January 9, 2025
Baptism of the Lord
This Sunday we will celebrate Christ’s baptism and have the opportunity to renew our own baptism as well. The day marks the official end of the Christmas Liturgical Season, so our music will include tunes associated most with Christmas, and three of the tunes originated in the American South.
Our Choral Prelude will be the African American Spiritual “Wade in the Water” with its lively rhythms and gospel swing. The melody originated in the 19th century and was passed down orally among enslaved people in America, so there are many variants to the tune. The song is believed to have been used as a secret code to signal to escaping slaves to flee to water so that dogs and slave-catchers couldn't track them. This life-saving message was disguised under the language of the River Jordan and the Pool of Siloam where the first one to enter the waters when “troubled” would be healed. Christ’s healing of the blind man in John 9 is the best-known Siloam reference for most of us. Wade in the Water’s lyrics were first published in 1901 in New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers by Frederick J. Work and his brother, John Wesley Work Jr. – I love the Wesleyan reference made by their parents!
Our opening hymn sets one of my most treasured texts, “How Firm a Foundation.” The tune we will sing is from the Southern Harmony collection of 1835, and the anonymous 1787 text has been a source of strength to me since memorizing the verses as a child.
The choir’s “Hymn Anthem” is the second most famous ‘Appalachian’ song after “Simple Gifts” – “I Wonder as I Wander” as collected by John Jacob Niles. This meandering tune ponders the miracle of the incarnation with a view to Christ’s impending crucifixion, all to save stubborn-hearted humanity that is “ornery” and unaware of the magnitude of the Holy One’s sacrifice for our salvation.
The tune was written by American folklorist and singer John Jacob Niles and has its origins in a song fragment collected by Niles on July 16, 1933. While in the town of Murphy in Appalachian North Carolina, Niles attended a fundraising meeting held by evangelicals who had been ordered out of town by the police. In his unpublished autobiography, he wrote of hearing the song: “A girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins. ... But, best of all, she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of a song.”
The girl, named Annie Morgan, repeated the fragment seven times in exchange for a quarter per performance, and Niles left with "three lines of verse, a garbled fragment of melodic material—and a magnificent idea". (In various accounts of this story, Niles hears between one and three lines of the song.) Based on this fragment, Niles composed the version of "I Wonder as I Wander" that is known today, extending the melody to four lines and the lyrics to three stanzas. His composition was completed on October 4, 1933.
As we journey with our Savior from the Jordan River into ministry and on to Calvary during the next few months of our liturgical year, may our hearts be open to the leading of the Spirit as our lives bear witness to that Christ who dwells within us.
With a thankful heart,
Kenton