From Our Choir Director

The last Sunday in January is our Covenent church anniversary, so the choir will be singing the anthem Alan Blackshear wrote to celebrate our 50th anniversary.  O God, Our Fortress combines two beloved hymns, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” and “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”  This message of hope and eternal support is certainly appropriate as we face the rebuilding of our sanctuary and our church.

Glinda

From our Organist

Music for January 29th includes

• Prelude: I Cry to Thee, Jesus Christ by Samuel Scheidt
• Offertory: Meditation by Beverly Simpson – Natica Behar Handbell Choir
• Postlude: Sortie by Alexandre Boely 

Gail

The offertory is “Aria Pastorella.”  The composer is Valentin Rathgeber (1682-1750).

The closing voluntary is a liturgical canon by Thomas Tallis (1520-1585).  A contemporary of Shakespeare and a “Gentleman of the Chapel Royal” in Elizabethan England, Tallis wrote musical settings for the new Anglican ritual and consequently became known as the “father of English Cathedral music.”

– Gail

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In Psalm 19 we read of God’s majesty and grandeur in nature. Both our Choral Call to Worship and our Anthem for this Sunday reflect that theme. Holy is the Lord, from the 1826 Deutsche Messe by Franz Schubert, contains the phrase “Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory”. The Heavens are Telling, based on a German art song or “lied” by Ludwig van Beethoven (1779-1827), echos those sentiments in greater detail. In response to God’s presence in the physical world, we are called “to serve, adore, and sing His praise”.

On March 18, regular rehearsals of the Covenant Kids and the Sanctuary Choir will continue, although UA and Shelton State are closed for Spring Break.

– Glinda

The offertory is “All Glory Be to God on High.” The setting you will hear is by Andreas Armsdoff (1670-1690).

The closing voluntary is “Cortege.”   The composer is Gottlieb Muffat (1690-1770).

– Gail

The anthem will be Eric H. Thiman’s arrangement of the hymn Immortal, Invisible. The music is adapted from a Welsh melody and the text is by Walter C. Smith. Written in 1926, the anthem was first published in England but has become a standard in American choral repertoire as well. It features an exciting organ accompaniment and an a cappella chorale.

The final stanza closes with “O help us to see ’tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee.”

At the Ash Wednesday service on February 25, the Men’s Ensemble will be singing Just a Closer Walk with Thee by Thomas A. Dorsey, featuring John Hasson on clarinet and Tom Mullen on trombone.

– Glinda

Glinda

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Violist Karen Eastman will present the opening voluntary for worship this Fourth Sunday of Advent. She will be playing the Ralph Vaughan Williams “Fantasia on Greensleeves” arranged for viola and piano by Watson Forbes. Greensleeves is a traditional English ballad that has been the setting for many different texts. The Presbyterian Hymnal associates it with the William Chatterton Dix text “What Child Is This.”

The offertory is the Austrian carol “Still , Still, Still,” PH 47, arranged by Douglas E. Wagner for two octaves of handbells and keyboard. Ringers are Madeleine Hill and Gail Hasson; keyboard accompanist is Glinda Blackshear.

The closing voluntary is “Fanfare on ‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing’” by Gordon Young. This hymn, PH 31, was written by Charles Wesley and first published in 1739 with the opening lines, “Hark, how all the welkin rings, Glory to the King of kings.” Wesley altered his original text five years later and over the years it has been changed by others as well. The tune is MENDELSSOHN an adaptation of a composition by Felix Mendelssohn that was published with Wesley’s text in 1857.

Gail

Glinda

As the tithes and offerings are collected, the Natica Bahar Handbell Choir will ring “Song of the Angels” by Anna Laura Page.  This composition incorporates REGENT SQUARE and GO TELL IT, tunes of two “good news” hymns.

The closing voluntary is a Jan Bender chorale prelude on “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus,” PH 1.  This Charles Wesley hymn was first published in Hymns for the Nativity of Our Lord (1744).  Wesley’s focus is the celebration of the first Advent as it looks forward to the second.  The tune is STUTTGART, one of eleven tunes found in Christian Friedrich Witt’s Psalmodia Sacra (1715). It is generally thought that STUTTGART was written as a psalm setting but in time became a chorale tune. Today it is the musical setting for both hymns and psalms (see PH 223)

– Gail

Glinda

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The opening voluntary for the First Sunday of Advent is “Oh, Come, Emmanuel” by Wilbur Held. It is based on VENI EMMANUEL, the fifteenth century tune associated with the advent hymn we know as “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” PH 9. The text dates to the twelfth century and is derived from the “O” antiphons. An antiphon is a verse usually from scripture said or sung before and after a canticle, psalm, or psalm verse as part of the liturgy. The “O” antiphons, traditionally sung before and after the Magnificat, each began with “O” followed by a biblical title for Messiah.

The offertory is “Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending” (Jesus Comes with Clouds Descending,) PH 6. This advent hymn is attributed to Charles Wesley and it was published under his name in Hymns of Intercession for All Mankind (1758); however, it seems likely that Wesley adapted it from a Moravian hymn. The Presbyterian Hymnal associates the text with HELMSLEY, but other hymnals associate it with different tunes. The musical setting you will hear is by Paul Manz and the tune is ST. THOMAS (Wade).
The closing voluntary is Joseph Bertolozzi’s “Partita on ‘People Look East’” It is based on BESANCON, the old carol tune that is the musical setting for the “Carol of Advent” by Eleanor Farjeon that first appeared in “Modern Texts Written for or Adapted to Traditional Tunes,” The Oxford Book of Carols (1928). We will sing “People Look East,” PH 12, next Sunday.

Gail

The parable of the tenants, which Frank read a few minutes ago, is pretty harsh. In its normal interpretation, it’s taken as a warning to the religious authorities of the day. The tenants represent religious authorities of the state of Israel, who are pictured as stewards of God’s good creation, represented by a vineyard. When the time for harvest came, the landowner God sends slaves to collect the produce, minus the cut the tenant-farmers get for their labor Israel. The slaves represent the prophets, and the Israelite religious authorities—who are the ones listening to Jesus preach the parables—the religious authorities are depicted killing the prophets God has sent to collect the harvest. They beat one, kill another, and stone a third. The God-slash-landowner sends some more slaves-slash-prophets, and the religious-authorities-slash-tenants kill those as well. Then God-slash-landowner sends his son, saying “They’ll respect my son,” and you only get one guess as to who the son might represent, and when the landowner sends his son, the tenant-slash-religious-authorities kill him too, which upsets the landowner, and when Jesus asks the religious authorities what the landowner does, the religious-authorities to whom he is speaking say: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

And you’d think it would be like “Oh! Snap!” Gotcha! But no: the chief priests and scribes don’t tumble immediately that he’s talking about them, not until he spells it out: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” They finally figure out that Jesus is talking to them, according to Matthew, and so plot to kill him.

But look at how we’ve been talking about this parable: we’ve been calling the overlord both God and landowner, the chief priests and scribes both religious-authorities and tenants and etc. And this indicates that there are at least a couple of ways to read this story . . . and to see what they might be, consider: what if this parable were to be preached to real, live tenant farmers? How would they interpret the parable? And tenant farming being as widespread even today, you can bet that it happens a lot. How might an Apartheid-era sharecropper in South Africa hear this? Or a campesino in Latin America, or a migrant worker on the Great Plains? Who would they identify with and, more importantly, who would they identify God as? Remember: these folks know about being sharecroppers, they know about having to come up with the required amount for the landowners whether the harvest is plentiful or not.

And in fact, that’s the way a lot of them become tenants on their own land … it happened in Apartheid-era South Africa, as foreign came in and began charging the native landowners for goods and services, and in a good year, they could pay for their seed and implements but in a bad year—and there are a lot in South Africa—in a bad year, they couldn’t pay their bills, and so they’d put up their land for collateral, but there’d come along another bad year, and pretty soon they couldn’t make the nut on their loan and the lender owned the land . . . that happened in the American mid-West, and it’s why theirs so few independent family farmers left, they are tenants or workers on the land they once owned, and corporate farming is the rule . . .

And so any tenant farmers listening to Jesus would know about the rich land owner—who left the tenants in charge and went to another country, the classic absentee land-owner—they were the ones who drove their grand-fathers and great-grandfathers off their land, they were the people who made their ancestors tenants on their own land . . .

And so there are at least two ways to read any scripture passage: from the above and from below, from the vantage point of the landowner and from that of the tenants, the point of view of the haves and the have nots. And—hold your cards and letters, I’m not advocating tenants murdering their landlords or anything but you can surely see that depending on where you sat you might have more sympathy with one side or another in this parable. And Matthew—writing for a upper-class Jewish crowd—most naturally slanted this story so that we’d think of God as the landowner, so it was quite a shock when the religious leaders realized that far from being identified with the landowner, far from being identified with God, they’re just tenants in the story . . . but any tenant farmers in Matthew’s readership wouldn’t think of it that way, they’d know exactly who they were in the parable, and exactly what the absentee landowner was . . .

Everybody hears the scripture from their own social location, according to their own context. Each of the people here in this sanctuary does, but so do all who hear it around the world. And each culture that hears it draws different lessons from the scripture than another would. That’s the nature of hearing, the nature of stories, the nature of context. And that’s the nature of World Communion Sunday . . . it was illustrated beautifully by the poly-lingual reading of the Ten Commandments . . . each of those languages represents a different way of hearing the scripture . . . a Mexican camposino will not hear it the same as a Parisian dressmaker who won’t hear it the same as a Korean postman. A Nigerian bricklayer will draw different lessons from a Greek bookseller who will look at it differently from a baby-boomer in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

We all have different perspectives, different needs, different expectations, and yet . . . we are united in Christ. We are one in the spirit, as the song goes, and as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper in a few minutes we should remember this, and think about all our brothers and sisters around the globe who are doing the same. Amen.