“How Beautiful” by Twila Paris was the offertory at Pender’s 9:00 am Traditional Service on July 9, 2023. It was sung by Rachel Kotiah Matos, accompanied on piano by Heidi Jacobs.
Twila Paris sings about the beautiful way Jesus demonstrated love to others while he was in this world. His love was more than warm sentiments. It was an embodied love – a love that expressed God’s compassion through physical actions. His hands served people food. His feet traveled to their homes and villages. His eyes looked upon sinners with joy and acceptance. With his body Jesus demonstrated love to others.
Paris sings about His hands and feet that served and walked to the cross, His heart that forgives all sins, and how His sacrifice inspires her to live a life that is willing to pay the price for her faith. She also talks about how beautiful it is when people spread the good news of His love through their actions and how the church is like a radiant bride waiting for her groom. Overall, the song celebrates the beauty of Christ and His body, the church.
After describing the beauty of Christ’s physical body on earth, the song describes the beauty of Christ’s communal body on earth – his Church. When Christians “live just as he died” – when, like our Savior, we serve others around us through physical expressions of love – the Church is beautiful, too. As the song says, “How beautiful is the body of Christ.”
“Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” was the closing hymn at Pender’s 9:00 am Traditional Service on September 17, 2023 It was sung by Pender’s Sanctuary choir, congregation and accompanied on piano by Heidi Jacobs.
“Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”
George Duffield, Jr. UM Hymnal, No. 514
Stand up, stand up for Jesus,
Ye soldiers of the cross;
Lift high his royal banner,
It must not suffer loss.
From victory unto victory
His army shall he lead,
Till every foe is vanquished,
And Christ is Lord indeed.
George Duffield, Jr. (1818-1888) wrote this hymn out of a tragic accident that resulted in the early death of one of the most stirring preachers in the northeastern United States during the mid-nineteeth-century. Dudley Tyng (1825-1858), an inspiring Episcopalian preacher, was one of several ministers participating in a great citywide revival that swept Philadelphia in 1858. His strong doctrinal preaching and his anti-slavery rhetoric were popular for some and angered others, resulting in his resignation from an Episcopal congregation that he pastored following the retirement of his father. In addition to serving the newly organized Church of the Covenant, his midday services at the YMCA attracted crowds as large as 5,000. On one occasion, March 30, 1858, 1000 men responded to the message by committing their lives to Christ.
During this sermon, Tyng is said to have declared, “I would rather that this right arm were amputated at the trunk than that I should come short of my duty to you in delivering God’s message.” Prophetically and tragically, within a few weeks while visiting the countryside, his arm was caught in the cogs of a corn thrasher and severely lacerated resulting in a great loss of blood and an infection that took his life a few days later. Either in his final sermon or on his deathbed, Tyng is to have said, “Let us stand up for Jesus.” Another account states that the dying Tyng told his father, a retired Episcopal minister, “Stand up for Jesus, father, and tell my brethren of the ministry to stand up for Jesus.”
Duffield, the son of a well-known Presbyterian minister, was educated at Yale University and Union Theological Seminary. He used his independent wealth, according to the Rev. Carlton Young, “to establish small congregations and to support evangelistic endeavors.” Duffield was inspired by the funeral service for Tyng to preach on Ephesians 6:14 in his sermon the following Sunday at Temple Presbyterian Church, the text of which reads, “Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness.” (KJV) The hymn he wrote was sung at the conclusion of the sermon.
An omitted stanza five alludes to Tyng’s death in lines 5 and 6: Stand up!—stand up for Jesus!
Each soldier to his post;
Close up the broken column,
And shout through all the host!
Make good the loss so heavy,
In those that still remain,
And prove to all around you
That death itself is gain!
Hymnologist Kenneth W. Osbeck noted that Duffield’s Sunday school superintendent was so impressed by the hymn that he shared it throughout the church’s Sunday school classes. From there, the editor of a Baptist periodical received a copy and promoted it his publication, giving it wider circulation and making it available for publication in hymnals to this day.
The inspiring story of this hymn and the countless singers who have responded to the call of Christ over the last 150 years notwithstanding, the rhetoric of the poem presents problems for Christians living in a religiously pluralistic context in the twenty-first century. Images of soldiers who “lift high [Christ’s] royal banner,” and fight “till every foe is vanquished” recall for many the militant campaigns of the Crusades in the eleventhth through thirteenth centuries. The British counterpart to this hymn is “Onward, Christian Soldiers” (No. 575), written just a few years later in 1864. Many will recall the controversy around the inclusion of this hymn in The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) before its publication. While Ephesians 6 would seem to provide an impetus for both of these hymns, the language employed is so vividly militant that they may be read by those beyond the Christian family as a call to a literal warfare.
Note, by contrast, the language of Charles Wesley’s 1749 exposition of Ephesians 6:13-18, “Soldiers of Christ, Arise” (No. 513), a hymn tied closely with the Scripture. At the conclusion of the third stanza, Wesley entreats us to “pray always, pray and never faint,/pray, without ceasing pray.” Wesley makes it clearer that we are engaged in spiritual warfare, and Christ provides us with spiritual weapons with which to wage our struggle.
While hymns like “Stand up, stand up for Jesus” may have inspired revival and mission efforts in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, our rhetoric today needs to match the gospel of compassion and love that we seek to share in the twenty-first century. Let us claim the call to the spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6 and balance this with the God who came in Christ to love a lost and suffering world.
For Pender’s offertory on August 6 2023 Brian Stevenson, Director of Music Ministries, played Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod version) on his harp. He was accompanied by Heidi Jacobs on the piano.
“Ave Maria” is a popular and much-recorded setting of the Latin prayer Ave Maria, originally published in 1853 as “Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach”.
The piece consists of a melody by the French Romantic composer Charles Gounod that he superimposed over an only very slightly changed version of Johann Sebastien Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 846, from Book I of his The Well-Tempered Clavier, 1722.
“On Eagle’s Wings” was the prelude at Pender’s 9:00 am Traditional Service on September 17, 2023. It was played on piano by Heidi Jacobs.
“On Eagle’s Wings,” by Michael Joncas; The United Methodist Hymnal, No. 143
And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
bear you on the breath of dawn,
make you to shine like the sun,
and hold you in the palm of His hand.*
“Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exodus 19:4, NRSV).
Many recent composers for the church draw from biblical sources, making allusions to specific images. Father Jan Michael Joncas (b. 1951) uses the providential image of “eagle’s wings” as the anchor metaphor for his widely sung refrain. This refrain is a response for Psalm 91, usually sung by a cantor.
In a presentation for the National Association of Pastoral Musicians (NPM) convention in Long Beach in 1989, Joncas stated, “Scripture grounds my life as a Christian, a preacher, and a priest” (Joncas, GIA Publications, Inc. website). “On Eagles’ Wings” is an example of the high scriptural content of Fr. Joncas’s compositions. The composition appeared first in the liturgical music collection On Eagles’ Wings in 1979.
Dr. Joncas is one of the most prominent liturgical scholars and musicians in Catholic music today. He was granted the BA (English) magna cum laude from St. Thomas College, St. Paul, Minnesota (1975), the MA (Liturgical Studies) summa cum laude from University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana (1978), and the SLL and SLD summa cum laude from the Pontificio Istituto Liturgico at the Collegio Sant’Anselmo (Roma, Italia) in 1989 and 1991, respectively.
Fr. Joncas has published widely in liturgical journals, written books, and composed and recorded numerous collections of liturgical music. He served as co-editor of Gather, one of the most widely used collections of liturgical music in Catholic parishes. He has served in parish ministry and is currently serving as University Artist-in-Residence and Fellow, Center for Catholic Studies, in the Department of Catholic Studies, University of St. Thomas.
The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) was the first major Protestant hymnal to include the refrain, “On Eagle’s Wings.” The only changes were the substitution of “God” and “God’s” for “He” and “His” for inclusive language purposes. Many Protestant congregations might view this song as a chorus or praise song. The roots are, in fact, much different. The song was written in 1978 as Joncas was concluding his MA in liturgy from Notre Dame. He was ordained in 1980 as a priest for the archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis.
While serving in Minnesota, Fr. Joncas collaborated with two of his colleagues, Marty Haugen (b. 1950) and David Haas (b. 1957), in producing some of the most effective music for the church’s worship that has appeared in the days following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). This music written for the Catholic liturgy should not be confused with shorter choruses composed by contemporary Christian artists whose roots are in evangelical Christianity. At the National Pastoral Musicians conference in Long Beach, Fr. Joncas noted, “We pastoral musicians do not sing to entertain bored worshipers or to seduce them into brainless ecstasy; we may sing in the Spirit, but we also sing with our minds” (Joncas, GIA Publications, Inc. website).
In the Catholic liturgy, “On Eagle’s Wings” would be used most often on Sundays when the lectionary calls for Psalm 91. Joncas’s solo setting of the psalm for cantor is not included in The United Methodist Hymnal. The refrain allows the congregation to participate more fully in the singing of the psalm.
Most Protestant congregations know only the refrain. The beautiful, soaring melodic line and the rich, providential images of the text allow it to stand on its own. “On Eagle’s Wings” is often used in United Methodist worship as a congregational response to the benediction at the conclusion of the service. It also has a broader use, being sung at many 9/11 memorial services and at the memorial service for those who died in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
How music will be used once it is published may be much different from what the composer intended. In correspondence with this writer, Fr. Joncas noted, “I wasn’t aware that by printing only the refrain in [The United] Methodist Hymnal, members of that denomination treat it more as a detachable benediction than a verse/refrain setting of Psalm 91.”
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