Monthly Archives: November 2016

At 3:00 p.m., sung by the Youth and Adult Choirs.

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Holy Eucharist Rite II at 10:30 a.m. sung by the Adult Choir, sermon by the Rev’d William Eakins.

Worship at Home:

Click here for the Service Bulletin; scroll to read full sermon text.

Due to a technical issue, the recordings of this service are unavailable.

Service Music:

Voluntary    Savior of the nations, come   Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Processional Hymn 640    Watchman, tell us of the night    Aberystwyth

Kyrie Eleison   from Litany of the Saints    adapt. Richard Proulx (1937-2010)

Sequence Hymn 324    Let all mortal flesh keep silence    Picardy

Offertory Anthem    No small wonder   Paul Edwards (b. 1955)
Text: Paul Wigmore (b. 1925)

Small wonder the star, small wonder the light,
The angels in chorus, the shepherds in fright;
But stable and manger for God – no small wonder!

Small wonder the kings, small wonder they bore
The gold and the incense, the myrrh, to adore:
But God gives his life on a cross – no small wonder!

Small wonder the love, small wonder the grace,
The power, the glory, the light of his face;
But all to redeem my poor heart –  no small wonder!

Paul Edwards began his career as a young chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. His text writer, Paul Wigmore, relays the story of No small wonder, which eventually was included in the famous service of Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge: “One November morning in 1983 the young composer, Paul Edwards, gathered up his week’s bundle of laundry and was about to leave for the local launderette when he opened a letter from me. The letter ended with a new poem – a carol for Advent and Christmas, just three short verses. Paul Edwards had already set a number of my lyrics for choir and this was a new one. He slipped it into his pocket. It would be something to read while he waited for the machine to do the washing, he thought. In the launderette he loaded the machine and sat down, read the poem, grabbed a scrap of manuscript paper and began writing. Trying to imagine how any composer could write this profound music while surrounded by the noise of washing machines is practically impossible.” God at work!

Sanctus    from Missa Emmanuel    Richard Proulx

Fraction Anthem    Agnus Dei   from Missa Emmanuel    Richard Proulx

Communion Anthem     The Lamb    John Tavener (1944-2013)
Text: William Blake (1757-1827)

Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.

“The Lamb” is a setting of a poem by William Blake, depicting the innocence of the Christ child, the beautiful creation of God. Part of Blake’s collection “Songs of Innocence” of 1789. Although the original poems were meant to be sung, Blake’s original tunes are lost to the ages. Sir John Tavener set the poem to music, explaining, “ ‘The Lamb’ came to me fully grown and was written in an afternoon and dedicated to my nephew Simon for his 3rd birthday.”

Closing Hymn 72    Hark! the glad sound!    Richmond

Voluntary    Toccata    Scott Lamlein (2010)

Cantor: John Nowacki

Full Sermon Text:

Have you ever been disappointed?  Looked forward eagerly to something happening that never appeared beneath the tree, looked forward to a vacation or some occasion that failed miserably to live up to expectation?  Sometimes, we even get disappointed in God when we look at our lives and look at a world and see so much that is painfully broken.  Where are you, God, we wonder?  Have we trusted in you in vain?

Take, for example, John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading.  He was once so confident about what God was up to.  God’s Promised One was about to break in upon the world to establish justice, separating the good folks from the bad like a farmer separates the wheat from the chaff.  “Repent and prepare the way of the Lord,” had been John’s ringing cry.  Furthermore John had been convinced that his cousin Jesus was the very one God had sent to carry out the divine judgment.  John had even heard a voice from heaven saying of Jesus, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

But now a short time later, John is not so sure he had heard aright.  In the prison cell where John has been locked up after getting himself in trouble with the authorities, John listens anxiously for news about what Jesus, God’s Chosen One, is doing.  And what John hears is not what he had expected.  Where is the promised Day of Judgment?  Where are the thunderbolts of divine intervention, the unquenchable fire of divine punishment?  Jesus isn’t denouncing the tax collectors, harlots, and other sinners; he is sitting down to have supper with them.  What’s going on here?  And so John starts to think: perhaps I was wrong about you, Jesus.  Maybe that voice I heard at your Baptism didn’t come from heaven after all but was merely the whistling of the wind.  So John sends messengers to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come or must we wait for another?”

There’s a very good reason why we need to hear this story of John the Baptist’s bewilderment and discouragement as we head into the Christmas season.  Truth be told, we sometimes are very much like that puzzled, questioning servant of God of long ago.  We too know what it is like to feel disappointed, let down, and depressed even at this very time of the year when we are supposed to be full of Christmas cheer.

Christmas is a season of great expectations.  We know the Christmas angels proclaim peace on earth and good will among men and women.  We would dearly like to experience that peace and good will in our hearts and in our homes.  And we go to great lengths, cooking special foods, trimming trees, putting up wreaths, shopping for just the right presents for everybody on our list – all in hopes of having the best Christmas ever.  But our actual experience often falls short of what we had hoped for.  We get exhausted and irritable, the relatives and family get into squabbles, fuss over what they will eat and not eat; not everybody is grateful for what you have given them.  Then we turn on the news and hear about threatened government shutdowns, angry dissent over the recent election, wars and rumors of ears, political gridlock in Washington, crazy people shooting innocent people in bars.  And we start to wonder if Christmas and the Good News it proclaims is really all it’s cracked up to be.  “Are you the One we expected, Jesus, or should we look for someone else?”

Now when John the Baptist asks his question, the answer Jesus gives is simple.  He tells John to look at what was going on.  There are amazing things happening that John is not noticing: blind people are receiving sight, people who haven’t walked in years are skipping and running, deaf folks are swapping stories, untouchable lepers are hugging their children, and the poor are hearing sermons that make them smile.  It was all straight out of the Book of the prophet Isaiah, the promise of what happens when God’s power is stirred up and comes among us with great might.

In effect Jesus is saying to John:  Think again, my friend.  You don’t understand the big picture of what God is doing.  You, John have focused on a message of repentance, and repentance is necessary because it opens people’s hearts to recognize their need of God’s love and mercy.  And God’s love and mercy is just what I, Jesus, have come to bring.   As God’s Chosen One, I have come to fulfill God’s promises of old: I have come to give sight to the blind, to open deaf ears, to bring the dead to life, and to preach the Good News of God’s love to all who are poor in spirit.  So, John, the word of God is not as you supposed, “Repent, lest you be judged,” but “Repent and receive with joy God’s redeeming work.”  Could it be that we, and not just John the Baptist, need to grow in our understanding of the new order that Jesus Christ ushers in?

There are Christians who seem more ready to sound the note of God’s judgment than to herald the good news of God’s compassion and mercy.  Last month a man in the city of Decatur, Illinois, was refused permission to sing at his grandmother’s funeral because the priest had seen the man’s picture in the newspaper participating in a Gay Pride rally.  A few years ago, the parents in Newtown received letters from avowedly Christian people telling them that the children were shot as God’s punishment for the sins of their parents. Putting such extremists aside, however, we must all learn to appreciate more fully, as the old hymn reminds us, that “there’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea…. For the love of God is broader than the measure of [our] mind and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.”

Why does God allow war and injustice to continue?  Why does God allow innocent people to suffer and evildoers to prosper?  Perhaps it is because God is incredibly more patient with the creation than we can imagine.  Perhaps in divine forbearance, God’s timetable of redemption is slow but nonetheless sure.  And perhaps we would do better to focus more closely on the signs of God’s Kingdom breaking into our world than on the evidence of human sinfulness.

There are signs of God’s Kingdom all around us if we would open our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts.

“Look,” Jesus tells John, “the poor have good news brought to them.”  Well the good news today is that the number of people living in extreme poverty is in steep decline.  So says a recent study published by the World Bank.  In 2013, less than 11% of the global population was living in extreme poverty, a dramatic decrease from 35% only 25 years ago.  Thanks to better education, better health care, improved rural infrastructure, especially roads and electrification, and employment opportunities brought on by the growth of the global economy, billions of the world’s poorest people have been given new life.

“Look,” says Jesus, the dead are raised.  Well, it happened over in Glastonbury just this week.  I read about it in the Hartford Courant.  Pastor Nancy Butler of the Riverfront Family Church, who for the past year has been dying of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, made a decision to go off her feeding tube and breathing vent and let herself die.  She did so trusting that God did not want her to suffer any longer and trusting that in dying, she would in her words, “go home to God.”  Last Wednesday, Nancy Butler passed away peacefully at home.  A note announcing Pastor Butler’s death posted on her church’s Facebook page reads, “We are deeply saddened by her loss but also share her joy in Christ, trusting that she is rejoicing in God’s presence and dancing with the saints.”

“Look,” says Jesus, “the lepers are cleansed.”  Well haven’t we seen this right here in West Hartford?  The Kattoubs, a refugee family from Syria, are in many ways modern-day lepers, exiled from their own country, homeless, and dependent on the charity of others.  And we at St. John’s, along with people from St. James’s Parish have welcomed them to our community and done everything we can to give them a fresh start in life in a new land and culture.  And thanks to the Max Restaurant Group, Mr. Kattoub, a former auto mechanic, now is earning a living making pizza on LaSalle Road.

“Do you hear what I hear?  Do you see what I see?”    These are questions from a Christmas song that, I imagine, we will hear many times in the days ahead.  They might serve to remind us to be alert, attentive, looking for the signs of God’s reign breaking into our world.  The song concludes, “the Child, the Child, sleeping in the night He will bring us goodness and light.”  Yes, there will be times when we will doubt whether that is true.  But as God promised long ago by the prophet Isaiah: “as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth making it bring forth and sprout, so shall my word be … it shall not return empty but it shall accomplish that for which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”  And isn’t that Good News!

Holy Eucharist Rite II at 10:30 a.m. sung by the Youth and Adult Choirs, sermon by the Rev’d Hope Eakins.

Worship at Home:

Click here for the Service Bulletin; scroll to read full sermon text.

Full Service Audio:

Sermon-only Audio:

Service Music:

Voluntary     Two settings of Es ist ein ‘Ros     Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927)

Processional Hymn 56 (st. 1, 2, 6, 7, 8)    O come, O come, Emmanuel    Veni, veni Emmanuel

The origins of “O come, O come, Emmanuel” date to medieval times. In the 800s, a series of Latin hymns were sung, called the “O” Antiphons. Over time, these were restructured, and the first draft of the beloved hymn we know came from Anglican priest John Mason Neale, in 1851. Born to a family of clergy, Neale wanted to become a parish minister, but his poor health prevented this. He instead became the director of Sackville College, a home for elderly men. This proved to be a good match, as Neale was compassionate with a great heart for the needy. A traditionalist, he was outspoken against the change that other hymn writers like Isaac Watts stood for, but today we find Neale and Watts side-by-side in our hymnals. We owe Neale our gratitude for this great hymn, as well as “Good King Wenceslas,” “Good Christian Men, Rejoice,” and “All Glory, Laud, and Honor.”

Kyrie Eleison   from Litany of the Saints    adapt. Richard Proulx (1937-2010)

Sequence Hymn 597    O day of peace that dimly shines    Jerusalem

Offertory Anthem    Jesus Christ the apple tree    Elizabeth Poston (1905-1987)
Words from Divine Hymns of Spiritual Songs, compiled Joshua Smith, 1784

The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree

His beauty doth all things excel
By faith I know but ne’er can tell
His beauty doth all things excel
By faith I know but ne’er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought
And pleasure dearly I have bought
For happiness I long have sought
And pleasure dearly I have bought
I missed of all but now I see
‘Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I’m weary with my former toil
Here I will sit and rest a while
I’m weary with my former toil
Here I will sit and rest a while
Under the shadow I will be
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit does make my soul to thrive
It keeps my dying faith alive
This fruit does make my soul to thrive
It keeps my dying faith alive
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

Sanctus    from Missa Emmanuel    Richard Proulx

Fraction Anthem    Agnus Dei   from Missa Emmanuel    Richard Proulx

Communion Anthem    Lo, how a rose e’er blooming    Michael Praetorius (1571-1621), Hugo Distler (1908-1942)
Words: Hymn 81

Closing Hymn 616    Hail to the Lord’s anointed    Es flog kleins Waldvögelein

Voluntary    Fantasy on Veni, veni Emmanuel     Wilbur Held (1914-2015)

Cantor: Daaé Ransom

Full Sermon Text:

“The wolf shall lie down with the lamb,” says the prophet Isaiah, “and the leopard with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together.”  But this is not reasonable, we say.  We know that if you put a lamb in a wolf’s lair, all we have done is to provide lunch for the wolf.  A little child cannot lead wild animals without being in grave danger and probably soon dead.  And since we are all reasonable people, we interpret Isaiah’s words as unreasonable, as poetry, as a dream outside of reality.

 But the very reason we come to church is to hear the dreams of God, not just to sing wonderful hymns and see our friends.  The very reason we come to church is to hear prophets like Isaiah tell us that things don’t have to be the way they have always been, that God’s dream for us is bigger and better that a dog-eat-dog world.  We come here to see things from God’s point of view, a peculiar way of seeing that is anything but reasonable.

 If we believe that this world is designed for nothing more than the survival of the fittest, then the vision of lions and lambs lying down together is only a foolish imagination.  And yet Isaiah’s words have a certain ring to them; Edward Hicks painted over sixty versions of the Peaceable Kingdom of pacified wolves and child leaders.  So maybe Isaiah is pointing us to something important, to a bigger and better and holier reality than the one we’ve got.

 There shall be an abundance of peace, says the Psalmist, and the mountains shall bring prosperity to the people.  St. Paul tells us that Christ has come to confirm these promises of peace on earth, good will to all.  At the center of Christian belief is the conviction that there is an omnipotent God with whom all things are possible, who really can make wolves lie down with lambs.  And the way we live and the way we will die depend on whether or not we believe this.

 If we don’t believe that there can be peace on earth, if we continue to trust in the power of our guns and bombs more than we trust in the power of God, we will always be at war.  If we don’t believe that God can build the bridges that are too hard for us to build, we will continue our family feuds and vendettas against our neighbors and hostilities toward our boss.   If we don’t believe Jesus promise that sins can be forgiven we will keep our secrets and harbor shame.  If we don’t repent because we fear God’s harsh judgment, we will live with despair and anxiety and never feel the “God of hope filling us with all joy and peace in believing.”

 If we don’t believe in God’s possibilities we will be stuck with our own convictions and live like the two brothers who once owned Manganaro’s grocery store in New York City.  Let me tell you the story.  Their shop had been around for a hundred years or so until Sal and Jimmy dell’Orto had an argument and split the business in two.  Although they worked right next door to each other, they never again spoke to each other nor did their children speak to each other because the feud extended through three generations.  At issue in their battle was which shop had the right to take phone orders for Hero-Boy sandwiches.  Jimmy said “to have a reconciliation, one of the parties has to say ‘I’m sorry,’ and I won’t.  I don’t feel the need to apologize to him for anything and I don’t think he is going to apologize to me.” After years of court battles and petty retaliations, both shops closed.  Over a hundred years of family business died with him because a wolf couldn’t lie down with a lamb, because one dell’Orto couldn’t lie down with another.

But in Isaiah’s words, when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea,” then hope and justice and peace can flourish.  I have seen it happen.  I have seen a husband hurt a wife in a way that left her demeaned and embarrassed and so angry that she could barely stop shouting.  She wanted him to grovel and he was so afraid to admit his wrongdoings he couldn’t speak.  He wanted her to forgive him, and she was afraid that forgiveness would diminish the issue so that he would feel free to do it again.  Realistically, there was no hope.  But they were people of faith, these folks.  They remembered their wedding vows and prayed that God would rescue them.  And they waited in their shame and anger until the Spirit of the Lord, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, came upon them, and they began the long task of rebuilding trust and making love – and now, at least one wolf and lamb are lying down together.

I have known it to happen.  I have seen a man who embezzled from his business and got away with it.  He thought he was clever and he was.  He also had no self-respect because he knew he was a sinner.  He wasn’t caught by the law, but he was caught by his guilt. It took quite a while for him to figure out what he needed to do.  He started by making his confession to a priest and then realized that he had to give the money back and admit his wrongdoing.  And he did.  His partners didn’t condemn him and they commended his honesty and let him keep his job, and he now knows that “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea.” 

You have seen it happen in this world too.  In our country, slavery and civil war threatened to divide us and oppress us all, but we found a way to live as one people committed to liberty and justice for all.   In Germany, the Berlin Wall finally fell after thirty years of division and separation.

God sent Jesus to show us that dreams like these can be more than dreams, that we need not give up and live in tired resignation, that we are not limited to what WE can imagine because God’s dream for us is more than we can ask or imagine.  John the Baptist shouted it in the wilderness, proclaiming that if we turn and say we are sorry and admit that we are wrong, we will see the Kingdom of heaven staring us in the face.  Paul wrote it to the Romans, that we CAN live together in harmony, that walls can tumble down, that Gentiles and Jews and Christians and Muslims and Afghans and Americans can live together in love.

When I was ordained many years ago on a cold day in December, the Bishop gave me a charge.  He said, “Live up to your name, Hope, and be an Advent priest so that Christmas may come to pass in unlikely lives and unlikely seasons and unlikely places.”

If we open our hearts to God’s love and dream big, it just may be so.

Holy Eucharist Rite II at 10:30 a.m. sung by the Adult Choir, sermon by the Rev’d Susan Pinkerton.

Worship at Home:

Click here for the Service Bulletin; scroll to read full sermon text.

Full Service Audio:

Sermon-only Audio:

Service Music:

Voluntary    Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme    Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Processional Hymn 57    Lo! He comes, with clouds descending    Helmsley

Kyrie Eleison   from Litany of the Saints    adapt. Richard Proulx (1937-2010)

Sequence Hymn 61   “Sleepers, wake!” A voice astounds us    Wachet auf

Offertory Anthem    Let all mortal flesh keep silence    Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Text: Liturgy of St. James, found at Hymn 324

Gustav Holst is best known for his 1919 orchestral suite The Planets. But church musicians know that Holst wrote a large body of very effective music for choirs. He grew up idolizing Wagner, and in 1895 while a student at the Royal College of Music met Ralph Vaughan Williams where the two became good friends. His choral works are supremely crafted miniature masterworks with a profound sense of harmony and finely planned dramaticism. (Notes courtesy John W. Ehrlich)

Sanctus    from Missa Emmanuel    Richard Proulx

Fraction Anthem    Agnus Dei   from Missa Emmanuel    Richard Proulx

Communion Anthem    The blessed son of God     Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Text: Miles Coverdale, after Martin Luther

The blessed Son of God only in a crib full poor did lie;
With our poor flesh and our poor blood was clothed that everlasting good. Kyrie eleison.

The Lord Christ Jesu, God’s son dear, was a guest and a stranger here;
Us for to bring from misery, that we might live eternally. Kyrie eleison.

All this did he for us freely, for to declare his great mercy;
All Christendom be merry therefore, and give him thanks for evermore. Kyrie eleison.

The Communion Anthem is an a capella choral hymn from Vaughan Williams’ Oratorio, Hodie. Late in life, the composer had always wanted to write a large-scale Christmas work, and here he fused the religious spirit of the festival with British overtones, with associations to English countryside carols. Vaughan Williams used no specific folk tunes in this work, but by this point in his career he had so synthesized their character that his folk tune-like themes sound fully authentic.

Closing Hymn 68    Rejoice! rejoice, believers    Llangloffan

Voluntary    Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme    Paul Manz, 1987

Full Sermon Text:

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