A WORSHIP SERVICE COMMEMORATING THE 500 TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

Transcription

1 A WORSHIP SERVICE COMMEMORATING THE 500 TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION Image: Frontispiece of Luther s vernacular translation of [The] Bible, which is the Entire Holy Scriptures [in] German published in Sponsored by the Philadelphia Area Presbyteries of The Presbyterian Church in America Hosted by Proclamation Presbyterian Church Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania October 29, 2017

2 INTRODUCTION Welcome to this very special service of worship. Our chief aim this evening is to glorify God for his sovereign rule (as the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it regarding the providence of God, after a most special manner, it taketh care of his church ) that brought to pass the ideas and events that we know as the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. The core significance of the Protestant Reformation was the Reformers restoration of the centrality of God s authoritative written revelation for governing all of life not just for the individual s life (in both the private and public spheres) but also for the life of Christ s church. In applying the Bible s teachings to the life of the visible body of Christ, the Reformers spoke of Well-ordered churches. What they meant was churches organized along explicit biblical teachings rather than human inventions. What a wellordered church looked like in real terms was one that used principles like vernacular translations of the Bible, worship services ordered around the faithful preaching of the Word (rather than the priestly sacrifice of the medieval Mass), congregational participation in prayer and music, and all conducted in the language of the people. Our service is not a recreation of an Early Modern worship service. However, this evening we hope to give twenty-first century worshipers a flavor of sixteenthcentury worship. To that end, the liturgy for our service is a composite of various liturgical and musical elements that our Protestant forbearers adopted, revised, or created and actually used in their own worship services in the Sixteenth Century. Of course, some of the arrangements have been modernized, and our instrumentation differs from theirs, but this evening we will be saying, singing, and hearing many of the prayers, hymns, and melodies heard and sung in Protestant church services some five centuries ago. Our subordinate purpose is to learn to worship God with greater effect. The way we hope to accomplish that goal is to instruct God s people about liturgy and music, so that with better understanding of, and appreciation for, the various elements of corporate worship and how they work in the liturgy, our worship will be more glorifying to God. Be sure to consult the service notes at the end of the bulletin. 2

3 SERVICE LITURGY PRELUDE Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth. Amen. WELCOME *INTROIT Hymn 1 All People That on Earth Do Dwell v. 1 accompanied; v. 2 a cappella in unison; vv. 3-4 a cappella in parts COLLECT O God, for as much as without you, we are not able to please you; Grant that the working of your mercy may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Cantate Domino Cairn University Chamber Singers John Mochnick *DECALOGUE Hymn 724 The Ten Commandments (vv. 1-5) CORPORATE CONFESSION Almighty, eternal God and Father, we confess and acknowledge to you that we were conceived in unrighteousness and are full of sin and transgression in all our life. We do not fully believe your Word nor follow you holy commandments. Remember your goodness, we ask you, and for your Name s sake be gracious to us, and forgive us our iniquity, which alas, is great. Amen. *HYMN 168 I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art A Mighty Fortress H.L. Hassler/Pizarro PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION Our God, we earnestly beseech you that you would graciously open your Holy and eternal word to your poor people, and establish us in the knowledge of your will, and direct all who err in your Word to the right way again, so that we may live according to your divine pleasure. Amen. SCRIPTURE READING Revelation 5:1-14, p. 1,030 in the pew Bible * Congregation stands. 3

4 APOSTLES CREED I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen. Carpenters of God Vijay Singh SERMON Soli Deo Gloria Revelation 5:1-14 *HYMN 92 A Mighty Fortress Is Our God *BENEDICTION POSTLUDE Worship Leaders TE Ben Falconer, Proclamation Presbyterian Church RE Rex Anderson, Christ the King Presbyterian Church TE Bill Mayk, Grace and Peace Presbyterian Church TE James Rich, Covenant Presbyterian Church Dr. R. Kent Hughes, Westminster Theological Seminary Musicians and Vocalists Dr. Ryan Kelly, Organist Dr. Steven McCollum, Director of Choral Activities, Cairn University R. Kent Hughes 4

5 Opening Declaration NOTES ON THE SERVICE John Calvin designed his 1542 liturgy for the churches of Geneva, which he called The Form of Church Prayers and Hymns, to open with a solemn declaration based on Psalm 121. This opening affirmation reminded all present of God s glory and man s frailty. Calvin s liturgy then followed this declaration with a silent corporate confession, because Calvin thought confession to be the proper beginning of worship. Our corporate confession will be made later in the service, following the Decalogue, that forms a basis for our confession of sins. Introit Taken from the Latin term to enter, the use of the introit dates to the Fifth Century. In medieval liturgy, it was a hymn, psalm, or anthem sung by the choir as the clergy entered to begin the eucharistic part of the service. The introit was traditionally sung antiphonally, that is, the choir began by singing the psalm text, and then alternately, the congregation repeated a response after each psalm verse or group of verses. The antiphon for the introit was typically a verse of Scripture. The theme of the introit was suited to gathering the congregation for worship, or possibly the season, feast, or occasion of that particular Lord s Day. The introit continued as long as needed to accompany the entrance procession. After reaching the altar, the presider would signal the choir to stop the introit. The entrance psalm would then conclude with the Gloria Patri, which resolved the introit and focused attention on the salutation and readings that followed. Some of the Reformers retained and adapted the introit. In Germany, Martin Luther preferred to use a complete psalm for the introit instead of just one verse. In England, the 1549 Book of Common Prayer used short psalms and sections of Psalm 119 for the introit. The 1552 Book of Common Prayer did not include entrance psalms, but permission was given during the rule of Queen Elizabeth for a metrical psalm or hymn to precede the liturgy ( 5

6 While our service has no clergy processing, we have included an introit; following the traditional liturgical pattern, we are using a psalm from the Trinity Hymnal. Hymn 1 All People That on Earth Do Dwell The words to this hymn are a metrical paraphrase of Psalm 100. This psalm concludes the collection of psalms that begins with Psalm 90 and extols God s greatness along with his faithful care and lovingkindness toward his people: LORD, you have been our dwelling place through all generations (90:1), and We are his people, the sheep of his pasture His faithfulness continues through all generations (100:3 and 5). This is a supremely appropriate psalm to sing for corporate worship. Author The familiar words of this hymn were arranged by William Keith. Although many of the details of his life are lost in the mist of history, he is believed to have come from Scotland. It is known that as a Protestant in the Sixteenth Century, Keith (or Kethe) fled England during Queen Mary s reign ( ) and lived as an exile in Geneva. He also visited the English Protestant enclaves of Basel and Strasbourg to keep in contact with fellow English Protestant emigres. Some scholars believe Keith is one of the Protestants who helped publish the Geneva Bible (1560), the version favored by many early Puritans. He authored some twenty-five psalm versifications, which were included in the Anglo- Genevan Psalter printed at Geneva in 1561, and they were also adopted into the Scottish Psalter of Since then it has been published in virtually all Englishlanguage psalters and hymnals (Psalter Hymnal Handbook). Tune This tune, OLD HUNDREDTH, which is sometimes called SAVOY or GENE- VAN 134, after its original text in the Genevan Psalter, first appeared in the enlarged edition of the French Genevan Psalter, published in 1551, as the tune to Psalm 134. The first half of the tune, which may have existed in plainsong and folk song for centuries, is a musical phrase which is found in various combinations before 1551; but the latter part of the tune, and the form of the whole of it, is the work of Louis Bourgeois, who was a French composer and music theorist of the Renaissance. 6

7 Bourgeois was an associate of John Calvin in Geneva, and made a significant mark on Protestant worship music there. His name first appears in the records of the Geneva council in July 1545 as a singer paid 60 florins a year to perform the new psalms and to teach the choristers at St Pierre (Calvin s main church). The following year, in collaboration with the city s preachers, he drew up a table announcing the psalms to be sung each Sunday, which was to be printed and posted on the church doors. Bourgeois showed his musical aptitude by adapting popular chansons (a multivoiced song in French) and old Latin hymns, as well as composing new melodies for the new metrical French translations of the psalms by Clément Marot and Théodore Beza. He also published harmonizations of these psalm melodies in simple syllabic homophony (one note for one syllable) for four voices in addition to more elaborate versions for four voices or instruments. The Protestant administration in Switzerland did not generally favor instrumental music, mainly because of its lascivious connection with dancing and secular entertainment, but Bourgeois was eager to establish its acceptability and insisted that the psalms of 1547, 1554 and 1561 were most suitable for instruments. To further the cause of psalm singing to instrumental accompaniment, Bourgeois undertook to improve the psalm tunes that had been written for the eighty-three metrical psalms translated by Marot and Beza. But Bourgeois may have miscalculated the best way to do this. On December 3, 1551 the Genevan composer was imprisoned for having, without a license, changed the tunes of some printed psalms, an action troubling those who had learned the old tunes that had already been printed. He was released the following day after Calvin s personal intercession, but the controversy continued: the council complained further that the faithful were disorientated by the new melodies, and so it ordered Jean Crespin, composer of the original tunes, to burn the prefatory Epistle to the Reader, in which Bourgeois claimed that not to sing was a denunciation of true worship. In July 1552 a minister from Lausanne warned the Genevan council that his town might not accept Bourgeois changes to the tunes of the old psalms by Marot or his settings of the more recent psalm translations of Beza (Grove Dictionary of Music, Bourgeios ). We sing this hymn, not only as an example of psalmody, which was so popular in sixteenth-century Protestant liturgies, but we are also singing parts of it a cappella ( after the manner of chapel [music] ) as example of unaccompanied congregational singing, which was characteristic of Calvinistic churches in the Reformation. 7

8 Collect A collect is a short prayer that was prayed by a group of people (Latin: collectionem) gathered in a church. Collects, as prayers recited in unison by the congregation, have a recognizable form: 1. The Invitation: Let us pray ; 2. The Address (the person of the Trinity who is being addressed, but usually the Father); 3. An attribute or quality of God, which relates to the petition (often Who... ); 4. The Petition (the matter being asked about or requested); 5. The Reason or Result expected (begins with the word that ); 6. The Christian Conclusion ( through Christ our Lord ); 7. The General Affirmation ( Amen ). This evening s collect is from the Anglican tradition s Book of Common Prayer, assembled by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury in the mid-1500s. He was a key Protestant reformer in the English Reformation and was later burned at the stake under Queen Mary Tudor. This particular collect is the one for the nineteenth day after Trinity Sunday, which is October 29 th in this year s liturgical calendar. Decalogue In many Reformed worship traditions, it is customary to have the Ten Commandments read or recited in a worship service as a reminder of God s high and holy covenantal standards that his people fail to uphold in word, thought, and deed. It is our miserable shortcoming of God s standards that points to our need for Christ and the full righteousness that he alone obtained by completely obeying all of God s holy Law. Our misery is the bad news that makes the truth of God s redemption in Christ, faithfully preached in the sermon, such good news. Instead of reciting the Decalogue in unison or antiphonally, we will sing the First Table corporately as it has been set to a sixteenth-century tune. Tune The tune for this hymn, LES COMMANDEMENS (French for the commandments ), is also attributed to Louis Bourgeois. It was first used in the Genevan Psalter (1547) for the Decalogue and for Psalm 140, and later used in British psal- 8

9 ters and in the Lutheran tradition. The arrangement derives from Claude Goudimel s 1564 harmonization, and is found as a chorale tune under the German title: WENN WIR IN HÖCHSTEN NÖTEN SEIN. Goudimel was a Huguenot (French Calvinist) composer and music publisher. Between 1551 and 1566, he published eight volumes of psalms in French with polyphonic (multi-voice) arrangements with instrumental accompaniment. Despite (or perhaps because of) his significant musical accomplishments for Huguenot music and worship, Goudimel was one of the many Protestant victims of the Saint Bartholomew s Day massacre conducted between August 28 and 31, Corporate Confession Luther retained the Kyrie from the mass, which was a sung response: Lord, have mercy. The Reformed liturgies abandoned the Kyrie and substituted a corporate confession of sin. The Strasbourg liturgy, which was drawn up by Martin Bucer as a way to bring uniformity among the various Reformed churches in Switzerland, has the minister introduce the corporate confession by saying, Make confession to God the Lord, and let everyone acknowledge with me his sin and iniquity. What followed in the liturgy were confessions with various levels of specificity as to the sins being confessed. One of the longest set confessions mirrors the Ten Commandments. The prayer we are using is from the 1539 Strasbourg Liturgy. Bucer intended the corporate confessions to rouse genuine repentance in the congregation (Thompson, Liturgies of the Western Church, 164). Congregational Hymn I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art Words The words of this hymn are attributed to John Calvin, although this is disputed by some musicologists. The original French text, Je te salue, mon certain Redempteur, was published in the 1545 Strasbourg edition of Clement Marot s Psalms. This French text was later printed in volume 6 of the 1868 edition of John Calvin s Opera (works), and thus spawned the attribution to Calvin. Tune The tune, TOULON, also a composition of Louis Bourgeois, was originally an adaptation of the Genevan Psalter melody for Psalm

10 10 Prayer for Illumination Because of the centrality of the Word in Protestant worship services, the Reformers understood that human inability to understand and believe divinely revealed truth necessitated seeking spiritual illumination from God by the Holy Spirit. Thus many Reformed liturgies included a prayer of illumination prior to the reading or preaching of the Word. Our prayer of illumination is adapted from the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli s 1525 liturgy, which he developed for worship at Zurich. Apostles Creed Worship in the Western Church has always included some form of confession of belief. One of the most common statements of faith used has been the Apostles Creed. While not written by the apostles (it was probably assembled using several shorter confessions circulating in the 300s), it does reflect apostolic teaching. It has been recited, chanted, or sung as a common element in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant worship services. We confess its truths in unison as part of the holy catholic church, that is, the people of God in all places and times. Hymn 92 A Mighty Fortress Is Our God Words This most famous of Luther s hymns is undoubtedly the anthem of the Protestant Reformation. The earliest hymnal still in existence that contains Ein Feste Berg ist Unser Gott (the German title, A Strong Castle is Our God ) dates to Regarding Luther s composition of the words, we ll let the editors of the American edition of Luther s Works speak: Scholars have combed the writings of Luther and his friends for phrases and expressions reminiscent of Our God He Is a Castle Strong. They have examined Luther s personal life and the religious and political events in the critical years between 1521 and A good case can be made for almost any year in this period, and we have to be content with the knowledge that this hymn more than any other epitomizes Luther s thought and personal experience. He did not write it to express his own feelings, but to interpret and apply the 46th Psalm to the church of his own time and its struggles.he wrote hymns not as a means of self-expression, but to serve his fellow-believers. Music For the background of the tune, we listen again to the editors of the American edition: While no one questions the bold originality of thought and expression in the text, Luther has sometimes been accused of plagiarism in regard to the melody. Scholars have tried to detect in it snatches of pre-reformation plain chant and folk song. It would be

11 foolish to dispute certain reminiscences of the music with which Luther had grown up. No creative genius lives in a vacuum; he cannot avoid using all sorts of readymade idioms for his building blocks. The value of the melody for Our God He Is a Castle Strong consists not in its absolute originality it reminds one most strongly of Luther s earlier martyrs hymn but in its basic integrity and strength. This is no patchwork of bits and pieces taken from here and there, but a masterpiece of musical expression. The melody reflects not only the general mood of the text, but gives strong rhythmical emphasis to the important words (vol. 53, pp ). Benediction A benediction (Latin: bene, well + dicere, to speak) is a short invocation for divine help, blessing and guidance, usually at the end of worship service. Dr. Hughes Oliphant Old reminds us that pronouncing a benediction at the conclusion of a divine service is one of the oldest traditions of biblical worship. He goes on to say that it was a high point in temple worship under the old covenant, when, after a sacrifice had been made, the high priest would raise his hands and pronounce the Aaronic benediction found in Numbers 6:24-26 ( The LORD bless you and keep you ). This same practice continued in the synagogue worship liturgy, and even the Lord Jesus himself, as his final act in his earthly ministry, raised his hands and pronounced a blessing on his disciples as he ascended (Luke 24:50). While use of a final benediction waned in the Middle Ages, Martin Luther revived its importance in Protestant worship liturgy. As Dr. Old points out, When one of the biblical benedictions is used, particularly the Aaronic blessing, then the covenant blessing of the patriarchs, which Abraham passed on to Isaac, and Isaac to Jacob, and Jacob to his descendants, is passed on to the congregation, and thus from generation to generation.the Reformers understood the Benediction not as one Christian s prayer for other Christians, a prayer that they might receive God s blessing, but rather as the conferring of the covenantal blessing, the blessing that God gave Abraham and that we as the descendants of Abraham by faith have received through faith (Leading in Prayer, pp ). 11

12 Below is a sample of William Keith s rendition of Psalm 100 in the original English, in a font type similar to how it would have looked as printed in the 1560 version of the English psalter in Geneva. Al people yt on earth do dwel, sing to yc lord, with chereful voice Him serve wt fear, his praise forth tel, come ye before him and reioyce. The Lord ye know is God in dede, with out our aide, he did us make: We are his folck, he doth us fede, and for his Shepe, he doth us take. Oh enter then his gates with prayse approche with ioye, his courtes unto: Praise, laude, and blesse his name alwayes, for it is semely so to doe. For why? the Lord our God is good, his mercy is for euer sure: His trueth at all tymes firmely stood and shall from age to age indure. A contemporary painting of a worship service in The Temple of Paradise a Sixteenth-century Huguenot house of worship. 12