“God Has Gone Up with Shouts of Joy”
This month we continue our Hymn of the Month series in which one or more hymns drawn from collections published by Wayne Leupold Editions will be posted on the opening page of the website for consideration by pastors and musicians who may wish to introduce the hymn to their congregations the following month. The Hymn of the Month will often be thematically appropriate for a particular season of the church year or it may be related to a more general theme about the church’s mission in contemporary
society. Thus, pastors and/or musicians may wish to have the choir introduce the hymn on the first Sunday of the month or season and then invite the congregation to join with the choir in singing the hymn on each of the remaining Sundays. Additional hymns will occasionally be suggested for a particular Sunday in the church year or for annual commemorations, such as the liturgies of Holy Week; such hymns may only be appropriate on the designated day, or they might be used as a Hymn of the Month in anticipation of or in response to the particular day observed on the church calendar.
For those congregations who observe The Ascension of Our Lord, this text, God Has Gone Up with Shouts of Joy, by James Hart Brumm (b. 1962) set to a tune, SAMARA, by Clark Kimberling (b. 1942) alludes not only to the Ascension story from the appointed Gospel for the day in the Revised Common Lectionary (Luke 24.44-53), but also to the appointed Psalmody (Psalm 47).
Brumm, who holds degrees from Westminster Choir College, New Brunswick Seminary, and Drew University, all in New Jersey, is an ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America. He is an active author, editor, scholar, and hymn writer serving as pastor and teacher for Blooming Grove Reformed Church in DeFreestville, New York. His three volumes of hymns published by Leupold Editions include Out of the Ordinary (2001), Rhythms of Praises (2009), and Alleluias All Our Days (2014). Kimberling is a mathematician with a PhD from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago who served for many years on the faculty of the University of Evansville in Indiana. Also a composer by avocation, Kimberling is a published composer of choral music whose collection of hymn tunes, Sing to the Lord a New Song, was published by Leupold Editions, Inc., in 200.
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