“A Transient, Chosen People”

By Mark Alan Filbert, Hymnology Consultant Hymn of the Month 0 Comments

Text: “A Transient, Chosen People,” John Core, Shores of Though and Feeling, p. 5. Tune: SEALEGS, Carson Cooman, At Dawn of Grace, p. 1. Alternate Tunes, WANDERER, TIMBER LAKE Alternate Familiar Tune: LLANGLOFFAN

For many denominations, the Transfiguration of Our Lord is celebrated on the Last Sunday after Epiphany, which in 2025 falls on March 2. A hymn drawing imagery from both the Old Testament (Exodus 34.29-35) and the Gospel (Luke 9.28-26) readings appointed for Transfiguration in Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary, is “A Transient, Chosen People”. The text by John Core (1951-2017) opens with allusions to the Exodus story and Moses’ “veiled but shining face” in the first stanza, contrasts the wandering of Christ in his day and that of the homeless in our day with the vision of Christ “who gleamed with glory upon the mountain crest” in the second and third stanzas, and calls us “to show now in blankest, bleakest place love, justice, and compassion: the shining of God’s face” in the final stanza. As with the January 2025 Hymn of the Month, multiple tunes have been published by The Leupold Foundation for this text. The tune, SEALEGS, by Carson Cooman (b. 1982), is both simple and elegant. The other two, listed above as alternate tunes, are by Iteke Prins (b. 1937) and John R. Kleinheksel, Sr (b. 1938), respectively. Given that the text may only be sung on Transfiguration Sunday each year, the Welsh tune, LLANGLOFFAN, is a good familiar alternative.

John Core was born at Camp (now Fort) Rucker, Alabama, and earned a B.A. in Speech Communication from West Virginia University in Morgantown, where he served as a Library Associate cataloging music from 1975 until his death in 2017. Core was a member of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and published four collections of texts with The Leupold Foundation. Carson Cooman is a Rochester, New York, native, who studied at Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University. As a composer, Cooman is both versatile and prolific; his organ music is published exclusively by The Leupold Foundation, along with one volume of his hymn tunes.

“A Transient, Chosen People”