A letter from the Director of Music

Dear Members and Friends of St. Andrew’s On-the-Sound,

This year, the month of March makes up the majority of the season of Lent. As we walk together through this penitential season of reflection and spiritual growth, I find that I look forward to Lent more and more each year. It provides time for contemplation and devotion, and allows for us to focus on the most important things in our spiritual lives as we begin the long walk to Holy Week.

Lent also provides an opportunity to explore hymns and scripture that we don’t encounter the rest of the liturgical year. This year, with our Sunday lessons in Year A, we encounter some of my favorite readings, especially in the Gospel of John. We hear Nicodemus asking Jesus how to be born a second time (in his response, Jesus includes the famous saying, “For God so loved the world…”), how Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at the well and gives her living water, how the man born blind is healed, and how Jesus weeps over the death of his friend Lazarus and then raises him from the dead. We also hear about the great valley full of bones that are raised and are called the house of Israel. I am so looking forward to hearing these beautiful readings this year, since the last time they came up was March 2020, when churches were closed at the start of the pandemic.

In addition to being able to hear and reflect on these wonderful texts, I also encourage you to come to church to sing some of our great Lenten hymns. While we may not sing it this year, one of my favorite hymns for the Sunday that we hear about the woman at the well is by Scottish minister and poet Horatio Bonar. He wrote I heard the voice of Jesus say in 1846.It has been set to several tunes since then, but my favorite is the great Third Mode Melody written by English composer Thomas Tallis in 1561 for a set of psalter hymns. This is the tune we find in Hymnal 1982.

Here are two stanzas from Bonar’s magnificent text:

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Behold, I freely give
the living water, thirsty one;
stoop down and drink and live.”
I came to Jesus, and I drank
of that life-giving stream;
my thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
and now I live in him.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,

“I am this dark world’s light.

Look unto me; your morn shall rise

and all your day be bright.”

I looked to Jesus, and I found

in him my star, my sun;

and in that light of life I’ll walk

till trav’ling days are done.

Blessings,

Justin Smith