Worship

Mighty Moo is away for the "HoliHAY weekend" and left you with his favorite song to enjoy!

Dear members of God’s family at Resurrection Church,

This Sunday, we continue to read Matthew’s instructions for the church. Today we hear about the importance of reconciliation, mutual forgiveness and love. Even more, we hear the promise of the risen Christ to be with us. If you are able, join the congregation by your own prayer at home at 10am on Sunday..

Worship Service

A pre-recorded worship service, complete with readings, Pastor Linman's sermon, prayers, and music will broadcast at 10am on Sunday, September 6, on our YouTube channel and will be available below:

Worship material for September 6, 2020

The following have been posted to YouTube; here is the YouTube Playlist for September 6, 2020:

Music Notes

Hymn of the Day: “Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether,” #470
Text: Percy Dearmer (1867–1936)
Tune: Union Seminary, Harold Friedell (1905-1958)

Harold Friedell (1905-1958) was an American organist, choirmaster, teacher, and composer. At an early age, he served as organist at First Methodist Episcopal Church (Jamaica, Queens) and studied organ with Clement Gale and David McK. Williams. He later served as organist at Calvary Church (New York), organist and choirmaster at Saint John’s Church (Jersey City, N.J.), organist and choirmaster at Calvary Church (New York), and finally organist and master of the choir at Saint Bartholomew’s Church (New York). Friedell also taught on the faculty of the Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music (New York).

Percy Dearmer (1867–1936) was an English priest and liturgist best known as the author of The Parson's Handbook, a liturgical manual for Anglican clergy, and as editor of The English Hymnal. Dearmer, with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw, is credited with the revival and spread of traditional and medieval English musical forms. His ideas on patterns of worship have been linked to the Arts and Crafts Movement, while Dearmer and Vaughan Williams' English Hymnal reflects the influence both of artistic and folkloric scholarship and Christian Socialism. Dearmer ended his life as Canon of Westminster Abbey, from where he ran a canteen for the unemployed.

Named for the School of Sacred Music at Union Seminary in New York City, UNION SEMINARY is a gently robust congregational tune illustrating Romantic tendencies that managed to continue in the twentieth century. It began in an anthem by Harold Friedell, who wrote it in 1957 for Percy Dearmer’s text. It was extracted as a hymn tune and published like that in 1970.

Dearmer’s text is a celebration of Christ’s presence among those who are tethered by the Spirit at the Lord’s table and who pray that as disciples they may make their meals and living “as sacraments” by caring, helping, and giving.”

Musical Reflection: “Union Seminary,” James Biery (1956)

James Biery is an American organist, composer and conductor who is Minister of Music at Grosse Pointe Memorial Church (Presbyterian) in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, where he directs the choirs, plays the 66-rank Klais organ and oversees the music program of the church. Prior to this appointment Biery was music director for Cathedrals in St. Paul, Minnesota and Hartford, Connecticut.

Biery’s setting of UNION SEMINARY is in 3 parts, or ABA. The A sections are based on a melody that he constructed from the hymn tune. He has changed the rhythm sligfhtly, and has built the melody on the inverted form of the original tune.

The middle section, combining the tune in its original key and rhythm with the tune a fifth below and a half-note apart, creates a delightfully off-center canon. Enjoy!

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Dear members of God’s family at Resurrection Church,

If we are faithful, the church is to follow Christ in the life-giving way of the cross. Paul helps us see today that this way includes rejoicing and weeping with those who rejoice and weep and therefore together persevering in prayer for them. If you are able, join the congregation of Resurrection church at 10 AM this Sunday to lis- ten to the word of God and to include such joy and sorrow in our common prayer.

Worship Service

A pre-recorded worship service, complete with readings, Pastor Linman's sermon, prayers, and music will broadcast at 10am on Sunday, August 30, on our YouTube channel and will be available below:

Worship material for August 30, 2020

The following have been posted to YouTube; here is the YouTube Playlist for August 30, 2020:

Music Notes

Hymn of the Day: “Take Up Your Cross, The Savior Said” #667
Text: Charles W. Everest (1814-1877)
Tune: BOURBON, Freeman Lewis (1780-1859)

Charles W. Everest was an Eposcopal priest. He published this hymn text when he was 19 years old in his Visions of Death, and Other Poems in 1833. The original text of this hymn differs very materially from that which we usually find in the hymn-books. The most widely known form of the text is that in Hymns Ancient & Modern, where it appeared in 1861. It was copied by the Compilers from another collection, but the originator of the alteration is unknown. The nearest approach to the original is in Horder's Congregational Hymn Book, 1884. Original text in Biggs's English Hymnology, 1873.

Included in Columbian Harmony (1825), BOURBON was credited there to Freeman Lewis and set to "Twas on that Dark and Doleful Night," a text often attributed to Isaac Watts. The tune appeared in several other nineteenth-century songbooks, among them Hauser's Hesperian Harp (1848). The tune title presumably refers to the aristocratic French family whose descendants included Henry IV, Phillip V, and Charles III, and after which a Kentucky county is named. It is also interesting to note that this county is more popularly known for its association with a particlar type of corn whiskey.

Musical Meditation: “St. Brendan’s” by David Schelat

David Schelat is Minister of Music at First & Central Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware. He has performed as organist, conductor, or composer for five regional conventions of the AGO, as well as for conferences of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, and National Association of Pastoral Musicians.

Peter Scholtes (1938–2009) wrote the hymn text "They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love" and the hymn tune “St. Brendan’s” while he was a parish priest at St. Brendan's on the South Side of Chicago in the 1960s. The idea for the hymn was born when he was leading a youth choir and was looking for an appropriate song for a series of ecumenical, interracial events. When he couldn't find such a song, he wrote the now-famous hymn in a single day. His experiences at St. Brendan's, and in the Chicago Civil Rights movement, influenced him for the rest of his life.

Dear members of God’s family at Resurrection Church,

For the next four Sundays we read from the Gospel according Matthew about the church, about its foundation and its way of life. Though it may be hard for us to see during this pandemic, we are indeed the church, founded on the mercy of God in Christ, rightly waiting until we can visibly gather again as a body. This Sunday, if you can, join the gathering in your heart, by reading and praying together at 10 am.

Worship Service

A pre-recorded worship service, complete with readings, Pastor Linman's sermon, prayers, and music will broadcast at 10am on Sunday, August 23, on our YouTube channel and will be available below:

Worship material for August 23, 2020

The following have been posted to YouTube; here is the YouTube Playlist for August 23, 2020:

Music Notes

Hymn of the Day: “Built on a Rock” #652
Text: Nicolai F. S. Grundtvig, 1783-1872; tr. Carl Doving, 1867-1937, adapt
Tune: KIRIEN DEN ER ET GAMMELT HUS, Ludvig M. Lindeman, 1812-1887

Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig most often referred to as N. F. S. Grundtvig, was a Danish pastor, author, poet, philosopher, historian, teacher and politician. He was one of the most influential people in Danish history, as his philosophy gave rise to a new form of nationalism in the last half of the 19th century. It was steeped in the national literature and supported by deep spirituality. The hymn text “Built on a Rock” is well known throughout Scandinavia and beyond and is sometimes viewed as second only to Luther’s “A mighty Fortress.” Carl Doving translated it into English in 1913.

Ludvig M. Lindeman was a Norwegian composer and organist. He is perhaps best known for his arrangements of Norwegian folk tales; over the course of his life he collected over 3000 folk melodies and tunes. Composed for this text, KIRKEN is among the first tunes he wrote. A bar form (AAB) tune in the Dorian mode, it is a suitably rugged, folk-like tune for this text. What it may lack rhythmically, it makes up harmonically. It is a compelling and sturdy tune “built on a rock”.

Musical Meditation: “Adagio” from Sonata #2 in C Minor by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor. As a composer he was one of the most influential of the German Romantic period. As an organist, Mendelssohn was well known and respected for his diversified organ improvisations with seemingly endless varieties of new ideas, and this added new dimensions to what one normally heard played on the organ at the time. As one might expect, these qualities are evident in the organ sonatas, which were commissioned in1844 as a set of voluntaries, or preludes, and published in 1845. In fact, all of the music in these Sonatas was composed between August,1844, and January,1845, so it is not surprising to find certain general characteristics appearing, almost like a recurring theme, throughout all six sonatas, which unifies the whole collection

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Dear members of God’s family at Resurrection Church,

The texts this Sunday are about God welcoming all people, from every nation and every race, to mercy, healing, and hope. “Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you,” echoes the Psalm. If you are able, join the congregation — our part of all the peoples! — in hearing about and praising God’s mercy this Sunday, August 16, at 10 am.

Worship Service

A pre-recorded worship service, complete with readings, Pastor Linman's sermon, prayers, and music will broadcast at 10am on Sunday, August 16, on our YouTube channel and will be available below:

Worship material for August 16, 2020

The following have been posted to YouTube; here is the YouTube Playlist for August 16, 2020:

Music Notes

Hymn of the Day: “Day By Day” #790
Text: Carolina Sandell Berg (1832-1903), tr. Robert Leaf (1936-2005)
Tune: BLOTT EN DAG, Oskar Ahnfelt (1813-1882)

Oscar Ahnfelt was a Swedish singer and composer. He wrote the music for many of Lina Sandell’s hymns. A pietist, he raised some concern in the State-church, but his music was apparently so popular, King Karl XV gave him permission to play and sing in both of his kingdoms. Ahnfelt’s music has spread throughout the world; two of his best-known songs are “Children of the Heavenly Father” and “Day by Day.” Caroline W. Sandell Berg is better known as Lina Sandell, the "Fanny Crosby of Sweden.” "Lina" Wilhelmina Sandell Berg was the daughter of a Lutheran pastor to whom she was very close; she wrote hymns partly to cope with the fact that she witnessed his tragic death by drowning. A number of her 650 hymns gained popularity particularly because of the musical settings written by gospel singer Oskar Ahnfelt. Jenny Lind, the famous Swedish soprano, underwrote the cost of publishing a collection of Ahnfelt's music, Andeliga Sänger (1850), which consisted mainly of Berg's hymn texts.

Musical Meditation “Morecambe,” Pamela Decker

Frederick Atkinson (1841-1897) wrote the Victorian tune MORECAMBE, named after a town in England’s Midland district. The composer’s intent was to provide a musical setting for Henry Francis Lyte’s famous hymn, “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide”. Indeed the rhythm is identical between EVENTIDE, the tune associated with “Abide with me,” and MORECAMBE. There is, however, no doubt that MORECAMBE is well suited to the text “Spirit of God.” In the first stanza, a descending melody accompanies the words, “descend upon my heart.” Likewise an ascending melody in the third line allows the words “mighty as thou art” to blossom. This rising figure works amazingly well with the text of each stanza. The final three notes of the melody, all on the same pitch, do not end on the customary tonic, home tone or first degree of the scale, but on the third degree. By concluding the melody on the third degree of the scale, there is a floating quality to the ending of each stanza, reminiscent of the hovering of the descending Dove, one of the metaphors of the Spirit.

Pamela Decker is Professor of Organ/Music Theory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona and she also serves as organist at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Tucson. She has won prizes in national and international competitions for organ and composition.

Ms. Angie has a new Children's Message! Click below to view:

Dear members of God’s family at Resurrection Church,

The readings today narrate “theophanies,” manifestations of the presence and word of God in the midst of human need. If you are able, join the congregation from your home in reading, singing and praying around the presence of Christ amid our world’s need on Sunday, August 9, at 10am.

Worship Service

A pre-recorded worship service, complete with readings, Pastor Linman's sermon, prayers, and music will broadcast at 10am on Sunday, August 9, on our YouTube channel and will be available below:

Worship material for August 9, 2020

The following have been posted to YouTube; here is the YouTube Playlist for August 9, 2020:

Music Notes

Hymn of the Day “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” #756
Text: William Whiting (1825-1878) Tune: MELITA, John B. Dykes (1823-1876)

William Whiting wrote the text of this hymn for one of his students who was about to sail to America. It was revised and included in the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861) “for those at sea”. This hymn, always paired with the tune MELITA which was written and published with it, has found wide usage as the sailor’s hymn and has been allied to the state almost as much as to the church.

MELITA is the ancient name for the island now known as Malta, where Paul was shipwrecked and found safety.

Musical Meditation: Cantilène, Gabriel Pierné (1863-1937)

Gabriel Pierné has been called the most complete French musician of the late Romantic/early twentieth century era. Pierné’s compositional style can be described as very traditional and classical in form while possessing a modern spirit. He was able to eloquently balance his own personal language with the elements of both discipline and instinct. Evidence of his studies with both Massenet and Franck are very apparent. From Massenet he acquired a sense of melody and lightness, while from Franck he developed a sense of structure and consciousness of art, and an inspiration for religious music. Though much of his music is overshadowed by other French composers from his day, it is because his time was devoted primarily to conducting.

Cantilène is the second of Trois Pieces, Op. 29.

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