Who said it first?

St. Pius X (born June 2, 1835, Riese, Venetia, then of the Austrian Empire now in Italy—died August 20, 1914, Rome, Italy; canonized May 29, 1954; feast day August 21) was the Italian pope who reigned from 1903 to 1914.  Known for his staunch political and religious conservatism, he was ordained in 1858, made bishop in 1884, cardinal and patriarch of Venice in 1893, and pope in 1902.  His eucharistic decrees eased the regulations governing daily communion, and his revival of the Gregorian plainsong and his recasting of the breviary and of the missal were important liturgical reforms. His decision to adapt and systematize canon law led to the publication of the new code in 1917, effective in 1918. His reorganization of the Curia modernized the church’s central administration, including a codification of the conclave.  He advanced the Liturgical Movement by formulating the principle of participatio actuosa (active participation of the faithful) in his motu proprio, Tra le sollecitudini (1903).  In his illuminating document, Tra le Sollecitudini, Pope Pius X writes, “Sacred music, being an integral part of the solemn liturgy, participates in its general scope… but its purpose is to add greater efficacy to the text… music is merely a part of the liturgy and its humble handmaid.” (TLS 23) 

However, coming 350 years before Pius X, there was another voice speaking similarly of music.  Instead of merely accentuating the role of music to the liturgy, this individual insisted that music was a servant of God's Word and theology.  In his profound remark, Martin Luther emphasizes the immense value of music, stating, "Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world." This quote encapsulates Luther's profound appreciation for the power and significance of music in society.  Even more profound, however, is Luther's other quote.  "Music is a handmaid of theology."  Luther's Latin preface is in some respects an expanded version of his "Frau Musica" poem, in prose rather than verse. Of the Protestant reformers around his time, it is only Luther unhesitatingly commended the use of music in the life and worship of the church and who articulates something that might be presumed from some in Rome but had not been addressed in such way before.

Do you suppose Pius X read it first in Luther?  Were they both drawing on similar points within the theological and liturgical tradition of the West, each in their own time?  Or could it be that each saw this differently and separately but articulated it in remarkably parallel terms and ways.  In any case, their successor communities of faith seem to have forgotten these words.  For some in Rome, the hymn either does not matter all that much at all and can be disposable song.  The great hymns of Roman tradition and the great hymns of the Christian West overall have been replaced with pop songs and eminently forgettable hymns written not as handmaid to either the liturgy or theology but reflections of the moment which can and probably should be forgotten as time goes on and the song is replaced.  For others in Rome, the congregational hymn has no place at all in the liturgy (Latin Mass folk).  For Lutherans it is not much different.  Those who separate style from substance find cause to introduce pop songs for the moment and musical styles that agitate against their sacred usage because they are not all that important after all and those who insist that only the Lutheran chorale should be used have narrowed their acceptable choice to a very small pool because they are too sacred to be added to in the present day or to borrow from anyone outside the Lutheran tradition.  In either case, both Rome and Wittenberg seem to have forgotten Pius and Luther.  

Looksmaxxing. . .

Do you ever have a day when something comes up in front of your screen and you have never heard of it before but it turns out to be stranger than you could have imagined?  So it was when an article in The Spectator (US edition) came to me with the title The Homoeroticism of Looksmaxxing.  What does that even mean?  Truth is stranger than fiction, as we all know only too well.

Apparently, looksmaxxing has become an online subculture fad that considers itself a form of self-improvement but actually is more like a cult for young, impressionable men still forming their identity and the high chieftain of this cult is a twenty something Tik Tok sensation who has his own oddities and affectation.  Meet Clavicular, real name Braden Peters, who has become the face of “looksmaxxing,” an  internet sensation who seems to have developed it into a religion or at least a belief systems — he teaches boys that their self-worth is about their appearance and that it is visible, measurable, and correctable through altering that physical appearances. Plastic surgery anyone?  So for the novice and those without deep pockets, looksmaxxing might resemble rather conventional self-care: skincare routines, time at the gym with a trainer, grooming helps, and such. But take it further and it enters the dark world of hormone (especially testosterone) injections, unregulated peptides, and pseudosciences such as “bone-smashing,” which is an attempt to shape facial bones by repeatedly striking the face with blunt objects.  I told you truth was stranger than fiction.

Looksmaxxing teaches boys to measure their worth by appearance, to distrust their bodies as they are and to treat them as a canvas for improvement, and to see masculinity as an external self-improvement toward an impossible goal. You want to know what happens when dating, marriage, having children, working to support a family, and providing for those you love at some cost to yourself disappears.  Looksmaxxing.  That is what happens.  In a desperate pursuit of meaning and purpose, our boys are turning inward but only as shallow as appearance.  Are we concerned?  It used to be an unkept boy in sweat pants and a tee shirt living in his parent's basement, stealing their internet, and living for video games but it has become now a crazy pursuit of an aesthetic ideal of appearance without concern for the cost in money or to the body and self-esteem.  Crazy is too small a word for this.  Braden Peters is making something like $100K per month doing content that is not quite erotic but certainly has an erotic sense to it and is cashing in on the move to make yourself the ideal.  But for whom?  Not for wife or children or work or even play.  Not for the greater community but only really for self and those who fawn over your self.  Wow.  That is just plain crazy.

For a generation of men increasingly either disinterest in or disillusioned with dating, status, career, and social mobility, why are we surprised that they are seeking comfort and solace in the mirror?  Can we offer them something more than a Christianized version of their vice?  I hope so.  This is exactly why raising up boys to be men is a cause within the Church but also for the sake of the world.  Think about it.  What can we do to rescue our boys from their worst selves (which was once drugs and alcohol)?  What can we challenge them to become?  

I wanted it to be true. . .

I will admit a love for books and stories and, when it happens, for movies that demonstrate the same almost mystic invitation into another world and another set of lives.  It is most engaging to read a book of fiction and at the end to regret the final words and period that bring it to a conclusion.  It is most encouraging to the author who has the ability to weave a story in words that we want to be true even if it is not.  Such is the power of imagination.  It leads us beyond ourselves and builds for us a new world in which we can be observers if not participants and it leaves us with a better sense of our selves because we got to know the characters borne of an author's creative skill.  

In the past I have enjoyed the great works of the mighty authors as well as the spy craft of Tom Clancy and the mystery of Agatha Christie along with the imagined world of a Dune planet.  Along with these I have loved the works of Shakespeare, the poetry of Auden, and the complexity of Dostoevsky.  But I can also say I have loved the romance and intricate portrayals of people and places in the Merchant and Ivory films and the great histories re-imagined in such movies as Operation Mincemeat.  We have so enjoyed the small releases such as The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society along with period pieces such as Cranford.  It is such a wonder to enter into a place and a plot with people you have never met until they become friends you cherish and fierce enemies you must battle.  Such is just a small part of my love for books, for words printed on a page.

While it is certainly not literature in the same sense as these works, Scripture is writing with a compelling story, great characters, and a plot whose resolution awaits an unnamed day when the Savior shall open the clouds and return in His glory.  There is something to be said about an appreciation of this.  No, it does not mean that you treat the Scriptures as any other book or that you discount its story as something less than real history but it does mean that the words are more than merely a set of facts recounted or doctrines unfolding for information.  The Bible is meant to engage the imagination.  There is something wrong with our reading if we do not build in our minds the face of a Moses or a Peter the way we would imagine how a character in fiction looks.  Movies can aid in this or they can disappoint us when they give faces to the people we have learned to know well that do not at all look like the images of our minds.  Perhaps that is why so many Biblical movies seem to fall short -- they make small what the Bible makes grand and so they disappoint us with something that is less than what the words on the page actually say.

In the old TV world of Dragnet, Sergeant Friday is said to have opined, "Just the facts, ma'am.  Just the facts."  I am told he never actually said it or did not say it in those words anyway.  Could it be that we are disappointed by Scripture because we want to distill the book down to quotes or because the stereotype lingers longer in our imagination than its reality?  Could it be that we have rendered the riches of the stories of the Bible into rather wooden accounts that not only lack in faithfulness to the Bible but make the authors and the Word whose words they are into something shallow and one dimensional?  One of the things I have loved doing over the years is to use the stories of the Bible in catechesis -- telling the stories of Scripture and letting the details and the whole landscape of the prose unfold to both engage and inform.  You cannot read the account of the Creation and Fall without being drawn into the story -- unless you are also dull and of single dimension.  You cannot read the stories of Abraham and Sarah or David and his kingly history and family and fail to be drawn into their stories as spectator and even participant.  Or, if you can, you have succeeded in turning God's divine drama into something pedestrian and bland.  If that is the case, it is a shame indeed.

Children's Bibles can sometimes rob the urgent and intricate stories of the Bible of their wit and elegance by presenting them not simply briefly but in the most spartan of prose.  Details matter. The details of the Bible stories matter.  Preaching involves unpacking these stories in such a way that it does not devolve into mere truths postulated so that someone gives ascent to these proof-texted propositions drawn out of context and out of sequence. What a shame when that happens.  A long time ago I got a Bible without verses or chapters and set in single column paragraph form.  It remains my favorite way to read God's Word.  It may not work for study but for the pure enjoyment of reading God's Word it cannot be matched.  This format allows my imagination to work, creating faces to the characters and building scenery for the words of the Lord that are His works as well.  I highly encourage it.  The Bible I use is also a King James version, with an elegance of prose and poetry that too often seems lacking in modern versions that seek to explain God as well as give testimony to His voice.  This has nothing to do with the downplaying of the truth of God's Word and everything to do with the engagement of the mind to assist that Word to make its home in our imagination as well as our hearts.

What Jesus did not say. . .

I read the insightful and humorous tirade on a piece David French wrote regarding the politics and religion of the Texas senate race.  You should read it also.  The whole thing is a good read but the individual points of this critique are spot on.  They illustrate the problem that confronts the orthodox Christian in the face of the liberal or progressive distortion of Christianity as well as the secular complaint against the faith.  That is that if Jesus did not say it, it must not be wrong and should not be part of the theological or moral stance of any individual or church body that is intent upon being Christian.

In the piece, the liberal Christian in this race, defended by David French, complains that "the evangelical focus on abortion and homosexuality in politics” is a betrayal of the Christian doctrinal and moral position precisely because these are seen as “two issues that Jesus never talked about.”  There you have it in a nutshell.  If Jesus did not say anything against it, it must not be wrong.  Since Jesus did not explicitly mention abortion or any one of the letters of the LGBTQ+ plethora of sexual desires or condemn them, it must mean that Jesus intended to support and accept them as both legitimate for the Christian to hold and moral.  Now that is a joke.  Nevermind that Scripture does address the sacred character of life and may, actually, address abortion -- though not exactly recorded from the mouth of Jesus.  

Let me explain.  

The original meaning of the Greek word porneia is “to prostitute” or “to sell.” However by the time of the New Testament, porneia had a very broad meaning that included sexual behavior such as prostitution, extramarital sexual intercourse or adultery, paedophilia, promiscuity, homosexuality, lesbianism, incest, premarital sex and bestiality. The Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament states,

Πορνεία means “prostitution, unchastity, fornication,” and is used “of every kind of unlawful sexual intercourse” (BAGD s.v.). . . . Since in Rom. 1:26f. Paul clearly alludes to homosexuality as sexual immorality, πορνεία can also refer to homosexuality as sexual immorality, as does εκπορνεύω. in Jude 7 (cf. Genesis 19) ¹

The lexicon’s message is not that porneia occurs in Romans 1:26f, but that the sexual sin in Romans 1 is included in porneia. For more discussion about Jude 7, see below.

Kittel, Bromiley and Friedrich  provides a very complete meaning of porneia stating that its meaning includes “adultery, fornication, licentiousness, and homosexuality.”^2,3 Harper’s Bible Dictionary states that porneia also includes “bestiality.”⁴

Colin Brown states this about porneia,

porneia (Dem.  onwards, rare in cl. Gk) harlotry, unchastity (also of a homosexual nature).⁵

This highly acclaimed Greek-English dictionary points out that porneuo, pornos, and porneia are part of the same word group. Then it states,

The word group can describe various extra-marital sexual modes of behavior insofar as they deviate from accepted social and religious norms (e.g. homosexuality, promiscuity, paedophilia, and especially prostitution).⁶

Colin Brown also tell us that porneia occurs in the “Testament of Benjamin.” The word is used to refer to homosexual behavior. In the following quote from the “Testament of Benjamin,” porneia is translated as fornication. Yet, it is referring to homosexual activity since Jude 7 is about homosexuality.

And believe that there will be also evildoings among you, from the words of Enoch the righteous: that ye shall commit fornication with the fornication of Sodom . . . ⁷

Verein D. Verbrugge in the  New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology writes . . .

[Rabbinical Judaism] frowned on any kind of prostitution or extramarital sexual intercourse. Incest and all kinds of unnatural sexual intercourse were viewed as porneia. ⁸

^{Yes, it is true that Jesus did not say the word we use in an explicit reference to such behavior but it is also true that Jesus did not stand outside the Biblical world with its overt approval of marriage between a man and a woman as a life-long relationship of love and fidelity along with its disapproval of any sexual behavior that contradicted or violated this context.}

In the same way, though the Bible may not specifically mention the word abortion, but it does speak volumes about the value of human life and its source in God alone. Throughout Scripture, we see the sanctity of life upheld. Verses like Psalm 139:13–16 and Jeremiah 1:5 show that the source of life is from God alone and reveal God’s intimate care for the unborn from creation to life's end.  Jesus does not stand outside this tradition but stands within this doctrine and moral stand in all His words and actions. 

The absurdity of the liberal and progressive stand is obvious: that Jesus wants you to have a lot of gay sex and abortions because he never mentioned these explicitly or condemns them clearing.  Jesus very clearly acts in violation of the accepted moral and theological stand of the day with respect to the treatment of women (in speaking with unclean women and in His refusal to take up the accepted side against the woman found in adultery while leaving the man off the hook) and does so in ways that arouse His opponents.  Jesus does this with respect to the laws of the Sabbath as well.  But somehow, it is presumed that by silence Jesus infers that either the sins of abortion or homosexuality are not so bad or that they might even be good means that Jesus apparently was unwilling or unable to own His approval of these in the same way He owned the rules concerning the Sabbath or violated the norms for His relationship with the women of the day.  How odd!  You might then infer, as the original piece suggests, that Jesus by His clear teaching condemns adultery unless, of course, you are having extramarital sex with some of the same sex or that you can abort all the babies you want as long as you treat those who actually survived to birth with dignity.  It would be a hoot and a funny joke indeed except that there are actually Christians and people who think they know Jesus who are saying exactly that.

________________________________

1. Balz and Schneider. Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament. Eerdmans Publishing Com. 1993. vol. 3., pp. 137-139.
2. Kittel. Theological Dictionary of the new Testament. Eerdmans. 1968. vol. vi., p. 581-595.
3. Bromiley, Geoffrey W. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Eerdmans Publishing Com. 1985. VI, pp. 918-921.
4. Achtemeier, Paul J. “Fornication.” Harper’s Bible Dictionary. Harper & Row & Society of Biblical Literature. 1985, p. 319.
5. Colin Brown. Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Regency Publishers. 1975. vol. 1., p. 497.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid. p. 499.
8. Verlyn D. Verbrugge.  New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Zondervan. 2000. pp 486. 

Too quickly. . .

When I was full-time, I will admit that Sundays were exhausting.  I typically got to the church by 5 am on Sunday so that I had some quiet time for sermon prep, teaching prep, and private devotions.  It was usual for me to get done with Sunday morning about 1-1:30 pm -- unless, of course, meetings and other activities were scheduled when that would extend to 4-6 pm!  I was tired.  In my foolishness I feared that my schedule was seen as exhausting by those in the pews.  For a few that was certainly true.  The cantor was there early and left at least as late as I did.  Others were also there for many hours on Sunday mornings and afternoons.  But I have discovered something in retirement.  I was wrong.  Nearly everyone in the congregation is there for a few brief hours and the worship service lasts at its longest 75-90 minutes.  Sitting in the pews and assisting in the distribution has taught me that the time spent together around the Word and Table of the Lord is not long at all but passes too quickly.  It is over in the blink of an eye.

It seems like I am just getting settled in the pew and the liturgy is already to the readings from God's Word.  It seems like I have just found my comfortable spot and the sermon is winding down to its Amen.  It seems like I am just beginning to say I believe and we are already confessing the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.  It seems like I am just starting to pray and already the petitions are done and we are in the Offertory.  The Eucharistic Prayer that seemed wordy at one point is too short to give me a real opportunity to meditate on the riches of God's grace soon to be placed upon my lips.  The distribution that once seem too long is over so fast and almost seems rushed.  I am just back in the pew and already we are being encouraged to bless the Lord, be blessed by the Lord's benediction, and being the final hymn.  Where did the time go?  It is all over too quickly.

I am not saying that 75 minutes or 90 minutes is too short but that when one enters into the presence of God around His Word and table, it is over far too fast.  Churchill said that they had barely begun to fight.  God has barely begun to deliver His gifts to my mouth and to address my mind with His wisdom and truth and to take from me the heavy weight of my sin and it is done.  I suspect I am speaking more here of the attitude of the heart than clock watching or the actually time spent in the pews.  I have rediscovered awe.  That is perhaps the biggest change for me on Sunday morning.

This is not about how wonderful the preaching is or the choir or the music.  They are fine.  It is about the renewed sense of awe at the simple privilege of being in the presence of the most high God who comes not to condemn sin but to bequeath grace upon grace.  It is the renewal that comes from listening again to every word of the liturgy, to hearing God's Word spoken into my ear, and to kneeling to receive the flesh of Christ upon my tongue and the blood of Christ upon my lips.  Amazing grace!  It is awesome.  It is too quickly over, the sacred vessels cleansed and put away, the echos of the hymn fading in the ear.  Wow.  It is the rediscovery of awe.  I always had some of it but the labor of Sunday, repeating everything twice, looking forward to the inevitable meetings or congregational activities always set for Sundays worked against this sense of awe and made me labor against this simple appreciation and joy of being in the presence of our gracious Lord.

I hope and pray that if you are leading worship from altar or organ bench, you still enjoy this wonderful awe.  I hope and pray that if you are sitting in the pew you think with me the wonder of where the time went and how you barely had a moment to consider the miracle of it all in the God whose voice lilts into the ear and whose heavenly food is tasted on the tongue.  Awaken to the awe of being in the presence of God.  Worship is not drudgery but awe.  The preacher or organist or choir do not make it so but God who comes to us, down to us, with heavenly grace and favor to bestow upon us His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation week after week after week.  In the blink of an eye He is there before we realize it and in the blink of an eye it is done before we appreciate its majesty.  We need to awaken to the awe of what happens on Sunday morning because that is the foundation of everything that flows out of it through the rest of the week and the rest of our lives.