Music for September 6, 2015 + The Fifthteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• O Christ, the Healer, We have Come – Richard Gieseke (b 1952)

Instrumental Music

• To God All Praise and Glory - John M. Rasley (1913-1998) (Tune "Mit Freuden Zart")
• The Desert Shall Rejoice - Lani Smith (1934-2015)
• To God Be the Glory - William H. Doane

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “R” which are from Renew.)

• Hymn 493 O for a thousand tongues to sing (AZMON)
• Hymn 602 Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love (CHEREPONI)
• Hymn 610 Lord, whose love through humble service (BLAENHAFREN)
• Hymn 325 Let us break bread together (LET US BREAK BREAD)

This Sunday we hear the Gospel passage that tells the story of two healings. First, Jesus casts a demon out of the daughter of a Gentile woman, then he causes a deaf and dumb man to hear and speak. In response to that reading, the choir will sing a setting of Fred Pratt Green's hymn, O Christ, the healer, we have come.

O Christ, the healer, we have come

to pray for health, to plead for friends.

How can we fail to be restored,

when reached by love that never ends?

From every ailment flesh endures

our bodies clamor to be freed;

yet in our hearts we would confess

that wholeness is our deepest need.

In conflicts that destroy our health,

we diagnose the world's disease;

our common life declares our ills:

is there no cure, O Christ, for these?

Grant that we all, made one in faith,

in your community may find

the wholeness that, enriching us,

shall reach the whole of humankind.

The subject of health and healing is one that has changed over the last century. Earlier hymns, more holistic in approach, were reticent to mention mental health. Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000), a British Methodist minister and poet, produced a new hymn on the topic which the Rev. Carlton R. Young, editor of the United Methodist Hymnal, calls a “prayer for wholeness of body, mind, and spirit.”

Stanza one asks the question, “How can we fail to be restored / when reached by love that never ends?” Restoration should not be confused with physical healing. For the Christian, restoration may not take place in this life.

Stanza two places the emphasis upon “wholeness” rather than “every ailment flesh endures.” According to a member of the committee, stanza three suggests a Freudian awareness of the unconscious: “Release in us those healing truths / unconscious pride resists or shelves.”

Stanza three places our individual ailments in the broader context of the “world’s disease . . . [of] our common life.” The stanza ends with the rhetorical question: “Is there no cure, O Christ, for [our ills]?”

The hymn concludes with a petition that we should all be “made one in faith.” True healing and wholeness happens ultimately communally—in the restoration of “the whole of humankind.”

(from History of Hymns: “O Christ, the Healer” by C. Michael Hawn.  http://www.umcdiscipleship.org)

As I will be out of town this weekend, I am delighted to have Jill Kirkonis play the organ in my stead. She has recently retired from playing at The First Baptist Church in Porter, Texas, and has joined her husband Dennis in the congregation of Good Shepherd. She was confirmed by Bishop Doyle this past June, and is graciously playing for us this Sunday. 

Our opening hymn was chosen to support the Gospel Reading today. “If I had a thousand tongues, I would praise Christ with them all.” So said Peter Böhler to Charles Wesley, inspiring the first line of the classic hymn, “Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer’s praise” 

Written to celebrate the one year anniversary of Charles’ conversion to Christianity, this declaration of Christ’s power and victory in his own life, rich in Biblical imagery of the Kingdom of God, becomes our own hymn of praise. We stand with the angels before the throne of God, lifting our voices as one church to glorify the one who “bids our sorrows cease.”

And yet, we also sing in the knowledge that the Kingdom of God is not yet fully realized. We proclaim Christ’s victory as a declaration of hope that we will see Christ reign over all. We stand with the voiceless, the lame, the prisoner, and the sorrowing, and lift our song of expectation.