Words, Words, Words

On Lent

2009-01-20T19:03:00.000-08:00

Here's something I wrote for a church newsletter. Written in part in evangelicalese, it's seeking to make a case for Lent for an audience that isn't used to such things.

Of the following dozen themes, which are most worth remembering in thoughtful, prayerful ways?

Jesus' birth.
Jesus' kingdom ministry.
Jesus' death.
Jesus' resurrection.
Jesus' ascension.
The sending of the Spirit.
Jesus' Second Coming.
Repentance and holiness.
Faith.
Hope.
Love.
Forgiveness.

I suspect you picked them all.

One advantage of following something like a traditional Christian calendar -- as opposed to a secular or Hallmark calendar -- is that it continually reminds us of the high points, from Bethlehem to the empty tomb and beyond. Granted: Seasons such as Christmas and Easter aren't biblically mandated. But done well, they can be one more discipleship tool, like Sunday school or men's and women's groups.

There's an easy objection to seasonal observances, and it's often put this way: Aren't these things that we should be emphasizing all the time? I think the answer is: Yes, in a sense, they are. But it isn't humanly possible to emphasize everything equally all the time, just as it isn't possible to recite all 21 chapters of the Gospel of John simultaneously. You can't say everything at once. It takes time.

But the objectors have a point. It's never right, for example, to forget the cross because we're emphasizing something else. All God's truth is interconnected. Some of our best Christmas carols illustrate this. "What Child Is This?" is a song about Jesus' birth, but it carries a dark reminder about this Baby's future:

Nails, spear shall pierce him through,

the cross be borne for me, for you.

We're forgetful creatures. And the Lord says, "Remember!" (Deuteronomy 4:10 and 7:18, among a host of other passages). It may be helpful to think of seasonal observances as periodic reminders of all the things we're called to reflect on -- and to live out -- the rest of the year. Every Christmas, every Easter is meant be a rock dropped into a pond that sends ripples through all our days.

We celebrate Jesus' resurrection every Sunday, of course -- that's why we meet on Sunday rather than some other day -- and we'll celebrate it in an even bigger way on April 12. How can we do it in a way that suggests we take Jesus' resurrection as seriously as we do his birth? How can we give it more weight?

One way is to prepare for it, as many churches have often done, with a season of repentance and renewal, with special attention to Jesus' suffering. I think of this season as the original Spring Revival, or (to use language associated with Rick Warren's book The Purpose-Driven Life) the original "Forty Days of Purpose." It's the "Lead Me to Calvary" season. It's the "Jesus, I Come" season.

That's what we're going to pursue this year here. We'll have a special service to get us started, on February 25, followed by special weekly services leading us to the cross and resurrection. We'll focus on humbling ourselves anew before God, on turning toward him in faith and repentance, on mutual forgiveness.

Can any of us honestly say we don't need those things?

Please pray even now for what's ahead. Pray that the beauty of these things will be real to us. Pray that we'll be changed, that we'll see afresh the light of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Nothing in our hands we'll bring -- nothing but our twistedness, our failures, our need; simply to his cross we'll cling.

How biblical is our music?

2008-10-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. – Saint Paul (Acts 20:27)

Any ministry of the Word should be devoted, not to a handful of pet themes or favorite sentences, but to what the apostle called "the whole counsel of God." It otherwise lacks integrity. A preacher who preaches only on the texts he's most drawn to is liable to end up preaching a lopsided gospel. One strength of working through whole chunks of the Bible is that it forces the preacher – and the rest of us – to wrestle with issues and questions that we might prefer to avoid.

As with preaching, so with music. Church music is a ministry of the Word. It should be devoted, not to a handful of favorite themes and sentiments – however good they are in themselves, and however good they make us feel – but to "the whole counsel of God." Our music should stretch us.

How are Christians, especially evangelicals, doing today, musically? Is this area of church life marked by wholeness, fullness? In many places, no. Proof: Lots of us know scads of Christmas carols, but only a handful of resurrection hymns. Given the New Testament's emphasis, that's scandalous. (See, for starters, 1 Corinthians 15; that's where the apostle says that the truth of the resurrection is what makes or breaks the church. See 1 Thessalonians 4; that's where he says he wants Christians to encourage one another with the hope of bodily resurrection on the other side of death.)

A scant familiarity with resurrection hymns isn't the only problem. There are no doubt plenty of other gaps in our music. How many hymns of confession and repentance do we know? How many songs about perseverance in holiness? How many hymns that spur us to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil? How many hymns about the promise of new heavens and a new earth? How many hymns on the ascension of Jesus? How many on His transfiguration? How many baptismal hymns? How many Communion hymns? How many psalms?

Looking back to my formative high school years in church, I don't remember many songs about any of those things. What I remember is a lot of songs about conversion. Conversion is important, but it's just the beginning, not the fullness, of our life in Christ.

If we want a music ministry marked by wholeness and integrity, it's not enough to ask of each individual song we sing, "Is it biblical?" We've got to ask whether our body of congregational music as a whole is biblical in its breadth and depth. We can't, like the blind men in the parable of the blind men and the elephant, lay hold of the trunk alone and pass it off as the whole beast, however much we like to revel in his trunkitudinousness. There's more to him than that.

Jonathan Edwards said we're naturally drawn to those things about God that we find friendliest. We shrink from the rest, and that leads to distortion. So with our music: We can have a hundred hymns about justification by faith (or conversion, or joy, or something else) that, taken individually, are all biblical. But if we sing little else, we distort God's truth.

The Scriptures have more to say. And so should our music.

I'm still alive

2008-10-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

To mark one year of not blogging, I'd like to offer this video. Musically, at least, I enjoy this.

'Our Father' in French

2007-10-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

Month before last, I posted a video of Kedrov's setting (in Slavonic) of the Lord's Prayer. Here's the French version by Maurice Duruflé. His original was for unison voices and organ (what you hear first); he then arranged it for four parts, unaccompanied (what you hear second). I wish this were a better recording, and that's no reflection on the singers. It's just that the audio and video aren't the best. No matter. You can still get a sense of the piece. Notice that Duruflé moves phrase by phrase in what is more or less the rhythm of speech. It's chantlike. The score goes back and forth between two and three beats to a measure.

These settings of the Lord's Prayer by Duruflé and Kedrov are my favorites. Both are 20th-century works, so they qualify as contemporary Christian music. Duruflé's, a mere thirty years old, is dedicated to his wife, Marie-Madeleine: à ma femme.

Here is the text:

Notre Père qui es aux cieux,
que ton Nom soit sanctifié,
que ton règne vienne,
que ta volonté soit faite sur la terre comme au ciel.
Donne-nous aujourd'hui notre pain de ce jour.
Pardonne-nous nos offenses,
comme nous pardonnons aussi à ceux qui nous ont offensés.
Et ne nous soumets pas à la tentation,
mais délivre nous du mal.

Weekly World News: 1979-2007

2007-08-28T21:10:00.000-07:00

Psalm-chant recordings

2007-08-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

When I write about singing the psalms, as I did here, or when I do a psalm-chant gig, people ask about good psalm-chant recordings. And I get paralyzed. I wish there were a slew of recordings to which I could point. Of course there's an abundance of recorded Gregorian chant, but not much is in English or involves the psalms. And there's an abundance of recorded Anglican chant, sung by English cathedral choirs. Indeed, you can get the whole psalter, as recorded by the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, on the Hyperion label. But much recorded Anglican chant sounds -- to these ears -- rather bloodless. The English choral tradition is less heavy with men's voices than, say, the Russian tradition, and the English tradition in most cases continues to favor boys' voices on top. I go to a little conference every year where we use Anglican chants to sing, for example, the Te Deum and the Beatitudes. But we sing them a good deal more vigorously and enthusiastically than what you'll hear on most recordings. I don't know of any recorded Anglican chant that sounds like what we do there.

Yes, that's the problem: I don't know many recordings of which to say, "Here's exactly the sound we're looking for."

Here are a few things I do enjoy:

The Divine Liturgy, St. Vladimir's Liturgical Chorale, David Drillock directing (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press). Orthodox worship is sung worship. I like its richer, deeper sound in comparison with the English tradition. This recording is in English and includes a couple of psalms or at least substantial psalm portions. You get the Lord's Prayer in Rimsky-Korsakov's setting, which is quite simple, and the Beatitudes. You also get Fr Alexander Schmemann singing "Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages" at the beginning, and he does not sing it the way many an Anglican cantor would -- as if he had a ping-pong ball stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The two Anglican chant recordings I like best are cheap and recent and better than their titles:

Psalms for the Soul and Psalms for the Spirit, Choir of St. John's, Elora, Noel Edison directing (Naxos). This Canadian choir uses clear-toned women instead of boys. I appreciate that the organ takes a back seat. You can actually hear and understand the choir. (Note: Not everything on these CDs is chant.) These recordings are available at iTunes.

Runner-up on Anglican chant: Psalms, Choir of Westminster Abbey, Martin Neary directing (Virgin). You can sample it at iTunes.

Lord, Open My Lips: Music for the Hours, by Cyprian Consiglio (Oregon Catholic Press). There are things to fault here -- I would like more vigor at points, and stronger voices among the cantors -- but in some ways this sounds closer than most recordings to what you might hear in your own church if you were doing this sort of thing. At least give credit where credit is due: The scriptural content of these three Catholic rites is higher than you get in a lot of evangelical worship. You can hear samples of every track at the link I've given.

As for myself, I am most drawn to the sound world of the Divine Liturgy CD.

Now, you may give each of these an audition and screw up your face at all of it. What then? Four things:

1. Listen again. Don't decide you don't like something after a single hearing. For the longest time, I'd listen to Brahms' Fourth Symphony, particularly the first movement, and think, "I just don't get this." I didn't like it. Now I love it. I love it as much as I love the rest of Brahms.

2. Use your imagination. Be open to the thought that, whatever your misgivings, something like this could be done and done well.

3. Honor the intent. Each form of chant represented here seeks to bend itself to the Scriptural text and give it pre-eminence.

4. Know that as you're reading this, someone in Africa or Asia or some other place is probably chanting a psalm, using cool African or Asian music that you and I haven't heard but might end up liking better than anything I've posted.

The Czech composer Antonin Dvorak drew on Czech folk melodies for his own work. He encouraged American composers to turn to black music for their inspiration. Could spirituals be an idiom worth exploring for psalm chant? Listen to Psalm 96 here.

The piece in the video above is the Lord's Prayer in a chant by the Russian composer Nikolai Kedrov Sr. (1871-1940). It's sung by the Youth Choir of Petcherskaja Lavra Kiev.

Try being sensitive to this seeker

2007-08-13T20:44:00.000-07:00

Think about your church's worship. Think about the worship of other churches you know. Now think about this seeker:

To whose church would you send a twenty-something Reformed Christian who could get into singing a little Greek on Sunday mornings -- say, a string of Kyrie eleisons?

Where would you send some young believer who fancies set prayers?

Where would you send somebody who thinks the psalms are all that, and is dying to sing them in church? What if he imagines -- get this -- that he could enlist the kids' help to make it happen?

Where would you send someone who wanted to be in a church where they sing things such as the Creed, and don't just say them?

Where would you send somebody who's dissatisfied with the Eucharistic status quo -- who's gotten to thinking (this person is big into reading the Fathers) that the Eucharist is enough of a raison d'être for Sunday worship that not to have it at least every week is deformed, not Reformed?

Where, in short, would you send John Calvin?

Thank you

2007-08-10T19:50:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Florida, and I've found things to give thanks for.

Thank you, O Lord, for the black-silver shimmer of sea beneath a rising full moon, a beauty that can make me cry and think how full of foolishness the world is.

Thank you, O Lord, for barefoot moms and dads and kids up and down the beach, huddled with flashlights over captured crabs.

Thank you, O Lord, for the noise of waves that let me sing out at night without worrying who'll hear.

Thank you, O Lord, for human companionship.

Thank you, O Lord, for the kindness of people who barely know me.

Thank you, O Lord, for my teachers.

Thank you, O Lord, for a 59-degree night in August in Philadelphia, and for a walk that makes me feel alive.

Thank you, O Lord, for the beauty of women who love you.

Tentacles

2007-07-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

I had a lovely chat at the beach in Destin the other night with Mary, an emergency-room nurse who was born in Yugoslavia. Mary grew up in the Orthodox Church and is now an evangelical Christian, and our wide-ranging conversation eventually turned to menacing aquatic creatures, especially jellyfish and stingrays. She's seen a lot of jellyfish stings lately. (A lifeguard corroborated her story; I asked him early one afternoon what the jellyfish score was, and he said they'd treated seventeen stings.) Mary told me how stings are treated at the emergency room, and I'm passing the information along. It may prove useful.

Here's what Mary does. First she soaks the afflicted area with white vinegar. (The lifeguards do this, too.) Then she applies shaving cream and "shaves" the wound with a major credit card. That's it.

I was stung once on South Padre Island and wish I'd known to do what Mary told me. True, after the tears dried, I was proud of the red stripes that left my lower leg looking like a barber pole and I enjoyed unveiling them at school, particularly to girls. It's not an experience I'd care to repeat, however. But should I do so, I plan to have vinegar and shaving cream on hand, as I did this past week.

Date idea

2007-06-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

[Begin video now.]

The romantics at Sovereign Grace Singles are hosting an online discussion of "Federal Vision" theology Tuesday night. I fear the outcome.

Quick cut to a few nights after this headline event:

She: John?

He: Yes, my little Reformed dumpling?

She: I've been thinking. About us.

He: What?

She: You know I love you.

He: I love you, too, my precious five-petaled tulip. What's wrong?

She: Remember the other night, when you got out the popcorn and Guinness?

He: Because Coke was too baptistic?

She: Yes. And we dimmed the lights and put on the romantic fireplace video?

He: Yes.

She: And snuggled up with our laptops for the Sovereign Grace Singles Voice Chat "Rich IM" Discussion of the Federal Vision Issue?

He: Oh, yeah, baby. [Nuzzles her right earlobe.] Good times.

She: It's over, John.

He: What? [Lets an open copy of the Institutes drop from his lap to the floor.] I thought you loved me?

She: I do. In so many ways we're perfect for each other. You're strong and handsome. We both love the Lord. We're both OPC. I'm a little bit Van Til, you're a little bit John Frame. You floss.

He: What is it, then?

She: You know what it is.

He: I don't!

She: It's about the covenant of works, John.

He: [Bemused.]

She: When you admitted the other night -- online -- that you're not too fond of that language, how was I supposed to feel? I was humiliated, in front of all those other Sovereign Grace Singles. All I could think was, "This is not the TR man I fell in love with in God's providence." It's over.

[Fade to Green Baggins olive drab.]

This post is hopelessly insider. I apologize to anyone who stumbles onto it and wonders what to make of it.

Sts Peter and Paul

2007-06-29T20:39:00.000-07:00

A blessed Feast Day of Sts Peter and Paul to you all!

It's my name's day, of course. My mother likes biblical names, and I'm named for the apostle, who often comes in for a good drubbing by his critics. I'm pleased and honored to bear his name.

I didn't do much to celebrate today, though some friends picked up a cake (we've been using every excuse we can find to celebrate with cake, and I'm due to bake a cheesecake any day now). I missed the singing and holy kissing that the Orthodox would've delivered.

I wanted to post a musical setting of some words from Paul, but I can't find it. I give you Dvorak's setting of Psalm 149 instead:

'Tu Risa'

2007-05-28T21:37:00.000-07:00

I missed Poetry Month, but here's a late offering, by Pablo Neruda, followed by my translation:

Quítame el pan, si quieres,
quítame el aire, pero
no me quites tu risa.

No me quites la rosa,
la lanza que desgranas,
el agua que de pronto
estalla en tu alegría,
la repentina ola
de plata que te nace.

Mi lucha es dura y vuelvo
con los ojos cansados
a veces de haber visto
la tierra que no cambia,
pero al entrar tu risa
sube al cielo buscándome
y abre para mi todas
las puertas de la vida.

Amor mío, en la hora
más oscura desgrana
tu risa, y si de pronto
ves que mi sangre mancha
las piedras de la calle,
ríe, porque tu risa
será para mis manos
como una espada fresca.

Junto al mar en otoño,
tu risa debe alzar
su cascada de espuma,
y en primavera, amor,
quiero tu risa como
la flor que yo esperaba,
la flor azul, la rosa
de mi patria sonora.

Ríete de la noche,
del día, de la luna,
ríete de las calles
torcidas de la isla,
ríete de este torpe
muchacho que te quiere,
pero cuando yo abro
los ojos y los cierro,
cuando mis pasos van,
cuando vuelven mis pasos,
niégame el pan, el aire,
la luz, la primavera
pero tu risa nunca
porque me moriría.

***

Your Laughter

Take bread from me, if you want,
take the air from me, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take from me the rose,
the lanceflower that you pick,
the water that suddenly
breaks forth in your joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is hard and I return
with tired eyes
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but on entering, your laughter
climbs to the sky looking for me
and opens for me all
the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
unfolds, and if suddenly
you see that my blood is staining
the stones in the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in autumn,
your laughter must raise
its cascade of foam,
and in spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing land.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring
but never your laughter,
because I would die.

Sing psalms

2007-04-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

I've been encouraged to post the following piece, which I wrote several years ago.

The answer to the “worship wars” is in the back of the pew in front of you. There, languishing between the storied suffering of Job and the royal wisdom of Proverbs, lies the Book of Psalms – one hundred and fifty of the greatest praise and worship songs ever.

How many churches squabbling over music have sung even one, first verse to last? How many have even considered it?

Christians these days are rethinking what they sing. Not all that’s old is good. Not all that’s new is bad. But the Psalms and biblical canticles are the measure of both. Any congregation that rallied around that point would eventually find its musical taste transformed. The best would drive out the pretty good, regardless of age. Almost miraculously, water would be displaced by wine.

Our songs shape our piety. More than most preaching, they’re the things that stick with us after we’ve exited the pew and passed through the back door. If we wallow in schlock and schmaltz, our devotion grows schlocky and schmaltzy. Our faith becomes long on sentiment, short on substance.

It is one thing to sing a line such as “now I am happy all the day,” to quote a traditional old hymn with a lie in its refrain; it is another to sing, with the author of Psalm 119, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” We can (and should) outgrow ditties and bad hymns. We cannot outgrow the Psalms. Psalms mature us.

Biblical music is a gift of God. Scripture is full of songs – those of Miriam, Moses, and Hannah, of Zechariah, the Virgin Mary, and Simeon. The letters of St. Paul contain hymns, and so does the Revelation. The Bible doesn’t come to us first as a theology textbook but as a storybook and songbook. We’re invited to put ourselves into the story (by faith and baptism) and then to join the songs.

That singing them never occurs to many “Bible-believing” Christians uncovers a baffling irony: The churches that claim to make the most of the Bible in their theology make the least of the Bible in their worship. For all their emphasis on the authority and God-givenness of Scripture, evangelicals have the least biblical worship in Christendom.

There are churches – even some that bear the name “Bible” – in which the Scriptures are a closed book, liturgically speaking. They aren’t sung. They aren’t prayed. They often aren’t even read, save as an aperitif before the sermon.

By contrast, Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox churches abound in biblical song. They sing Psalms and canticles. They sing the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer. They sing songs full of biblical language and imagery.

The point of comparison isn’t to vilify one tradition while idealizing others. It has to be admitted that some churches that sing Psalms often settle for truncated versions and intone them with little relish. Every tradition has its liabilities. But Christians wrangling over worship would do well to learn from their brothers and sisters who have not forgotten that the Psalms are the church’s first and finest hymnbook.

The Psalms have always held a cherished place in private devotion. St. Jerome, the great fourth-century Bible translator, reports hearing them sung by people in the fields and in their gardens. But the Psalms were also central to public worship, and Psalm-singing churches perpetuate a tradition rooted in the Bible itself.

What is the Book of Psalms about?

Many things, of course. Praise and lament, wisdom and wickedness, secret sins and tender mercies. But the deepest Christian conviction about the Psalms is that ultimately they speak of the suffering and glory of Jesus. It is a conviction that springs from words attributed to the risen Lord himself, who opened his disciples’ minds to the things concerning him “written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms” (Luke 24:44).

Jesus prayed the Psalms. They were twice on his lips when he was dying. To sing them after him is to join his prayer. What stronger incentive do churches need?

One stumbling block is obvious. Many churchgoers aren’t accustomed to chanting, which is the kind of singing that best suits the shape of the Psalms. But the success of chart-topping chant CDs proves that such music retains its appeal. Of course Gregorian chant isn’t the only way to sing Psalms. But the key thing is that chant, in all its various forms, adopts a posture of humility before the text. It seeks only to give the inspired word pre-eminence, to be conformed to it, and to glorify it. Ideally, it bends the singer to do the same.

If churches limit themselves to an hour of gathered prayer each week, shouldn’t they apply their voices to the best, most profound songs they’ve got? Wouldn’t biblical songs top the list? Many congregations sing so little as it is. Four hymns take as little as five minutes. The rest is talk.

Churches can do better than that, and they’ll have to if they hope to acquire the mind of Scripture, which is the mind of Christ. Doing better will require moving beyond skirmishes over “choruses versus hymns.” It will require a long look back at the patrimony they have lost and a resolve to reclaim it.

By all means sing the words of Wesley and Watts. And sing the best words of writers today. But sing, above all, the words with which Jesus made his prayer to the Father.

A postscript: When this was published in a newspaper, it drew a varied response. Evangelicals who wrote letters tended to take umbrage. No church, one of them wrote, sings all the psalms. (He was wrong.) Another said chant was unrealistic. (I think he was wrong, too.) A Methodist worship director challenged my assertion that four hymns can take as little as five minutes. Anyone who plans worship, she said, knows that you allot five minutes per hymn. Maybe so, but I stand by my stats. I took a few well-known hymns -- "Holy, Holy, Holy," "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," etc. -- and timed them. When worship leaders in a rush shave a verse off a hymn at the end of a service, they're often not saving more than 25 seconds or so.

A Lutheran or two were full of thanks. One Anglican said: Keep on, but evangelicals are not going to listen.

Since the piece was published, I've done a number of psalm-chant workshops at several Presbyterian churches and twice at Dallas Baptist University. The Baptists have been the most enthusiastic. The first time I was on their campus, several of them hung out around the piano for an hour afterward, expressing their weariness with contemporary Christian music. The second time, a student came to me afterward and said, "I like this music because it doesn't call attention to itself. It calls attention to the text."

Christ is risen!

2007-04-08T03:34:00.000-07:00

The Catechetical Sermon of our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Holy and Light-bearing Day of the Holy and Saving Resurrection of Christ our God:

If any be pious and a lover of God, let him partake of this good and radiant festival.
If any be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord.
If any have wearied himself in fasting, let him now partake of his recompense.
If any have wrought from the first hour, let him receive today his rightful due.
If any have come after the third hour, let him feast with thanksgiving.
If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings, for he shall in no wise suffer loss.
If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, not wavering.
If any have arrived only at the eleventh hour, let him not fear for his tardiness.
For the Master, who loveth his honor, accepteth the last even as the first.
He giveth rest to the one who came at the eleventh hour, as to the one who wrought from the first.
And He hath mercy on the one that delayeth, and he careth for the first.
To the one He giveth, and on the other He bestoweth gifts.
He both accepteth the works, and welcometh the intention;
He honoreth the acts, and praiseth the purpose.
Enter ye all, therefore, into the joy of your Lord.
Ye first and ye second, partake of the reward.
Ye rich and ye poor, dance your joy together.
Ye that abstain and ye slothful, honor the day.
Ye that have fasted, and ye that have not fasted, be glad today.
The table is laden; do ye all fare sumptuously.
The calf is fatted; let none go away hungered.
Partake ye all of the banquet of faith.
Partake ye all of the riches of loving-kindness.
Let none lament his neediness, for the common kingdom hath been revealed.
Let none grieve for his offenses, for pardon hath shone forth from the grave.
Let none fear death, for the Savior’s death hath set us free.
He that was held by it hath quenched it.
He that descended into Hell hath despoiled Hell.
He embittered it, which had tasted of His flesh, and Isaiah, anticipating this saith, Hell was embittered, when it met thee below.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was deceived.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was cast down.
It was embittered, for it was fettered.
It took a body and encountered God.
It took earth and met heaven.
It took what it saw and fell upon what it saw not.
Where is thy sting, O Death?
O Hell, where is thy victory?
Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown.
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice.
Christ is risen, and life prevaileth, and there is none dead in the tomb.
For Christ in arising from the dead is become the first-fruits of those that have fallen asleep.
To Him be glory and might unto ages of ages. Amen.

Christ is risen!

'Truly, this man was the Son of God'

2007-04-06T17:17:00.000-07:00

The major newspapers and magazines regularly write about Jesus this time of year. More often than not, the news is scandalous, at least where Christian believers are concerned. Several years ago one paper published a story about professing Christians who believe that their faith needs a new symbol: The cross (they say) is too violent. In its first draft, the story quoted no one who might have pointed out that you'd have to move mountains of New Testament testimony to the cross to dislodge it from its central place. The cross stands out, as if in a pop-up book, on nearly every page.

In the years since that report, one of the national newsmagazines published a story about what followers of the great world religions think of Jesus. They gave him great reviews for his character and teaching -- as they understood them -- but they all had this in common, too: They stumbled over Jesus' cross. The cross was offensive, nonsensical, unthinkable. If the story did nothing else, it proved that the apostle Paul’s words still hold true: The message of Christ crucified is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.”

Mark, of course, wrote one of the first stories about the cross. His whole Gospel is about the cross. Especially from the middle of the book on, the cross throws a shadow that grows darker as the story goes on, until we finally arrive at the awful moment itself. What we have heard tonight is the climax of the story. But how does Mark begin to tell it? Here’s his first sentence, which isn’t really a sentence but something more like a title: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Already we risk tuning out. We hear the words so much -- gospel, Jesus, Christ, Son of God -- that we hardly hear them at all. But keep listening, more closely, and you may end up asking questions: What’s a gospel? What’s a Christ? Who is God? We think we’ve got the answers down pat. But if we suspend what we think we know and open ourselves to Mark’s story, we may find ourselves challenged to think afresh.

Take the gospel: What is it? Most of us have gotten in the habit of saying something like this: Jesus loves you and died for your sins. That sort of statement is true, and it’s part of the gospel, but it’s not quite how Mark puts it. Or, more to the point, it’s not quite how Jesus puts it when he himself "preaches the gospel." Listen to how Jesus begins a public ministry that is destined for the cross: He came into Galilee, “proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel.” We’re not used to putting it that way. Awhile back I polled dozens of friends and acquaintances with this simple question: What is the gospel? As I recall, none but one said anything about the reign of God, which, for Jesus, was the big headline.

But what will it look like? How will God bring his reign to bear?

Mark’s answer is full of irony and the unexpected. Not least in the confession of the centurion at the cross: "Truly this man was the Son of God." He -- the executioner, a non-Jew -- is the first human being in the Gospel to make that confession. The opening of the Gospel identifies Jesus as the Son of God, and the Father bears witness to his Sonship, at his baptism and at his transfiguration. But the centurion is the first to say, in effect, "Amen." And he says it when we least expect it: When Jesus breathes his last in shame.

On the Gospel's first page, Mark tells us that the cross-story about to unfold is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, one of whose great themes is the coming reign of God. Think back to a scene involving that prophet almost four centuries before the scene we’ve heard described tonight. In the year that Israel’s King Uzziah died, Isaiah was given a vision of the Lord in his temple. He saw the Lord enthroned, “high and lifted up.” He saw the train of his robe fill the temple. The foundations shook. Smoke filled the house. Seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed, borne aloft on their wings, flew around him crying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” The sight did not leave the prophet unmoved. Seeing the Lord of hosts in glory put him on his knees. Isaiah saw the sorry hypocrisy of his heart. “I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the king!”

The centurion as well saw the Lord, “high and lifted up.” But how unlike Isaiah’s vision this is! And yet Mark is saying that this, too, is a vision of the king. Soldiers mock Jesus with acclamations of royalty. They dress him in purple. They crown him with thorns. Above his head they post the accusation against him: King of the Jews. The chief priests taunt him as he hangs on the cross: “Let the Christ [the Anointed One], the king of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.”

In all this, Mark wants you to see and believe. He wants you to believe that even in mockery, the mockers speak more truth than they know. Yes, this is where the gospel of the kingdom is reaching a climax. He wants you to see -- not something other than what you see, not a fiction in which Jesus does come down from the cross -- but he wants you to see the scene in its shame and degradation and to say, with the executioner standing by: “Truly this man was the Son of God.” Jesus is the king, and this cross is his throne. Here he comes with saving authority to bring God’s reign, dealing at last with what’s wrong with the world, which is to say you and I. Here is the gospel. Here is God, not “acting like he's God” as we often say of someone who's “lording it over someone or everyone else.” No. Here is God, the servant of all, giving his life as a ransom for many.

“The hopes and fears of all the years,” we sing at Christmas, “are met in thee [Bethlehem] tonight.” Maybe so. But here, in the nails of the cross, are met the human spitefulness of all the years, all your spitefulness, all your selfish ambition, all your self-centeredness, all your ugliness; here in the darkness around the cross is all the darkness of your heart. Jesus carries it there and absorbs it, suffering alienation from the Father, alone in darkness of the dreadful curse. “He saved others; he cannot save himself.” But if he saves himself, he cannot save others.

“The whole earth is full of his glory.” On this day, it was the glory of God to undergo voluntary humiliation. It was the glory of God to hang naked on a cross. Will you face that image, for the first or millionth time, and own it? St. Augustine said, "God has humbled himself, and man is still proud." Behold your God. And, beholding him, humble yourself. Cry within the dark places of your heart, “Holy, holy, holy. ... Woe is me apart from you. For I am a man, I am a woman, I am a girl, I am a boy of unclean lips." Say, with Isaiah, "My eyes have seen the king." And with the centurion, "Truly this man is the Son of God.” And embrace him, cross and all.

To him be glory and honor, both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

'I hear music'

2007-03-18T20:35:00.000-07:00

Even just the first minute makes me think, "All will be well."

'Forgive me, a sinner'

2007-02-18T14:45:00.000-08:00

Today is Forgiveness Sunday, which marks the beginning of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church. Here's a piece I wrote for the newspaper a few years ago.

The man who just prostrated himself before me and confessed himself a sinner is back on his feet and embracing me. He has squatted and bowed before dozens of other sinners in this little candlelit cathedral, as have I, and both of us have worked up a sweat. Tomorrow our legs will ache. This is one strenuous way to get ready for Easter.

The “Forgiveness Vespers” service is how Orthodox churches embark upon Lent. Western Christians begin with ashes on their foreheads. Orthodox Christians begin with their foreheads on the floor.

The service marks a high point on the Orthodox calendar. Worshippers step reverently into the cathedral, knowing that tonight their church will “change keys” and enter a period whose mood they often describe as bright sadness. Prayers are rising before dusk, but sunlight has left the church by the time the old archbishop invites his people to draw near for a heart-to-heart. He begins to talk of forgiveness.

Their Lord, he tells them, pursued their reconciliation unto death. His sacrifice should move them to go about forgiving with urgency, outside the church as well as within. The archbishop’s counsel: If you aren’t willing to forgive, don’t bother with Lenten fasting. It would be pointless.

Finally, he makes a general confession himself. He admits, for example, that he has often been guilty of impatience. For that and other failings, he is sorry. “My brothers and sisters,” he says before prostrating himself, “forgive me.”

And so begins the rite of forgiveness. Starting with the archbishop, the people form a receiving line that slowly winds around the church. Everyone prostrates himself or herself before every other person present, even strangers.

“Forgive me, a sinner,” each one says, and then bends low. The person opposite makes the same confession, the same gesture. Rising, they embrace and kiss. “God forgives, and I forgive,” each one says, or other words to that effect.

Because everyone participates, all inevitably stand face to face with those who know them best. Young fathers bow before their young children. Boyfriends and girlfriends ask one another’s forgiveness. A mother seeks pardon from her son. Husbands prostrate themselves before their wives, and vice versa. A few people, choked by emotion, cannot get the words out every time. Tears say what their tongues cannot.

Cynics may doubt the genuineness of all this; some doubt its necessity. One visitor a few years ago was bemused to see all those faces down and bottoms up. Keeping her seat, and her distance, at the back of the church, she quietly wondered aloud, “Do they really need that much forgiveness?”

A Christian answers yes, they really do – and not just for more or less public offenses in word and deed, but even for offenses committed in secret or in the heart. No sin, in Orthodox and other Christian thought, is absolutely private. Each represents a breaking of faith with the whole church, the whole human race. No one who believes such a thing means to deny that sin offends God above all. The idea is simply to affirm that sin also offends those made in the image of that God.

But shouldn’t people who think that way seek and extend forgiveness all the time, and not just one Sunday night in late winter? Any church that prays “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” week in and week out, knows the unanimous Christian answer. In the words of St. Paul, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young German theologian martyred by the Nazis, envisioned Saturday as a time when laypeople might regularly pursue reconciliation with one another before sharing Holy Communion the next day. “Nobody who avoids this approach to his brother,” he wrote, “can go rightly prepared to the table of the Lord.”

The Orthodox are exhorted, just before they sing the creed, “Let us love one another, that with one accord we may confess: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

Right thinking without right relating, to paraphrase St. James, is dead. As the Orthodox see it, a simple rite of forgiveness at the end of evening prayer underlines that point and puts it in boldface. “Let us embrace one another,” they will sing in the wee hours of Easter morning. “Let us speak also, O brethren, to those that hate us, and in the resurrection let us forgive all things, and so let us cry: Christ is risen from the dead!”

A resurrection gospel puts those who believe it on their knees before God. Sooner or later, it puts them on their knees before one another.

A most welcome Valentine's Day visitor

2007-02-14T13:04:00.000-08:00

A short prayer

2006-12-18T17:29:00.000-08:00

Lord, teach me to love above my circumstances.

Cool kids

2006-12-11T21:30:00.000-08:00

I became an uncle when I was eight and thought it was the grandest thing in the world. I adored my niece. For a long time I think I looked forward more to having children than to being married. Kids were great. Later I taught a fifth-grade Sunday school class for several years and thought that was grand, too.

I haven't been around children much in recent years, with two delightful exceptions named Addi and Olivia. One of the happiest things about the church where I'm an intern now is the wonderful kids there, and it's been a lot of fun getting to know them and finding that I can still connect. I had lunch at the pastor's house Sunday. When I walked in, a woman from the church said, "The Paul Buckley Fan Club is downstairs." She was talking about Yasmina and Olivia and Ethan. So I descended the staircase to the dungeon -- everyone around here says "basement" -- and toured their fort, a handsome pavilion of straight chairs and bedsheets. They also had an assembly of rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses and the like that you would envy if you saw it. They had musical instruments, too, and together we performed a setting of "Silent Night" for four voices, cymbals, one maraca, and a pterodactyl. (Cymbals on downbeats, maraca on upbeats.)

It's good to be hobnobbing again with people who can appreciate these finer things.

Which five books?

2006-10-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

I've got too many books. Some of you think there's no such thing, and I once thought that myself. But listen: I'm never going to get them all read; I no longer even want to. And I think it's time for winnowing.

Seeing a multitude of books in boxes before my move reminded me of something that the novelist Flaubert said. He wondered something along these lines: How educated might a person be who knew just five books well?

We've had to read a slew of books in seminary, and part of me thinks that's good. Seminarians need to be exposed to a wide range of thought both old and new. But it's hard not to feel like most of our reading, because there's so much of it to do, remains superficial. Flaubert was onto something. It could be better to read five books well -- if they're the right books -- than to skim dozens.

So I'll put the question to you: What five books should we all read and know well? Sir Francis Bacon said some were to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and a few to be chewed and digested. Which five merit our chewing and digesting?

Don't list the Bible or Shakespeare. Let's assume we've got those already. Don't list Calvin's Institutes or Thomas Aquinas' Summa either. Assume we've got those, too.

From there to here

2006-10-03T21:01:00.000-07:00

My road trip to Philadelphia took a good twenty-something hours of driving. That's a lot of hours to think, sing, pray, and admire the passing scenery (cows, trees, mountains, and, in Tennessee, one dead armadillo, supine at the side of the road). Along the way, I listened to nine talks on marriage by Pastor Tim Keller of New York City, two or three lectures on Romans 8 by N.T. Wright, and a couple of favorite mix CDs. Keller's talks are excellent: challenging, convicting, and encouraging. I'll to try to post more about them soon.

Romans and depression

2006-09-08T15:43:00.000-07:00

N.T. Wright tells an instructive story at the beginning of a lecture given at Wycliffe College in Toronto. A minister friend in England, before he sought ordination, was working in a rough area of London. The experience was trying, and he became very depressed. The warden of the hostel where he stayed told him he should read the letter to the Romans every day for a month. As in a chapter or half-chapter a day? No, the warden said. Read the whole letter, every day, after work. He did, and he says it changed his life and transformed his views of all sorts of things.

The Christian psychiatrist John White tells a similar story, about himself, in The Masks of Melancholy.

Years ago, when I was seriously depressed, the thing that saved my own sanity was a dry-as-dust grappling with Hosea's prophecy. I spent weeks, morning by morning, making meticulous notes, checking historical allusions in the text. Slowly I began to sense the ground under my feet growing steadily firmer. I knew without any doubt that healing was constantly springing from my struggle to grasp the meaning of the prophecy. (202-03)

The Gideon Bibles you find in hotel rooms usually have an index of passages to read when you're fearful, guilty, doubtful, or otherwise beset. It's a perfectly legitimate approach to fear, guilt, doubt, and the rest. But there's something to be said for what Wright's friend and White did, immersing themselves in a couple of whole books of Scripture. I suspect it "worked" in part precisely because Romans and Hosea didn't address their depression head-on, at least not in any obvious way. Repeated exposure to the letter and the prophecy kept drawing their minds away from themselves and pushing them toward other concerns.

Maybe there are times when we don't need another comforting passage to read or another Christian book on suffering; we need something that will open our minds to the big picture, and a work such as Romans does nothing if not present a big picture. Ditto a stretch of Scripture such as Isaiah 40-66. Ditto the Gospel of John. Ditto (if you want something much shorter) the letter to the Ephesians.

One blessing per finger

2006-09-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

This is good. David Field, who teaches at Oak Hill Theological College in London, shows how "at all times I have immediate access to great truths which put hassle, disappointment, pain, and hard work in perspective."

'Thy kingdom come'

2006-09-04T17:29:00.000-07:00

I spend about an hour walking just about every day. And when I walk, I often pray, with set prayers as well as extemporaneous ones. The Lord's Prayer, the "Our Father," is always among them.

"Thy kingdom come."

The other morning I landed on that petition and camped there awhile. I've been thinking about it a lot since a recent trip to Southeast Asia, where I met a little group of Christians who follow Jesus in circumstances less comfortable than mine.

It's possible for some believers to so emphasize that God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass that they lose a sense of the tension between how things are and how they ought to be -- yes, even decreed to be. I fear that, given the chance, they might rewrite those subjunctives in the Lord's Prayer ("thy kingdom come, thy will be done") as simple indicatives ("thy kingdom is come, thy will is done"). And of course the indicatives are true in a sense, too. But clearly the prayer implies that God's will is not in fact done in the way we hope for it ultimately to be done, here in the "colony" (earth) as back at "headquarters" (heaven). And the kingdom has not in fact come in full.

I'm not sure how to hold it all together. I do know that the Lord's Prayer, at least in Luke's Gospel (11:1-4), is Jesus' fundamental answer to a question about how to pray, and that the question was prompted by the sounds of Jesus' own praying. This prayer tells us how he wants us to think aloud in the Father's presence and with what disposition of heart. And it's a prayer with subjunctives, a prayer that asks for a different world from what we've got. It longs not for escape, but for change and transformation.

"Thy kingdom come ... on earth as in heaven." That's a plea. But I doubt many of us experience it as much more than pretty words until we get some heartfelt sense of the present disjointedness between heaven and earth. We've got to feel in our gut, as Hamlet did after that horripilating midnight interview with the ghost, that "the time is out of joint." We've got to feel the pinch. I suspect that my brothers and sisters in Asia and elsewhere feel it more keenly than most of us in the West do. The ones I met gather every morning at 5:30 to pray. I take it their circumstances have taught them something about the importance of prayer, perhaps especially a prayer such as "Thy kingdom come."

A recent heartbreaking experience at home and my glimpse of life abroad and the acquaintance of a few Asian Christians have left me more sensitive to the disjointedness, the pinch. They're teaching me to want to see the Father's reign -- his healing, restoring, all-things-reconciling, true-sons-vindicating reign -- brought to bear in his world.

It struck me as I prayed one recent morning that when we say "Thy kingdom come," we scarcely realize what we ask for. What on earth does that look like? What would it look like for God's reign to come in our relationships? In the lives of Christians around the world? In our churches? In our families? In my life? In yours? I hardly know. And so it also struck me that part of our problem as pray-ers is a staggering failure of imagination. We can't imagine -- we often don't even try to imagine -- how the coming of the Father's reign might change things. We can't imagine that things can be different. We can't imagine that repentance and progress and maturity and real change -- personal, cultural, or otherwise -- are possible. We can't imagine that things could be transfigured.

It's good to have the apostle Paul's consolation (in Ephesians 3:20) that the Father can do more than we ask or think. But surely Paul means not just to console, but also to prod: Enough of the shriveled imaginations. Ask more. Imagine more.

In whatever context we pray it -- friendships, relationships, marriages, missions, conflicts -- "Thy kingdom come" is an invitation to think a lot bigger, a lot more Father-focused, than we are used to.

Step right up!

2006-09-04T17:11:00.000-07:00

Hello. I'm Paul Buckley. Welcome to my blog.

No idea what all I'll say here. I'll tell you something of what I'm thinking. I'll tell you what I'm reading. And I'll welcome your thoughts along the way.