Advent Music
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Happy Advent! I love this time of year, and not necessarily because of the “Countdown to Christmas” nature of it, but I always love the contemplative and waiting parallel purple seasons of Advent and Lent. I don’t think I am alone in this, at least in Clergyworld™, as these are the seasons that folks love to put together intentional planning curriculum for worship, and a plethora of new hymnody is written. It may also be that it feels like Christmas and Easter are set in their ways, and Ordinary Time is scattered, but Lent and Advent are in the Goldilocks Zone for creativity. As such, I hope you are finding meaning in the little things we are doing this Advent season, focusing specifically on it as a Season of Hope, as opposed to the fairly recently traditional watch words of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.
As we prepared, Lauryn brought us a new biblical translation and lectionary texts that have informed our planning. I shared some in last week’s blog about Rev. Dr. Wilda Gafney’s (you can read more about her at her website here: https://www.wilgafney.com/) work to help us expand how we see some characters often overlooked. Compare how her translation/interpretation of Genesis 16:7-13 sits side by side with the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (I always laugh at that name).
A few differences I want to point out, you may have noticed. First, Dr. Gafney is purposefully naming Hagar, rather than using a pronoun. I think this is purposeful, to elevate the name of someone who is often overlooked in the story where typically Abraham takes center stage, or maybe Abraham and Sarah. Second, and I mentioned this last week but it is worth seeing again, how Dr. Gafney translates the Tetragrammaton, that is YHWH, the name of God that is spelled, but never said aloud, and usually translated as “LORD.” Rather than simply saying “lord,” over and over again, Dr. Gafney names God using attributes of God found in the surrounding text. So that God who sees Hagar by the spring (and really sees who she is), is called “ALL-SEEING GOD.” And when God is giving instruction that is difficult to understand, telling slave Hagar to return to her mistress Sarai, the Lord gets my favorite title of “INSCRUTABLE GOD.” Inscrutable means impossible to understand. I may now think of the more confusing parables as coming from Inscrutable Jesus.
While a case can obviously be made that the NRSVUE is a “better” translation, that is more word-for-word translated from Hebrew and Greek into English, I don’t think that makes Gafney’s wrong, or worse. I choose to believe that God still speaks, and one of the ways God does this is by having us take a different look at the way our predecessors wrote their feelings about God speaking into the scripture we have inherited. Gafney has given us the gift of new lenses to do that looking with.
Of course poets and musicians have been doing this work for thousands of years. Poetic License has been a tool for understanding God, even during times when preaching from an “unauthorized version” would have led to defrocking or worse for the pastor doing so. Reflecting on how Dr. Gafney’s names for LORD reminded me of how the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel does the same. The stanzas in Chalice Hymnal include Dayspring, Wisdom from on high, and Desire of nations, in addition to Emmanuel, when addressing God. As I mentioned last week, thank you to Linda Savelle and Theresa Steward, for joining me in creating new stanzas we will sing this season, using the names Gafney crafted. It is also included in your Advent Devotional Booklet.
The other musical thread we will follow through Advent is a refrain based on a line Lauryn wrote for our “Affirmation of Hope” liturgy, this hope keeps us going. That line struck me as I read it, and it stayed with me for a while, and I realized it had music in it. We sing that affirmation three times, followed by the prayer “Keep us, O God,” and then repeat that pattern again. Thanks to Royce Savelle for helping accompany this little refrain on guitar.
We will of course be singing some traditional seasonal favorites. On Advent 1 we sang 125 Come, O Long, Expected Jesus to HYFRYDOL, as it is in the hymnal. I like this text to the more dancelike GENEVA 42 (in our hymnal just a page earlier on 122 to Comfort, Comfort You My People), but sturdy HYFRYDOL is fun to sing too. We also sang 136 Christians All, Your Lord is Coming which was written in 1993 by Disciples of Christ pastor, Jim Miller. Traditional DoC worship services lead to weekly communion, this is why we have so many communion-centric hymns in our hymnal, that we borrow from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), as they are officially named. I often say, having served in both contexts, that Cooperative and American Baptists are Disciples that don’t have communion often enough, and Disciples are Baptists who have communion so often they sometimes forget its meaning. Anyway, Christians All is a great Advent hymn to sing on a communion Sunday, tying together hope for the Prince of Peace, the risen Christ, and the way we lift cup and bread. We also sang the Christmas Carol, 144 O Little Town of Bethlehem. I like singing this in Advent as well, as the final stanza points not just to the birth of Christ, but ends with the line “O come to us, abide with us, our God, Emmanuel.” Also, Bethlehem, translated as “house of bread,” ties nicely with imagery around Communion. This week you can look forward to singing 138 Awake, Awake and Greet the New Morn, and 142 People, Look East! bookending a service where we ask how we help to create a world that all God’s children are born, welcomed into, and loved.
Lastly, I want to highlight two newer hymns that the choir is presenting Advent 1 and 2. This past week we sang the beautiful new hymn Advent Begins in the Darkness of Night, written in 2017 by Dave Bjorlin, and set to music by Ben Brody. You can see it in your Advent Devotional book as well. This hymn contains a powerful line that encapsulates the frustration and hope I find inherent to Advent:
Advent begins with our dreams yet deferred.
Love seems ridiculous, prayer seems absurd.
But in the midst of life’s centerless maze
we lift together our protest of praise.
I find double meaning in “protest of praise,” which became the title of Dave’s hymn collection that includes this piece. Sometimes my protest is praise, other times I want to protest praising at all. In either occurrence, Dave reminds us to do it together, as “we,” rather than “I.” God accepts both our protest of praise and protest as praise.
Over the years I have done lots of “arranging on the fly,” like we sang Advent 1. That is, simple hymn arrangements where I hand the choir a hymn, I might say “sing stanza 2 in parts, I’ll play an interlude, and then sing stanza 3 in canon” or something like that. But before I visited GIA in Chicago, I had never composed a “proper anthem,” with parts written out, musical ideas fully realized. Advent 2 will be the first time we will present one such piece.
This past summer noted American composer Emma Lou Diemer passed away at the age of 96, leaving behind a legacy of choral, instrumental, and organ music that managed to be complex and 20th century/modern, but also recognizable and singable. I realized that I did not remember singing a hymn by her, so I went digging and found one she wrote for the United Church of Christ hymnal, called Let Us Hope When Hope Seems Hopeless. I started trying to arrange it this summer, and had given up. But with renewed energy and confidence, I returned to it after Chicago, and gave it to the choir the day after the election. The words UCC Pastor David Beebe wrote are good, but the tune Diemer crafted is even better. The arrangement takes Diemer’s melody and organ harmonization, and I wove in HYFRYDOL/Come O Long Expected Jesus as well as hints of NEW BRITAIN (Amazing Grace).
Blessings on you as you continue your Advent journey!
Chris
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[1] Hope, sign pointing to the village of Hope, Derbyshire UK, https://www.flickr.com/photos/polsifter/4047982682 Shared under Creative Commons License 2.0