there’s a wideness in God’s mercy

The past few weeks the singers in the Park Avenue Youth Chorale have been working on a fantastic setting of There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy by the late Calvin Hampton.  If you are looking for a well-written, singable piece for young voices that both challenges and inspires, I highly recommend it.  It’s also an easy read for adult choirs.

The text Hampton uses is a combination of various couplets from a larger poem, Souls of Men, Why Will Ye Scatter, by Frederick William Faber.  The text is a bit dated in some respects, but there is a freshness to many of the lines, which don’t sound as if they were penned in 1862.  It has been a joy to share this piece with the choir and I only hope that these powerful words shape their understanding of God’s love and grace in their lives.

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea;
there’s a kindness in his justice,
which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth’s sorrows
are more felt than up in heaven;
there is no place where earth’s failings
have such kindly judgment given.

For the love of God is broader
than the measure of man’s mind.
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more simple,
we should take him at his word:
and our lives would be all sunshine
in the sweetness of our Lord.

Souls of men! why will ye scatter
Like a crowd of frightened sheep?
Foolish hearts! why will ye wander
From a love so true and deep?
There is welcome for the sinner,
And more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Savior;
There is healing in His blood.

all my work be praise

Park Avenue Christian is blessed to have Alice Parker and singers from Melodious Accord recording sacred choral music in our sanctuary this week.  It is such a gift to have your work day full of beautiful melodies, and Alice’s settings of hymns and spirituals are always so thoughtful and well-written, with great attentiveness to the color and character of the text.

The piece that is running through my head this morning is an elegant versification of Psalm 23, “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need,” from her Eight Appalachian Mountain Hymns.   I am busy, busy, busy these next two weeks, especially with many details before I head to Italy in early June, where I will be participating in a workshop of a new piece based on paintings of Mary, Jesus’ mother (more about that soon.)  While listening to this hymn (especially the last stanza), I was reminded that I can see all of these things to do as work or I can see them as an occasion to praise.  Even in the minute and sometimes infuriating details, I can thank the God who has given the gift of life and who sustains and tends to me always and everywhere.

And as work emerges out of a spirit of praise and thanksgiving it can and will reorient and redefine my priorities, values, and time frame. So that, even in the midst of many important and time-consuming tasks, I will find the rest and security of a beloved child of God.  Then the work can flow because my being is focused on faithfulness to God rather than overwhelmed by the tasks at hand, or bound up by perfectionism or fear of failure.  I will know what and how to do because I have taken to time to be.

My Shepherd will supply my need:
Jehovah is His Name;
In pastures fresh He makes me feed,
Beside the living stream.
He brings my wandering spirit back
When I forsake His ways,
And leads me, for His mercy’s sake,
In paths of truth and grace.

When I walk through the shades of death
Thy presence is my stay;
One word of Thy supporting breath
Drives all my fears away.
Thy hand, in sight of all my foes,
Doth still my table spread;
My cup with blessings overflows,
Thine oil anoints my head.

The sure provisions of my God
Attend me all my days;
O may Thy house be my abode,
And all my work be praise.
There would I find a settled rest,
While others go and come;
No more a stranger, nor a guest,
But like a child at home.
-Issac Watts

and mary said, “take my hand”

I am sure I have said it before in this blog, but Advent is such a powerful season of the church year for me.  There is that constant blurring of darkness and light; the mingling of grief and loss with hope; visions of the world as it is now (broken and bruised) are contrasted with visions of the cosmos as it is to be when Christ comes again (whole and healed).  This season honors the messiness and complexity of my life and calls me deeper in the wonder and mystery of God.

For the past two weeks, sermons at Park Avenue Christian Church have been focused on Mary, especially her response to God’s call.  This week Pastor Jackson used her as a model for how we worship.  I’ll let you listen for yourself but, in short, I heard that worship is fundamentally about a response to God.  It is saying, “Amen – so be it” – agreeing that God is good; declaring that God is trustworthy and loving; allowing God to surprise and delight us; letting God reshape our priorities and values.  But worship is also a living, extravagant “Alleluia!” - not simply the verbal assent that we offer corporately each week but, as Mary shows us, a decision to embody what we believe through our lives and actions.  Worship is active and engaged, it is never passive.  It is a “yes” that has legs.

But worship and life are not always easy and I have especially been thinking about how Mary’s “yes” did not guarantee her a future of eternal happiness and bliss, as some Christian traditions seem to play up.  Contained in the yes was future pain and grief mingled with amazing joy.  She holds in her being the ecstatic outpouring of the Magnificat, “My soul magnifies the Lord…” but also the bitter tears shed at the foot of the cross.

Mary must have had some hunch, deep in her being, that God was trustworthy.  And I wonder if that understanding was formed through corporate worship.  She would have heard the history of God’s work in and through her people; she would have memorized and sung the Psalms that speak of God’s steadfast love.  Maybe she knew and loved the stunning words that emerge from the bleakest part of Lamentations: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”   I don’t think she said yes ignorantly or meekly but I want to believe that she knew that she was opening herself to the possibility of both great joy and pain, to the fullest expression of what it is to be human.  Or even if she didn’t know what the future held, she trusted that God would walk through it with her.

—

We had a guest singer join us in worship this week, an African-American woman with a powerful, soulful voice.  We have been working together over the past few weeks on Compagnia Colombari’s production of Strangers and Other Angels.  From the first moment I heard her sing, I knew that I needed to invite her to share her gifts at church.  Her voice is not polished as someone who is classically trained but there is a depth, a ferocity and power in her singing that I have rarely heard.  She happily accepted the invitation and we were planning to reprise a version of “This Little Light of Mine” that we had performed the afternoon prior.

About 15 minutes before worship, just as choir rehearsal was wrapping up, she asked if she could sing another piece during the service.  I am often leery of things that I haven’t had the chance to practice and I think many trained musicians always feel a certain tension between spontaneity and quality (in other words, you can’t have quality without preparation).  But I also grew up in the Pentecostal church and in congregations where music was not always tightly scripted.  There was room for Spirit, for something that might speak to God’s people in a spontaneous, fresh way.  She sang the piece she was thinking of (it sounded almost like the Spiritual, “I Want Jesus to Walk With Me”) and I was able to find a satisfying chord progression to support her.  We ran through it and I told her that we could use it during Communion, while the choir was being served.

It was a wonderful, uplifting service and when we got to Communion the elements were consecrated and broken, as they are every week.  The choir sang Dixit Maria, a beautiful motet by the Renaissance composer Hans Leo Hassler, as the bread and wine were distributed.

Dixit Maria ad angelum:
Mary said to the angel:
Ecce ancilla Domine
Behold the handmaid of the Lord;
mihi secundum verbum tuum.
Let it be done to me according to your word.

And then after a short silence, the soloist sang (in the same key but in the minor mode):

Walk with me Lord; walk with me
Walk with me Lord; walk with me
Ooh, while I’m on this tedious journey
I want Jesus to walk with me.

Oh, hold my hand Lord; please hold my hand
Oh, hold my hand Lord; hold, hold my hand
While I’m on this tedious journey
I want Jesus to walk with me.

- Vanessa Bell Armstrong from the album “Peace Be Still”

Though one piece was planned weeks ahead and the other an intuitive, last-minute choice, each gave us a powerful but complementary image of Mary’s response to God.  The Hassler offers an elegant statement of trust and obedience – unvarnished, pure and direct.  And in the plaintive moaning of “Walk With Me, Lord” I hear Mary humbly asking God to hold her hand and walk the journey with her, because she knows that she can’t do it on her own.

I don’t know about you, but there are days when I need a Mary who is full of simple faith and trust, completely open to God.  And there are other days when I need a Mary who has weathered the challenges and struggles of life but is so sure of God’s sustaining presence in the midst of them that she can still respond with a weary but equally heartfelt “yes!”  I am deeply grateful for worship that allowed me to hear and see both of those this week.