Gerhard Cartford's translation of this Brazilian folk song gives us such a glimpse of what has gone wrong with the church of the late 20th and 21st centuries in this country. We don't sing to please an audience, we sing because God has called us (11 times in scripture) to sing a new song. We sing because God has done wonders. We dance because God gave us the Spirit. We (singers, instrumentalists, etc.) offering our musical gifts in a service are not there to perform for an audience. We offer our gifts back to God in the hopes that God speaks through them. We live in a consumerist entertainment culture that has put this idea in our heads and it is evident in the way we respond to musical gifts offered. It is there in the way we complain when we don't like what was sung, or that something we really like isn't being sung. 

I don't think it's an accident that God calls us so many times to sing a new song. A new song is not comfortable. It may not be in a style we like. But what it always does is help us grow. It sheds new light on something about God, about ourselves, or about the world around us, and how we are called to interact with our neighbors. But what should never, ever be its purpose is to entertain us. How much more would we grow if we stop expecting to be entertained by worship, but rather expect to be changed?

Sing to the Lord a new song... not because it makes you feel good, but because God has done wonders. Dance for our God... even when you may not feel like it, because God gave us the Spirit. 

Marshall

Song of joy and wonder, sound so wild and free; 
Voice of wind and thunder, boundless as the sea; 
Music of God, the love that casts out fear; 
Song that sang in Jesus, sing within us here. 
- Marty Haugen

The song that will be our hymn of the month for May ("Word that Formed Creation") is yet another one where I have to reread those words that I am singing to get the full depth of it.

With Trinity Sunday being the last Sunday of the month, in many of the verses, Haugen really gets to the interplay of the God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in the things we experience every day: creation, love, and music.

​Each verse ends with a statement that shows what God has done in Jesus and then asks that God work the same in us. "May the love of God sound within us all, raise us up anew, and sing within us to renew us all."

Marshall

So often in church music, we find two different names for the same tune especially with a lot of early Appalachian hymn tunes. This week we will hear/sing the same Appalachian tune but will see it listed with two different tune names.

In the Gathering Music, we see the tune called RESIGNATION and yet when we sing the same tune later in our hymnal, the tune name is listed as CONSOLATION. I'm sure our psychologists in the pews could have a lot of fun with the similarities and differences in the two terms used as hymn tune names here. And yet, in even other sources, the same tune might be referred to as IRWINTON.

Back 100 years ago, these shape note tunes were very localized and not published widely. Shape notes were a type of musical notation where each note of the scale had a different shape. It wasn't until the mid-1800s that some began collecting these songs from various regions and publishing them to where they could largely be shared beyond the reach of word of mouth from one region to another.

In William Walker's collection Southern Harmony, published in 1835, this tune is listed as RESIGNATION; while in the collection The Sacred Harp, published in 1844, the tune is referred to as IRWINTON. And yet in others from around the same time, you might find that the tune is referred to as CONSOLATION, as it is in our hymnal. And even within those collections, there might be slight variations in the harmonizations of those tunes, something that still carries into today in our modern hymnal. The choice of tune name also hints at the source of its harmonization. 

Here it is as RESIGNATION as it would have been sung straight out of those days in The Sacred Harp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRdS5dIVmbM

Marshall

It is always amazing to recognize that the imagery Jesus gives us throughout the Gospels is that of the earth. In the Emmaus road encounter, the disciples only recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread -- food, nourishment, that which comes from the earth.

In her liturgical response about this moment, Anne Krentz Organ ends every phrase with a IV chord slightly lower than the V chord most of us steeped in Western classical music would expect, but a phrase ending more common in folk music to create anticipation of the next phrase. It gives this sense of having to return to the earth to find Jesus there. 

In "Alleluia! Jesus Is Risen!" (another text for the tune EARTH AND ALL STARS that we used throughout the month of September with its original text full of  "loud boiling test tubes," athletes and bands, hammers, engines, etc.), Herb Brokering also reminds us of  the image of Christ as vine. Again, that image of Christ being found in something that comes from the earth. 

May we continue to look for Christ in the nourishment we receive from the earth. May these songs help us to remember that throughout the week. 

• Be Known to Us, Lord Jesus
• Alleluia! Jesus Is Risen!
• Thank You, God

Marshall

Help then, O Christ, our unbelief; 
and may our faith abound
To call on you when you are near
and seek where you are found: 
- Henry Alford

The tune SHANTI has long been my favorite tune paired with Henry Alford's text (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbe3bpi_9Pg ). It allows for so much more introspection and reflection on these words. 

In our hymnal, it is paired with DUNLAP'S CREEK, a much livelier Appalachian
tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEm3pTaZCZ4

In some ways, I think we could learn a lot more from this hymn by singing it with both tunes first being able to reflect on this text and its meaning through SHANTI and then to share it joyfully through DUNLAP's CREEK. Two tunes from two different time periods that each shed a different light on this text. 

Marshall

These are the words that end Psalm 88, the darkest psalm and one of only a few that never have some sort of turn toward praise. On Maundy Thursday, we will use a particular setting by Zebulon Highben of this psalm during the stripping of the altar at the end as we move into the darkness of Good Friday that has been very effective in previous churches I have served. Also included in Maundy Thursday will be an excerpt of the piano work "Black Earth" by Turkish composer, Fazil Say. The connection has to do with the text of the song "Kara Tropak" on which Say bases this work. The last line of each verse of that song roughly translates to "my only friend is the black earth". Here is the entire work recorded during the pandemic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaXJQOR0I40.

As we navigate the emotional roller coaster that is Holy Week, don't forget to spend time in the darkness there amidst the confusion of the disciples, the betrayal Jesus experiences, in the sense of abandonment on the cross, and the grief of Mary.

It is important growth that happens in those dark places. Growth that doesn't happen when we avoid discomfort. Death comes before resurrection. Resurrection only happens because death came first. 

Marshall

​Many people have a favorite hymn and I am no different. But worship is bigger than what music we like or don't like, what might make us feel good in the moment. So while knowing my favorite hymn may be a nice thing to help you know who I am and what is important to me, it being my favorite is not a good reason to sing it every Sunday or even necessarily all that often. This week is a Sunday where the hymn that happens to be my favorite ties into the other parts of worship. Part of the middle verses even talks about footwashing, which we come to often with Maundy Thursday and the example Jesus sets in John 13. But that isn't the reason it is my favorite. 

This text by Brian Wren is my favorite because it gives us such a picture in such a deep and poetic manner of what God calls us to do in worship . The first and second verses speak to the baggage we bring -- broken trust, chosen wrong, etc. -- and how despite that baggage we are still people who are made in God's likeness and that we come to hear God's call (though that call will nearly always take us out of our comfort zone) and that we come seeking hope for all people. The third and fourth verses speak to our misplaced expectations -- looking for God in the pomp and circumstance of a heavenly throne, but instead finding God is kneeling in front of us, washing our feet. The rest of the fourth and fifth verses speak to the transformation God intends in us and the purpose with which God sends us out into the world. 

God calls us, transforms us, then sends us into the world having been changed by God's call and God's love. It isn't simply about comforting us by leaving us the way we came in. It is about growing together in community through what we learn about God, ourselves, each other, our neighbors (God's definition of neighbor), and what God calls us to do in relation to each of those entities. This growth comes through the sermons we hear, the songs we sing, and the ways we serve in worship and our willingness to let them take us out of our comfort zone and into a place of transformation. 

As you come into worship this and every week, I encourage you to acknowledge the baggage you bring, recognize God's likeness in the community, expect to be transformed rather than entertained, and go into the world ready to serve. Read the text of this hymn in your insert as a reminder and let it transform your perspective. 

Give us your Spirit's liberty
to turn from guilt and dull despair, 
and offer all that faith can do 
while love is making all things new. 
- Brian A. Wren

Marshall

You, who walk each day beside us, sit in power at God's side, 
You, who preach a way that's narrow, have a love that reaches wide. 
You, the everlasting instant; you, who are our pilgrim guide. 
- Sylvia G. Dunstan, ​"You, Lord, Are Both Lamb and Shepherd"
​

I love the phrase that repeats in every verse of Sylvia Dunstan's hymn quoted above: "You, the everlasting instant." If there's anyone who might be able to speak of an everlasting instant, it is Dunstan, considering how many deep and profound hymn texts she wrote which have reached far beyond the short instant of her 38 years on this Earth. 

God exists outside the confines of time, while we experience life teleologically (in an order of events). This idea of experiencing things without the confines of that teleological order has long been a spark for art, music, literature, and drama. In fact my dissertation piece, "Four Movements in Search of a Composer," took its inspiration from the play Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello. In that play, Pirandello explores some ideas that were far ahead of his time. In it, the six Characters don't experience their story in a teleological order and so find it difficult to try to convey that story to the Director. At the same time, Pirandello insinuates that once their story is told the Characters become real, implying that teleological order is necessary to life. Hence when trying to put this idea into music, I took a musical idea and used every part of that idea in different orders, sometimes starting in the middle of the idea and working backwards. 

And yet, Sylvia Dunstan puts this idea of God existing outside of time in a phrase that is simple (yet vast in what it encompasses), that is repeated in each verse: "You, the everlasting instant." May we continue to look beyond our own experience and reflect on these seemingly opposite aspects of God that are both true in the same everlasting instant. 

Marshall

So often with music in the church we think of the title of the text of a hymn, but there is also another name, the name of the tune. Hymn tunes are designed to be interchangeable with different texts.

For example, take the tune ST. LOUIS (which we tend to associate with the text "O Little Town of Bethlehem") and sing the lyrics of "House of the Rising Sun" to it instead -- or sing the text of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" to the tune HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN. And while sometimes a tune was written specifically for a certain text (i.e. "Here I Am, Lord"), there are times when the tune that was originally paired with a text is not the same one that has become traditionally associated with the text. There are also various regional differences. While we here in the United States will usually think of the tune MUELLER for the text "Away in the Manger," people in Great Britain are more likely to assume the tune CRADLE SONG. Interestingly enough, both of those tunes were written by composers in the U.S.

Sometimes the tune name given refers to a place. Last year, I arranged the hymn tune COPELAND for handbells, choir, and organ. (Here is a link: https://www.youtube.com/live/3PA1YbMCkT0?si=k8nhnm8AIRWibQti&t=2642). The hymn tune was written by Michael Corzine, who was the organ professor at Florida State for several decades and his office would have overlooked Copeland St. Hence, the tune name -- it was probably written in that office.

Sometimes it may refer to a person -- ST. LOUIS refers to Lewis Redner, the organist who wrote the tune for "O Little Town of Bethlehem," but he did not want the recognition, hence the change in spelling of Lewis to Louis.

One of our hymns this week is sung to the tune RATHBUN. Ithamar Conkey wrote the tune while an organist at a church in Connecticut. One Sunday it was particularly rainy and none of the choir showed, except one lone soprano. He was so discouraged he left and went home. That afternoon he wrote this tune for the text "In the Cross of Christ I Glory." The lone soprano who showed up that morning was Beriah Rathbun, and so he named the tune after her.

Marshall

​Soul, adorn yourself with gladness, 
Leave the gloomy haunts of sadness, 
come into the daylight's splendor, 
there with joy your praises render. 

This hymn text by Johann Franck has always stuck with me. It is not found in our hymnal but the tune it is paired with, SCHMUCKE DICH has been a staple in the Lutheran church and is paired with several other texts including a text by Joel Lundeen (a relative of our very own Steve Lundeen). Brahms sets this tune with this joyful inner line of sixteenth notes weaving through and around the tune. I think the world we live in can certainly be represented much of the time as the gloomy haunts of sadness. 

Similarly, the sending music is based on another tune much more well known in the Lutheran church, Thine the Amen. The hymn as a whole points to the great wedding banquet in Revelation and how it all is God's and there is much imagery of the joy of this feast throughout. However, it is genuinely a difficult one to spit out all the words in terms of congregational singing. 

So while we are not necessarily singing these wonderful hymns, I hope that knowing their context helps you to think about the images of joy that are woven into the fabric of these tunes and the texts associated with them as you hear them this Sunday. 

Marshall

The first lines of Carl P. Daw, Jr.'s hymn text give us this pattern to growth in faith. Letting go of what had seemed sure, comfortable, expected is the place where growth begins. Faith endures by recognizing our connection to those who have gone before us and holding fast to those roots while enduring change necessary to prepare us for that maturation of faith that comes with reaching out, looking beyond the limits of our minds, stretching them, and learning to live in the wideness of God's mercy with compassion. May we continue to seek growth as we learn through the ways our hymns highlight in different ways what we see in Philippians 3. Thanks be to God for those that have faithfully written hymns that continue to help us learn more about ourselves, God, our neighbors and the ways in which God calls us to live in this world. 

Marshall

This week, rather than Sunday's music I will focus on some of the things coming up for Ash Wednesday (2/18). In particular, I want to focus on two things that are likely unfamiliar to the congregation, but have been particularly meaningful in previous churches I have served.

In "Now Is the Time of Grace," the congregation only sings the refrain, which has a gentle lilt reminding us of God's grace and our call to turn and seek God. In between this are verses sculpted from Isaiah 58 about the kind of fast that God would choose.

The other thing is the chant "Remember That You Are Dust," which is a simple chant sung over a drone. I've found that having two handbell ringers using the singing bell technique is the most effective drone over which everyone sings. As the chant continues, the composers' intent is that it becomes a multi-part round with people starting the chant at different times, so don't feel like you have to start with everyone else. There is no "right" time to start the chant. In fact, when people do start singing at different times it becomes sort of a cloud of these notes that still has movement within it, like an amoeba of sound. A living organism changing shape as it moves through time made of individual pieces of dust by God's grace. 

Marshall

Gather us in, all peoples together, 
fire of love in our flesh and our bone.
- Marty Haugen

I first encountered this hymn in 2001 in a piano arrangement of it by Malcolm Kogut. Kogut's arrangement has a lot of shifts into asymmetrical meters such as 5/8 and 7/8, which give it lots of energy and is very fiery in that way. But fire is also a way of burning away impurities. We might prefer to look at fire as a tool or we might look at it as a thing of destruction. Our preference doesn't make fire any less one or the other. For one person the fiery arrangement may be a struggle as a tool for learning to play in these unusual meters. For another, it may simply be a lot of fun. But the piece is both. 

This song is so appropriate for this time of the church year as we move from the season of Epiphany into the season of Lent. And this image of fire gives us the light and energy we carry from Epiphany and sustains into the reflection of Lent where we seek not just to refrain from the things that might be hindering us in our relationship with God, but also seek to redirect that energy into the things that will bring us closer to God. God's love is energizing but also purifying and will cause us to continuously change into who we are called to be. 

As you sing this hymn on Sunday, think about all the images of the people God is gathering and who we are called to be through the lens of that image of the fire of God's love. Which images energize you? Which may be places where God is working on changing you to become who you are called to be? 

Marshall

​Called as partners in Christ's service, 
called to ministries of grace, 
We respond with deep commitment
fresh new lines of faith to trace. 
-Jane Parker Huber 
Used by permission. OneLicense.net # A-709014

It is always that last line that has been the phrase that sticks out to me. Tracing the work of something is often how we learn--we mimic what somebody else has put forth first. In 2018, I wrote a concerto for two saxophones and wind ensemble for a friend of mine who wanted such a piece that he could perform with his first saxophone teacher. I focused a lot of it around one saxophone beginning each melodic line in the same way as the other saxophone but each line veers off in a new direction. Unfortunately, his teacher passed before they were ever able to realize this piece. 

God gives us new lines of faith all the time. Sometimes through people with the boldness to look beyond what has been and is to what could be. Sometimes through circumstances and opportunities to reach beyond the safety and comfort of the walls of this building. But what is always clear is that the people God calls are not called into a place of comfort. How many prophets could not understand why God called them -- I  don't have the skills to do that -- people aren't going to listen to me -- and all the other excuses they tried to give. God didn't call them to speak like someone else (sing like someone else, play like someone else). God doesn't call us into the ease of simply tracing, but the anguish of forging new lines. 

God calls us to forge new lines of faith, but just as with those melodic lines in my concerto, those new lines don't come from out of nowhere. They begin from a place of tracing (recognizing what is good in that line being traced) and veering off to reach new places while retaining what is essential to the line in the first place. 

Are we ready to forge new lines of faith? Or are we too enamored with what makes us comfortable? 

Marshall

In this week's lesson from Luke, we encounter Jesus reading parts of Isaiah from a scroll, parts that were prophecy about what the Messiah would do: proclaim good news to the poor, setting prisoners free, giving sight to the blind, etc. 

You will see that theme running through the hymns this week, stated in different ways by the different authors of these hymns. In John Bell's "The Summons" he poses question essentially coming from Jesus throughout the Gospels and with the last verse gives what our response should be. The third verse directly speaks to some of the things addressed in the Isaiah text, but it is always this line that I think of as the highlight -- "Will you kiss the leper clean and do such as this unseen." Imagine what is asked there and what an immense call that is, and to do it without the thought of being recognized for that sacrifice. 

Amanda Udis-Kessler in "Church Is More than Just a Building" extends the tasks that we see in that scroll from Isaiah to being what the church is and does. I especially like the ending phrase "It's our work toward a world made new." Rusty Edwards phrases it in a manner that has always caught my attention. While he focuses more on praising Jesus for doing all these things, he begins with the phrase that is the title of the hymn "Praise the One Who Breaks the Darkness."

So, church, how do we break the darkness by shining our light? We do those things in that scroll from Isaiah, not alone, but as a church we "kiss the leper clean and do such as this unseen."

Marshall