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The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost
O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee, mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the same Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 19)
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The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost
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A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
✛
The Beauty of Holiness
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Today we welcome back or for the first time the boys of Saint Thomas Choir School, their families, and also the faculty and staff of the school. It is very good to see you, and it also a signal to the rest of us that life here is about to change.
Saint Thomas has a rigorous schedule of worship all year, even when the Choir School is off. We have nineteen Eucharists every week even in July and August: three on Sunday, three every day Monday through Friday in the chantry, and one on Saturday as well. But when the Choir School is here, six of these services become choral, six!
The feeling I have each September, a feeling shared by the Saint Thomas clergy, staff and lay leadership, might be likened to the sudden full-throttle of a jet plane taking off. This feeling is not just because of the choral services themselves, which are command performances for the clergy and some assisting staff. It is also because of the sudden presence of a school full of third to eighth graders among us, learning, practicing, rehearsing and performing. And over at the Choir School it includes living, eating and sleeping, classes of all sorts, and innumerable school activities from playing an instrument to kicking a soccer ball.
The truth is, it is great wonder to behold and a joy. The boys learn to sing to professional levels of excellence, sing a sacred music repertoire from the Middle Ages to the present moment; they are exposed to the Church’s classical teaching and to the glories of Anglican liturgy; and they are influenced by the ethics and etiquette of living in a community of Christian care and charity, of justice and respect for others. I commend both Headmaster Fr. Wallace and Music Director Dr. Scott, and their staffs, for their leadership on these fronts.
Boys, I hope that when you sing, you will feel the pleasure of praising the Lord in song. It has been said that the one who sings, prays twice. What does that mean? It means at least this much: that the one who sings praises God in the words that are used, as we all do when we use prayers with words. It also means this: that the one who sings praises the Lord in the spirit, the literal movement of the air (like an organ) from the lungs and the pump of the abdomen through the vocal chords and out the mouth, the miracle of music which is part of the human person. So the singer prays twice in two-fold praise of the Lord: with the words and the music, with the mind and the spirit. That is why people love hymns.
Many years ago I received a message from the mother of a chorister here who had been startled – as we all would be – by her home phone ringing one morning around 6 or 7 am. A voice chirped, “Hi, Mom, do you know Sheppard?” He was referring to the English 16th century polyphonic composer John Sheppard, probably better known in our time than in his (in part due to his being performed by choirs like ours). Mom, who was a musician, did know some things, yes. “Well,” said the new chorister who had just been exposed for the first time to Sheppard, “the notes all tumble over one another, and it’s awesome.”
I thought then, as I do now, with whole hearted deepest conviction, that when a nine or ten year old calls his mother at the crack of dawn to tell her a sixteenth century polyphonic composer’s music is awesome, something awesome itself is going on here. This is a great part of what we are about – the discovery of the wonders of sacred music, music of the highest order from all ages of worship.
Now there is more to all this than just what is happening to a young chorister. Boys, you and the Gentlemen of the Choir, under Dr. Scott’s direction and supported by the school and all the rest of us, are an essential part of the mission of Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue. Our stated mission is “to worship, love and serve Our Lord Jesus Christ through the Anglican tradition and our unique choral heritage.” Our unique choral heritage, the Men and Boys Choir which comes down to us from the Middle Ages of Christendom, is what you embody this morning and will do through this upcoming season. You make this gift to the city and to the world.
It has been done here for a long time. This year we are celebrating the 100th anniversary, the Centennial, of our glorious church building. The old church, which was also glorious, burned to the ground in 1905. This church, even more glorious, was built on the same spot and dedicated in 1913. But since 1919, for 94 out of those 100 years, there has been a Saint Thomas Choir School, singing the praises of Jesus Christ in this breath-taking gothic house of prayer at the center of midtown Manhattan, some might say in the center of one of the true centers of the world. The leaders who led the rebuilding of the church wanted it to be here. They also wanted the worship within the church to live up to the glories of the building. And so the Rector Dr. Stires and the Warden Mr. Steele brought Dr. Noble from York Minster in England to be Music Director. They started the Choir School. The Choir School was essential to their vision.
It is essential to our vision as well. So it is my desire and prayer that this year will be a season of excellence and joy for our Choir and the Choir School and the whole Saint Thomas community; that our mission will be further enhanced; and that many souls will be drawn in here to experience something akin to what that young chorister said to his mother early in the morning nearly twenty years ago. What he experienced, among other fine things, is what the Psalm calls the beauty of holiness. Welcome back. It’s good to see you.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
