May 20, 2012: Youth/Graduate Recognition Sunday

May 13 2012 Youth Sunday

Hymn: I Danced in the Morning

LindaJo McKim writes, “This hymn was written by Syndey carter and has become his most famous song. It uses an American Shaker melody which is often sung to ‘’Tis a Gift to Be Simple.’ Carter adapted it and harmonized it for this text. SIMPLE GIFTS is a Shaker tune deriving from the Shaker movement, which originated during an English revival in 1747. The name “Shaker” came from the shaking that occurred during the stress of the spiritual exaltation the members experienced in their meetings. Aaron Copland famously set the tune in his “Appalachian Spring” orchestral suite.

Hymn: 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. 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.”

Hymn: Here I Am, Lord

Daniel L. Schutte wrote the text and tune of this hymn in 1981 for a diaconate ordination. Paul Westermeyer writes, “It plays off the potency of Isaiah 6:8—“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’”—followed by God’s hard words, “Say this to the people: ‘Keep listening but do not comprehend.’” These potent and hard words are blunted in the latter part of the twentieth century by hymns like this that place the words of God in the congregation’s mouth. This is further complicated by the first-person pronoun in the refrain, where it no longer refers to God but to the singer.”