I once was asked if planning music for worship was like a composition for me. The answer is a resounding yes! The title above might be the title for the composition of worship this Sunday, Nov. 2nd.

While there will be some old favorites among the hymns we will sing, there is also that glimpse into the future. During the Time for All Ages, I will be working on a song that is based on our scripture reading that comes from a wonderful children’s music curriculum called Growing in Grace. One of the best things about it is that there are options to include some bells and other instruments, but also that they are songs that are much more geared to where children are now and are approached in a way that is more about faith formation and less about performing. Truly, that is the way we should approach all music in worship--talking about how God spoke through what we sang or played because that is what creates community and helps us grow. How did that song shed a new light on this familiar reading? How did God show me something new about my neighbors? About myself?

We will begin our song of the month that we will slowly learn over the month of November. It is a bilingual song that will have us singing a repeated phrase in Spanish with a section in English in the middle. Again, that focus on connecting to the whole church--around the world and throughout time.

I will also be playing a handbell solo, and while for many that may be a very new thing to imagine, for me it also brings up memories of those that I’ve served in a previous church where I helped a 15-year-old ringer ring that same solo both as a challenge for themselves and a gift to their dad.

As we remember those who have departed, we will have multiple ringers of various ages and backgrounds building up a chord as more names are read symbolizing how both those whose name was read and those ringing a bell all are part of the chord of the church throughout time.

Lord, may we not look at our past only through a lens of nostalgia, but rather as children discovering it, sifting through it, and deciding what needs to become something new.
 
Marshall

For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of our mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
But we make this love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify its strictness
With a zeal God will not own.
- Frederick W. Faber

I think this verse of the hymn “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” speaks volumes every time I read it, hear it, sing it, etc. In 2007, I arranged 2 of the 14 different tunes often associated with this text in various hymnals. This is the only verse of text I left out. On purpose. Not because we don’t need to hear it, read it, and sing it, but because to try to contain this text to a melody or harmonization developed within my mind created some cognitive dissonance for me.

So while we might find it paired with the tune WELLESLEY in the United Methodist Hymnal or with IN BABILONE in our hymnal, each tune does capture some of this text, but not all. The tunes it is paired with in my arrangement are the New York City organist Calvin Hampton’s tune written in the late 1970’s, ST. HELENA, and the 19th century North American tune LORD, REVIVE US. Where ST. HELENA is very introspective, LORD, REVIVE US is somewhat loud and brash. I hope that as the choir sings this arrangement, you will hear in the two tunes the wideness of God’s mercy, and in the harmonization of those tunes the following line from the hymn:

Marshall

The church of Christ in every age,
Beset by change, but Spirit led,
Must claim and test its heritage
And keep on rising from the dead.
- Fred Pratt Green

In our consumer society, a lot of attention is paid to branding—to make sure a product, its advertising, etc. has a certain look so that people associate that look with the quality and name of the product. Because we are surrounded by this consumer mindset in our society, we tend to try to brand our version of what constitutes “church” by how the church looked in a certain age. Even some of most well-known and loved hymns have not always been the same. The language has changed, a new tune was written for a centuries-old text that had largely been forgotten, a new text has been paired with a tune that was once associated with another text. And often, that process spans not only centuries but the globe as well. For instance, the text above by Fred Pratt Green, an English chaplain and hymn writer, is paired with the tune WAREHAM (an 18th century tune) in most of the hymnals that have come out since around 1990, including our hymnal. However, the text was not written for that tune, but rather the English folk tune HERONGATE amongst those collected by the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in the early 20th .

(A recording of that text set to HERONGATE can be found here. A recording of that text set to WAREHAM can be found here.)

What is it about WAREHAM that might speak more to this age of the church more than HERONGATE, and hence be the one most often used in recent hymnals? How does it fit the needs of congregations today? How might accompanying it with different instruments shed a light on this text needed in this age that accompanying it with a different instrument would not? While these questions might be specific to a hymn, they are the kinds of questions we need to wrestle with it comes to any tradition, event, etc that might be part of our branding of “church”. For instance, I have heard the phrase “It just isn’t Easter without brass.” But was there brass on that first Easter morning? Was God still at work even when there was no brass? Was it still Easter even if it didn’t come in the package of brass fanfare and spectacle that your branding of “Easter” has brought you to expect? Sometimes we can be too quick to only recognize our branding of “church” rather than see how God is at work in a different packaging of the church. Let’s be more ready to shed our branding of “church” in order that God’s church can continue to rise in the new packaging God is calling us into.  

This is why I would encourage our middle and high school students to sing in the choir or ring handbells alongside adults. You have as much to teach us adults about how you see the world and what kind of packing might be more needed in this age as the adults have to teach you about what that heritage we have as a church is and what we can learn from the ways in which that heritage has been packaged before. Please contact me if you are interested in choir or in ringing handbells.

On November 2nd at 11:30, we will be having an orientation to what we can envision with children’s music for children where I will demonstrate what I see as a way for our youngest members to grow in their faith, musical gifts, and understanding of how we continue to grow as we offer these gifts. I hope to see our families there and ready to see what God might have in store.
 
Marshall

When compassion gives the suff’ring consolation;
When expecting brings to birth hope that was lost;
When we choose love, not the hatred all around us:
We see God, here, by our side, walking our way.
- Jose Antonio Olivar, tr. Martin A. Seltz

Some of my favorite devotions are the ones where an expectation we have is flipped. For instance, in his choir devotional book Rehearsing the Soul, Terry York writes about rhetorical questions such as “If God can be for us, who can be against us?” and the answer we expect is: “no one.” But he takes that and gives us another possible answer that is equally true: “Me. I can.”

We can talk about expectation in that same way: we can talk about it bringing birth to hope as in the text above from one of our hymns on Sunday. But we can also talk about another side to expectation such as I presented in a devotion written for an Advent devotional last year:

"…[T]o open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness." (Isaiah 42:7, NRSV)
 
Keys can be used to open or lock doors. Doors that keep us from seeing what might be on the other side of them. Another word often associated with Advent comes to mind, expectation. Sometimes our own expectations can operate like a key. We can be so focused on what it is that we expect that we can lock that door when something doesn’t match that expectation and miss what God has in store on the other side.
 
A composition of mine from 2010, Faith Pill, for alto saxophone and electronic media illustrates this well. Take a moment and listen to this work at https://soundcloud.com/marshall-d-jones/faith-pill-11-19-13
 
Probably not what you expected. How did your expectation cause you to respond? Did you listen despite it being different from your expectation? Or did you turn it off as soon as it didn’t meet your expectations?
 
The work is centered around a recording of a London street preacher. How likely is it that the message God was speaking through him was missed because his appearance, smell, demeanor, etc were not the way someone expected to hear God? The chaos of the electronic parts is in stark contrast to the peace represented in the saxophone part. But how often does the saxophone’s tone not match what our expectation of the sound of peace might be? Think about the times you have experienced peace. Has it always come at the times and in the way you expected? Listen again, reflecting on the words of the preacher and how the tone of the saxophone changes over time.
 
How often this week have you missed that glimpse of God’s kingdom because it didn’t come the way you expected? Fear not, you are in good company. We see examples throughout the Gospels of those who did not recognize Jesus because he didn’t come in the way that they expected. They expected a king to lead them to victory over their earthly enemies, but instead Jesus came to go to the cross. The key to seeing our heavenly home may just be learning to look beyond our own expectations.
 
"Unexpected and mysterious is the gentle word of grace
Ever-loving and sustaining is the peace of God’s embrace."
—Jeanette Lindholm

Lord, help us to see beyond the doors we close with the keys of our expectations. Help us to hear your gentle word of grace even when it comes forth as thunder. Help us to recognize you in the places, people, songs, and art we may not necessarily like or expect to find you.

Marshall

This text is often used in worship on Maundy Thursday in conjunction with the 1 Corinthians 11 text often associated with that day in the church year. However, there is still a strong connection to John 17 this week. While Ola Gjeilo only set the first verse of the text in the original chant in the choral anthem that we will sing this week, I think if we look at further verses there is much more to be said about what Jesus prayed for in John 17 would look like in our actions toward and interactions with each other. A translation of those verses can be found as hymn #396.

I hope we all meditate on those words as we listen to the way Carson Cooman sets this text for organ in the prelude, as the choir sings Ola Gjeilo’s setting for choir, and as we listen to the way Sally Drennan Mossing sets it for piano in the postlude this week.
 
Marshall