January 30, 2025
4th Sunday After Epiphany
Our readings this Sunday include so many profound and much-loved passages. The Old Testament reading includes the comforting words of Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you”, and 1 Corinthians 13 with its well-known hymn in praise of love. Our Psalm and Gospel readings speak of the Holy One rescuing us from the hand of the wicked, because God has been “our protector since our mother’s womb.” These all serve as eternal reminders that each of us is infinitely precious in God’s sight, and our concerns and cares are known and shared by our Creator.
Our opening hymn “How Can We Name a Love” sets Brian Wren’s profound text to the familiar tune TERRA BEATA. In four inspired verses we explore the varied ways we learn about love, share love, show love and experience love, ending with the reminder that “in Christ alone is love full-grown, and life and hope begun.”
The Choral Prelude is an exquisite miniature by the English Church Music Composer Edward Bairstow, setting Song of Solomon 2: 3 & 4. “I Sat Down Under His Shadow” was written in 1925 and in its 90 brief seconds achieves a glorious climax with the words “He brought me to the banqueting house, and His banner over me was love.”
Our Choral Anthem is a nod to African-American Heritage Month, but also my desire to utilize more Spirituals throughout the year. The day’s readings of God rescuing us from distress and evil-doers inspired my choice of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” for this Sunday, in a lush modern arrangement by Howard Helvey. The Spiritual was composed sometime after 1865 by Wallace Willis. Willis was a Choctaw freedman, a formerly enslaved African American granted citizenship in Native American territory, Choctaw Nation, after the civil war. Alexander Reid, a minister at a Choctaw boarding school, heard Willis sing the song and transcribed the lyrics and melody, which he then sent to an a cappella group, the Fisk Jubilee Singers. They popularized the song during US and European tours in the 1870s. In 1909 the Fisk University Jubilee Quartet, a group formed to carry on the legacy of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, made the earliest known recording. Its lyrics have long been interpreted as potentially coded. They likely refer to the Underground Railroad, the network of clandestine routes and safe houses used by enslaved African Americans in the 19th century to escape into free states or Canada.
As we receive Communion, the choir will sing Timothy Dudley Smith’s 1985 recasting of our 1 Corinthians 13 reading set to a lilting tune by Michael Joncas. “Not For Tongues of Heaven’s Angels” is a lovely poetic setting of Saint Paul’s words to the Church in Corinth, and Timothy Dudley Smith ends each of his four verses with the plea “May love be ours, O Lord”, which Joncas opts to repeat three times as a prayerful chorus.
Our closing hymn pairs the familiar tune MARYTON (O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee), with a 1991 text by Jean Wiebe Janzen inspired by the writings of the 14th-century mystic, Julian of Norwich. Like my own Mother, Jean Janzen was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Janzen was asked to contribute some new hymn texts for the 1992 Mennonite hymnal, using some of the great English mystics for her inspiration. She admits “when I read the words of Julian of Norwich as she refers to God as her mother…I was astounded!” Janzen’s hymn is constructed of three four-line stanzas, and the text is written in the first person, attributing to each person of the Trinity different aspects of Motherhood. My favorite setting of “Mothering God You Gave Me Birth” was arranged by the prodigiously talented Tom Trenney, and last September I purchased his anthem for our Chancel Choir to sing on Mother’s Day 2025. For the third verse on Sunday, I will be using a reharmonization by my favorite living Canadian Church Composer, Paul Halley. His “Organ Descants” incorporate the soaring lines of the soprano descant into the organ score to help elevate our praising to new heights.
The last verse of Janzen’s text sends us forth into the world to live our faith more fully, knowing that our Creator holds us close in these challenging times:
“Mothering Spirit, nurt’ring one, in arms of patience hold me close,
So that in faith I root and grow until I flow’r, until I know.”
With a Grateful Heart,
Kenton