Each week, you may find information here about the music in the traditional worship services at First United Methodist Church in Lewisville, Texas. Some of this information is original; most of it is copied from other websites such as Wikipedia, GBOD, and hymnary.org. It is my hope that this information will enhance your understanding and enrich your worship experience.
About the Cello Music:
Adagio - Tomaso Albinoni
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (1671-1751) was an Italian composer of the Baroque era. His output includes operas, concertos, sonatas for one to six instruments, sinfonias, and solo cantatas. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is known today for his instrumental music, especially his concertos. He is best remembered today for a work called "Adagio in G minor", attributed to him but largely written by Remo Giazotto, a 20th century musicologist and composer, who was a cataloger of the works of Albinoni.
Remo Giazotto (1910-1998) was an Italian musicologist, music critic, and composer, mostly known through his systematic catalogue of the works of Tomaso Albinoni. He wrote biographies of Albinoni and other composers, including Antonio Vivaldi. Giazotto served as a music critic (from 1932) and editor (1945–1949) of the Rivista musicale italiana and was appointed co-editor of the Nuova rivista musicale italiana in 1967. He was a professor of the history of music at the University of Florence (1957–69) and in 1962 was nominated to the Accademia Nazionale di S. Cecilia. In 1949, Giazotto became the director of the chamber music programs for Italian state broadcaster RAI and in 1966 was appointed director of its international programs organized through the European Broadcasting Union. He was also the president of RAI's auditioning committee and editor of its series of biographies on composers.
Adagio in G minor for strings and organ, also known as Adagio in Sol minore per archi e organo su due spunti tematici e su un basso numerato di Tomaso Albinoni (Mi 26), is a neo-Baroque composition often misattributed to the 18th-century Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni. In fact the work was composed by a 20th-century musicologist and Albinoni biographer named Remo Giazotto. The piece was purportedly based on the discovery of a bass line by Albinoni in a manuscript fragment.
Scholarly debate over the existence of the fragment persists, with most seeing the affair as a musical hoax perpetrated by Giazotto. There is no room for doubt when it comes to the source of everything in the Adagio other than the bassline, and Giazotto's authorship of these parts is not disputed.
The composition is often referred to as "Albinoni's Adagio" or "Adagio in G minor by Albinoni, arranged by Giazotto”. The ascription to Albinoni rests upon Giazotto's purported discovery of a manuscript fragment (consisting of a few opening measures of the melody line and basso continuo portion) from a slow second movement of an otherwise unknown Albinoni trio sonata.
According to Giazotto, he obtained the document shortly after the end of World War II from the Saxon State Library in Dresden which had preserved most of its collection, although its buildings were destroyed in the bombing raids of February and March 1945 by the British and American Air Forces. Giazotto concluded that the manuscript fragment was a portion of a church sonata (sonata da chiesa, one of two standard forms of the trio sonata) in G minor composed by Albinoni, possibly as part of his Op. 4 set, around 1708.
In his account, Giazotto then constructed the balance of the complete single-movement work based on this fragmentary theme. He copyrighted it and published it in 1958 under a title which, translated into English, reads "Adagio in G minor for strings and organ, on two thematic ideas and on a figured bass by Tomaso Albinoni”. Giazotto never produced the manuscript fragment, and no official record has been found of its presence in the collection of the Saxon State Library.
The piece is most commonly orchestrated for string ensemble and organ, or string ensemble alone, but with its growing fame has been transcribed for other instruments.
About the Hymns:
O Sacred Head Now Wounded
“O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” is one of the great hymns of the church, perhaps the greatest passion hymn. It has an equally great history. It is based on a long medieval Latin poem, Salve mundi salutare, with stanzas addressing the various parts of Christ's body hanging on the Cross. The last part of the poem, from which the hymn is taken, is addressed to Christ's head, and begins "Salve caput cruentatum." The poem is often attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153).
Bernard of Clairvaux, saint, abbot, and doctor, fills one of the most conspicuous positions in the history of the middle ages. His father, Tecelin, or Tesselin, a knight of great bravery, was the friend and vassal of the Duke of Burgundy. Bernard was born at his father's castle on the eminence of Les Fontaines, near Dijon, iu Burgundy, in 1091. He was educated at Chatillon, where he was distinguished for his studious and meditative habits. Bernard had all the advantages that high birth, great personal beauty, graceful manners, and irresistible influence could give, but, strengthened in the resolve by night visions of his mother (who died in 1105), he chose a life of asceticism, and became a monk. He entered the monastery of Citeaux, the first Cistercian foundation, in 1113. Two years later he was sent forth, at the head of twelve monks, from the overcrowded abbey, to found a daughter institution in the Valley of Wormwood, the Abbey of Clairvaux. On the death of Pope Honorius II., in 1130, the College of Cardinals split without a clear choice of Pope. Bernard was instrumental in the restoration of Pope Innocent II to Rome, which greatly increased his influence in the Church. The summer of 1146 was spent traversing France and Germany to rouse the people to engage in the second crusade. In both countries the effect of his appearance and eloquence was marvellous, almost miraculous. The population seemed to rise en masse, and take up the cross. In 1147, the expedition started, a vast army, of which probably not a tenth ever reached Palestine. It proved a complete failure, and a miserable remnant shared the flight of their leaders, the Emperor Conrad, and Louis, King of France, and returned home, defeated and disgraced. The blame was thrown upon Bernard, and he soon died, weary of the world.
One of the hymns by which St. Bernard is best known as a writer of sacred poetry is "Salve mundi Salutore," an address to the various limbs of Christ on the cross. It consists of 350 lines, 50 lines being addressed to each. Many other hymns and sequences are attributed to St. Bernard. Hymns, translated from, or founded on, St. Bernard's, will be found in almost every hymnal.
The poem was translated into German by the Lutheran hymnist Paul Gerhardt (1607–1676). He reworked the Latin version to suggest a more personal contemplation of the events of Christ's death on the cross. It first appeared in Johann Crüger's hymnal Praxis pietatis melica in 1656. Although Gerhardt translated the whole poem, it is the closing section which has become best known, and is sung as a hymn in its own right. The German hymn begins with "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden”.
Paulus Gerhardt studied at the University of Wittenberg, after which he was pastor at Mittenwalde, and then St. Nicholas’s Church in Berlin, then finally archdiaconus at Lübben. The outward circumstances of Gerhardt's life were for the most part gloomy. His earlier years were spent amid the horrors of the Thirty Years' War. He did not obtain a settled position in life till he was 44 years of age. He was unable to marry till four years later; and his wife, after a long illness, died during the time that he was without office in Berlin; while of the five children of the marriage only one passed the period of childhood. His latter years at Lübben as a widower with one surviving child were passed among a rough and unsympathising people.
Gerhardt ranks, next to Luther, as the most gifted and popular hymnwriter of the Lutheran Church. With a firm grasp of the objective realities of the Christian Faith, and a loyal adherence to the doctrinal standpoint of the Lutheran Church, Gerhardt is yet genuinely human; he takes a fresh, healthful view both of nature and of mankind. In his hymns we see the transition to the modern subjective tone of religious poetry. From the first publication of Gerhardt's hymns they at once came into favour among all ranks and creeds; and a large proportion are among the hymns most cherished and most widely used by German-speaking Christians at the present day.
The length of many of Gerhardt's hymns ("Ein Lämmlein" is 10 stanzas of 10 lines; "Fröhlich soil," 15 stanzas of 8 lines), and the somewhat intricate metres of others, have caused his hymns to be less used in English than otherwise might have been the case; but a considerable proportion have come in some form or other into English hymnbooks. A large selection, translated with scrupulous faithfulness but not retaining much of the lyric grace of the originals, was published by the Rev. John Kelly, in 1867, as Paul Gerhardt’s Spiritual Songs.
“O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” is a beautiful but free translation of the "Salve caput cruentatum". Gerhardt's version appeared in Crüger's Praxis (1656), in 10 stanzas of 8 lines, entitled, "To the suffering Face of Jesus Christ." Bernard's original is powerful and searching, but Gerhardt's hymn is still more powerful and more profound, as redrawn from the deeper spring of evangelical Lutheran, Scriptural, knowledge, and fervency of faith.
The hymn was first translated into English in 1752 by John Gambold (1711–1771), an Anglican vicar in Oxfordshire. His translation begins, "O Head so full of bruises." In 1830 a new translation of the hymn was made by an American Presbyterian minister, James Waddell Alexander (1804-1859). Alexander's translation, beginning "O sacred head, now wounded," became one of the most widely used in 19th and 20th century hymnals.
James Waddell Alexander, D.D., (1804-1859) was an American Presbyterian minister and theologian who followed in the footsteps of his father, Rev. Archibald Alexander. He studied at Princeton, and was Professor of Rhetoric at Princeton, 1833; Pastor of Duane Street Presbyterian Church, New York, 1844; Professor of Church History, Princeton, 1849; and Pastor of 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, 1851. His works include Gift to the Afflicted, Thoughts on Family Worship, and others. His hymn translations were collected and published at New York in 1861, under the title, The Breaking Crucible and other Translations.
Alexander’s complete text follows:
O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
O sacred Head, what glory, what bliss till now was Thine!
Yet, though despised and gory, I joy to call Thee mine.
What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.
Men mock and taunt and jeer Thee, Thou noble countenance,
Though mighty worlds shall fear Thee and flee before Thy glance.
How art thou pale with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!
How doth Thy visage languish that once was bright as morn!
Now from Thy cheeks has vanished their color once so fair;
From Thy red lips is banished the splendor that was there.
Grim death, with cruel rigor, hath robbed Thee of Thy life;
Thus Thou hast lost Thy vigor, Thy strength in this sad strife.
My burden in Thy Passion, Lord, Thou hast borne for me,
For it was my transgression which brought this woe on Thee.
I cast me down before Thee, wrath were my rightful lot;
Have mercy, I implore Thee; Redeemer, spurn me not!
What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.
My Shepherd, now receive me; my Guardian, own me Thine.
Great blessings Thou didst give me, O source of gifts divine.
Thy lips have often fed me with words of truth and love;
Thy Spirit oft hath led me to heavenly joys above.
Here I will stand beside Thee, from Thee I will not part;
O Savior, do not chide me! When breaks Thy loving heart,
When soul and body languish in death’s cold, cruel grasp,
Then, in Thy deepest anguish, Thee in mine arms I’ll clasp.
The joy can never be spoken, above all joys beside,
When in Thy body broken I thus with safety hide.
O Lord of Life, desiring Thy glory now to see,
Beside Thy cross expiring, I’d breathe my soul to Thee.
My Savior, be Thou near me when death is at my door;
Then let Thy presence cheer me, forsake me nevermore!
When soul and body languish, oh, leave me not alone,
But take away mine anguish by virtue of Thine own!
Be Thou my consolation, my shield when I must die;
Remind me of Thy passion when my last hour draws nigh.
Mine eyes shall then behold Thee, upon Thy cross shall dwell,
My heart by faith enfolds Thee. Who dieth thus dies well.
The music for the German and English versions of the hymn is by Hans Leo Hassler, written around 1600 for a secular love song, "Mein G'müt ist mir verwirret", which first appeared in print in the 1601 Lustgarten Neuer Teutscher Gesäng. The tune was appropriated and rhythmically simplified for Gerhardt's German hymn in 1656 by Johann Crüger. Johann Sebastian Bach arranged the melody and used five stanzas of the hymn in the St Matthew Passion. He also used the hymn's text and melody in the second movement of the cantata Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem, BWV 159. The harmonization found in our hymnal is from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.
About the Choral Music:
My Song is Love Unknown - John Leavitt
(c.1991, Augsburg Fortress)
Seventeenth-century devotional poetry provided a nurturing environment that enriched hymnody in the days before such 18th-century hymn writers as Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley.
Congregational singing beyond metrical psalms was not widely practiced during the 17th century. Though devotional poetry during this era was not typically written to be sung by congregations, verse from this century found its way into hymnals later on.
Samuel Crossman (1624-1684), an Anglican minister, received a bachelor of divinity at Penbroke College, Cambridge. He then served both an Anglican parish at All Saints, Sudbury, and a Puritan congregation. Crossman sympathized with the Puritan cause as a dissenting religious body within the context of the Anglican Church of England. He participated in the 1661 Savoy Conference, which attempted to revise the Book of Common Prayer so that it could serve both Puritans and Anglicans. The Conference was unsuccessful, and the 1662 Act of Uniformity expelled some 2,000 Anglican ministers, including Crossman. He recanted and was soon ordained in 1665, becoming a royal chaplain. He was called to a position in Bristol in 1667 and became Dean of Bristol Cathedral in 1683.
This poignant meditation of the Passion of Christ was published just before Crossman’s ordination, in The Young Man’s Meditation (1664). This short book of poems was reprinted in 1683, and the poem appeared for the first time as a hymn in the Anglican Hymn Book in 1686, just two years after the author’s death. The original poem has seven stanzas, taking the singer from Palm Sunday through the crucifixion. But its purpose is not simply to retell the events of the Passion. From the beginning we find that this is a love song—sung to the Savior who demonstrated pure love, even to the “love-less” so that they might be “love-ly.”
John Leavitt (b. 1956) is a composer, conductor, teacher, and church musician. He received the Doctorate of Musical Arts from The Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Dr. Leavitt is a lifetime member of the American Choral Directors Association and is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, from which he has received annual recognition for his achievements in composition. Currently, Dr. Leavitt serves on the faculty of MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, KS as professor of music and director of choirs. In 2010, Dr. Leavitt was the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts’s American Masterpieces which partnered with the Kansas Arts Commission and the Kansas Music Educators Association. He was commissioned by them to write a new choral work in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the State of Kansas.
John Leavitt has set the verses of “My Song is Love Unknown” as a multi-movement work reflecting on the emotions of the Passion story.
I. Sinfonia
II. Chorus
My song is love unknown, My Savior's love to me,
Love to the loveless shown, That they might lovely be.
Oh, who am I, that for my sake My Lord should take frail flesh and die?
III. Solo
He came from his blest throne, Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none the longed-for Christ would know.
But, oh, my friend, my friend indeed, Who at my need his life did spend!
Sometimes they strew his way And his sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day Hosannas to their King.
Then "Crucify?" is all their breath, And for his death they thirst and cry.
IV. Chorus
Why, why, why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
Why, why, why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He gave the blind their sight. Sweet injuries!
Yet they at these themselves displease, and 'against him rise.
V. Solo
This is my friend in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend!
But, oh, my friend, my friend indeed, Who at my need his life did spend.
This is my friend in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend.
But, oh, my friend, my friend indeed, Who at my need his life did spend.
Who at my need his life did spend.
VI. Chorus
They rise and needs will have My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they save, The prince of life they slay.
Yet cheerful he to suffering goes,
That he his foes from thence might free.
In life, no house, no home My Lord on earth might have;
In death, no friendly tomb but what a stranger gave.
What may I say? Heaven was his home;
But mine the tomb wherein he lay.
VII. Chorus
Here might I stay and sing No story so divine!
Never was love, dear King, Never was grief like thine.
This is my friend, in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend!
Behold the Lamb of God - Healey Willan
(c.1960, Concordia Publishing)
Healey Willan (1880-1968) was a Canadian organist and composer. He composed more than 800 works including operas, symphonies, chamber music, a concerto, and pieces for band, orchestra, organ, and piano, but is best known for his religious music. Willan was born in England, and he began musical training at age eight, with studies at St. Saviour's Choir School in Eastbourne. He earned, by examination in organ playing, harmony, counterpoint, history and orchestration, the Royal College of Organists' Associateship in 1897 and Fellowship in 1899. The Anglo-Catholic Tractarian movement led to an Anglican revival of plainsong, and in 1910, Willan joined the London Gregorian Association (which strove to preserve and revive "plain-chant"). In 1913, Willan emigrated to Canada. In 1921, he become Precentor of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene (Toronto), where he remained until his death. St. Mary Magdalene, under Willan, became a North American mecca for choral and Anglican church musicians. In 1920, the Toronto Conservatory (now the Royal Conservatory of Music) appointed Willan Head of its Theory Department. In 1934, he founded the Tudor Singers, which he conducted until it disbanded in 1939. From 1937 to 1950, Willan was University of Toronto Professor of Music and Organist. When the Order of Canada was established in 1967, it named Willan a Companion. In Britain, it was customary for the Archbishop of Canterbury to occasionally grant very distinguished English cathedral musicians the Lambeth Doctorate, Mus. D Cantaur; in 1956, Willan, "the Dean of Canadian composers", became the first non-English church musician to be so honoured. People who remember Willan from his time at St Mary Magdalene's like to moderate his somewhat dourly pious public image by quoting him: "English by birth; Canadian by adoption; Irish by extraction; Scotch by absorption.”
“Behold the Lamb of God” was written for the choir of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Sappington, Missouri, and based on John 1:29 and Isaiah 53: 4-5.
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities.
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
About the Poetry:
A Heart Too Broken, A Soul Too Small - author unknown
In the mirror of my soul, I see the cracks and flaws,
A tapestry of sin, where darkness overdraws.
I reach for grace, but my hands are stained and weak,
Unworthy to receive the love I long to seek.
The whispers of my heart, a chorus of despair,
"How could such love be mine, when I have nothing to share?"
My deeds, like fallen leaves, scattered on the ground,
A testament to failings, where no virtue is found.
Yet, in the quiet spaces, a glimmering light appears,
A whisper of redemption, that conquers all my fears.
A love that sees beyond the scars, the pain, the shame,
A love that calls my name, and whispers my true name.
What Have We Learned? - Loyd C. Taylor
Loyd Taylor was one of twelve children and grew up as a simple country boy in the great state of North Carolina. His parents were a source of inspiration by providing him with a rich and full appreciation for life and living and of faith and family. Much of his writing reflects a sense of deep Southern roots. Loyd's writings reveal a person who is thankful for each day God allows him to live. In Loyd's own words, he says, “I by no means consider myself to be a great poet, certainly not a professional poet; I do, however, believe God has given me a gift, a muse if you would. So, I just follow my muse and write the way that I think and feel. I prefer the title, Simple Poet; because it suits me and my writing.”
They shouted with praises, reaching the sky,
Pushing and shoving to see Jesus pass by.
Crying, 'Hosanna, hosanna, glory to the King!
He comes to us today, great joy He doth bring.'
They threw down palm leaves, covering the way,
Clearing the way for His entrance that day.
Raising joyful voices, as praises filled the air,
The day had come, God answered their prayer!
But, in a short time they changed their chant,
From joyful noise, to a mob's hate-filled rant.
From Hosanna, hosanna, as when He was praised;
To crucify Him! Crucify Him, as their anger blazed!
In disbelief we might question why they turned?
But maybe the question is, 'What have we learned? '
He Bore the Cross - Lucy Wall
Lucy Wall is originally from Motherwell in Scotland. She moved to London after finishing High School and spent three years training on a Musical Theatre course at Arts Educational Schools in Chiswick. After graduating, she went on a U.K and International tour with the show “Oh! What A Night” where I played the lead role “Cat.” I then toured with the show “Chicago” playing the role of “Kitty” and understudying the leads “Velma Kelly” and “Mamma Morton.” She continued a busy and award-winning career in West End productions and touring companies. She enjoyed writing poetry as a young girl but pretty much forgot about it for many years of her life. In 2006, she began writing Christian poetry. She states, “I find writing poetry as a wonderful outlet and method for gathering my thoughts and feelings towards different circumstances in life and I love writing as I feel it’s time I get to spend connecting with my Saviour.”
I think of how He bore the Cross, forsaken on the tree.
He hung with shame and paid the price and died thinking of me.
Though He was pure and lived a life completely free from sin,
The cup of wrath Christ took as His and did not pass from Him.
When soldiers came with grasping hands my Lord did not resist.
He did not flee or turn away when by a traitor kissed.
He knew the purpose of His life, the reason He had come;
To save the likes of you and me, a work that must be done.
When questioned by authorities my King did not proclaim
His innocence or righteousness, instead He took the blame.
So silently He stood condemned and shamed for all to see.
He took the guilt that I deserved and with humility.
I wonder, as they flogged His back what pain He felt within.
The whip that tore away His flesh was coated in my sin.
My lustful heart that ripped His beard, my lies spat in His face.
The vanity in me so vile instead was His disgrace.
My selfishness laid on His back He carried up the hill.
They kicked and mocked my mighty Lord and yet He loved me still.
My envy crowned upon His head, it pierced His gentle skin.
The injudicious crowd threw taunts as blood dripped down his chin.
As jealous whispers tied him down my Lord did not retreat.
My greed, the force that drove the nails into His hands and feet.
In tortured isolation and exposed for all to see,
My King endured shame on the Cross and died thinking of me!
Good Friday - Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Britain: "In the Bleak Midwinter", later set by Gustav Holst, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Harold Darke, and "Love Came Down at Christmas", also set by Darke and other composers. Rossetti was educated at home by her mother and father through religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels. Rossetti delighted in the works of Keats, Scott, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. The influence of the work of Dante Alighieri, Petrarch and other Italian writers filled the home and influenced Rossetti's later writing.
From 1842 onward Rossetti began writing down and dating her poems. Most of them imitated her favored poets. In 1847 she began experimenting with verse forms such as sonnets, hymns and ballads, while drawing on narratives from the Bible, folk tales and the lives of saints. Rossetti's first commercially printed collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems, was published under her own name by Macmillan & Co. in 1862, when she was 31. Rossetti worked voluntarily in 1859–1870 at the St Mary Magdalene house of charity in Highgate, a refuge for ex-prostitutes. It is suggested that Goblin Market may have been inspired by "fallen women" she came to know. There are parallels with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in religious themes of temptation, sin and redemption by vicarious suffering. She was ambivalent about women's suffrage, but many have found feminist themes in her work. She opposed slavery in the United States, cruelty to animals in prevalent vivisection, and exploitation of girls in under-age prostitution. She continued to write and publish for the rest of her life, mainly devotional work and children's poetry. In the years just before her death, she wrote The Face of the Deep, (1892) a book of devotional prose.
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.
Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
The Cross was His Own - author unknown
They borrowed a bed to lay His head
When Christ the Lord came down;
They borrowed the ass in the mountain pass
For Him to ride to town;
But the crown that He wore,
And the cross that He bore...
Were His own.
He borrowed the bead when the crowd He fed
On the grassy mountain side;
He borrowed the dish of broken fish
With which He satisfied;
But the crown that He wore,
And the cross that He bore
Were His own.
He borrowed the ship in which to sit
To teach the multitude;
He borrowed the nest in which to rest,
He had never a home so ruse;
But the crown that He wore,
And the cross that He bore
Were His own.
He borrowed a room on the wy to the Tomb
The Passover lamb to eat;
They borrowed the cave, for Him a grave;
They borrowed the winding sheet.
But the crown that He wore,
And the cross that He bore
Were His own.
The thorns on His head were won in my stead,
For me the Saviour died.
For the guilt of my sin the nails drove in
When Him they crucified;
Though the crown that He wore
And the cross that He bore
Were His own - -
But they were rightly mine!
The Sacrifice - George Herbert
George Herbert (1593-1633) was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognized as one of the foremost British devotional lyricists. He was born in Wales into an artistic and wealthy family and largely raised in England. He was admitted on a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609, and graduated first with a Bachelor's and then with a Master's degree in 1616 at the age of 23. Subsequently, Herbert was elected a major fellow of his college and then appointed Reader in Rhetoric. In 1620 he stressed his fluency in Greek and Latin and attained election to the post of the University's Public Orator, a position he held until 1627. He attracted the attention of King James I and sat in the Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625.
After the death of King James, Herbert renewed his interest in ordination. He gave up his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of the rural parish of Fugglestone St Peter, just outside Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill and providing food and clothing for those in need. he preached and wrote poetry; he also helped to rebuild the Bemerton church and adjacent rectory out of his own funds. Henry Vaughan called him "a most glorious saint and seer". He was never a healthy man and died of consumption at age 39.
Herbert wrote poetry in English, Latin and Greek. Shortly before his death, he sent a literary manuscript to his friend Nicholas Ferrar, reportedly telling him to publish the poems if he thought they might "turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul", otherwise to burn them. In 1633 all of his English poems were published in The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, with a preface by Ferrar. The book went through eight editions by 1690. All of Herbert's surviving English poems are on religious themes and are characterised by directness of expression enlivened by original but apt conceits in which, in the Metaphysical manner, the likeness is of function rather than visual. In "The Windows", for example, he compares a righteous preacher to glass through which God's light shines more effectively than in his words. Commenting on his religious poetry later in the 17th century, Richard Baxter said, "Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth in God, and whose business in the world is most with God. Heart-work and heaven-work make up his books”.
Herbert is venerated as a Saint in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church on 27 February; also on 1 March in, for example, the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, being the day of his death. There are various collects for the day, of which one is based on his poem "The Elixir”:
Our God and King, who called your servant George Herbert from the pursuit of worldly
honors to be a pastor of souls, a poet, and a priest in your temple: Give us grace, we pray,
joyfully to perform the tasks you give us to do, knowing that nothing is menial or
common that is done for your sake ... Amen.
The quote "All may have, if they dare try, a glorious life, or a grave" from Herbert's "The Church Porch" is inscribed on the outer wall of St. John's Church, Waterloo.
Oh all ye, who passe by, whose eyes and minde
To worldly things are sharp, but to me blinde;
To me, who took eyes that I might you finde:
Was ever grief like mine?
And now I am deliver’d unto death,
Which each one calls for so with utmost breath,
That he before me well nigh suffereth:
Was ever grief like mine?
O all ye who passe by, behold and see;
Man stole the fruit, but I must climb the tree;
The tree of life to all, but onely me:
Was ever grief like mine?
Lo, here I hang, charg’d with a world of sinne,
The greater world o’ th’ two; for that came in
By words, but this by sorrow I must win:
Was ever grief like mine?
But now I die; now all is finished.
My wo, mans weal: and now I bow my head.
Onely let others say, when I am dead,
Never was grief like mine.
Upon a Wooden Frame - author unknown
Upon a wooden frame, a man of grace,
A crown of thorns, a tortured face,
Nails driven deep, a cruel design,
A king of love, condemned to die, not to reign.
The jeering crowd, their voices loud,
A mockery of justice, a wicked shroud,
A life so pure, now stained with blood,
For what crime, misunderstood?
The sky grows dark, a weeping sky,
As innocence hangs, a silent cry,
A father's heart, torn in two,
A love so great, what can we do?
The cross stands tall, a symbol stark,
Of human cruelty, a bitter mark,
A paradox of pain, yet love's embrace,
Injustice done, on Calvary's space.
Oh, the weight of guilt, the heavy cost,
A life so precious, forever lost,
A sacrifice for all to see,
The bitter truth, of man's cruelty.
First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus
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