Welcome to Sundays at Home
Good morning and welcome to Trinity! So glad you are tuning in virtually for today’s service. As we worship remotely, each week you’ll find Sundays at Home with Trinity Episcopal Church. We will be featuring the full service recording, as well as the sermon and anthem on their own.
If you would like to join us for an in-person service we have two options for Holy Eucharist. An 8am service in our sanctuary (without music) and then a full service at 9am in the Bishop’s Garden each Sunday. Simply bring a chair, mask, and a heart for worship.
Once again, thank you for tuning in and for being faithful with your time, talents, and treasures.
Grace and Peace!
Rev. Jonathan V. Adams
Worship for July 11, 2021
Please view the embedded video of our service below by clicking on the grey arrow in the middle of the image.
During the summer, our Trinity Kids series will be featuring previously recorded episodes.
About the Music:
The organ voluntaries this week are based on several hymns found in our hymnal. The first needs no introduction: “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound”, #671, was written by John Newton (1725-1807), an ordained clergyman in the Church of England who started life as a sailor at age 11. His tumultuous sailing life, including a storm in which his vessel was nearly wrecked, led to his eventual conversion to Christianity and subsequent ordination. His legacy to the church includes several hundred hymns, including the poem “Amazing Grace”, written in 1779. The tune, “New Britain”, was already circulating in tunebooks of the time, but William Walker of South Carolina set the poem to this tune in 1847. Thus began the marriage of tune and text that has become one of the most beloved American hymns of all time.
The closing voluntary is a toccata (touch piece) on the tune “Gaudeamus Pariter” by Bohemian composer Jan Roh (Johann Horn, 1487-1547). This tune appears in our hymnal with two different texts: #200 with the Easter text, “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain”, and #237, “Let us now our voices raise”, a more general purpose hymn. This rousing arrangement is by American organist James Biery (b. 1956), Minister of Music at Grosse Pointe Memorial Church in Michigan.
The hymn for this week is #686, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, sung to the tune Nettleton. Robert Robinson (1735-1790), pastor of a Baptist congregation at Cambridge, England, wrote the text at age 22 when he converted to Methodism. The American folk tune ”Nettleton” first appeared in an American hymnal in 1813 and is named for Asahel Nettleton, an American theologian and Evangelist who was influential during the Second Great Awakening and also published music.
Our bass section leader and Music Intern Ryan Davis has chosen the aria “The People That Walked in Darkness” from Handel’s “Messiah” for his Offertory solo. Based on Isaiah 9:2, these words are filled with meaning for us, as we struggle in the darkness of our world and our lives, in the darkness of our anxieties, sins and shortcomings. Whatever our burden is, Isaiah invites us to move from darkness into the light of God as found in his son Jesus Christ.