, as the process of writing and revision continued, a former professor pointed out that this should more fully celebrate the Church universal, of which we are all a part. I tried to include those words that have been key in the preaching and teaching of our church: boldness, service, caring, giving, etc. The second, third, and fourth stanzas were written with much consideration for our church’s diverse opportunities for mission and service, both in our local community, and our more far-reaching ministries.

Anthem: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

The English Baptist minister Robert Robinson wrote this hymn about 1758 and had it published a year later. Methodist hymnologist Carlton Young notes that hymn was originally four stanzas long, but, hymnal editors in the eighteenth century eliminated the final “apocalyptic climax,” a pattern which has been followed to present day. The fourth stanza reads as follows: “O that Day when freed from sinning, I shall see thy lovely Face;/Clothèd then in blood-washed Linnen [sic] How I’ll sing thy sovereign grace;/Come, my Lord, no longer tarry, Take my ransom’d Soul away; Send thine Angels now to carry/Me to realms of endless day.” In the hymn, it is helpful to know that “Ebenezer” means “Stone of Help,” as found in 1 Samuel 7:12, and a “fetter” is a kind of chain or manacle used to restrain someone. The tune NETTLETON is an American folk hymn, named after the famous nineteenth-century evangelist, Ahasel Nettleton. Young writes, “The hymn’s strong evangelical themes and its singable and rousing tune have made this one of our most beloved hymns.”

September 16, 2012: The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Sep 16 2012

Hymn: Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee

Henry van Dyke wrote this hymn in 1907, and from the outset intended that it be sung to the famous tune from the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Dr. van Dyke said of his hymn writing, “These verses are simple expressions of common Christian feelings and desires in this present time, hymns of today that may be sung together by people who know the thought of the age, and are not afraid that any truth of science will destroy religion, or any revolution on earth overthrow the kingdom of heaven. Therefore these are hymns of trust and joy and hope.”

Hymn: O Word of God Incarnate

This hymn first appeared under Psalm 119:105, “For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is a light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life,” in William Walsham How and T.B. Morrell’s 1867 Supplement to Psalms and Hymns (1854). Sam Young writes, “The poet extends the psalm’s light motif in a contrived inventory of the Bible’s attributes: ‘Word of God incarnate,’ ‘Wisdom from on high,’ ‘Truth unchaning,’ a divine gift, a vessel [originally ‘casket’] where truth is stored, the picture of Christ, a banner before God’s advancing host, and ‘chart and compass.’ The final stanza is a petition to Christ to purify and restore the church to its former stature as the light to the nations.”

Hymn: Now Praise the Lord

Presbyterian minister Fred Anderson wrote this paraphrase of Psalm 147 in 1986. When it was first published, it included a seventh stanza that focused on the Trinity:

Sing Praise to God, the source of life,

Sing praise to God the Son.

Sing praise to God’s life-giving power,

Forever three in one.

Solo: Give Me Jesus

Paul Westermeyer: “This is an African American spiritual that in some versions begins ‘I heard my mother say.’ It was part of the repertoire of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the group that formed at Fisk University in the 1870s and moved African American spirituals to a public and world-wide stage. Their story is told in the book that joins the phrase ‘Dark midnight’ to ‘when I rise.’ The narrative moves from morning to midnight to the break of day to death—that is, back and forth across all of life as it rises, wails, and dies. And then to encompass everything, it wants to sing. The song it sings is ‘Give me Jesus.’”

September 9, 2012: The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Sep 9 2012

Hymn: Praise the Lord, God’s Glories Show

LindaJo McKim writes, “The text was Henry Francis Lyte’s original version of Psalm 150. It appeared in Spirit of the Psalms (1834) and was altered by the author for the enlarged edition of 1836. The present collection is a slight variation of the 1834 text with the word ‘God’s’ replacing ‘His’ in the first line.

Hymn: O Savior, in This Quiet Place

Fred Pratt Green wrote this text following a request by the St. Barnabas Counseling Centre, where it was first sung in 1974. Hymnologist and minister Erik Routley called the hymn “a little gem;” LindaJo McKim reports that it has become widely used at healing services. I found the fifth and sixth stanzas to be particularly appropriate given Caroline’s sermon this week, and they fit well with the progression of the hymn’s tone.

Hymn: Be Still, My Soul

This hymn’s first appearance came in a German songbook in 1752, when it was published in six stanzas. Jane Borthwick translated five of the six in 1855 for Hymns from the Land of Luther. Modern hymnals have usually omitted the third and fifth stanzas. They read:

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,

and all is darkened in the vale of tears,

then shalt thou better know his love, his heart,

            who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.

                                   Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay

   from his own fondness all he takes away.

Be still, my soul: begin the song of praise

    on earth, be leaving, to thy Lord on high:

acknowledge him in all thy words and ways,

           so shall he view thee with a well-pleased eye.

                                    Be still, my soul: the Sun of life divine

                      through passing clouds shall but more brightly shine.

Anthem: Now Thank We All Our God

Perhaps the most well known hymn to ever come out of Germany, the first two stanzas were written by Martin Rinkart around 1630 as a table prayer before a meal. They are based on a text from the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus 50:22-24: “And now bless the God of all, who everywhere works great wonders, who fosters growth from our birth.” The final stanza serves as a Trinitarian doxology. 

September 2, 2012: The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Sep 2 2012

Hymn: O God, Our Faithful God

This hymn originally in German was written by Johann Heermann and titled “A Daily Prayer.” Paul Westermeyer writes, “Like Psalm 90 it contrasts the ever-flowing fountain of God—without whom nothing is—with the speck of humanity who nonetheless confidently ask God to turn with compassion to us and prosper our handiwork.” Englishwoman Catherine Winkworth, a prolific translator of German hymns, performed the translation. She promoted women’s higher education, and wrote a book, Christian Singers of Germany, which has long been of interest to music scholars. A tablet on the wall of Bristol Cathedral states that she “opened a new source of light, consolation, and strength in many thousand homes.”

Hymn: Seek Ye First

Karen Lafferty penned the first stanza of this “biblical song,” based on Matthew 6:33 and 7:7, in 1972. She wrote the hymn after attending a Bible study where Matthew 6:33 was studied. When she returned home she composed the melody for the stanzas on her guitar. Lafferty calls this “a song in which people can put God’s desire for their lives above their own.”

Hymn: We All Are One in Mission

Rusty Edwards’ hymn calls for Christians throughout the world to find their call, united in Christ, to “plan and work together that all may know Christ’s love.” The second stanza comments on the ways in which our ministries and we are different, yet all fall under one purpose. The third stanza pictures the “stark reality” of Jesus nailed to the tree, then being resurrected to inspire service and reconciliation. The hymn ends with a resolution to united in Christ, and repeats the first two lines of the first stanza.

Anthem: Every Valley

John Ness Beck wrote this paraphrase of Isaiah 40:4-5 in 1976. Although he only uses the two verses, he sets them in such a way as to convey different thoughts with each repetition. The first verse is a simple statement, first by the men, then the women, of a peaceful and verdant world redeemed by God. The second is richer in musical texture, with four-part singing and syncopated rhythms providing good word painting for “and the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.”