On this last Sunday of our “Sustaining Grace” campaign, we will be making our pledges of treasure to our beloved Grace Church. It is also your gifts of time and talent that make our beautiful church the welcoming home that it is! Pastor Valarie’s Sermon will focus on the Means of Grace which God provides us in the Sacraments of our Faith.

Our talented Upendo Choir will bless us with two rousing songs from their tradition at the Anthem and Offertory segments of our Worship. Their titles are “Natamani Sana Kuingia Paradizo” (I Wish to Enter Paradise) and “Nimemuona Asiye Badilika” (I Have Seen the Unchanging One).

The Chancel choir will offer their praise in two unpublished (and unrecorded) works which we will be singing from handwritten manuscripts. The Call to Worship by my mentor Richard DeLong will gather our prayers with an evocative motet written for the choir of Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Cathedral just up Ross Avenue. “Let My Prayer Come Up Into Thy Presence as Incense” sets Psalm 141: 2 in a way that we can almost envision the incense wafting heavenward – sometimes in whisps of smoke and then in a billow of fragrant cloud rising to the throne of grace. Only a few composers have chosen to
set this text over the centuries, and I and my choirs have always found this one to paint the text most exquisitely. The text has been sung to begin Communion at every English Coronation for five centuries, and the best-known setting is by John Blow most likely composed in 1685 for the Coronation of James II.

Our music at Communion is the sixth setting of “Amazing Grace” in our choral library, and is a duet written by Jan McDaniel who currently serves as Musical Director at the Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma. The work was written in 1983 while studying in Berlin, and includes an obligato violin part which includes the famous Amazing Grace tune we know so well, “New Britain”. The work has a theatrical feel to it, starting with ponderous chords in the piano before the violin states McDaniel’s melody the first time. Set for Mezzo-Soprano and Tenor, it will be sung for us by Ellen Kitchler and Jesse Keller, with Diane Dillard on the violin. We are so blessed to have this unpublished score and fine musicians
to bring it to life from an often scribbled page!

My Postlude is the Finale from Igor Stravinsky’s 1911 ballet The Firebird, a powerful good spirit whose feathers supposedly convey beauty and protection upon the earth. After the mythical creature saves the world from evil and rescues heroic Prince Ivan’s bride-to-be, the bells of all the churches ring out in triumphant pealing of bells around the town. I will be playing from Stravinsky’s two-piano version of the orchestral score which he produced for rehearsing with the Ballets Russes.

Today and every day I give thanks for this beautiful Family of Faith that gathers here to Worship each Sunday. Know that my prayers go with you and I pray that our praising puts a song in your heart to help sustain you this week.

With a Thankful Heart,
Kenton