Polyphonic Music -- Earlier than imagined. . .

From phys.org:

Earliest known piece of polyphonic music discovered

New research has uncovered the earliest known practical piece of polyphonic music, an example of the principles that laid the foundations of European musical tradition.  The earliest known practical example of polyphonic music – a piece of choral music written for more than one part – has been found in a British Library manuscript in London.

The inscription is believed to date back to the start of the 10th century and is the setting of a short chant dedicated to Boniface, patron Saint of Germany. It is the earliest practical example of a piece of polyphonic music – the term given to music that combines more than one independent melody – ever discovered.  Written using an early form of notation that predates the invention of the stave, it was inked into the space at the end of a manuscript of the Life of Bishop Maternianus of Reims.

The piece was discovered by Giovanni Varelli, a PhD student from St John’s College, University of Cambridge, while he was working on an internship at the British Library. He discovered the manuscript by chance, and was struck by the unusual form of the notation. Varelli specialises in early musical notation, and realised that it consisted of two vocal parts, each complementing the other.

Polyphony defined most European music up until the 20th century, but it is not clear exactly when it emerged. Treatises which lay out the theoretical basis for music with two independent vocal parts survive from the early Middle Ages, but until now the earliest known examples of a practical piece written specifically for more than one voice came from a collection known as The Winchester Troper, which dates back to the year 1000.  Varelli’s research suggests that the author of the newly-found piece – a short “antiphon” with a second voice providing a vocal accompaniment – was written around the year 900.

As well as its age, the piece is also significant because it deviates from the convention laid out in treatises at the time. This suggests that even at this embryonic stage, composers were experimenting with form and breaking the rules of polyphony almost at the same time as they were being written.  “What’s interesting here is that we are looking at the birth of polyphonic music and we are not seeing what we expected,” Varelli said.

Listen here:



and here:

The Voice of Disfunction. . .

DYSfunction always screams at the top of its lungs while the functioning seem either to whisper or remain silent.  I read recently that the Roman Synod on the Family should have been renamed the Synod on on Divorce, Remarriage, Alternative Families, and Homosexuality.  Fully 61% of of the word count was directed to the single or divorced.  About 7% to those to be married and another 7% to those newly married...  Cohabiting couples and the civilly married got 17% of the word count.  Homosexuals got 7% of the word count but only one sentence was written about men as husbands and fathers.  Not to pick on Rome, this is a typical example of how we deal with things in the church.  We tend to ignore the intact and functional and focus on the broken and dysfunctional.

The problem with this is that it skews the way we think of things as a whole.  For example, when I asked my middle school age catechism class whether there were more Roman Catholics in the world or gay people, hands down they said "gays are a larger percentage of the population than Roman Catholics..."  It is not merely a mistake; it is a mistake of colossal proportions!  Yet they have been conditioned to "hear" things in such a way that this was their unmistakable conclusion.

By the example of the media and even among churched folk we would assume that most all marriages end in divorce, that few people are actually married and have children, that the population of gays and lesbians in the pews is perhaps 1 of 4 Christians, that nearly everyone begins having sex with whomever is available about age 16 and this promiscuity continues unabated both for the married and those single.

Yes, we do need to be aware of the nature of the dysfunction around us and among us.  Yes, we do need to focus upon addressing the problems of the dysfunctional.  Yes, we must confront things we wish we did not have to deal with -- especially in the brokenness of singles, marrieds, families, and children.  BUT at the same time, we do need to talk about, raise up, and model intact marriages and families.  We do need to talk about, raise up, and model chastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage.  We do need to make sure that our people know that marriage is not a lost cause, that sexual purity is not a remnant of some bygone Victorian era, that family is not impossible amid the press of career, personal fulfillment, and self-interest (that seems to dominate the discussion).

We do NOT talk enough about those who sit in the pews every Sunday, faithful to their spouses, raising children with faith and good moral compass, seeking to do good and to be good to the glory of God, living out their faith within the boundaries of repentance and forgiveness, and paying attention to the catechism and the Word of God... These are not the oddities or holdovers from an antiquated generation.  These Christian people are not exceptions but actually do predominate among the faithful.

The voice of dysfunction always screams for attention but the intact, functioning, faithful Christian folks and families among us are too silent and hidden for our own good.  We need to address them, encourage them, raise them up as models, and honor them -- EVEN as we address the dysfunctional with their many wounds and needs.

The same can be said for the faithful in other aspects of our church life.  There are Christians and pastors and congregations that live on the fringes of good taste, faithful teaching, and orthodox liturgy -- too many of them -- but let us not forget the parishes, people, and places where people endeavor to actually be faithful in doctrine and practice and who aspire to beauty in service to the Gospel and to glorify God.  God bless them.  It is not impossible to be married and faithful, a family intact, single and chaste, a vibrant parish living within the twin poles of Word and Sacrament and engaged in the mission of Christ.... And we must never let it become the impression of our people that such is beyond the pale.  We do them a disservice even as we do the dysfunctional a disservice by suggesting that broken and wounded and bleeding is the only posture for Christian people and parishes.

Freedom's shame. . .

The murders in Paris are but the tip of the iceberg both in terms of the past and the future.  Islam does not countenance freedom and it does not tolerate freedom which is used to mock or blaspheme its deity.  There are many in the West who do not understand this and who refuse to accept this.  I, for one, am not ready to surrender freedom of expression to the purveyors of propaganda or the thought police who will decide what will or will not be tolerated.  Yet at the same time I am offended by the childish way we treat the precious liberty for which so many have sacrificed so much. How shallow and trivial we esteem the treasure of freedom so severely tested and purchased over and over again on battlefield and in blood. 

Though we may despise what is said, we insist upon the right of those to say it.  But that is not where it ends.  We may not and should not defer to an agency of government to censor what is said or published in the public square, that does not mean we should not police our own tongues and practice a voluntary restraint for the sake of virtue, nobility, and good.  Discretion has become a hidden or forgotten virtue and its character is much in need in our broken and fearful world.  But it needs to be the discretion of a people who know and highly esteem the cost of freedom and who refuse to abuse it by using its liberty in shameful ways.

On the one hand was must admit that Christians have long been the targets of the kind of rude and crude sarcasm that Islamic warriors found so offensive at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.  Alas, Christians are soft and easy targets because they do not take up arms to defend their faith or their God.  I suppose that one may grant the authors and editors of Charlie Hebdo a certain amount of courage for taking the risk of offending Islam and not just Christianity.  We all know that Europe has become an anti-religious atmosphere in which such satire is considered prime entertainment.  It is sad but true that the places where the spires of great cathedrals pierce the skies have become more tourist destinations than the spiritual homes of the people who live around them.  It is no less true, for example, in the Lutheran heartlands as well.

The murders were an act of terrorism and should be admitted as such and those who did them and plotted them treated as terrorists.  That said, I hope for better from us as people -- better than the surrender of our noble freedom to simply offend.  It only shows the poverty of our words and arguments when we choose to characterize our positions only with vile depictions of our opponents.  We ought to be better than this, better equipped to propose our values and better equipped to defend them against those who disagree.

Freedom's shame is that those who are heirs to this precious gift of liberty squander it on things that do not build, encourage, uplift, help, ennoble, honor, improve, or elevate us as individuals and as a people.  I am not at all suggesting that we should not discuss and even argue our positions on issues that divide us.  Unity which cannot afford such open and honest discussion is a weak and fragile unity that will not survive.  Yet we would do better to honor the sacrifice of those who have bequeathed to us this privilege by using the power of our arguments better than the crude cartoons Charlie Hebdo is known for.  I am not saying that this will silence the terrorists or end the violence but it would better if we fought over ideas than over dirty caricatures of our opponents, over crude depictions of life, and over pornographic images.  We dare not surrender this policing of our thoughts, speech, and publications to governments, agencies, or cultural warriors but we ought to do it ourselves for the sake of truth, honor, and freedom.

Sleeping at Gethsemane. . .

What a great title!  Sleeping at Gethsemane... it is the title of an article by Robert Gagnon at the Theopolis Institute.  You can read it here. . .  In it he warns us of the danger of sitting idly by while the world is making great inroads against the position of the Church with regard to sexuality, sexual orientation, and homosexual marriage.  The battles are being fought not out in the open but hidden in classrooms and the media.  Our children will be more seriously affected than we are by this subtle campaign to change the mind of all people.  And we are, as Christians, by and large sleeping like the disciples at Gethsemane before these dangers.

Most pastors have failed to fulfill their responsibility to alert their flock to the dangers that the church is now facing. Consequently, most Christians cower in the face of abusive attacks by those promoting a homosexualist agenda, just as the disciples fled at Gethsemane when Jesus was arrested. Sadder still, many Christians, particularly those who consider themselves among the elite of evangelical Christianity, continue to relegate this issue to the back burner of political concerns, dissuading fellow believers from seeing this as a central (in my view, the central) political issue of our day.

You may or may not agree with Gagnon.  You may or may not agree with the series of examples he has posited to back up his claims.  But what is hard to disagree with is the evidence that there is a growing intoleration with what, until recently, was the universal stance of Christianity to the issue of homosexual behavior.  As the point of view against such prevailing political correctness is pushed further and further from the public square and Christians are more and more isolated to the hidden corners of culture and community, it will be nearly impossible to reclaim the legitimacy of this position for our children and their children.  In the meantime, we Christians tend to act as if it is no threat unless it is in my backyard or I am directly impacted by these things.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We are all impacted and we will all find it harder and harder to retain our confession amid the pressures and powers of those allied against us -- especially the forces of academia and the media.

This is not a call to arms but a call to action.  We can take nothing for granted in this war upon the values and order God both intended and established.  We may be further behind the trendsetters in Europe here but it is hardly consolation.  Can we afford to sleep at Gethsemane?  Gagnon makes a convincing case for the answer to be "no".

Whatever happened to polite conversation?

A while ago there was quite a dust up among the comments -- one quite unrelated to the blog post I wrote -- but it has caused me to look more closely at the comments.  I will be honest here. I do not spend as much time on my blog as some of those who comment.  I do not read the comments -- except perhaps those registered very soon after the blog post.  I hardly ever go back and read comments that were placed upon the blog some weeks after the initial blog post or later -- that is, of course, unless I see the number of comments suddenly jump!

I have attempted from the beginning to allow the comments to be a free flowing discussion and do not moderate the comments.  I do not see them before they appear on the blog and no one should assume that I approve of or agree with comments posted on this blog -- least of all those that attack me or my position.  I would hope that we could continue to allow comments to be unmoderated and free flowing.  I have neither the time nor the desire to moderate comments and would probably shut down the comments altogether rather than take the time to review all comments before they are posted.

That said, it troubles me when comments become personal attacks on what others have said.  You are certainly as free to disagree with comments posted as you are to disagree with me what I have posted.  I would hope that we can act with some level of decorum and address one another politely even in disagreement.  So I ask those who comment to refrain from personal comments, from making derogatory comments about the person, or from offensive comments designed more to incite than to debate the points raised.  If you want to attack me personally, well, I am a big boy and I will survive;  if you want to personally attack other people commenting upon this blog, please count to ten, calm down, and think better about it.

Our comments should be designed to add light and not just heat to the discussion.  I do not claim infallibility and I reserve the right to change my mind.  Sometimes I have had to rethink what I wrote because of a comment.  Sometimes I have responded to comments posted.  I am grateful even for those who respectfully disagree with me.  I am not so grateful about those who use the comment box just to attack or falsely characterize my opinion.

I hope that you will take this to heart.  I certainly look forward not only to your readership but also a lively discussion of the issues I raise.  I can think of nothing better than for a blog post I wrote to initiate a healthy debate.  Please, however, do so politely and respectfully, without resorting to attacks upon the person.  If you make a statement, it is fair game for others to disagree -- just like the the blog itself.  Let's keep the focus upon the issue.  Thank you for your faithful readership and for your responses to my humble opinions.  The blog format may be aging but I will be here as long as I have a meandering opinion.  God bless you!

Perhaps the best journal article I have read. . .

Harold Senkbeil is always a good read.  Now he has hit one out of the ball park in the current issue of the Concordia Journal.  Entitled "Engaging Our Culture Faithfully, this is perhaps the best journal article I have read.  Period.  It deals with the issue of church and culture and suggests, with good evidence, that the problem has not been our failure to listen to the culture but the church's paying too much attention to the culture.

You can read it in PDF in the entire journal download here. . .  It was first delivered at the Bjarne Wollan Teigen Reformation Lectures at Bethany Lutheran College and Seminary, Mankato, MN, Oct. 31 and Nov 1, 2013.  Thanks to the Concordia Journal for the reprint!!

He begins by suggesting that he was wrong -- 17 years ago he suggested that the problem facing Lutherans was the inroad of American Evangelicalism.  Now he suggests that the problem is not the secularization of culture but the secularization of the church.

What I am proposing as the best way for Christians to face contemporary challenges builds on Professor Walsh’s thesis: our problem is not so much the secularization of society as it is the secularization of the church. If that is true then the way for-ward is the way of the cross: first death, then resurrection. Perhaps the collapse of all things familiar and comfortable to us is not that disastrous. Perhaps it is the inevitable consequence of a church grown complacent and dependent on its addiction to the culture.

He walks us through the loss of virtue, the flight from reason, the debacle of individualism, the movement from Christ to Christian, and then suggests that we have been too successful at resonating with the beat of the world and now the chickens have come home to roost.  This is, in his view, a new Babylonian captivity of the Church.  The Church has lost her story, moved from chastity to decadence (in all areas of life), shifted from soul to self, and is guilty of acedia (usually translated sloth but in reality a disaffection and disillusionment from God's purposes and gifts).  He suggests a path to lead to the recovery of corporate life, an addiction treatment for our disease of evangelicalism, the renewal of preaching, and the rebirth of catechesis..  One of his most compelling areas is the recovery of prayer and meditation.  In the end he points us to Augustine and his own apology for the Church in the classic City of God.

I hesitate to comment much more because I do not want to substitute my words for Senkbeil's or to give you and excuse for NOT reading this profound and perceptive article.  Read it.  Read it again.  It is goooood!  Hard but good.

The Manger Scene and the Gospel according to Luke

If you have ever wondered about the traditional manger scene we all have in our homes and how close to reality this is, Dr. Ken Baily has done a masterful job of connecting the dots and demonstrating the reality according to the text of Scripture.  Our versions of the creche may be a bit fanciful and too many of us may have taken off on the disconnect in our preaching, but here is the chance to see how we can shape our imagination to the Word itself. . .   Listen up!

Click here to listen to Dr. Baily on Issues, Etc. . .

Humanizing the church. . .

In an article forwarded to me some wag writing for the Telegraph is waxing poetic on the promise of women bishops actually saving the Church of England (like the female priests did, right?!).  Anyway the whole idea is not new.  Basically it compares men and women in such a way that it disfavors men as uncaring, unwilling to provide basic pastoral care, and the stuff of everyday life.  Women bishops, they say, will reinvigorate pastoral care, humanize the face of the church, and restore the significance of faith in everyday life.  Hmmmmmm

The problem with this is that in some ways we are already too good at pastoral care and terrible at the stuff of doctrine and truth.  I am, of course, speaking of the false kind of pastoral care which simply affirms the feelings people, hears them out, and tries to meet their felt needs.  This is the kind of ridiculous stuff that has dominated pastoral care ideas for decades and it has done much harm to the church and the faithful. 

Our people have to believe that doctrine is far removed from everyday life and is basically irrelevant to that everyday life.  They have come to believe that the church is there to serve them and this service takes the form of hearing them out, assuring them that what they feel is legitimate, and then affirming their needs and changing nearly anything and everything to meet those needs.  In short, we have become imprisoned to this kind of pastoral care and it has left the church an empty shell.

Pastoral care is not about feelings or felt needs but about the Word and Sacraments.  Pastoral care is not about ignoring truth or sin for the sake of affirmation but confronting sin with the unpleasant truth of the law to bring about repentance and speaking the healing balm of the Gospel in the form of absolution.  Pastoral care is about shifting the focus of piety and belief away from the shifting sand of feelings and onto the sure ground of God's unchanging Word and the means of grace that always deliver what they promise (new life in baptism and the food of eternal life in the Eucharist).

The church does not need to be humanized.  Just the opposite.  The church needs to be made Christian again.  That means taking seriously the creeds, paying attention to the catechism, growing a piety that flows out of and back into the Eucharist, and hearing the Word as the living voice of God who acts in His speaking to deliver His promise.  That means the church needs to reflect back less (dare I say none?) of the culture and values and feelings the world glories in and mirror to the world the full counsel of God's Word, with full conviction confess "we believe and teach," and with full attention pray the liturgy that intrudes into our empty and lost world the kingdom of God (in Word and Table).

We have humanized the church too much and where has it left us?  Maybe we ought to try Christizing the church.  What use has anyone of an institution of such weakness that the best it can do is to mimic back to me what I think, feel, value, or say?  Judging from the health of many churches that have endeavored to be a legal partner (marry?) to the culture, not much.  Wake up, C of E!  Wake up all others so tempted!

Where's the beef?

Though many of the recent worship battles have focused on style, style doesn’t really matter, said J. Daniel Day, retired senior professor of Christian preaching and worship at Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, N.C., and author of the 2013 book Seeking the Face of God: Evangelical Worship Reconceived.

“Worship can be facilitated and used around any kind of style,” says Day, a former pastor of First Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C. The music and sanctuary decorations can be tailored to fit the tastes of the congregation. “But the question becomes … ‘where’s the beef?’”  By that, Day says he means the object of worship, which should be God. But over the centuries, the purpose of worship in many evangelical churches has been to attract and evangelize new members.

You who have read my blog for a while have not failed to miss my skepticism about the separation of style and substance and my disdain against those who say Lutheranism's future lies in believing like Lutherans while worshiping like Evangelicals.  I have complained over and over again that people will not be satisfied by Lutheran wannabes who act like the people they are not in order to attract folks and about the whole idea and its presuppositions in making worship primarily an evangelistic venue.  Now, a Baptist is raising those very concerns.

Read more here. . .

“The gathering of the people becomes about the outsider rather than the community of faith,” Day said. “It becomes effort to evangelize rather than to worship.”  Another major shift away from historic Christian worship came even earlier, he added.  “The whole emphasis coming out of the Reformation was to convert worship into an educational experience,” Day said. “So you had these didactic, Calvinist lectures that became the models for today’s teaching sermons that go on for 45 minutes to an hour.”

At that point, churches ceased being places of worship. “The sanctuary becomes a lecture hall.”
Or they become entertainment centers, Day says, where worship is about “being impressed by the magnificence of the place, the costumes and the jumbo screens.”  Rather than just being an annoying difference of opinion with those who think differently, Day says these trends are damaging and contribute to the exodus of Millennials and others from American churches.

I can only assume that the good Baptist pastor who authored those words has been reading my blog:

“It’s really not about style, it’s about thinking intentionally about a seamless garment — a unity of word and deed in which all these things tie together,” Hatch says.

To be wise as the Magi. . .

Sermon preached for Epiphany (Observed) on Sunday, January 4, 2015.

    Epiphany is the strangest of stories.  We have no clue who, from where, or how many of what Scripture calls the "Magi" or wisemen came to worship Jesus.  What we think of astrologers or palm readers may pale in comparison to the real identities and reputations of these Magi.  Yet, God called them.  By a star He led them on an epic journey.  To the Child of His promise, God brought them.  And now they stand as examples of the wisest of the wise. 
    The priests and prophets knew the Bible and could accurately direct the Magi to the city where the Christ was to be born.  But they did not have enough faith to follow them, not even enough curiosity to go over and give it a "What if..."  Herod consulted the Bible but abused its revelation to lie, deceive, murder, and then gloat in his wickedness.  But here we are on Epiphany, remembering and honoring the Magi who had only a star to lead them yet they followed.
    They were not wise in the sense of earthly knowledge, keen intellect, or astute judgement.  No, they had little to commend them EXCEPT faith in the voice, light, and promise of God.  As the Psalmist says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  They were truly wise in the ways of faith and we seek the same wisdom.  They certainly did not follow as people who comprehended what God was doing.  They could not have known what the end of their journey would be, but that did not hinder them from following the light of the star. Are we so wise?
    They did not have a clue what was waiting for them but they prepared with their best, the worship of their bended knee, the gold that the world values, the frankincense of priestly offering, and the myrrh that hid the future of this child in the cold, darkness of death.  Are we prepared to give such gifts?
    The destination was surely a surprise.  Just a baby with nothing to reveal who He was except the mystery of the star that let them here.  Yet not just a baby, either.  Here is the God who wears a diaper and nurses at the Virgin Mary's breast.  Here is the mighty God hidden in the weakest of forms, as a mere infant.  Here is the God who has come to rescue His lost people and yet who must Himself be rescued from the lunatic named Herod.  What a mystery!  Who could have known?  Was the surprise worth it?  Could they have been disappointed – surely there were babies where they came from. . . but no child like this One.
    You come here week after week and there is no magic here. It is thoroughly predictable.  The Word that forgives, the water that cleanses sinners, and the bread and wine that feeds eternal life.  It is the surprise of surprises.  God does not come to us in heavenly glory but in human form – word, water, bread, and wine.  Yet here is the end of all our journeys and the beginning of all our hopes.  It is the surprise that is comprehended only by faith – that God comes to His people hidden in ordinary means.
    The Magi's wisdom was nothing but a gracious trust in a word and a promise the world found foolish, that none of the wise in Jerusalem were curious enough to check out, and that came into the world while everyone slept. What they found was not something never seen before – a baby.  Hidden in flesh, the Godhead see, so we sing.  We want to be wise; we study things as if God had hidden Himself in facts and figures, in intellect and IQ.  But the wisdom of God is available to infant, to child, and to those who will become like children in faith.  It is found in the surprise of infant flesh, efficacious Word, living water, and bread and wine that hides flesh and blood.
    We who would be wise need to become like the Magi.  Where there is faith to recognize God's presence and promises, to trust in them, to follow them, and to rejoice at the ending point – there is wisdom.  Faith to rightly value the things of this moment and faith to return to the Lord our very selves, and along with our worship, our tithes and offerings. 
    We tend to think of our tithes and offerings as votes of approval or perhaps disapproval of how things are going but the Magi show us they are much more than this.  They are the marks of wisdom to value more than anything the God who came to us in flesh, the Gospel of forgiveness, and the promise of life death cannot overcome.  They are signs of faith and marks of the wisdom that is willing to meet God not where we might expect Him but where He has chosen to reveal Himself.
    Today we pray to be so wise – to possess the wisdom of faith.  To see the Light of Christ.... to follow that Light... to trust in that Light to bring us where we need to be... and to have gratitude enough to open our hearts, lives, and wallets in worship of Him whom the Lord has given us to be our Savior and Redeemer.  Such faith and wisdom and worship may not be all that Christ deserves but it is what He asks of us. This is the wisdom of the Magi.  Amen.

Fake art. . .

How Modern Art Become Trapped by Its Urge to Shock

Read it. . and re-read it. . . I quote the last few paragraphs:

The interesting fact, however, is that the habit of faking it has arisen from the fear of fakes. Modernist art was a reaction against fake emotion, and the comforting clichés of popular culture. The intention was to sweep away the pseudo-art that cushions us with sentimental lies and to put reality, the reality of modern life, with which real art alone can come to terms, in the place of it. Hence for a long time now it has been assumed that there can be no authentic creation in the sphere of high art which is not in some way a 'challenge' to the complacencies of our public culture. Art must give offence, stepping out of the future fully armed against the bourgeois taste for the conforming and the comfortable, which are simply other names for kitsch and cliché. But the result of this is that offence becomes a cliché. If the public has become so immune to shock that only a dead shark in formaldehyde will awaken a brief spasm of outrage, then the artist must produce a dead shark in formaldehyde - this, at least, is an authentic gesture.

There therefore grew around the modernists a class of critics and impresarios, who offered to explain just why it is not a waste of your time to stare at a pile of bricks, to sit quietly through ten minutes of excruciating noise, or to study a crucifix pickled in urine. To convince themselves that they are true progressives, who ride in the vanguard of history, the new impresarios surround themselves with others of their kind, promoting them to all committees that are relevant to their status, and expecting to be promoted in their turn. Thus arose the modernist establishment - the self-contained circle of critics who form the backbone of our cultural institutions and who trade in 'originality', 'transgression' and 'breaking new paths'. Those are the routine terms issued by the arts council bureaucrats and the museum establishment, whenever they want to spend public money on something that they would never dream of having in their living room. But these terms are clichés, as are the things they are used to praise. Hence the flight from cliché ends in cliché, and the attempt to be genuine ends in fake.

Art has long insisted that beauty, like truth, is in the eye of the beholder.  What foolishness!  No amount of sincere belief makes a lie into truth and no amount of cliched fakery can turn garbage into art.  Yet this is what we have been left with -- a vain attempt to one up each other by shocking us to death in the name of authenticity and then calling it art or beauty.  This does not only happen in the museum and it is not only the canvas that conveys our preoccupation with stark and ugly vulgarity.

Consider the way modern art has become the cause to erect bland, stark, ugly, cold, and sterile buildings and call them churches!  As another blogger put it, Even our architecture has given God the boot, so to speak. Circular and fan shaped churches dominated after 1950. The tabernacle was relegated to the side, altars became largely devoid of candles or a cross, and it became almost “immoral” for the priest-celebrant not to “face the people.” Seeing and interacting with each other became the goal. God was invited, too, but His role seemed more to affirm what we were doing and to be pleased with us; or so we sang, on and on and on. Surely God was happy when we were happy! 

Or as another commentator put it:
Have you noticed that nobody loves modern churches? Nobody. I mean NOBODY.
Seriously. Have you ever met anyone who sees a church like this and and heard them whisper, “I just love that church! It is so inspiring!”.round
No. Never.
Have you ever gone into a “worship space” like this and heard someone say how awed they were to be in the presence of God? I doubt it. interior round
That’s because these buildings were not designed to inspire awe or to remind you about the presence of God. They are people centered, not God centered. They are auditoria not temples.
There is a gut level negative respond to these buildings. Even those who have got used to them make comments like, “Well, it’s our church and we’re doing the best we can.” Worse still, they have grown up with these monstrosities and they do not know of anything else.
I have spent the last week in central Missouri worshipping in a beautifully restored country church built at the end of the 1800′s. My heart opened in worship simply because the space was sacred, simple and beautiful.
The gut level rejection of the modern, brutal, utilitarian barns is not merely a hankering after “ole time traditions”. It is not simply a nostalgia for the past or a question of personal preference.
We react negatively to round churches because we want to be oriented towards God in worship, not towards one another.
Furthermore, everyone knew this down the ages. That’s why there was a certain pattern to Christian churches, and did you know the pattern was actually established by God?
tabernacle-drawingIn the Old Testament God revealed to Moses how to build the tabernacle–the traveling tent/temple they used in the wilderness. The tabernacle was rectangular with a large outer meeting place of the people. Then there was the “Holy Place” for the priests and this was surmounted by the “Holy of Holies” where the Ark of the Covenant was lodged. The Ark of the Covenant was the Throne of God himself.
This was the prescribed plan for a building to worship God, and the Temple in Jerusalem was a larger, permanent version of the tabernacle.
Now nobody is suggesting that Christian churches should be traveling tents (although the preachers in the American south used to do pretty well in their tent meeting revival services) Neither am I suggesting that we should build churches that are replicas of Solomon’s temple.
But there was a basic pattern here that was followed in all Christian churches from the earliest days. The pattern was of a three fold, hierarchical space. A large meeting space for the people, a next step into the holy place for the priests and then the dwelling place of God which is the Holy of Holies.

Thanks, CPH. . .

CPH put together this little infomercial on Advent and then followed up with one on Epiphany.  I am sorry that I forgot to include the one for Advent; better late than never you can see it now.  The one for Epiphany remains thoroughly relevant since we have barely begun this season of revelation of Christ as the Son of God.

Some rough water ahead for those who swim the Tiber...

All too often those who leave Lutheranism express the rationale in graphic terms -- in order to be authentically Lutheran (evangelical catholic), they must become Roman Catholic.  I do not question the motives of those so attracted nor will I here engage in a debate over the rightness or wrongness of their conclusions.  It is sufficient here for me to admit that as tempting as Rome (or Constantinople, for that matter) may be, what you are leaving from will usually follow you.  The same ignorance of things catholic, the casual approach to the Mass and piety, the devaluation of orthodox doctrine and practice -- all of the things we complain about as Lutherans is found in the churches that attract us.

Here is one honest story of a parish and school -- Roman Catholic -- though it could be Lutheran.  It is the kind of thing that challenges the idea that you have go somewhere else to be orthodox and catholic in belief and piety.  In fact, it is the kind of thing that suggests that the path to recovery and the cause of renewal is the common ground of all churches who claim to be or desire to be evangelical catholic.  It is not enough to confess in principle the doctrine and then practice whatever feels good.  It is not enough to have noble motive but to leave your people largely in the dark about what it means to believe, confess, and teach the faith.  It is not enough to follow the rubric while failing to preach faithfully just as it is not enough to preach earnestly but treat the rubrics as unimportant.

At noon I have to be at the local Catholic school—let’s call it St. Dismas—to train altar servers. I will arrive a few minutes early, and by 12:05 most of the kids will have trickled in. We are in the Southern California, so most of the boys at St. Dismas wear short pants year-round. Students are required to attend one Mass per month with the school, but it has never occurred to anyone, not their parents, not the pastor, not the teachers, and certainly not the students, that they should wear pants to Mass. The girls wear skirts that in 1966 would have been described as “micro-minis.” When I told the boys’ parents that I expected them to wear their uniform pants to Mass when they become servers, the school principal—a genial thirty-something man who insists on the rigorous use of the title “Dr.” but often wears sweatpants and flip-flops to work—cornered me outside his office for a talk. He warned me that I might get some pushback from parents on the pants requirement. “We are only a medium-Catholic school,” he informed me. “We’re not really that Catholic.”   [read the rest here. . . ]

Indeed, that is exactly the point.  Preaching and teaching the faith faithfully requires us to practice it faithfully on Sunday morning and attention to the liturgy or mass requires us to be concerned about doctrine, teaching, and preaching.  The real meaning of synod may indeed be not that people walk together according to the  common ground of personal preference but that they walk together according to the orthodox teaching and confession of the faith and the faithful practice and liturgical observance of the faith.  There can be no other unity worthy of Christ.

We do not need sacramental or liturgical entrepreneurs but those who attempt with every ounce and fiber of their being to be orthodox and faithful in doctrine and practice.  This cannot be met by meeting some minimal standard of teaching and preaching and presiding.  No church or parish will prosper as God desires by merely reaching for what is easy, comfortable, or accessible.  If we aspire only to the minimal confession required of orthodoxy or the minimal catholicity of liturgy and piety, we have by nature forsaken the very definition of orthodoxy and faithfulness.

Yet it is this spirit that has and continues to infect the churches.  We are not that catholic.  There is no catholicity by degrees or tepid orthodoxy.  We strive for fullness in confession and practice or we have abandoned every effort or desire for catholicity whatsoever.  Evangelical is not a term at odds with catholicity and catholicity is not opposed to the evangel. 

You read it and see if it could not have been written by an anonymous Lutheran.  I grieve for those who leave us thinking that they have found an end.  Every place I look is a beginning, sometimes a good effort and sometimes a baby step toward the goal of fullness in evangelical catholic confession and practice.

Beyond belief. . . beautiful!

Koriyama Second Junior High School ( The Vocal Ensemble Competition Japan 2010 )
Mozart Missa Brevis KV 275 Performed by Japanese High Schoolers. . .





Sadly, too many high school choral programs in American schools are unison singing to a soundtrack, usually a poor attempt at mimicking a pop artist. . . at least that is what it looks like down South. . . We worry about being bested in science, math, etc... we ought to wake up to the lead such schools have over us in terms of music!

On empty mangers and empty crosses. . .

Every now and then at this time of year one might hear a news report of someone who stole the baby Jesus from the manger in some outdoor creche -- either as prank or to make a religious point of some kind.  Immediately we get outraged.  Nobody better steal the baby Jesus from our nativity set!  No sirree...

Yet we are much more reserved about crosses without the figure of Christ in suffering. . . the crucifix.  In fact, we might be relieved that someone has stole Jesus' body from the cross so that we don't have to look on it anymore.  Why are we outraged that the baby Jesus would be missing from the manger but relieved to find a cross without the figure of Christ in His agony?

That is indeed the problem.  We like babies and a religion of a baby God who comes to be cooed over and cared for.  We are rightfully uncomfortable about a religion of a man God who comes to wear our sin, carry our suffering, die our death, and be laid in our grave.  This Christian Gospel is shocking to our comfortable lives of self-delusion about the seriousness of sin and its dreadful enemy death.  It is so shocking to us that we would rather make peace with death and deem it natural than confront the honest price it cost the Lord to set us free from sin and its curse of death.  It is so shocking to us that we would rather live the lie that a little self-improvement help is all we need, some tips on how to live a better, fuller, richer, longer, healthier, more successful, more pleasurable, and happier life than to face up to our lost condition.  It is so shocking to us that we complain  mightily about the baby missing from the manger but do not utter one word of complaint when we see a cross minus the figure of our Lord in His wounded and suffering condition, paying the full price of our redemption.

Something wrong with that. . .  For another view of the same problem read Adriane Heins blogpost. . .

In case you always wondered. . .

Self-consciously Lutheran. . .

Friend Pr Will Weedon used the phrase first.  In a random thought on his blog he wrote: ...the LCMS structure as conceived by the founders of Synod only works if the members of congregations and the pastors of parishes are self-consciously LUTHERAN. . .  It is a genius phrase that certainly explains the conundrum we find ourselves in today.

Missouri has an odd structure by all accounts.  We are congregational but not congregationalist, we have a ministerium but we act as church as well, and we have no bishops but we do invest individuals with the episcopal authority to oversee doctrine and practice on all levels in our church.  We are somewhat anti-clergy and yet hold up the Office of the Pastor as the highest of all offices.  We are kind of democratic but refuse to allow democracy a place when it comes to what we believe, confess, and teach.  We are highly uniform in creed, confession, and (in theory) hymnals and agendas and yet free to allow congregations to structure themselves and order their work locally.  We are divided into districts but none of those districts are representative to the national Synod; quite the other way around, the districts are "synod in that place."  Sometimes we seem and, perhaps, we are a bundle of contradictions.  Yet they worked and will work if and when we are self-consciously Lutheran in doctrine and practice.

Therein lies the rub...   We are not at all sure or united in what that means.  Some see it in a minimalistic way that offends our Confessions and others see it in a hierarchical way that is equally offensive.  The structure works when we set aside liberty for the sake of witness and work in the name of Jesus.  So parishes set aside (voluntarily as a condition of membership) their right to call whomever and agree to call from the roster of our church pastors, teachers, and other rostered workers.  So parishes set aside (voluntarily as a condition of membership) their right to define the faith and agree to uphold and adhere to the confessional standard of the Synod (expressed constitutionally in article II but also in the doctrinal resolutions and stances agreed upon by Synod in convention over the years).  So parishes set aside their freedom to act individually (voluntarily as a condition of membership) to act in concert with their brothers and sisters throughout the Synod in the work of educating church workers, foreign missions, publishing orthodox educational, theological, and liturgical materials.

It does not work when we no longer have confidence in the means of grace, when we resent the willing and voluntary setting aside of liberties to work in concert, when we insist upon individual rights and privileges first, when we are jealous of turf and dollars, when we are suspicious of the motives of each other, when we act with a party spirit, when we act in solitude or individually to do what we have agreed to do together, and when we refuse the oversight, advice, and counsel of those whom we have elected to serve with this episcopal ministry for our sake, for the sake of one another, and for the greater good of the cause of Christ and His Gospel.

There is no shortage of people complaining about the state of the good ship Missouri and some of their

complaints are spot on (from all sides) but many of their complaints are just plain wrong.  The truth is that some of us do not want Missouri to work -- we have grown too comfortable with our insistence upon rights and privileges to restore the language of responsibility and accountability.  I believe that Missouri is the best hope for Lutheranism in America but I am not always sure we are up to the task.  I believe we can be, we should be, and we would be if we all picked up on and savored the opportunity to be self-consciously Lutheran in doctrine and practice.  It will not happen instantaneously nor will it happen easily but it is the best hope for Missouri so that we may be the best example of the Lutheran genius of evangelical catholicity for our time.  Pray, brothers and sisters, that we get it right. . . sooner rather than later.

..the LCMS structure as conceived by the founders of Synod only works if the members of congregations and the pastors of parishes are self-consciously LUTHERAN, that is, if they are willing to be corrected by and held accountable to the Symbolical Books in doctrine and in practice.

God has a name!

Sermon for the Eve of the Circumcision and Name of Jesus, preached on December 31, 2014.

    Allah is not a name but a generic term for god – just like the English word.  Jews have a similar term, El as in Elohim.  But the Jews also had name for God.  It was not much good to them because they feared using it. The God of the Old Testament wore many names that were not names at all.  They were terms to emphasize a characteristic of God.  The actual name of God was unutterable – in reading Scripture you substituted Adonai (Lord) whenever the unspeakable name of God appeared.  Only Moses spoke it and lived and that was how God’s people knew to follow the patriarch. 
    Now God has a name – not a name we gave Him but the one He gave His Son.  His name shall be called Jesus.  Names are not for us.  We do not call ourselves by our names; others do.  So our name exists so that others may know us.  It is no different for the name of God.  In giving us the name of His Son, God was giving us the opportunity to know Him without fear, to enter into a relationship with Him by baptism and faith, and to wear His name before the world.
    The name of God is Jesus.  The God whose identity was hidden behind His works has now taken form and flesh and come among us and we have beheld His glory, the glory of the one and only Father.  Jesus is the long promised Savior who keeps all the prophetic word.  Jesus is the Redeemer who is come to accomplish the saving will and purpose of the Father.  He does for us what none of us can do for ourselves.
    He gives us the name Jesus and with that name comes access to the grace in which we stand.  The name of Jesus is not merely a name to identify the God in flesh but it is the key, the means, the access code to all that God's mercy has promised.
    The name Jesus is our access to the Kingdom.  So the splash of water that might seem ordinary is extraordinary because it is water with the name of God, instituted and commanded by Him.  The name Jesus is our access to the life that eludes and escapes us here on earth.  "I am the way, the truth, and the life," says Jesus to those who will hear Him.  He is not come to point to another way or to unravel the roadmap to heaven.  He is the way.  When we hear Scripture, we hear the voice of Jesus calling and inviting us to come to Him who is the way, to believe in Him who is the way, and to walk in the way of life that is Christ.
    The name Jesus is our access to the fellowship of the table.  We come not of our own desire but bidden by the Lord and by His promise hidden in bread and wine.  It is the fellowship of the faithful and no casual meal.  We come here discerning Christ in the bread and in the cup, His flesh for the life of the world and His blood that cleanses us from all sin is here our food to eat and our cup to drink.
    Our God has a name and a face.  No more pillars of cloud by day or pillars of fire by night.  No more Sinai mysteries or patriarch's shining faces.  No more bloody sacrifices.  No more generic terms.  We have a God who addresses us with His name and whom we address with the name He has given us to use.
    He stands among us where His name is, in water, bread, wine, the voice of absolution, and the Scriptures.  As we prepare to let go of a past and embrace an unknown future, we do so with the blessed assurance that His name remains with us, so that we can call upon it in the day of trouble, come to it for absolution of our sins, confess it in the waters of baptism that give us life, and commune under it at His table.  Without His name, we fear God but with the Name of Jesus comes release from our fears, the assurance of His everlasting presence, and the grace that delivers to us all His promises. 
    Who knows what 2015 will bring?  We are hopeful but we are also skeptical.  Whatever it brings, the name of Jesus is on us, is upon our lips in prayer, is spoken boldly before the world, is worn on our foreheads in baptism, and is the name of entrance whereby we feast upon His body and blood.  Though everything else go wrong, this will not change.  Amen.

Religious Choice

I don’t make my kids go to church; I want them to make up their own minds about religion.” I overheard the line from a parent sitting at a nearby restaurant table, and have heard the adage countless times.  Freedom of choice is every American’s birthright, and Americans have several religions from which to choose.  Non-Christian religions have increasing visibility, and Christianity itself has numerous denominations. Teaching our children a particular form of religious expression may seem something like teaching them to eat only one kind of cheese on a smorgasbord of limitless options. With so many religious alternatives, how can we help our children choose?  Read more here. . .

So one more author enters the fray over the idea of religious choice -- in particular the choice of our children and what we can or should do to inform that choice.  This time the author begins with a question of whether a child can make such a choice.  It is perhaps a good place to begin.  We spend our time hopeless arguing over the wisdom of choices parents make for their children in so many different aspects of life.  The sad truth is that many parental decisions are not so much choices or informed decisions but paths of least resistance -- both for them and between them and their children.  I have personally encountered more than a handful of families who were Lutheran before they moved here but, in the course of choosing their battles and finding so much bite back from their children, this time let their kids choose the church the family would attend.  Really!?

Let me as you parents.  If you do not think the church you attend is the best one for your children, what in the dickens are YOU doing in that church?  If you are comfortable making all sorts of temporal decisions for your children (vaccines, health habits, dietary options, etc...), why do you shy away from a decision when has eternal consequences as well as temporal?  If you are willing to give in on the eternal future of your children and abdicate your roles as the leaders of the faith of the household, why do you strive so hard to get them into a good preschool or get good grades or do well in sports or a thousand other things which may or may not give them a better life today but have almost zero impact on eternity? 

I was always told that parents have to choose their battles.  We were rather lenient about hair styles.  We did not fight one of our three who insisted upon wearing shorts all winter long (though the school called us a few times to warn us of our parental failure).  We did not choose their vocations (though we did have strong ideas about them).  But we did choose their church, chose to have them baptized, chose to raise them in the faith, prayed with them through teenage years and still, and made it clear that, no matter the age, if they lived under our roof, Sunday mornings were spent in Church!  My parents gave me no choice and my wife's parents did the same.  In the end, it was their most lasting legacy to us all!

I have no patience with parents who wimp out on raising their children in the faith.  The truth is that many of them use this excuse to justify their own doubts or disinterest in the faith.  That is an even worse reason for not attending worship.  We treat the trivial as valuable and the eternal as of little consequence.  It is no wonder that our children seen through our indifference to the faith and act as indifferently to religion and faith and the church as their parents. 

What is wrong with us?  Grow up. . . If there is something wrong with the church you are attending, find one that is faithful to the Scriptures and to the catholic tradition.  Stay there and stick to it.  Get involved.  Worship faithfully.  Pray regularly and together.  Listen to the sermons and teaching.  Model faith to your children.  Unless you do this, you give them no choice at all but NOT to believe.  Every child can reject what their moms and dads taught them.  They can refuse to brush their teeth and use the toilet just as they can refuse to believe.  But it is surely less likely once they have grown up with an 18 year tradition of being part of the faith and among the faithful.  College and life may test their mettle but if you give them something solid to hold onto, they will have something to return to when the silliness of what passes for intellectual curiosity and academia gives way to real life.

Lets begin 2015 with some beauty. . .

Go here for photos of the 21 most beautiful churches in the world. . . you might argue with them about one or two but all in all the beauty is spectactular!