A Blessing

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 17, 2019
Today's offertory anthem is my setting of a blessing that is particularly meaningful to me. I was introduced to this text by the Reverend Elizabeth Goodyear Jones, who served as interim rector when I was the principal parish musician at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Jackson, Mississippi in the mid-1990s. She concluded every Eucharist with this blessing, written by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

 William Sloane Coffin (1924-2006) served as chaplain of Yale University and later as senior minister of the Riverside Church in New York City. He was a leader in the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

 I composed the musical setting for Liz's final Sunday at St. Philip's in 1995. While on sabbatical last summer, I made some revisions to the anthem, and our choir sang it at our recent Recovery Eucharist. I have corresponded with the Reverend Coffin's widow and son, and I've received their permission to submit the composition for publication. I find this text to be as meaningful today as when it was written a generation ago. I hope that you will find it to be a blessing in your life as well. 


May the Lord bless you and keep you. 

May the Lord’s face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. 

May God give you grace not to sell yourself short, 

Grace to risk something big for something good, 

Grace to remember that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth,
and too small for anything but love. 

May God take your minds and think through them. 

May God take your lips and speak through them. 

May God take your hands and work through them. 

May God take your hearts and set them on fire.

                                                                   -William Sloane Coffin, Jr. 

 Music for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 17, 2019

 Hymns
423   Immortal, invisible, God only wise (St. Denio)
296   We know that Christ is raised and dies no more (Engelberg) 
124 (stanza 5)   What star is this with beams so bright (Puer nobis)
325   Let us break bread together on our knees (Let Us Break Bread)
544   Jesus shall reign where’er the sun (Duke Street)

Service Music
Gloria in excelsis S-277   New Plainsong, David Hurd 
Psalm 1   St. Martin’s Psalter, Thomas Pavlechko
Sanctus S-125   A Community Mass, Richard Proulx
Fraction Anthem S-154  New Plainsong, David Hurd

 Anthems
A Blessing     -Marty Wheeler Burnett
Make me a channel of your peace    -Sebastian Temple, arr. Martin Neary

 Organ Music
Chorale Prelude on Duke Street     -Peter Pindar Stearns
Prelude in D Minor     -Anton Bruckner

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