This is a recording of a hymn festival on November 17, 2024. Commentary by Rev. Dr. Harold L. Senkbeil. The Organist is Rev. Dr. Paul Grime. The Officiant is Matthew Wurm.
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Confidence in Uncertain Times: A Hymn Festival
A sung service built for a season of anxiety, opening with the acknowledgment that recent events and the daily news leave people uncertain, and turning that unrest toward God’s Word and the confidence it gives against death. Between the hymns the cantor sets Bach’s chorale prelude “Before Thy Throne I Now Appear”—dictated, by tradition, on Bach’s deathbed—as a prayer of longing for grace in the face of death. The spoken meditations trace the whole arc: death entering through Adam, Christ alone conquering it by cross and grave, the sure hope of the resurrection of the body, and the comfort that those who die in Christ are kept as the apple of God’s eye. Hymns of the Last Things follow—”Wake, Awake” among them—picturing Christ the Bridegroom coming to claim His Church, washed clean in His blood. The festival closes by sending the worshipers back down to ordinary life on the plain, where Christ still keeps them until He leads them home.