Prelude — Come Sunday
Duke Ellington · piano
Duke Ellington wrote this as the sacred heart of Black, Brown and Beige, a musical history of African Americans that was, among other things, a direct challenge to America: to live up to its founding principles of freedom and equality for all.
Introit — How Can I Keep from Singing
Robert Lowry · organ
This hymn spent the better part of a century quietly circulating through American congregations before Pete Seeger recognized its folk soul and carried it into the broader culture. Its thesis is simple and radical: “My life flows on in endless song above earth’s lamentation.” As we celebrate 250 years of imperfect becoming, this feels like the right question: how can we keep from singing, even now… especially now?
Opening Hymn — Shall We Gather at the River
HPP #480, vv. 1, 2, & 4
In July of 1864, the Reverend Robert Lowry sat in his parlor in the grip of a brutal heat wave. The Civil War was raging; an epidemic was moving through his city, and death was everywhere. He found himself asking — as we are parting at the river of death, shall we meet at the river of life? This is a hymn that walks us forward, regardless of how things look ahead.
Interlude — Down to the River to Pray
American folk / spiritual
The origin of this song is genuinely contested, which is itself a kind of American truth. It’s been called a Christian folk hymn, an Appalachian song, and a Southern gospel tune. And with so many different hands on it over the years, it really is all of these at once.
Music of Reflection — Hymn to Freedom
Oscar Peterson · piano
The great Oscar Peterson reached deep into the blues and the Baptist spirituals of his childhood to craft this beautiful hymn. Within months of its composition, Hymn to Freedom had been adopted as an anthem of the American Civil Rights Movement. It did what the best American music has always done — it named the wound and insisted on the healing simultaneously.
Communion — A Medley of Early American Music
piano
Our Communion today is accompanied by a meditation on the sounds America made in its first century — voices that rarely share a stage but together sketch the full emotional range of a people still assembling itself.
Offertory — What Wondrous Love Is This
American folk hymn
This hymn has persisted across the entire span of American religious life because its question is inexhaustible: “What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?”
Closing Hymn — We Would Be Building
FINLANDIA · HPP #482, all verses
“We would be building; temples still undone…” This is a hymn for a nation that is not yet finished. It’s a celebration of commitment to the work that remains — which is, on reflection, the most honest posture available to a republic marking 250 years. We are still building.
Postlude — Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
Battle Hymn of the Republic
Julia Ward Howe wrote this hymn in a single night, after hearing soldiers sing at a Washington troop review. It draws on imagery from Revelation for its vision of divine justice and became the anthem of the Union through the Civil War. We close with it today as testimony: the glory has not yet fully arrived, and we have seen enough of its promise to continue marching toward it. His truth is marching on.