Choral Anthems

Rejoice and Sing, Hosanna to the King!

Composer: Lloyd Larson (Beckenhorst Press)

Text: Lloyd Larson, from the Palm Sunday narrative

Season: Sung April 13, 2025, Palm Sunday, Beverly Heights Sanctuary Choir

Palm Sunday is the one day in the church year when the crowd gets it right. “Hosanna” is a Hebrew cry for help, “save us now,” that had become a shout of praise, and the people lining the road into Jerusalem used it in both senses at once without knowing it. Within the week the same city would call for his death. The anthem does not dwell on that; it stays with the morning, the palms, and the children singing.

Lloyd Larson wrote it as a processional for exactly this Sunday: bright, rhythmic, built to be learned quickly and sung loudly, with a tambourine part if the choir wants one. At Beverly Heights it followed the children’s tone chimes and “Antiphonal Hosanna” on Palm Sunday 2025, so the whole church had been singing hosannas before the choir took its turn.

Scripture: Matthew 21:1 to 11; Psalm 118:25 and 26

How Deep the Father’s Love for Us

Composer: Stuart Townend (1995); arr. Larry Shackley (Hope Publishing)

Text: Stuart Townend

Season: Sung March 23, 2025, in Lent, Beverly Heights Youth Choir

Stuart Townend wrote this hymn in 1995, and it has done something few modern hymns manage: it has moved into the regular rotation of churches that sing almost nothing written after 1900. The reason is the text. It says what the older Passion hymns say, that the Father gave his Son and the Son bore the wrath, and it says it in the first person without sentimentality: “It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished.” There is no mood music in it, only the cross and the one who put him on it.

The Youth Choir sang Larry Shackley’s arrangement during Lent in 2025. Hearing it from young voices sharpens the last stanza, which refuses to boast “in gifts or power or wisdom” and boasts only in Christ. This recording has become one of the most watched on the church’s channel.

Scripture: Isaiah 53:4 to 6; Galatians 6:14

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