This Sunday we will observe The Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple which is always observed on February 2. This only occurs on a Sunday every five years or so! In our Gospel reading in Luke 2, we will read about Mary and Joseph bringing baby Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord in the temple because he was a first-born male child.
Our Processional hymn will be In his temple now behold him, written by Henry J Pye in 1853. Pye studied at Cambridge and became a priest in 1850. The hymn was written for this Holy day and is in the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Church Hymns. (John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology 1907) We will sing the hymn to the tune Regent Square that is usually associated with Angels from the realms of glory. This version of the hymn comes from the Evangelical Lutheran Worship in America hymnal. (2006 Augsburg Fortress)
St Martin’s Choir will sing a light-hearted arrangement of the traditional spiritual, This little light of mine. It was arranged by George Mabry in 2010 for St James Music Press. Dr. Mabry is the director of the Nashville Symphony Chorus since 1998 and is professor of music emeritus at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn. He has conducted All-State and Honor choirs in Kentucky and Virginia and is an accomplished composer and arranger. This is a “gospel” style arrangement with choir members declaring how they will spend all seven days of the week!
On Monday, he gave me the gift of love, On Tuesday peace come from above.
On Wednesday, told me to have more faith; On Thursday, gave me a bit more grace.
On Friday, told me to watch and pray; On Saturday, told me what to say.
On Sunday, gave me power divine, Just to let my little light shine.
(2010 St James Music Press License #11394)
Our Communion hymn will be a new one, Love astounding, written in 1999 by Jeannette Lindholm. Many of the extraordinary aspects of God’s love are captured in this short hymn, sung to the early American tune Holy Manna. Dr. Lindholm is a professor of English and Coordinator of the Writing Center at Salem State University in Salem, MA. While completing her master of theological studies at Boston University School of Theology, she studied hymn writing with the Rev. Dr. Carl P Daw, Jr. Her hymns have been published in several hymnals. She is a member of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Rockport, MA where she sings in the choir. (Marilyn Haskel & Lisa Neufeld Thomas, Voices Found hymnal supplement, 2004 Church Publishing)
Our final hymn also centers on LOVE, Charles Wesley’s Love divine, all loves excelling. This hymn is considered by many to be one of Wesley’s finest texts, and is one of his most popular hymns. It is believed that his first line was inspired by a line from a John Dryden poem used in Henry Purcell’s opera King Arthur, which begins, “Fairest Isle, all Isles excelling, Seat of Pleasures and of Loves.” On April 29, 2011, millions of people around the world turned on their televisions to watch one of the most anticipated spectacles of the year: the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The ceremony featured a number of hymns, one of which was “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” a hymn that is both appropriate and seemingly paradoxical for a wedding. This ceremony was so celebrated because it represented the “dream” for romance - a prince finding his princess, true loves coming together, and a couple rising above the odds to be together. This, we argue so easily, is love. And yet this hymn reorients us to see that this beautiful wedding and marriage is only, and can only ever be, a reflection of the Love above all loves. We are only able to love one another because Christ first loved us. The hymn is a prayer: through the incarnated Christ, we pray for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and ask that we would never be separated from the love of God in Christ, who works in us and through us until our time on earth is done. God is love, and we are the mirrors and bearers of that love to each other. (Hymnary.org)