This Sunday we will continue our theme of LOVE as we read the somewhat difficult words that Jesus gives to his disciples in Luke 6: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you…Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Our Processional hymn will be God is Love, let heaven adore him, written by Timothy Rees in 1922. Rees was born in Cardiganshire, Wales and became an Anglican priest serving in Mountain Ash, Wales and as a Forces Chaplain during WWI, and also became Bishop of Llandaff, Wales where he died in 1939. He wrote several hymn texts with contemporary words. (hymnquest.com)
Our Sequence hymn will be Forgive our sins as we forgive written in 1967 by Rosamond Herklots, who wrote these words after digging weeds in her garden and thinking how bitterness, hatred, and resentment are like poisonous weeds growing in the Christian garden of life. We have many hymns about God’s forgiveness of our sins, but this one adds a most helpful guide in forgiving others. Herklots taught school briefly but from 1930 to 1980 worked as a medical secretary for a London neurologist. She had written poetry since childhood, and after encouragement by members of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland she wrote about a hundred hymns. (Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1988)
St. Martin’s Choir will sing a new anthem by Karen Marrolli, Weave Us in Community. Marrolli is the Director of Music Ministries at Central United Methodist Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition to being a classically-trained composer and conductor, Karen is a prolific singer-songwriter. Called “provocative” and “powerful” by listeners, her songwriting is autobiographical and stems from influences that range from musicians such as Tori Amos and Regina Spektor to acoustic folk sounds of Americana and Irish traditional music. (Karenmarrollimusic.com) This anthem has an Irish folk music style and incorporates the traditional Irish tune St. Patrick. It will be enhanced by Charlotte Elsensohn on the flute. Charlotte is a senior at Parkway Central High School and has shared her talents with us several times over the past few years. Chris Marsh will provide the bodhran hand drumming.
Creator, Christ, and Holy Ghost, come and dwell within our hearts today.
Dispel the idols we love most, and lead us on the servant way.
We tend toward war and bend toward will while you ask us to break the sword and spear.
Now let your song grow louder still. O melody of peace, draw near!
As varied voices blend and ring in harmony, your voice is heard.
So let our actions also sing a song of hearts and souls now stirred.
Now, subject to each other’s needs, each other’s joys, each other’s load,
We follow where the spirit leads, to heal and offer grace bestowed.
When threads of love have come undone, O threefold God of unity,
Sew up our tatters, one by one, and weave us in community, weave us in community.
(2023 Birnamwood Publications, a div of MorningStar Music Publishers, Inc., all rights reserved)
Our Communion hymn also follows our Luke 6 reading: Christ, your words of love confound us by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. Carolyn writes about an event in 2006 when there was a school shooting at an Amish school in Nickel Mines, PA. She later learned that some of the Amish families whose children had been shot had gone to the home of the shooter’s wife and children, offering them gifts of food and forgiveness because offering love and forgiveness in the face of violence was the only way they could live as followers of Jesus. We are often “confounded” by Jesus’ words about love and forgiveness. “We don’t know what to do with them. We believe that Jesus’ words sound good in theory, but we struggle to live them out in practical ways. We wonder if we could have forgiven the shooter and embraced his family so quickly.” This hymn also explains that people in abusive situations should not feel that God wants them to stay there. “There are ways to stand with dignity, to refuse to be victims, and at the same time to seek the good for others. Forgiveness frees the one who has been hurt as well as the one who has done the hurting.” May we do, Lord, unto others as we’d have them also do. You have shown us: Love is action. May we love, and make things new. (from I Sing to My Savior, New hymns from the Stories in the Gospel of Luke by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, 2022 all rights reserved)