Prelude — In a Landscape
John Cage (1948) · piano
The piano pedals are held, sustaining every resonance so that nothing fully decays — the sound of the pasture before the service begins, everything present and open. It serves as the landscape Psalm 100 invites us into: the gates, the courts, the place where the flock already gathers.
Introit — I’ll Sing a Song of Love
John L. Bell · organ
This is the sound of a shared making. Bell’s Iona Community tradition holds that no one worships alone; the song belongs to everyone.
Opening Hymn — Here I Am, Lord
HPP #541, all
The hymn is built as a conversation: God speaks, and we answer. The call in the verses — “I have heard my people cry” — echoes Matthew’s image of a shepherd who sees the crowds harassed and helpless and is moved with compassion. Our refrain — “Here I am, Lord, is it I, Lord?” — is the congregation’s answer to the harvest that needs workers.
Anthem — Gabriel’s Oboe
Ennio Morricone (1986, from The Mission) · organ
In the film, a Jesuit priest climbs to a waterfall and plays his oboe to the Guaraní people watching from the trees — an act of pure, unarmed outreach. It is the exact gesture the unison prayer describes: coming to find the lost, coming to bring safety, crossing into territory where love has no guarantee of return. It simply arrives.
Hymn of Reflection — Morning Has Broken
HPP #267, all
This hymn asks us to receive the day — and the people in it — as if for the first time. Ephesians calls us to put away bitterness and anger and to be kind and tenderhearted; this is the music of that interior clearing, the sound of a morning that resets the heart.
Communion — Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling / For the Beauty of the Earth
Offertory — I’ll Give What I Have
John L. Bell
Ephesians says: work, so that you have something to share with those in need. Bell’s hymn holds that same standard — not what we wish we could give, not what we plan to give someday, but what we actually hold.
Closing Hymn — God of Grace and God of Glory
HPP #456, vv. 1, 3, & 5
“Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour.” It sends us out the way this service has shaped us — aware of the harvest, aware of the need, and asking for the grace to carry into the streets of our own village what we have received at this table.
Postlude — Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum
Claude Debussy (1908) · organ
Debussy dedicated this suite to his young daughter with “tender apologies for what follows” — knowing she would one day have to practice difficult scales just like these. The piece begins as a set of dutiful piano exercises, then drifts somewhere luminous and free; the discipline exists, but so does the liberation from it. It is a fitting close for our service about a shepherd who imposes no preconditions: come home first, the scales can wait.