Holy Eucharist Rite II at 10:30 a.m. sung by the St. John’s Youth & Adult Choirs, sermon by the Rev’d Susan Pinkerton.

Worship at Home:

Click here: Service Bulletin – Sermon Text

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Service Music:

Voluntary    Now pray we to the Holy Spirit    Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

Processional Hymn 608    Eternal Father, strong to save    Melita

Gloria in excelsis S278     William Mathias (1934-1992)

Sequence Hymn 707    Take my life and let it be consecrated    Hollingsdale

Offertory Anthem    Hark I hear the harps eternal    Alice Parker (b. 1925)

Hark I hear the harps eternal ringing on the farther shore,
as I near those swollen rivers with their deep and solemn roar.
Halelujah, halelujah, halelujah praise the Lamb,
Halelujah, halelujah, glory to the great I am.

And my soul though stained with sorrow, fading as the light of day,
passes swiftly o’er those waters to the city far away.
Halelujah, halelujah, halelujah praise the Lamb,
Halelujah, halelujah, glory to the great I am.

Souls have crossed before me saintly to that land of perfect rest,
and I hear them singing faintly in the mansions of the blest.
Halelujah, halelujah, halelujah praise the Lamb,
Halelujah, halelujah, glory to the great I am.

Alice Parker is a national treasure: America’s reigning queen of choral music. – American Record Guide
My twenty-years’ experience with Robert Shaw, an immersion in folk music of many kinds, has had a profound effect on my own understanding of song. I learned to see each tune as a small universe, setting up its own rules of pitch and rhythm, mood and dance. If I understand that universe, and work within it for my setting, the result is an organic whole that allows the original melody to flourish. – Alice Parker

Sanctus S128    William Mathias

Fraction Anthem S166  Agnus Dei     Gerald Near (b. 1942)

Communion Anthem     Treasures in Heaven    Joseph W. Clokey (1890-1960)
Text: Matthew 6:19-21, 7:7-8

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Hymn in Procession    Lord, you give the great commission    Abbott’s Leigh

Voluntary     Fugue from Toccata in D minor     Dieterich Buxtehude

Buxtehude’s Toccatas are very different from the French Toccatas, made famous by Widor. Written in a free style in many tiny sections, each passing phrase brings on higher and more intense emotion. Presented today is the final fugue from one of these great works. Buxtehude was one of Bach’s mentors, and, after traveling to North Germany to study with him, Bach was nearly fired from his own church position for playing music that was too “out there.”