Prophet's Song

Words: John Thornburg

Music: Jane Marshall

September 29, 2013

Jane Marshall, composer of this morning's anthem, is a contemporary composer of choral music and a hymnwriter. She is a longtime member of the Sacred Music graduate faculty at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, and is also active as a music clinician in churches around the country. Recipient of many distinguished honors and awards, Marshall continues to write and publish choral music for all ages, and 22 of her hymns and responses appear in our own current United Methodist hymnal.

In this anthem composed in 1996, Marshall sets to music the words of her former United Methodist pastor and poet John Thornburg, who is the son, grandson and great grandson of Methodist ministers. John is a published hymn poet who has has written over 100 hymns, anthems and vocal solos, and his hymn texts appear in six different hymnals. In 2001, after 22 years in parish ministry, Marshall began a new calling by starting an itinerant ministry of song leading and worship consultation called “A Ministry of Congregational Singing”, which he pursues to this day. These are his deeply inspirational words:

To sing when fleeting breath and truant hope forbid,

To stand when gusts of fear at cyclone strength prevail,

To act when blanket heavy apathy surrounds,

To roar when falsehood clothed in silence overwhelms;

This then is faith:

The assurance of things hoped for,

The conviction of things not seen,

And in God's good grace to sing, to act, to roar.

We are called to live this faith.