Music for August 16, 2020 + The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Vocal Music

• Build My House from Peter Pan – Leonard Bernstein (1918-1919), Kimberly Bollinger, soprano 

Instrumental Music

• Ach Gott und Herr – Johann Gottfried Walther 1684-1748 (attr. To Johann Sebastian Bach)

Congregational Music (all hymns from the Hymnal 1982.)

• Hymn 420 - When in our music God is glorified (ENGLEBERG)
• Song of Praise S-236 – Canticle 13: Glory to You – John Rutter (b. 1945)

One of the unexpected blessings of virtual worship is that the same technology which enables me to bring the Good Shepherd Choir together in this time of quarantine also allows me to work with friends who live hundreds or thousands of miles away. One former choir member, Kim Bollinger, has been part of our virtual congregation these past few months, which led me to ask her to sing for one of our services. She readily agreed, and suggested a song from Leonard Bernstein's little known musical, Peter Pan. 

Most folks don’t know it, since it didn’t have a big run on Broadway. Bernstein wrote half a dozen songs for the show, which starred (of all people) Boris Karloff! (He was Hook, of course). The song Kim suggested is sung by Wendy, where she expresses her hope that her home will be be built with Peter Pan. It's a beautiful song, but I wondered what Kim was thinking! What does this have to do with the worship of God?

Then I reread the lyrics, and heard, for the first time, the voice of God, speaking to us! It was like a parable, and we know how much Jesus loved speaking in parables! Read these words:

Will you build me a house?
A house that really will be mine.
Then let me give you my design.
A simple scheme of ... the house I dream of.

Build my house of wood.
Build my house of stone.
Build my house of brick and mortar.

Make the ceiling strong.
Strong against the storm.
Shelter when the days grow shorter.

But build my house of love.
And paint my house with trusting.
And warm it with the warmth of your heart.

Make a floor of faith.
Make the walls of truth.
Put of roof of peace above.
Can you build my house of love?

Copyright (C) 1950, 1980 by The Estate of Leonard Bernstein. Copyright Renewed. Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company, LLC, Publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. Sole Agent

I can imagine God asking this of each of us. Not so much as in our church, but in ourselves. In Paul's letters to the Corinthians, he often asked,  "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?"  We would do well to survey our own life and see of what our "temples" are made.

The opening and closing voluntaries are two settings of the same German Chorale, O God and Lord,These pieces were part of a collection of organ chorale preludes found in the music library of Johann Kirnberger, a pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach. Many of Bach's manuscripts had been preserved in Kirnberger's library (the "Kirnberger collection"), as well as other pieces that Bach had transcribed for his pupil. These two settings of Ach Gott und Herr were among those, and were for centuries thought to be by the master himself, but modern scholarship has attributed the authorship to the baroque composer Johann Gottfried Walther, a second cousin of Johann Sebastian Bach whose his life was almost exactly contemporaneous to that of the famous composer.