Music Ministry Spring Update | 2022

As we enter the solemn season of Lent, having just experienced the glorious mountain top experience of Jesus’ transfiguration, we are reminded of the lonesome journey that our Savior traveled throughout His ministry on this earth.  The spiritual, Jesus Walked This Lonesome Journey, speaks to the time that Jesus wandered in the earthly wilderness, prayed, and died for us.  “Oh, nobody else could walk it for him; He had to walk it by himself.”  Saint James’ music ministry has planned musical offerings for this season through Easter to facilitate our refection on Jesus’ tremendous sacrificial love and our response to that love–from the dust and ashes of Ash Wednesday to the ceremonious entry of Jesus to Jerusalem, to His betrayal, His substitutional crucifixion, and His ultimate defeat of death through the resurrection.

Beginning with Ash Wednesday, we implore God, our creator and healer to “Have Thine Own Way” with us until “all shall see Christ only, always, living in me!”  The hymn is based on Isaiah 64:8 “But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand.”  Later in our Lenten journey, the choir reminds us of Mary Magdalene’s anointing of Jesus’s feet with her tears, through the beautiful hymn, “Drop, drop slow tears” composed by Orlando Gibbons in 1623 and set to the poetry of Phineas Fletcher.

Palm Sunday begins with the praise of Hosannas and the majestic “All Glory Laud and Honor” as Jesus reveals His royalty with His entry to Jerusalem on a colt, but our thoughts soon turn to the impending cross, with “Beneath the Cross of Jesus”.  On Holy Thursday, we experience Jesus’ loneliness in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Jesus urges his disciples to “Stay with me, remain here with me; watch and pray” in a piece composed by French musician, Jacques Berthier, for the Taizé community, an ecumenical Christian monastic fraternity in Taizé, France.  The service concludes with Dutch composer Eelco Vos’ “Psalm 22”, an emotional solo that depicts Jesus’ agony and sense of abandonment from God.  Good Friday carries us to the cross and crucifixion with Pie Jesu from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem Mass.  The melancholy sound of the cello evokes a pensive mood as we reflect on Johann Crüger’s “Ah, Holy Jesus”.  Our journey through Lent and Holy Week concludes on Easter Sunday with a grand crescendo of trumpets, organ, and voices as we celebrate Christ’s resurrection with Vernon Hoyle’s festive arrangement of This Joyful Eastertide.  “… but now hath Christ arisen, arisen, arisen!”

If you like music or like to sing, we invite you to join Saint James’ choir.  You do not have to read music.  We meet on Thursdays from 7-8 pm in the music room and warm-up before the Sunday service at 9:30 am in the music room. Also, if you play a musical instrument, we invite you to share your gifts at a Sunday service.  For more information, please contact René Milam at organist@saintjameswarrenton.org.

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