Music Notes from Denise, March 1, 2025

This Sunday we will experience the final Sunday after Epiphany before we enter the season of Lent. This will also be the last time that we sing ALLELUIA! during worship until Easter, so several of our hymns incorporate Alleluia!

Our Processional hymn will be Ye watchers and ye holy ones, written in 1909 by John Athelstan Riley. Riley was involved in compiling The English Hymnal of 1906 and contributed several hymn translations. This hymn is based, in part, on the Te Deum laudamus, an ancient hymn that is still used in both the Eastern and Western branches of the Church. You are God: we praise you; You are the Lord: we acclaim you; You are the eternal Father: all creation worships you. As this hymn is sung, contemplate the vastness of creation as it worships God continually, in heaven and on earth, past and present, including angels and Christians of all traditions. (Hymnary.org)

The Sequence hymn will be Christ, upon the mountain peak, written by Brian Wren in 1962. He based the text on the gospel story of Christ’s transfiguration. Powerfully poetic, it not only captures something of the awe in the event -- we share in the awe as we sing “Alleluia” -- but also presents a cosmic picture: the saints, angels, prophets, all nations, and the whole creation bring praise to the true Son of God! (Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1988, Hymnary.org)

St. Martin’s Choir will sing an arrangement of Antonio Vivaldi’s canon titled, All Earth Rejoice with a Gladsome Voice by Hal H. Hopson. The text is very reminiscent of the Te Deum:

All the earth rejoice with a gladsome voice; now sing we alleluia.

Praise the Lord, Rejoice, rejoice and sing.

Sing alleluia, sing, O praise the Lord. Sound the trumpet; sound the harp. Praise the Lord.

    (copyright 1992 by Belwin Mills, text and arrangement by Hal H. Hopson, all rights reserved)

Our Communion hymn will be Alleluia, song of gladness and comes from the Evangelical Lutheran Worship hymnal. It is an alternate text of the 11 century hymn Alleluia, dulce carmen that was translated by John M Neale in 1861. It finds us in our current journey as we anticipate Ash Wednesday and gives hope to us as we contemplate where we are today and our eternal desire to forever sing Alleluia joyfully! (Copyright 2006 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Augsburg Fortress, Publishers)

Our final hymn is another “oldie by goodie” Revive Us Again, or We praise Thee, O God! It was written in 1863 by William P Mackay, a Presbyterian minister in Scotland. He writes about his own conversion from a life of selfishness. While a young physician, he found himself treating a dying man who demonstrated great faith and joy. When the man died he left Mackay his special book. Upon looking at the book, Mackay realized that it was Mackay’s own childhood Bible that his mother had given him and that he had sold in earlier years when he needed funds. He was so moved that he converted to faithful Christianity and pursued the ministry. He also wrote several hymns, including this one found in our Lift Every Voice hymnal. (Then Sings My Soul, 150 of the World’s greatest hymn stories; copyright 2003 by Robert J. Morgan)

Rector's Reflection: Embracing Sacrifice, March 1, 2025

Beloved Members of St. Martin’s,

This Sunday is the last Sunday before Lent, and that means that we traditionally hear stories of transfiguration—stories where the glory of God becomes manifest before humanity. This year we will hear Luke’s recounting of Jesus’s Transfiguration on the mountain where he had gone with some of his friends to pray.

We hear this story of wonder and awe right before entering into the 7 week period of Lent. We get a welcome reminder of the awesomeness and overwhelming power of God as someone beyond all our ways of knowing—who nonetheless cares for and seeks relationship with us, and who built us to long for that sense of wonder and awe in our lives. That’s really what Lent is all about, too. Yes, it is about purification and sacrifice—words that rarely get used in our common lives together, but I think words that might need restoration in our common lives together. The word “sacrifice” itself has lost all meaning for too many people in our common life. People recoil from this word, thinking it means “suffering,” or “being deprived of something.” And our society is not about those things, or even delaying gratification. The invention of modern advertising in the 1920s is predicated on killing off those concepts.

But the history of the word “sacrifice” paints a more appealing picture. In its Latin roots, there are two parts: “sacr,” which means “holy,” and “facere” which means “to make.” At its roots, then, a sacrifice is something that makes us holy. The ancient Romans used the word sacrifice to mean the exercising of a priestly function. The most benign general meaning of the word in English today refers to the giving up of something now in order to get something better later. In the end, it is about reordering the attention toward long-term satisfaction, rather than fleetingly and mindlessly feeding our hungers.

A willingness to sacrifice in our own lives makes us better, more well-rounded people and makes society better overall. The determination at the start of the 20 century, for instance, to outlaw child labor and require school attendance led to the United States being a leader in technology and the sciences in the later half of that century.

The idea of Lent as a time of deprivation, of unfulfilled hungers, and dreariness has even penetrated modern secular culture—as a negative aspect of Christianity. But what if we embraced the full meaning of sacrifice—as something that makes us holy; as something that enables us to take the long view, and lay the foundation for a deeper richer life by devoting our time and attention from our shallow, everyday impulses and hungers toward building lasting justice, peace, and well-being for all?

As we approach Lent this year, I want to borrow an idea from Pope Francis a few years ago. I encourage you to NOT focus on what you will “give up.” I want to encourage you to consider what you might take on to replenish yourself, and to focus your attention differently during this sacred time. Instead of fasting from a favorite food or, God forbid, caffeine, what about committing to fifteen daily minutes of morning or evening prayer? What about embracing returning to weekly worship on Saturdays or Sundays? What about committing to joining the diocesan Lenten book study? What about starting a gratitude journal to record specific things each day for which you are thankful and which you find beautiful?

You’ve heard about doing one random act of kindness. What about committing to doing one deliberate act of justice for those who are in vulnerable groups each day-- especially to counteract the common belief that Christians are about castigation, self-righteousness, and shaming others?

Lent reminds us that Jesus was willing to lay down his life to overcome the calculus of human evil—what would happen if we respond by taking up our lives and seeking to make ourselves more Godwardly-centered?

Let’s find out.

In Christ,

Mother Leslie+

Please join us for Worship at 10:30 am this Sunday, March 2nd

Transfiguration, Lewis Bowman

Live by faith, grow in grace, and walk in love with St. Martin's this coming Sunday as we come together, in person as well as online, for worship, thanksgiving, and praise. Wherever you are on your journey of faith, allow us to walk alongside you.

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8E Epiphany 2 Mar 2025 LS.pdf

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