August 26, 2012: The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Aug 26 2012

Hymn: O Worship the King, All Glorious Above!

Robert Grant penned this paraphrase of Psalm 104 and saw it published in 1833. Erik Routley writes that this text is a “good example of the impact on hymnody of the new search for poetic stanzas which [Reginald] Heber so strongly promoted.” Reginald Heber, the writer of “Holy, Holy, Holy,” supplied “the first alternative to the evangelical topical/doctrinal organization of hymnals” which led to further revitalization of British hymnody in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Hymn: Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah

LindaJo McKim writes, “William Williams, known as the ‘Sweet Singer of Wales’ and ‘the Isaac Watts of Wales’ wrote this text, full of biblical imagery in 1745.” A minister, Williams’ original title for the hymn was “A Prayer for Strength to go through the Wilderness of the World.” Alan Luff, a Welsh hymnody scholar, comments on the world of Williams: “[it] is a mixture of his own Wales and the land of the Bible. So a preaching journey can become both the toiling of the Israelites through the wilderness and Everyman’s pilgrimage through life to the eternal home. The best known of his hymns in English, ‘Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,’ shows the truth of this; in it we are the Israelites seeking food and water in the wilderness and at the end we are passing through the waters of the Jordan to reach final safety on the other side.” Carlton Young notes that “the hymn draws upon strong biblical metaphors, especially from Exodus 13 and 16: ‘manna,’ ‘crystal fountain,’ ‘fire and cloudy pillar,’ ‘crossing the river Jordan to Canaan’s side.’

Hymn: God of the Ages, Whose Almighty Hand

Daniel Crane Roberts wrote this hymn in 1876 “for a celebration of the Centennial ‘Fourth’ of July.” He writes, “When our General Convention appointed a Commission to revise the Hymnal, I sent it, without my name, promising to send the name if the hymn were accepted… [a committee was appointed] to choose a hymn for the centennial celebration of the adoption of the Constitution. Subsequently it was selected as the ‘Recessional’ at the ‘Bi-Centenary’ of Trinity Church, New York City.”

Anthem: Saints Bound for Heaven

Alice Parker and Robert Shaw collaborated to arrange a number of traditional American folk songs and hymns into choral works during the mid-to-late twentieth century. “Saints Bound for Heaven” was first published in William Walker’s The Southern Harmony (1835). It was published with seven stanzas; the Parker/Shaw arrangement you’ll hear today includes stanzas 1, 2, 5, and 7. In the second stanza, the text refers to “our threescore years and ten;” this is a reference of Psalm 90:10, part of which reads, “The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong.”