12 Hymns Project: Come thou fount, and Rain down

Texts: Matthew 5:43-48

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…”

You might recognize these as the opening lines to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and even though I’ve never read it, I couldn’t help be think of these words as I prepared the sermon for this morning.  Months ago when we were trying to decide how to fit 12 hymns into 10 weeks of worship services, Rain down and Come thou fount were lumped together mostly because they contained pretty overt water imagery and they both were prayers of petition to God to rain down blessings.  That seemed like enough to lump them together, so we did.  And we planned to figure the rest out later. 

Well, later is now, and the more I tried to synthesize these two sets of lyrics into one coherent message during the last few days, the more I found to contrast in them.  Yes, they both draw on images and metaphors about God’s love being like water: falling down, flowing, raining, streams and fountains, thirst quenching, life-giving, saturating water.  Yes, as Joel mentioned a few weeks ago when he talked about the importance of paying attention to the audience of a text, both of them are directed to God as prayers.  Yes, they both are prayers that, at least in part, petition God to rain down blessings and love. 

But then they start to diverge a bit. 

First, let’s look a little more closely at Come thou fount.  Now I realize we haven’t sung it yet, so let me…

Twelve Hymns Project: Amazing Grace

Texts: Exodus 34:5-9; Acts 9:1-9

Joel and Abbie Miller

Joel

Anne Lamott wrote: “I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

Maybe this helps explain the popularity of “Amazing grace.”  The song has been so widely embraced, it spans all kinds of communities that otherwise have little in common, religious and secular.  We are at so many different places – in our life experience, in our ideas about the world.  Grace meets us where we’re at, and so, it seems, does this song that features grace as its protagonist.

A case in point for this breadth of appeal is that these lyrics, written by an English former slave ship captain, John Newton, have also become adopted among the African American spirituals.  Descendants of the enslaved and the enslavers need not understand all the mysteries of grace in order to know we need it.

Abbie

The hymn “Amazing Grace” as we know it, has a grace filled history as well.  It was originally written as a reading or poem that may have been chanted instead of sung.  It was not even seen as one of John Newton’s finest works in Britain.  One biographer calls Newton , in reference to this song, an “unashamedly middle brow lyricist for a low brow congregation.”  Out of the 150 words, only 21 are more than one syllable.

Despite this, the song took hold in the United States during the Second Great Awakening and the development of shape note singing. Amazing Grace was used during tent revival meetings to punctuate fervent sermons, with added repetitive verses.  It was sung to around 20 different melodies before it became widely known and published with a melody named “New Britain”.

The hymn was printed in hymnbooks…

Twelve Hymns Project: HWB 614 In the bulb there is a flower

Text: Matthew 6:25-29

Three times a year Mennonite Central Committee publishes its Washington Memo.  It’s a little six page pamphlet.  Each one focuses on a key social or political area of concern, giving historical background, policy principles for addressing the situation, ways MCC is involved, and ways for the reader to pray and act for peace.  We get it in the church office.

The spring/summer 2017 issue is about US/North Korea relations.  The cover page includes a large picture of an agricultural field with mountains in the background.  On the ground and in the air are a number of birds, cranes.  With MCC’s permission, we’ve used that image for today’s bulletin cover.

The cover page of the Washington Memo includes a caption beside this picture that says this: “View from South Korea into North Korea.  Red crowned cranes are an important symbol on both sides of the border of longevity, purity and peace.  The cranes thrive in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the countries because of the relatively undisturbed habitat.”

Seeing this, I felt myself drawn into something resembling a parable of Jesus.  Out of curiosity I did some online research on these cranes and their place in the Korean peninsula.

It turns out the Smithsonian Magazine did an article on red-crowned cranes back in April of 2011.  It’s title and opening line is this: “The DMZ’s thriving resident: The Crane.  Rare cranes have flourished in the world’s unlikeliest of sanctuary, the heavily mined demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.”

It turns out…this is a complex parable.  More on that in a bit.

Parable was a favorite form of teaching for Jesus.  Parables frequently, but not always, reference the natural world and invite the hearers to consider the wisdom on display.  Parables…

Twelve Hymns Project: Be thou my vision, HWB 545

Text: Isaiah 6:1-8

“Be thou my vision” is a prayer.  It’s an ancient prayer.  The language feels old.  When’s the last time you were having a conversation and found yourself saying “naught be all else to me save that thou art?”  I haven’t decided yet whether I know what that means.  But we sing it.  One of the wonders of setting our prayers to music is that we say things, we sing things, without having to understand everything we’re singing.  Sometimes the music and the rhythm of the words are enough to make it a prayer.

The English feels old, but the song is Irish through and through, in text and in melody.  What we have is just a translation.  The original is old enough that no one’s quite sure how old.  It may go as far back as the 6th century, words of an Irish poet, Saint Dallan.  Or maybe it was written a couple hundred years after Saint Dallan and just got attributed to him.  The oldest surviving manuscripts of this Irish prayer are from the 10th or 11th centuries.

Before Saint Dallan, around the year 401, a young man and his family were walking along a beach in the Western part of Britain.  They were interrupted by a fleet of boats, Irish warriors.  The warriors demolished the nearby village and captured the young man, taking him back to Ireland and selling him to a local warlord.  The young man’s name was Patricius.

Patricius was enslaved as a shepherd, spending his time in the wild with his master’s animals, exposed to the weather and foraging for food just like the animals he kept.  He did this for six years.  During that time he had an awakening toward the Christian faith he had grown…

12 Hymns Project
STS 124: My soul cries out
Scripture texts: 1 Sam. 2:1-10; Luke 1:46-55

The world is about to turn.

I have to admit that on more than one occasion I have slipped up and changed the lyrics to “the world is about to burn,” which was, perhaps, less of a slip up and more of a reflection on the world around us. 

The world is about to turn.  Things are changing.  A new day is dawning, but not just any new day.  The air is crisp with possibilities.  Breathe it deeply.  A reverie of hope tiptoeing toward that vernal awakening; creation unfolding, stretching cramped wings that have caught the scent of a favorable breeze.

The world is about to turn.

Whether turning or burning, the world is making way for something new.  God is making way for something new, and our hearts shall sing of this day God brings.

Of our top 12 hymns, My Soul Cries Out, also known as the Canticle of the Turning, is one of the newer ones, first published less than 30 years ago.  One of the advantages of this is that I was able to find a blog post about the hymn that was written by the the arranger of the music and author of the text, Rory Cooney.

Cooney writes that the song was written for his parish in Phoenix, Arizona in order to tie together in worship the themes of Luke’s gospel during Lectionary Year C when Luke is a main focus.  The more he thought about the monumental task of tying together all of the themes of Luke’s gospel the more he kept coming back to Mary’s song at the end of the first chapter. 

Often called the “Magnificat” because of the first word in the latin translation that means “to magnify,” Mary’s song speaks broadly and…