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

Worship at Home:

Click here: Service Bulletin – Sermon Text

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Service Music:

Voluntary    Passacaglia in d minor, BuxWV 161     Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

Processional Hymn 608    Eternal Father, strong to save    Melita

Choral Anthem     Greater love hath no man      John Ireland (1879-1962)
Words: Song of Solomon 8:7,6; John 15:13; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 Corinthians 6:11; 1 Peter 2:9; Romans 12:1
Claudia Ayer and John Nowacki, soloists

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. Love is strong as death. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness. Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus; Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

This work was commissioned in 1912 for Charles Macpherson, the sub-organist of St Paul’s Cathedral. Intended as a meditation for Passiontide, Greater love hath no man drew its text from a compilation of scriptural passages in Daily Light on the Daily Path, a series of booklets containing Bible readings which Ireland used to observe on a regular basis. The anthem rapidly gained currency in cathedrals and church choirs and, with the outbreak of war in 1914, its text gained a special resonance as the casualties from the front mounted. Indeed, with Alice Meynell’s poem Summer in England, 1914, which contrasted the slaughter of Flanders’ fields with the tranquil scenes of England, and the subject of sacrifice emanating from pulpits throughout the land, Ireland discovered that his anthem inadvertently resonated with a wider national mood.

Sequence Hymn 705    As those of old their first fruits brought    Forest Green

Offertory Hymn    Great is thy faithfulness    Faithfulness