Worship for November 8, 2020
Please view the embedded video of our service below by clicking on the grey arrow in the middle of the image.
About the Music:
This Sunday's Prelude is the moving “Elegy” by Brenda Portman (b 1980), award-winning composer and organist at Hyde Park Community United Methodist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. This solemn and lyrical piece is offered as a musical expression of remembrance for All Saint's Day (November 1) and Veterans Day (November 11).
Much of our music this Sunday is based on Hymn 61, Wachet auf (Sleepers Wake), Interesting to our current times, both the words and tune to this German chorale were written by Phillipp Nicolai while he was the pastor in Una, Westphalia, during a terrible epidemic that took more than 1300 lives in the locality in 1597.
During his career, J.S. Bach wrote over 200 cantatas, including one for each Sunday of the liturgical year, many of which were based on a familiar chorale with text relating to the appointed lessons for the day. This Sunday's anthem comes from Bach's Cantata 140 Wachet auf, which is based on the hymn by Phillipp Nicolai about the parable of the wise and foolish maidens which is appointed for this Sunday.
The service concludes with a postlude based on the Advent hymn "Wachet auf" by Wayne L. Wold, Director of Music Ministry at First Lutheran Church in Ellicott City, Maryland and Adjunct Associate Professor of Organ at Shenandoah Conservatory. He also taught at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, from 1990-2020.