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.”