December 4, 2011

10:55 Gathering Song: The King of Glory Comes

Willard Jabusch, a Catholic priest, wrote this text in 1965 to be used for a folk-music ensemble at a Catholic parish in Illinois. Jabusch wrote five stanzas in the original text; we will sing the first and third today as they relate to Christ’s coming. The first stanza and refrain are based on Psalm 24:8 and Isaiah 7:14, while the third references Isaiah 53.

Hymn: O Lord, How Shall I Meet You?

This text, written by Paul Gerhardt and published in 1653, has found itself used many times over since its initial publication, perhaps no more famously than in J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Gerhardt was a German pastor who served several churches and wrote over one hundred hymns. The tune VALET WILL ICH DIR GEBEN is also known as ST. THEODULPH, and is used as the tune for “All Glory, Laud and Honor.”

Hymn after Proclamation: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

The text for “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” comes from a seven verse poem that dates back to the eighth century. It was used in a call and response fasion during the vespers, or evening, service. The original text created the reverse acrostic “ero cras,” which means “I shall be with you tomorrow,” which is fitting, as we look back and forward to the coming of Christ.

Hymn: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

The Psalter Hymnal Handbook notes that the Greek text of “Let All Mortal Flesh” may date back to the fifth century. It is based on a prayer chanted by the priest when the bread and wine are brought to the table of the Lord. The author writes, “The text expresses awe at Christ’s coming (st. 1) and the mystery of our perception of Christ in the body and blood (st. 2). With the images from Isaiah 6 and Revelation 5, it portrays the glory of Christ (sung to by angels) and his victory over sin (st. 3-4). Although it has a eucharistic [communion] emphasis, the text pictures the nativity of Christ in a majestic manner and in a much larger context than just his birth in Bethlehem. We are drawn into awe and mystery with our own alleluias.”

Response: Feel the Spirit in the Kicking, stanza 2

Richard Leach wrote this hymn as a setting for the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth in Luke 1, when Elizabeth hears Mary’s voice and the baby she is pregnant with “leaps for joy.” The second stanza, which we’ll sing today, draws from Mary’s song, the Magnificat (“my soul magnifies the Lord”).

Timothy Dudley-Smith, hymn writer

10:55 Anthem: He Comes to Us as One Unknown

Timothy Dudley-Smith wrote this hymn while on vacation in 1982, and has written, “The opening line of this hymn is part of a longer sentence from the closing pages of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1919), which says of Christ, ‘He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those first men who knew Him not.’” Paul Westermeyer writes, “The hymn moves in the first two stanzas from a ‘sense of the divine’ which is part of the human experience to an increasingly Christian confession. The third stanza makes allusions to Revelation 1:15 (his voice like the sound of many waters), 1 Kings 19 (the still small voice), and 1 Chronicles 14:15 (the sound in the tops of trees a signal from God). By the fourth stanza ‘the text is explicitly Christian in its reference to both incarnation and to atonement.’ With stanza 5 ‘there is the personal response of faith to the Lord Jesus Christ of the New Testament,’ with allusions to Luke 24:27 (where Jesus on the Emmaus road interprets things about himself in the scriptures) and 1 Peter 1:8 (even though you do not see him you believe in him).” The tune for the hymn comes from the oratorio Judith by the English composer C. Hubert H. Parry. This anthem setting was arranged by John Ferguson, an esteemed American arranger of hymns who is in the midst of his final year of teaching at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.