Monday, July 6, 2020
Collect for Today

God of faithful surprises, throughout the ages you have made known your love and power in unexpected ways and places: May we daily perceive the joy and wonder of your abiding presence and offer our lives in gratitude for our redemption. Amen.
Today's Scripture Readings

Psalm 1, 2, 3 * 4, 7
Numbersalm 32:1-6, 16-27
Romans 8:26-30
Matthew 23:1-12

St. James the Less Choir Sings Old One Hundreth
The Old 100th Psalm Tune, aka "All people that on earth do dwell," is one of the most universal hymns, sung by Christians on every continent and translated into many languages. That universality is baked into the song's title, text, and history.

In 1559, the Scotsman William Kethe wrote this paraphrase of Psalm 100 to go with an anonymous French melody. Kethe wrote the hymn in Geneva, Switzerland. He lived there in exile because, back in Britain, Queen Mary was burning Protestants at the stake for their heresy. Under the influence of the reformer John Calvin, Kethe and many other exiles were worshiping with metrical paraphrases of the Psalms, and it was in that context that Kethe wrote this setting, a straightforward and elegant example of the genre.

From there, the hymn spread: to hymnals around the world, and to adaptations by many different composers. Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote this arrangement for the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Its unusually slow, majestic tempo allowed the sound to echo throughout Westminster Abbey. Here, the St. James the Less choir sings the anthem with trumpet from choral scholar Liam Ryan.

Will there really be a morning?
The text of "Will there really be a morning?" has been running through my mind since about March 13, 2020. The poetry of Emily Dickinson often nudges at me through my music collection.

One such nudge comes in the form of another of her poems, "'Hope' is the thing with feathers." God is hope. God is the feathered, spirit-bird that perches in our souls. Dickinson asks, "Will there really be a morning? Is there such a thing as day?" Morning and Day are symbols of hope, and of a new beginning. To me, "Will there really be a morning" is the question, and "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" is one of the answers.

If we keep asking our questions and really seeking answers, one day we will find Morning and Day -- on the other side of the pandemic, on the other side of systemic racism, of police brutality, of war, hunger, of all the hopelessness that bombards us every time we look at a screen. Look to the mountains, the waterlilies, the birds, the far-off places… look to the helpers, the experts, the scholars, the ambassadors. As pilgrims on this journey with God, we won’t always know the answers, but we will always have hope.

-- Anastasia Balmer