Welcome to Sundays at Home
Good morning and welcome to Trinity! So glad you are tuning in virtually for today’s service. Each week you’ll find Sundays at Home with Trinity Episcopal Church. We feature the full service recording, as well as the sermon and anthem on their own.
In-person services are held at Trinity Church each Sunday at 8:00am & 10:30am and at 12:00noon each Wednesday.
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 November 28, 2021
The First Sunday of Advent
Please view the embedded video of our service below by clicking on the grey arrow in the middle of the image.
Our Trinity Kids series is currently featuring previously recorded episodes.
About the Music:
The lovely “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” is often performed as an instrumental piece at weddings, but it’s composer, J. S. Bach originally created it as the finale of a ten-movement liturgical piece for voices with instrumental accompaniment. It was written in 1723 for the feast of the Visitation, which commemorates Mary’s visit to Elizabeth as written in the Gospel of Luke, making it perfect for Advent. Bach based this music on an earlier cantata that he wrote for the 4th Sunday of Advent in 1716, which he expanded, ending with this hymn of praise to Jesus, our joy. Bach’s version included those now-famous triplets, played in this arrangement by the violin with organ accompaniment.
Bach also wrote a cantata based on the hymn (#61) “Sleepers, wake!” of 1599, by Philipp Nicolai, which covers the Parable of the Ten Virgins. The fourth movement, “Zion hears the watchmen singing”, is based on the second verse of the hymn. The melody is sung by the tenors, with the phrases of the tune entering intermittently with the famous lyrical melody played by the violins. In our version, sung at the Offertory, the tenor solo will be divided among three of our tenors who will alternate phrases of the chorale. Bach’s later transcription of this movement for organ is very famous and often heard during Advent. We will also sing this hymn at the close of the service and I will play an arrangement by the German organist Max Reger (1873-1916) as the Postlude.
The great English hymn writer Charles Wesley (1707-1788) penned the words of our opening hymn, “Lo! He comes with clouds descending”. It is commonly sung to the tune Helmsley, published in 1763. The hymn was considered one of the “Great Four Anglican Hymns” in the 19th century.
Possibly the most familiar Advent hymn of all time, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” has its origins over 1,200 years ago in monastic life. Originally in Latin, the hymn is a metrical paraphrase of the “O Antiphons”, a series of plainchant antiphons which were sung before and after the Canticle of Mary, the Magnificat, over the seven days before Christmas. The familiar tune, Veni Emmanuel, has its origins in 15th century France.