Thanks, everyone, for sharing your selections for Reformation Day. Let's move on to this Sunday: All Saints' Day (transferred). I've got two questions for us:
1 - What hymns will your people sing, and what liturgy will you use?
2 - Will you observe a Commemoration of the Faithful Departed from your parish in the last year? If so, would you mind describing your rite (what you do) and ceremony (how it is done)?
13 comments:
1. Hymns: 677 (Opener, divided men/women for stanzas 3-6), 605 (Baptism Hymn), 932 (Sermon Hymn), Communion Hymns (618, 563, 590), 680 (Closer). We'll use Divine Service 1 (with This is the Feast as the Hymn of Praise).
2. Yes, we use the suggestions in the Agenda, so we sing stanza 1 of 672 (we have used 676 in the past), do the Collect of the Day for the Commemoration, Then read the names of those deceased since last year's All Saints Day, Ringing the bell once after each name, sing stanza 2 of 672, Do one of the additional collects provided for the Commemoration, and then do st. 3&4 of 672.
I'll post the bulletin on the church website soon if you want to see it in a bulletin.
The website is www.gracelutheranlr.org (just FYI. The bulletin probably won't be up until tomorrow or Monday.
We had planned All Saints for Wednesday's midweek service. Then an elderly pastor in the congregation died, and we had his funeral in conjunction with the All Saints service. Funeral rite combined with Divine Service 3. Can't find a bulletin so as to remember all the hymns, but it included "For All the Saints" (LSB) and "Behold a Host" (TLH) and "Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care" (Schalk) and "Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending" (LSB).
Thanks, Susan. "Lo, He Comes". Great pick! Never thought of that before for All Saints' - but what a great fit.
Nathan, I'll translate your numbers for our friends (and myself) who don't have the LSB numbers memorized, but please give titles in the future. :)
So, here's what they sang down in Little Rock with Nathan on Sunday:
FATS
Father Welcomes
Jesus Sat with His Disciples
I Come, O Savior, To Thy Table
Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness
Baptized into Your Name Most Holy
Thine the Amen
Jerusalem the Golden
Perhaps a future line of discussion for us might be "Communion Hymns - how much about the Sacrament and how much about the Theme of the Day?"
By the way, at Bethany we sang:
FATS
And There's Another Country (tune: THAXTED)
Jerusalem, My Happy Home
Sing with All the Saints in Glory
I Am the Bread of Life
Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones
"And There's Another Country" is another paraphrase the hymn of Clairvaux known in LSB as "Jerusalem the Golden" and made popular in our circles by its use at CTS, including in a CTS promotional video. We use it as part of our commemoration rite, which is homespun. The rite is as follows:
1- pastoral description (scripted, not improvised)
2 - reading of names, with each name followed by a handbell. The bell pitches outline SINE NOMINE.
3 - prayer
4 - congregations recites 1 Thess 4:16-17
16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
Sorry for confusing matters. Thanks for Philip for clarifying.
670 - Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones
Litany ending with the Commemoration
and naming of the saints both by pastor and people in the pews, culminating in the collect for All Saints and going directly into Worthy is Christ canticle
Anthem - Sing Me to Heaven, Gawthrop
Second Anthem - Sing With All the Saints in Glory- Eggert
672 - Jerusalem the Golden
Distribution: 940 Holy God We Praise Thy Name; 661 The Son of God Goes Forth to War; 838 The Saints in Christ
Final Collect -- old one for Commemoration of the Faithful Departed
677 - For all the Saints (recessional)
We did all saints Compline on November 1st. We sang 676 and 677 (all stanzas, stanza 5 interpreted by the organ and stanza 6 was actually read by the lector).
Does anyone else get the feeling that 676 would work best with a fiddle, an accordion, and maybe a recorder?
Hymns sung at my church were:
Entrance Hymn
"Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones"
HOD
"For All the Saints"
Distribution Hymns
(1) "Jerusalem, O City Fair and High"
(2) "Jerusalem the Golden"
(3) "Heavenly Hosts in Ceaseless Worship"
Closing Hymn
"We Sing for All the Unsung Saints"
"This Is the Feast" was used as the Hymn of Praise for that day, as our parish does for the Easter Season and for Saintstide (All Saints Day -- Christ the King Sunday).
No distinct commemoration of the deceased was done. However, we did include a petition in the Prayer of the Church denoting our members who died since last All Saints Day and asking for the families to find comfort in the sure hope of the resurrection of the dead.
In past years we have sung Loehe's "Wide Open Stand the Gates" (LSB 639) during the Distribution. It has some great imagery of how "This sacrament God gives us Binds us in Unity, Joins earth with heav'n beyond us, Time with eternity."
No, Tim, I hadn't thought of that - but as an accordion player I'd like to try it! I think that instrumentation would work even better with "Jerusalem, My Happy Home", though.
BTW, I have an arrangement of "Behold A Host" for children's choir (or soloist) and piano that we'll be putting up on the site for next year. Other things posted for All Saints' include a setting of the Beatitudes (unison, w/ piano) and stanzas on "For All the Saints". (a.k.a. 'FATS')
Luke - "For All The Unsung Saints" is a new(er) hymn to an older tune. Did you find it first in LSB? I'm thinking that's an original pairing, though I'm not sure. Anyone know?
And how did it go, btw? Have you all sung this a few times already or was this your first All Saints to sing it? Perhaps your folks already knew the tune? (It's used for "The Son of God Goes Forth to War", a more commonly known hymn in LCMS circles.)
Chris - "Wide Open Stand the Gates" is one of my all-tiem FAVS. I wish more of our churches sang this great hymn.
I recall singing it once at another congregation I used to serve and remarking to a pietist-leaning pastor how I was moved by the hymn. I thought he'd respond positively, since I was talking about the "feelings of my heart". Instead he dismissed the hymn as some sort of relic.
I wasn't has theologically or politically aware at the time, though. Looking back at that now, and knowing now how well this pastor knows his church history, I think there was a simpler explanation: the pastor in question is simply "not a Loehe man." LOL!
Phillip:
Yes, we first found "We Sing for All the Unsung Saints" in LSB. It went quite well, since the congregation knows ALL SAINTS NEW well. (We have sung "The Son of God Goes Forth to War" fairly often, and we have a small group of former Episcopalians who can carry the rest of us for those two hymns!)
I like the way it closes the All Saints Day celebration, incorporating some of the old All Souls' Day thoughts, as well as speaking of us being "the vessels of God's grace" in the closing stanza.
And I can echo the support for "Wide Open Stand the Gates". It also seems to go well here, and it reinforces the music for "Jerusalem, O City Fair and High," adding it to the Last Days rotation of hymns.
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