Music for Sunday 15 May 2011

I'm back on the coalface this week, having enjoyed two weeks of relatively quiet bliss.  That is, the sort of bliss that comes between completing a major grant application, conducting for two concerts, carrying on with a new job and failing to take the planned gap of two or three days out of Melbourne.  I feel hindsight teaching me that the best-laid plans ought to be made some months in advance.

This Sunday conjures up a series of images, all connected with livestock.  You can find the readings here.

The big declaration in the Gospel is one of the most famous sayings of Jesus: I am the good shepherd.  Combined with Psalm 23, you'd think that this would make hymn selections relatively easy and straightforward.

But think about it for a moment.  I am is not as simple as it first appears.  Think of the encounter between Moses and the burning bush: God refuses to be identified by a name, and when pressed tells Moses to say that he's been sent by I am who I am.  This makes that series of sayings in John's Gospel a little more complicated: Jesus isn't claiming the water, light, shepherd, and way of life as a personal attribute, but as something that strikes off into a much larger framework.  They are ultimately a deeply eschatological sayings.  There is a message here that goes beyond the merely pastoral world of sheep and fields and shepherds, and if one wishes to explore it more deeply through hymnody there's a lot of material to work through.

Music this week will include Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Dear shepherd of your people [444]
Sequence: Christ be my leader by night as by day [624]
Offertory: I danced in the morning [242]
Communion: Author of life divine [506]

The parish choir is back to work again after their recess.  Beginning from this week there will be no Wednesday rehearsals: until the end of the year practice will all be done on Sundays.

Here's an anthem idea for those of you who like these things: