323. Hymn for Advent 1 (Series A)

In Useful Hymns, I put forth a hymn for every Sunday of the Church Year ... but that was following the historic, one-year lectionary as found in The Lutheran Hymnal. For some months now, I've been singing one of my hymns (or occasionally, somebody else's hymn set to music I wrote for it) out of UH or Edifying Hymns every Sunday. One trouble I have is that my current home church doesn't follow Historic One-Year; it follows the Lutheran Service Book three-year series, with a separate set of lessons for every Sunday in Year A, B and C. So, I've noticed that, more often than not, the hymn I wrote for a given Sunday in UH or even EH doesn't gel with the readings for the equivalent Sunday in A, B or C. Sometimes it's just a matter of moving a piece meant for a different week into the slot. Sometimes I have to hunt a little harder for something relevant to the day's lessons, and at times the stretch is considerable. And I've also noticed some gaps in my hymnnic output: Bible stories for which I haven't written a hymn, but maybe I should.

Meantime, my hymnwriting has slowed down quite a bit. I had a fit, a few weeks back, and scribbled out two epic hymns, but more often I've been going months at a time without writing any and I wonder, at times, if I'm just flat out of ideas. Or if the ideas I do have are just unwriteable (and I could give examples). But it has slowly dawned on me that what I really should do is clench my jaw and churn out three more Church Years worth of hymns. I'm not ruling out the possibility of putting "See UH No. X or EH No. Y" when I find myself on ground I've adequately covered before. But even with shortcuts like that, this new project gives my third hymnbook the potential to become the bulkiest of the lot, so far.

Today's hymn launches this project with a brief hymn (may they all be briefish!) for the Sunday that LSB glibly calls Advent 1 – the first Sunday of the Church Year. The lyrics largely riff on the Epistle from Romans 13:11-14, with a bit (toward the end) of the Gospel from Matthew 21:1-11. The tune I'm thinking of using is from a French metrical psalter of Strasbourg, 1539, and is called either AU (or possibly DU) FORT DE MA DÉTRESSE or OLD 130TH. It is sometimes ascrbed to Claude Goudimel and sometimes to Louis Bourgeois, though as the latter edited the Genevan Psalter, he is spuriously credited with a lot of tunes. I've seen this one used with at least four hymns in American Lutheranism: "In heaven is joy and gladness," "O Lord, hear Thou my calling" and "We stand in deep repentance," all in The Lutheran Hymnary, and "Mine eyes unto the mountains" in Service Book and Hymnal. And so, here's my hymn for the next Advent 1, seeing as we're going through Series C this church year.

Oh! Know the time, dear children,
High time to wake from sleep.
Now, loving one another,
All God's commandments keep;
For near is our salvation,
More than when you believed.
Cast off the works of darkness;
The mail of light receive!

Oh! Know the time, dear children:
The night is all but spent,
The day its fingers stretching
To touch the orient.
Walk as befits the daytime:
Clearheaded, chaste, at peace;
And put on Christ, refusing
To let your flesh have lease.

Oh! Know the time, dear children:
Your King rides in to rule,
As when the heir of David
Rode up on David's mule.
Believers cry "Hosanna!"
To David's Son and Lord;
If any ask, "Who is it?"
"The Christ," reply the horde.