The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

15 January 2012

9:00
Holy Eucharist, Rite II
Good Shepherd Choir

11:30
Holy Eucharist, Rite I
Chamber Choir

1Sm 3.1–10
1Co 6.12–20
Jn 1.43–51

Voluntary
Voluntary I in D
John Bennett

Introit hymn 7
w
‘Christ, whose glory fills the skies’
 Charles Wesley
m
‘Ratisbon’
 mel. Geystliche gesangk Buchleyn, 1524
 adapt. William Henry Havergal

Psalm 139.1–2, 12–15
R
Lord, you have searched me out and known me.
Tone III

Sequence hymn 706
w
‘In your mercy, Lord, you called me’
 Josiah Conder, alt. Charles P. Price
m
‘Halton Holgate’
 William Boyce

Offertory anthem
w
‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts’
 Anthem at the Committal  (Burial Office)
m
Henry Purcell

Communion anthem
w
‘What wondrous love is this’
 American folk hymn, ca. 1835
m
 The Southern Harmony, 1835
 arr. Paul J. Christiansen

Communion hymns 232, 314
w
‘By all your saints still striving’
 Horatio Bolton Nelson, ver. Hymnal 1982
m
‘Nyland’
 Finnish folk melody
 adapt. & harm. David Evans
¶ Wednesday is the Feast of the
    Confession of St Peter

w
‘Humbly I adore thee, Verity unseen’
[Adoro te devote]
 attr. Thomas Aquinas
 tr. Hymnal 1940/1982
m
‘Adoro devote’
 French church melody, Processionale, 1697

Postcommunion hymn 535
w
‘Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim’
Charles Wesley
m
‘Paderborn’
 mel. Catolisch-Paderbornisches Gesang-buch, 1765
 harm. Sydney Hugo Nicholson

Today’s Gospel brings a wonderful question I often like to paraphrase when I approach someone. Of course the line, ‘Behold an Israelite in whom there is no guile’, falls flat if the person approaching doesn’t know anything about the New Testament. However, it strikes me that Jesus’s comment is full of humor rather than piety, and it’s a good comment to throw at a friend or colleague. After all, who is there who never employs deceit or cunning? Jesus surely knows this and is having a little fun with Nathanel. And Jesus knows us too, just as our Psalm (139) and our Offertory anthem will point out.

How does he know this about us? Epiphany leads us into the season when we remember that Jesus is the King the Magi worship, the one whom John bows low to baptize, and the one who makes his followers into fishers of men. He is Nathanael’s Lord, and our Lord, and we are honored and blessed to be called by him.

The Introit hymn, ‘Christ, whose glory fills the skies’, introduces us to the newborn Jesus who is to be heralded as the ‘Son of God, the King of Israel,’ to use Nathanael’s words. Charles Wesley (1707–1788) penned the words, and the text has often been used for services dealing with light, either in the morning, in Advent, or in Epiphany. The composer of the tune is unknown, but it has been traced back in German hymnals as early as 1539.

The Sequence hymn, ‘In your mercy, Lord, you called me’, remembers again the calling of Nathanael, as well as our own. It was written by Josiah Conder (1789–1855), a publisher born in London into the dissenting and non-conformist tradition. Blinded in one eye through smallpox, he nevertheless wrote a great many poems and hymns, some of which are considered to be among the best in the early nineteenth century. The tune, ‘Halton Holgate’, was composed by William Boyce around 1761. Boyce served as a chorister at St Paul’s, London, and as organist at various churches. He published the three-volume Cathedral Music which documented English church musics from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. His increasing deafness made his music-making difficult and he was ultimately asked to resign as church organist.

The Postcommunion hymn, ‘Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim’, is another of Charles Wesley’s praise hymns. Written in 1774, it was a time of political and religious persecution. Oddly, the Church of England thought that the Methodist societies were plotted by the Roman Catholic Church and they forcibly repressed them. To rally the Methodists, Wesley wrote this seventeen-stanza hymn as a kind of battle cry. Most of the militaristic stanzas are usually dropped, and we retain that portion which celebrates the Christ who reigns over all. ‘Paderborn’ is a German folk melody found in the Paderborn Gesangbuch of 1765. It may originally have been sung with a rather bouncy rhythm, but today it supports Wesley’s words in a stately manner.

David Zersen