Music Notes from Denise, October 12, 2025

This Sunday we will read the familiar command in Luke 17 from Jesus to the Samaritan who he has just healed: “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” Our music will reflect the place that faith has in our everyday lives.

Our Sequence hymn will be Healing river of the Spirit, written by Ruth Duck. In Voices Found leaders guide, Marilyn Haskel and Lisa Neufeld Thomas write, “The River Jordan figures frequently in the Old Testament stories of our salvation history. John was baptizing people in it when Jesus came to him and asked to be baptized himself. It divides the time when the mantle of spiritual leader passes from Elijah to Elisha.”  In this Sunday’s reading in 2 Kings 5, “it is the body of water where Naaman, the warrior from Damascus, is told to bathe seven times to cleanse his body of leprosy—a sign that the God of Israel comes to all with healing and grace. Ruth Duck, the writer of this hymn, likens the Holy Spirit to this familiar image of the healing river that is not mighty or roaring but gentle, comforting, and peaceful The images are baptismal and transformational. Our human wanderings, like the winding of the river, can ultimately bring us back to our source of being with the help of the Saving Spirit.” (Voices Found Leaders Guide 2004 Church Publishing Inc.) Ruth Duck was an internationally renowned hymn writer who spent her life turning sacred words and ancient liturgies into hundreds of groundbreaking hymns which captured God’s inclusive love and heart for justice. She passed away in December of 2024 and in the United Church of Christ’s website (ucc.org/hymnwriter-ruth-c-duck-remembered), Carolyn Winfrey Gillette wrote that, “Duck’s work, with hymns “filled with beautiful images…that creatively allude to biblical references,” inspired her own hymnody journey. She stated “I am confident that Ruth’s beautiful, faithful words will be a blessing to the Church for years to come.” (ucc.org)

The Offertory will be a joint anthem by the children’s Chapel Choir and St. Martin’s Choir. It’s a new arrangement of the classic This Little Light of Mine by Mark Patterson. It starts with a soulful beginning sung by the Chapel Choir and then it explodes with radiance and joy when the adults join in singing: “Shine, Shine, Shine”. Sherry Algren has made little white lanterns that the children will hold to demonstrate their “little lights”. It should be an enjoyable compilation with a festive accent by Becky Brewer on the tambourine! (2012 Choristers Guild. All rights reserved)

Our Communion hymn, O Jesus, I have promised, is a traditional hymn in our blue hymnal but we will sing the words to a new tune, Hatherop Castle, composed by Geoffrey Beaumont in 1960. It was recommended by one of our own Altar Guild members, Angela Logan, who has fond memories of singing it in her church as a youth. She gave me a copy that was found in a songbook, Thirty 20th century Hymn Tunes published by Josef Weinberger Ltd. in 1960. The choir will lead the first stanza and the congregation can join in on the rest.

Our final hymn brings us back to our original theme about healing and faith, O for a thousand tongues to sing, written in 1739 by Charles Wesley. “If I had a thousand tongues, I would praise Christ with them all.” So said Peter Böhler to Charles Wesley, inspiring the first line of the classic hymn, “Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer’s praise” (Psalter Hymnal Handbook.) Written to celebrate the one year anniversary of Charles’ conversion to Christianity, this declaration of Christ’s power and victory in his own life, rich in Biblical imagery of the Kingdom of God, becomes our own hymn of praise. We stand with the angels before the throne of God, lifting our voices as one church to glorify the one who “bids our sorrows cease.” We proclaim Christ’s victory as a declaration of our faith and hope that we will see the Kingdom of God full realized and lift our song of expectation. (Hymnary.org)