It seems to me that there are some essential practices that attend our faith as Christians.
By saying that, I do not wish to imply, or get into an argument about, whether they are obligatory or not. In some senses I think they are, and in others not. All I’m saying is, let’s not get into a fight about: Chaplain Mike says we have to do these things to be Christians, or good Christians. Can we please just skip the whole grace vs. demand/faith vs. works debate this time around?
I use the word essential because I find that these practices signify something of the essence of following Jesus. They go to the heart of “walking in newness of life.” They are also time-tested practices that have found an honored place in the history of God’s people. They haven’t traditionally been emphasized within the revivalistic, doctrinaire evangelicalism I was in most of my adult life. Thankfully, some evangelicals have begun to speak more about them now, but not before a whole flock of us left to find these practices available and organically integrated in more historic expressions of the faith.
One essential practice I’d like to talk about is praying the Psalms.
The Church indeed likes what is old, not because it is old but rather because it is “young.” In the Psalms, we drink divine praise at its pure and stainless source, in all its primitive sincerity and perfection. We return to the youthful strength and directness with which the ancient psalmists voiced their adoration of the God of Israel. Their adoration was intensified by the ineffable accents of new discovery: for the Psalms are the songs of men who knew who God was. If we are to pray well, we too must discover the Lord to whom we speak, and if we use the Psalms in our prayer we will stand a better chance of sharing in the discovery which lies hidden in their words for all generations. For God has willed to make Himself known to us in the mystery of the Psalms.
Psalms contains the prayers of the king and the kingdom. Put together in five “books” like the Torah of Moses, the Book of Psalms is the Torah of God’s Messiah. The first part of the book is filled with the psalms of David, the king, whose prayers represent the laments and praises of the ideal King (Messiah), who is introduced to the reader in Psalm 2. The psalms of David expose us to the heart, mind, and spirit of our King. The book also focuses upon the divine promise of restoring God’s divine Kingdom in the world, by which all nations and all creation will be renewed. It is one of the places in the Bible where Jesus and the Kingdom are most apparent. To pray the Psalms is to learn what it means to pray, “May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as in heaven.”
Praying the psalms can be as easy as reading them aloud, directing the words toward God. But I think they are even more effective when sung or chanted.
My church hymnal is one resource for which I, as a Lutheran, am grateful, and one of the best parts of our hymnal is that it includes the psalms. All 150 of them are there, with instructions and markings for chanting them. Any individual, group, or church would find great benefit in praying them in this fashion regularly.
I have also discovered a wonderful site called The Seedbed Psalter. This online metrical psalm-book was put together by Dr. Timothy Tennent and Mrs. Julie Tennent from Asbury Seminary. The great feature of this site is that it gives you a variety of hymn tunes to use when singing the psalms. Here is a screen shot of Psalm 1, as it appears there:
Mrs. Tennent has arranged these psalms to fit with many familiar and accessible tunes. For example, the five tunes above are the tunes for (1) Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee, (2) Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, (3) Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, (4) Come, Thou Fount, and (5) Brethren, We Have Met to Worship (from Sacred Harp).
There are excellent indices, and even the ability to download tunes. I encourage you to make use of this fine and edifying resource.
However we go about it, it is an essential part of our faith to pray the Psalms.
Ever since I was a child, one of my favorite hymns has been, “This Is My Father’s World”, by Rev. Maltbie D. Babcock. I’m sure what first caught my attention was its lovely melody, which is said to have been adapted from an English folk tune by Franklin L. Sheppard.
This hymn (or poem as it was at the time) was not published until after Babcock’s death in 1901. Shortly after he died, his wife put together a book of his poems and this one, “My Father’s World,” which originally had sixteen stanzas, was included.
Babcock was a pastor in upstate New York. The story is told that he loved to go hiking in an area known as “the escarpment,” where there was a breathtaking vista of farms and orchards, with Lake Ontario about fifteen miles in the distance. It is said that upon leaving for these walks, he would tell his wife, “I’m going out to see my Father’s world.”
One of the obvious messages of this hymn is acknowledgment of the goodness and beauty of God’s creation. Ken Burns recognized this and used an instrumental version of the hymn as music for his recent documentary series on America’s national parks. Babcock’s experience of God “speaking to him everywhere” through his general revelation reflects the divine testimony in Psalm 19:
The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In our day, “This Is My Father’s World” reminds us of our responsibility, as God’s stewards, to care for the world that he has given us. It is not our world; it is our Father’s world. According to Genesis 1, he has entrusted its care and keeping to us. Human sin has affected not only our relationship to God, but also our life in and relationship to the natural world. It is obvious that we have abused creation many ways. Environmental responsibility is ultimately a Christian duty, because we believe in the One who created our home and entrusted it to us.
Perhaps the strongest stanza of the hymn is this one:
This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.
In recent days, this lyric has become more recognizable because of reference to it by N.T. Wright in his teaching on eschatology. God’s plan will culminate, not in some ethereal heaven away from earth, but rather in heaven coming down to earth and utterly transforming it and all the universe into a new creation. Whereas much gospel hymnology has stressed leaving the world for heaven, the fact is that the future Christian hope is utterly terrestrial. Earth and heaven shall be one. God shall take up his throne here, and all will be made new.
This is why Jesus died:
With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Eph 1:8b-10, NRSV)
God’s redemption of individuals through Jesus’ death and resurrection is but one part of a plan that includes all creation. Earth and heaven shall be one. He will be our God, we will be his people, and he will dwell among us. And we will sing, “This Is My Father’s World.”
This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.
This is my Father’s world, the birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world: He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.
This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.
Since the gospel message is “How God Became King” (N.T. Wright), it is right and fitting that we should end the Church Year and our presentation of Bach’s cantatas with this jubilant chorus of praise to our risen and ascended Messiah, Lord and King of all creation.
God goes up with jubilation
and the Lord with bright trumpets.
Sing praise, sing praise to God;
sing praise, sing praise to our King.
• • •
SERMON: Celebration (1 Thessalonians 5.16-18)
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
• • •
We conclude our sermon series from 1 Thessalonians today. We have been considering this letter from Paul, drawing out several themes that Martin Luther and the other reformers emphasized in their effort to restore the Church and bring her back to the Gospel during the Reformation. Thus far, we have considered:
CONVERSION: As people created anew by Christ, we are ever growing and changing by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, dying to the old life, and walking in newness of life
REVELATION: It is through the power of God’s Word that God creates faith, hope, and love in us. His great and precious promises in Christ sustain us in our journey of faith.
RESURRECTION: God’s ultimate goal for creation is that all will be made new in a world of righteousness and peace. Even we ourselves will be raised from the dead and made whole, reunited with the faithful departed. Heaven will come to earth. Death, sin, and evil will be banished, and we will be with the Lord forever.
EDIFICATION: In the meantime, God calls us to lives of service and pastoral care — faith working through love — reaching out to our brothers, sisters, and neighbors with Christ-like love and encouragement.
VOCATION: Each of us has callings from God that he graciously gives us to fulfill. As we do, God works through us to show his love and care for the world and all creation.
Today, we will talk about one final theme that came to the fore during the Reformation. We’ll call it CELEBRATION. One of Luther’s great concerns was to reform the Church’s worship services so that they would be centered around the gospel and give people opportunities to participate in celebrating Christ.
If you had gone to a worship service in Luther’s day, you might have heard a service in Latin, and not in your native language. The sermon might have been weak and legalistic. There would have been little congregational singing. When you came to take Communion, you would not have been allowed to take the cup, only the bread. The mass would have been understood as the actual sacrifice of Christ and participation in it a good work that earned salvation. Martin Luther and others sought to restore the gospel message to the worship service by focusing more on the word of the gospel and the participation of the people. He also allowed more freedom for pastors and congregations to adapt the liturgy.
But Luther didn’t change everything. Worship didn’t become a free-for-all. It still followed the same basic pattern and maintained its dignity and focus on Christ through the Word and the Table.
Our text today encourages us to rejoice, to pray, and to give thanks. As those who practice our faith in the Lutheran tradition, we think that our rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks is best practiced by following a certain order when we gather together for worship. We call this “liturgy,” which, in its original language refers to “the work of the people.” Liturgy is led by a minister, but it is work that we all do together. The liturgy invites us all to participate in responding to God’s grace in Christ with rejoicing, prayer, and thanksgiving.
The liturgy follows a certain basic pattern. It is designed to enable us to meet with God and focus my attention on Christ and the Gospel. Let me try to explain in a simple manner why we worship in the way we do.
If I were to receive an invitation to a banquet at a king’s palace, there would be a protocol, set up by the king’s staff, for guests to follow. We would enter the palace and show our respect and gratitude for being invited. We would be introduced to the king and he would address us as his citizens. We would sit down at the banquet table and he would lead us in partaking of the feast prepared for his honor and our blessing. We would be dismissed in peace to go and live as his loyal subjects.
The same pattern would hold if my wife and I were invited to the home of dear friends. When we arrived, we would be greeted at the door and as we entered we would say, “Thanks for having us over; boy, that sure smells good; I love what you’ve done with your house” — we would offer words of thanks and praise. Before dinner was served, we might sit down in the living room or out on the deck together. We would catch up with one another through conversation. Then, summoned to the table, we would sit down as guests and enjoy the meal our friends had prepared and served us. Finally, after more conversation, we would bid them goodnight, saying, “We must do this more often. We’ll be in touch.” We would go home, hearts warmed after a time of renewing a special relationship and hoping to strengthen those bonds in the days to come.
Do you see the four-fold pattern?
We gather.
We exchange words.
We share a meal.
We depart renewed.
This simple pattern that can be worked out with as much or as little fanfare as a congregation desires. It can contain any style of music, any number of creative elements, and it can fit any cultural setting.
It’s the way we meet with God. It’s the protocol of having an audience with our King. It is the pattern of enjoying table fellowship with Jesus and with one another. There is a gathering, a sharing of words, an invitation to the table, a sending back into the world and into our daily lives. Justin Martyr, one of the early church fathers, described this pattern way back in the 2nd century:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. (Justin Martyr, First Apology c. 150 AD)
And this is still the way we are meeting with God together today. I like to call it our “Sunday Dinner” together as a church family. We gather, we hear and share the Word, we come to the Table, we leave to live and serve in newness of life. Amen.
”It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.”
[The] California man who planned to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a homemade scrap-metal rocket – in an effort to “prove” that Earth is flat – said he is postponing the experiment after he couldn’t get permission from a federal agency to do so on public land.
Instead, Mike Hughes said the launch will take place sometime next week on private property, albeit still in Amboy, California, an unincorporated community in the Mojave Desert along historic Route 66.
Assuming the 500-mph, mile-long flight through the Mojave Desert does not kill him, Hughes told the Associated Press, his journey into the atmosflat will mark the first phase of his ambitious flat-Earth space program.
“It’ll shut the door on this ball earth,” Hughes said in a fundraising interview with a flat-Earth group for Saturday’s flight. Theories discussed during the interview included NASA being controlled by round-Earth Freemasons and Elon Musk making fake rockets from blimps.
Hughes promised the flat-Earth community that he would expose the conspiracy with his steam-powered rocket, which will launch from a heavily modified mobile home – though he acknowledged that he still had much to learn about rocket science.
“This whole tech thing,” he said in the June interview. “I’m really behind the eight ball.”
Artificial lighting at night is contributing to an alarming increase in light pollution, both in amount and in brightness, affecting places all over the world, a new study has found.
Some regions have showed a steady increase in light pollution aligned with economic development, but more developed nations that were thought to be “going dark” by switching to energy-saving LEDs showed no apparent decline in their rates of light pollution.
Globally, there has been a push toward more energy- and cost-efficient light sources, such as LEDs, but this has directly contributed to an alarming increase in light pollution, the researchers believe. Using the first calibrated satellite radiometer for night lights, which can detect radiance, a team of scientists found a 2.2% increase in the Earth’s outdoor artificial lighting each year between 2012 and 2016.
…The study concluded that a steady increase in the use of energy-efficient lights that are cheap and readily available will result in even more light pollution and a reduction of natural day-night light cycles in areas that still experience them.
Light pollution poses a threat to 30% of vertebrates and more than 60% of invertebrates that are nocturnal, including plants, microorganisms and, most alarmingly, human health, the researchers add.
Anyone who’s ever sipped coffee knows how temperature can affect taste: if it’s too hot, it’ll scald your mouth; too cold and it’s barely worth drinking. By one estimate, you have only about 37 seconds to enjoy the brew at an ideal level of warmth. “That didn’t make any logical sense to me,” says Clay Alexander, CEO and founder of Los Angeles–based Ember Technologies. So he invented a solution: the stainless-steel Ember mug. Reinforced in white ceramic coating, it keeps coffee or tea at a precise temperature—anywhere from 120°F to 145°F, set through an app—for about an hour on its own and for an unlimited amount of time on its charging saucer. It’s the second in Ember’s series of smart drinking devices, following a temperature-control tumbler last year. And it may be poised to become a desktop staple: the mug launched on Nov. 9 and is already being sold in 4,600 U.S. Starbucks stores. —Melissa Chan
•
Michelin Vision Concept
In the future, our cars will be smart, and our tires will be smarter. Or so suggests Michelin. Its Vision concept—unveiled this year to demonstrate the potential of tire technology—certainly makes a compelling case. For starters, it’s airless, eliminating the need to worry about pounds per square inch. It’s also made from recycled materials in an effort to reduce waste. But the most impressive feature may be its 3D-printed treads, which can be swapped in and out to accommodate various road conditions—without changing the tire itself. The challenge will be figuring out a way to do it quickly, says Terry Gettys, who helped lead the project, “because consumers are going to want their tires [ready to go] in just a few minutes.” Michelin estimates that a tire this advanced may still be as far as 20 years away. But some of its features, like airless designs and sensors that flag drivers when treads are wearing down, could become mainstream over the next several years. —Lisa Eadicicco
•
VICIS Zero1
For decades, football players have worn the same kind of head protection: hard, plastic helmets. About four years ago, Sam Browd, a pediatric neurosurgeon, started thinking about how to approach them differently. What if, he wondered, the outer shell were made of a flexible polymer? That way, helmets could work like car bumpers, reducing the force (and the sound) of a collision immediately on impact. He sketched a prototype on a napkin and brought it to contacts at the University of Washington; together they founded a startup, VICIS, to make it a reality. “We wanted to build the safest helmet ever made,”says Dave Marver, the company’s CEO. The result, made possible by some $40 million in investments, is the Zero1, which earned top marks in the NFL’s annual helmet testing for its ability to reduce the forces that can cause brain injury. It’s now being used by players on 18 NFL teams, including Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith, and about 20 college teams. Next up: versions for younger athletes. —Jenny Vrentas
•
GreenWave 3D Ocean Farm
The future of farming is growing oysters, mussels, clams and seaweed on ropes anchored to the ocean floor. So says Bren Smith, a commercial fisherman turned director of GreenWave, a Connecticut nonprofit doing just that. The concept isn’t as wild as it may seem. As land farming becomes increasingly problematic—it accounts for a growing portion of the planet’s greenhouse-gas emissions—and oceans get overfished, humans will need to develop alternative food sources. GreenWave’s crops offer compelling advantages: they’re protein-rich, self-sufficient (no fertilizer needed) and they even help combat climate change (by sequestering carbon as they grow). Of course, getting Westerners to center their diet on mollusks and seaweed is a stretch. Still, GreenWave sees potential: the group has helped fishermen establish 14 farms along the coast of New England since 2013, and now has plans to expand in California, the Pacific Northwest and Europe. —Julia Zorthian
Won what? Won the battle of the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. Won the central conflict of 16th-century theological warfare. How? By winning more people to his view than Luther or Calvin were able to win to theirs.
Baptists, the spiritual heirs of Zwingli in terms of their understanding of the Lord’s Supper, far outnumber both Lutherans and Presbyterians in the United States. Indeed, there are more Baptists than Lutherans and Presbyterians combined.
Zwingli, it turns out, is far more important to modern Christianity than Luther or Calvin. But you hardly ever hear his name anymore because Luther was more bombastic and Calvin more dictatorial.
…Zwingli won because his theology has proved itself victorious for centuries and will continue to be victorious — even over the bellicose old Luther — as long as there are Baptists in the land.
• • •
DIORAMAS OF DEATH
Check out the fascinating piece at NPR about Frances Glessner Lee, the “godmother of forensic science.” The video below will take you into her fascinating world.
At the turn of the century, miniature model making was a popular hobby among wealthy women. Lee adapted the the techniques she’d mastered building dollhouses to make tiny crime scenes that she used in the classroom at Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard, which she founded. She called her series, “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.”
“They do something that no other medium can do. You can’t do it with film, you really couldn’t do it with still images. Even today I don’t think there’s a computer simulation that does what the nutshells can do,” says Bruce Goldfarb. He oversees the collection at its permanent home at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, Md. The models are so convincing that they’re still being used to train criminal investigators from around the country. “She knew that she was dealing with hard-boiled homicide detectives and so there couldn’t be anything remotely doll-like about them. They were not toys,” Goldfarb says.
English words like “pumpkin,” “skunk,” and “Massachusetts” are derived from Wampanoag words, but until recently the language itself was lost. In 1993, Jessie Little Doe Baird, then in her 20s, had a series of dreams about her ancestors. In the dreams, they were speaking to her but she couldn’t understand them. The tribe had a prophecy which said that their lost language would come back when they were ready for it, revived by the children of those who had broken the language cycle. Baird saw the dreams as a sign.
Baird worked with Kenneth Hale, her thesis advisor at MIT, an expert in indigenous languages, and a descendant of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams. She also collaborated with fellow tribe members and other Native Americans, making use of Algonquin languages, which are related and still spoken. In 2000, she published a grammar and has since put together a dictionary of the Wampanoag language. She then received a MacArthur Fellowship and helped launch an immersion school that teaches the language to Wampanoag children.
For the first time in over a century, Wampanoag people can celebrate Thanksgiving in the language of those who first observed the feast.
• • •
THIS WEEK IN MUSIC…
I’m always on the lookout for good singer-songwriters. A few weeks ago, I was introduced to Phoebe Bridgers, and I find that her songs fit the increasingly bare November landscape perfectly. In the linked NPR piece, Stephen Thompson writes about Bridgers’s haunting single, Smoke Signals:
Like fellow rising stars Julien Baker (with whom she’s toured) and Julia Jacklin, Bridgers immediately presents as a formidable talent: She’s got a voice powerful enough to command any stage, but with intimate phrasing that cries out for late-night drives and walks under headphones. In “Smoke Signals,” she crams a relationship’s worth of emotions, milestones and small details — a week in the wilderness, the deaths of Lemmy and Bowie, the scene surrounding a Holiday Inn — into five and a half slowly but powerfully unfurling minutes.
Note from CM: Here is an example from Michael Spencer’s post-evangelical journey of his emergence from certain fundamentalist ways of thinking about the faith and its various expressions. This was first posted in 2009.
• • •
Point: evangelicalism contains within itself some almost irresistible itches from its fundamentalist DNA. From time to time, the urge to scratch is almost overwhelming. These itches would include:
“Must say that Catholics are not Christians….”
“Must say that all things ecumenical are bad unless it’s guys on our team writing books or putting on a conference….”
“Must say all mainline Christians are apostate….”
“Must find ways to say our church actually has the pure Gospel others don’t have….”
“Must point out heretics like the emerging church and N.T. Wright…..”
Recently I’ve noticed a new variety of fundamentalist itch.
“Must show that creeds written before the Reformation are deficient compared to Reformation theology….”
Apparently, we’re on track to a kind of KJV-only logic. Don’t trust anything before we got everything right somewhere in there in the Reformation. Somewhere in there. Somewhere.
In a hundred years, we will be warning young theologians about reading the church fathers or anyone before Wayne Grudem. Be careful about listening to preachers before Piper.
Of course it all makes sense. Our various kinds of exclusive Fundamentalism always do. It’s so inclined towards rationalism that making perfect sense to your intellect is never the problem.
Making the case that the Nicene Creed isn’t enough to answer all the questions in Christianity- which no one ever claims- is clear as new glass. You won’t solve every theological issue with the Nicene Creed. No, we’ll need more than that.
Right. But then what are we going to say together as a common creed? Nothing? Jesus is Lord? Your book of Confessions? Whatever’s in the head of the latest reformation cop?
The more you add to that brew, the fewer and fewer people are going to be at the party…oh wait…that’s the real issue isn’t it? Is there a party? Do we want anyone else to stop by and have a hot dog and a root beer? Or is this get-together just for us and our closest friends?
Conservative evangelicals are pretty easily convinced that ecumenical conversation is not nearly as interesting or as helpful as telling all the Eastern Orthodox near you that their church is the “Orthoborg.”
Is the Jesus you are following calling you into ecumenical relationships with other Christians? Not evangelistic relationships, but fellowship around a shared Christ, even if not a shared table?
Or is Jesus giving you your theological policeman’s orders for the day? Get your quota of arrests. Get the Catholics off the streets. Arrest some mainliners. Let’s clean this neighborhood up. And be careful out there.
If grace has created an ecumenical party around the Jesus described in the Nicene Creed, it’s not the church. those can’t be the absolute boundaries. Some are left out. These days, a few that shouldn’t be in may use that good confession to slip in the door. The party may not be much more than a meal, a drink and a few laughs. Or it may be a clinic, a clothes closet and a meal for the poor. It may be working together on ecumenical worship during Holy Week or a prayer walk around your community.
In my house, it’s loving my wife, her friends and her church. At my ministry, it’s loving and sharing a school day with Orthodox, Catholic and every other denomination and tradition.
In my own experience of seeking a Jesus shaped spirituality, it’s learning that “if they aren’t against us, they are for us.” It’s the party grace throws for all the many different kinds of prodigals, sinners and lost sheep Jesus has collected.
It’s about the flavor, scent, sound and presence of grace toward other believers.
It’s not about agreement, but it’s about mutual confession of the ancient faith.
It’s not about the table, but about reverencing the one who is on the table.
It’s not about whether major things are at stake, but about knowing that people for whom Jesus died are always important and worthy of love and respect.
It’s not about whether the Gospel applies, but about how I apply the Gospel.
The ecumenical community is created by Jesus. It’s his guest list, and I can set up a lecture room at the Hyatt and outline my objections, or I can go in and have some food, drink and conversation. Jesus won’t beg me. He’ll just tell me where to find him.
Thank you, Lord, In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…
For life itself, the gift I take most for granted.
For my baptism and introduction to the Gospel when, as an infant, all I could do was trust.
For my family and my ancestors, for hope for generations to come.
For the blessing of being born and raised in a good, prosperous, and free land, as a member of a generation that lacked for little.
For my confirmation, when seeds were planted that have produced fruit throughout the rest of my life.
For an incredible variety of friends and experiences over the years.
For the many ways you protected me during the foolishness of my youth. And for remembering not the sins of my youth.
For guiding my steps, though I have been almost totally clueless when it comes to making choices in my life; somehow a way has always appeared before me.
For my teachers, formal and informal, who have been second only to my family in shaping my life.
For a spiritual awakening in my teen years that kept me from being a statistic.
For my family — my wife, children, and grandchildren — in whom my heart delights and for whom it aches and breaks and prays each day.
For baseball, game of my life, and for knowing, as a Cubs fan, that “wait until next year” now actually means something!
For the Marx Brothers, Bogart, The Wizard of Oz, Woody Allen, It’s a Wonderful Life, Tom Hanks, and all the characters I’ve met and alternate worlds I’ve entered in darkened, magical rooms.
For music, joy of my life. For this past year of immersing my Sundays in the sublime works of Bach.
For van Gogh, Chagall, Giotto, Pollock and all the artists who’ve produced wondrous images that stimulate my imagination and fill my heart with wonder.
For laughter; hearty, healthy, holy laughter. I pray for this more and more.
For Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Chaim Potok, Frederick Buechner, Marilynne Robinson, and all my muses.
For a calling to ministry, the never-ending well of the Bible from which to teach, and the many opportunities to serve that have come my way.
For all the churches that taught me how to be a pastor more than I taught them how to be congregations.
For Luther, in all his tenderness and storminess, and his unyielding focus on Christ.
For Eugene Peterson, Henri Nouwen, N.T. Wright, Pete Enns, and my brother Michael Spencer — faithful guides in the post-evangelical wilderness.
For the life-affirming privilege of working with the dying and their families with a team of remarkable people.
For hearing me when I pray Kyrie Eleison at the beginning of each worship service, and for Word and Sacrament to cleanse and nourish me in faith with all pilgrims as we journey on.
For one true holy catholic and apostolic church — even when it looks hopelessly shattered in a billion pieces.
For grace beyond measure, hope without end, and a Savior to whom none can compare.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Chaplain Mike
• • •
And finally, God bless the Spencers, the Dunns, the Zehners, the Dyes, the Jepsens, the McCanns, the Stallards, and all the other families who have lent their loved ones to give their talents to working and writing for Internet Monk.
And thanks to our community of readers and commenters. I’m grateful for each and every one of you.
A Thanksgiving Meditation for 2017
A Sense of Sin and the Joy of Gratitude (Huh?!) by Randy Thompson
Thanks-giving is a by-product of a certain way of looking at life, a way of looking that has eyes to see the goodness of God and the goodness of God’s creation, coupled with the awareness that we are undeserving of such goodness.
This awareness of being “undeserving” is another way of saying that we are aware of who we are in relation to God, that we are a crooked, hand-drawn line in relation to God, our straight-edge ruler. The Bible tells us that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of the God who loves us (Romans 3:23). In other words, it tells us we’re sinners. We don’t like that idea, but if we’re at all honest with ourselves or attentive to the bloodbath of human history or aware of the weekly horrors we read about or see on TV, we must admit it’s true. There’s a spiritual malignancy slowly devouring the human heart, for which there is no cure other than from God.
God’s cure, of course, is the Son whom He sent to us, whose unjust death became the miracle cure of our fatal illness. Through Christ, we see clearly the goodness of God, the goodness of the Creation God proclaimed as good, and the goodness of God’s gifts.
“OK,” you say. “But what does all this have to do with thanks-giving? How on earth does a sense of sin lead to the joy of gratitude?”
Being aware of who we are as sinners, albeit forgiven sinners through Christ, is an education in humility, whereby we know who God is and who we are in relation to God. Specifically, we come to understand that we are outsiders to God’s goodness, but that God has adopted us and made us participants in His goodness. From the perspective of humility, God’s goodness is a grandly big goodness indeed.
A sense of sin is the fertile soil in which humility grows, and, in turn, humility is the fertile soil in which joyful thanks-giving grows and in which worship grows.
Why is humility so important to thanks-giving? Because humility sees all goodness offered to it as a gift and blessing, something undeserved and unexpected.
The opposite of humility is a sense of entitlement, that, somehow, we deserve what we think should be “ours.” It’s the arrogance that demands its “rights” from the universe. It’s the self-centered perspective that sees God’s gifts without seeing the Giver of these gifts, so that they become disconnected, lifeless idols that we think we can pick and choose at our convenience.
Both a sense of entitlement and idolatry destroy our capacity to receive God’s gifts and even to recognize them as gifts. Instead of being drawn ever nearer to God and into God’s goodness through worshipful gratitude and praise, we end up alone, on the outside looking in, unable to experience life as God intended it to be lived. Humility is the recognition of being on the outside, and rejoicing that God through His Son has invited us in.
Gifts make glad both the giver of the gift and the gift’s recipient. It is a joy for the giver to give. It is a joy for the recipient to receive. For the recipient, it is a particular kind of joy, a grateful joy that recognizes God in His gifts and rejoices in them as well as in the Giver.
And so it is that the most unpopular of Christian doctrines is put into the service of joy and gratitude through the Gospel. The smaller we see ourselves to be, the larger God’s gifts appear. The more we own our own sinfulness, the more clearly we see the goodness and generosity of God.
For a sinner, the gift of forgiveness, acceptance, and love is an indescribable gift. So are all subsequent blessings and gifts. Paul the Apostle got it right:
Yesterday’s post examined the spiritual aspect of Michelangelo’s great Roman Pietà. In particular, we noted how the two figures appear idealized [despite their sorrow], reflecting the Neo-Platonic ideals of beauty on earth reflecting God’s beauty; the beautiful figures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus are echoing the beauty of the Divine. Michelangelo was not striving for historical accuracy, but for the ideal, the transcendent, the eternal. Mary and Jesus represent, at this level, not murdered son and grieving older mother. Rather, they represent idealized man and woman, together, in their triangular unity, reflecting the image of the Triune God.
And this beauty, especially of the idealized human form, is a both a reflection of God’s beauty and a climbing pathway in which the person of perception may ascend, in some way, to heaven itself.
Near the end of his life the great artist Michelangelo began work on another Pietà, utterly unlike the one he completed at age 24.
Fifty years had passed since Michelangelo had completed the Roman Pietà. No one remains unchanged in their thoughts and values over half a century, especially a person with a mind like Michelangelo’s. Always a religious man, his maturing years had brought a maturing spirituality, and a deepening ambivalence about what art is for, and what it can do.
At the age of 61 he began a deep friendship with a 46-year-old poet, Vittoria Colonna. The great artist addressed some of his finest sonnets to her, made drawings for her, and spent long hours in her company. Vittoria became his been deepest confidante, and every Sunday afternoon they sat on a balcony at the convent where she lived in Rome, discussing the deep theological questions of the day: What is the nature of grace? What is the nature of sin? Who has religious authority on Earth? They had watched the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation first-hand, and they were both keenly interested in theology.
Colonna also conveyed to him the intellectual and religious concerns of her scholarly, cultured, very catholic circles of friends, including clerical reformers within the Catholic Church, who were seeking to heighten religious awareness and personal holiness.
In 1547 Colonna died, leaving Michelangelo bereft. He was also buffeted by the ailments of age, guilt over unfinished projects, and disillusions over the treachery of friends.
He turned to poetry, picturing her as a great fire, warming his old age.
But Heaven has taken away from me the splendor
Of the great fire that burned and nourished me;
I am left to be a coal, covered and burning,
And if Love will not offer me more timber
To raise a fire, in me there will not be
A single spark, all into ashes turning.
In the year Colonna died, Michelangelo would begin work on a new Pieta. This was to be something special to him, a final coda giving a backwards meaning to all he had done before. He worked, not on commission, but after hours, in privacy, wearing a thick hat holding a candle for illumination. This pieta would go on his own tomb. And, for the first time, he carved his own face into a sculpture.
He never finished. In fact, in his 80th year, after working on it for over half a decade, Michelangelo would take a hammer and chisel and begin to destroy it. Vasari, his first biographer, says only the intervention of a servant saved it from total damage.
Michelangelo reluctantly allowed the pieces to be gathered and later restored by another sculptor, who also added the face of Mary Magdalen (in an unfortunately passive expression).
This Pieta now resides in Florence, in a small museum behind the Duomo. The Florentine Pieta [also called the Disposition] departs not only from the form of the Roman work, but also in the tone. Obviously, the figures are different. Besides Mary and Jesus there is a male figure in the back, likely Nicodemus, lifting Christ down from the cross by the band around his chest. The face of Nicodemus is Michelangelo’s.
In his earlier works, each person had their own psychic space, even when they were touching in some ways. In the Roman Pieta, the virgin looks down, seemingly lost in thought, upon the body of her son. But in the Florentine version, Mary’s [unfinished] face is pressed against Christ’s head in a passionate display of love and devotion as she reaches under his left arm to clasp the body being lowered from the cross.
Nowhere is the difference between the two pietas more visible than in the body of Christ [the only part finished]. Instead of the languid and passive tone of the Roman Pieta, here the suffering of Jesus is dramatic and centralized; The left arm is distended and torqued, the abdomen twisted and bent. The head slumped over.
Why the great difference between the two Pietas? Why the self-portrait? Most importantly, why did the great sculptor attempt to destroy his work,something he never did to any of his other pieces (though he left many unfinished)?
I do not know the answers to all these questions. The master did not often explain his artwork and actions. But I wonder if in the 50 years since he had carved the idealized perfection of the Roman Pieta, his ideas of what really constituted beauty had changed. He no longer saw the ultimate expression of the beauty of God in the idealized human body (as in the first Pieta) but in the broken and suffering body of the incarnate one, the God-man. A man in his 70’s has a completely different view of life than that same man in his early 20’s. For Michelangelo, I believe, the real beauty of God is not now seen in the perfection of the human body, that cosmic point of intersection between the realms of matter and spirit. Rather, God’s beauty is seen in the ugly, torqued and twisted body of the God who has died for us.
Reading further between the lines, perhaps he took up the chisel to erase his work because even his great skill was maddeningly unequal to the task of showing this beauty adequately.
As I say, I do not know for sure what went through Michelangelo’s mind. But I do know that as I stood before the Florentine Pieta, at age 55, it’s incompleteness, its unsmoothed chisel strokes, its broken beauty . . . all these resonated with the disillusioned, broken part of my heart more profoundly than the earlier Pieta ever could. I feel like a failure much more than I did as a young man. My aging body reminds me that I will never have time to make life what I want it to be, to make myself what I want to be. Perfection is laughingly out of reach; I grasp for adequacy. Regrets circle overhead like buzzards. But there is, by God’s grace, still a profound beauty in the brokenness. Ultimately, I have no power for beauty or rightness at all, except to, like Michelangelo in the sculpture, cling to the dying God.
Next to the sculpture is a sonnet inscribed on the wall; It is by Michelangelo, from about the time he was carving by candlelight this gravestone piece. As always, he sums it up better than any of us can:
So that finally I see
How wrong the fond illusion was
That made art my idol and my king,
Leading me to want what harmed me.
Let neither painting nor carving any longer calm
My soul turned to that divine love
Who to embrace us opened his
arms upon the cross.
In June of 1496 a 21-year-old sculptor arrived in Rome and within a month received a commission: a statue of the Roman wine god Bacchus, for Cardinal Raffaele Riario. However, the work was rejected by the cardinal, and the young sculptor began to look for another commission.
Soon the French ambassador to the Holy See, Cardinal Jean de Bilhères-Lagraulas, commissioned him to carve a Pietà, a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of Jesus [pieta = pity]. The piece was finished within two years, and was soon to be regarded as one of the world’s great masterpieces, “a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture”. Thus, by the time he was 24, the name of Michelangelo was in the forefront of European art.
Michelangelo sculpted the Pietà from a single block of Carrara marble, which he claimed was the most perfect block of marble he had ever worked with. He also claimed that he could “see” the sculpture, and needed only to remove the marble surrounding the scene.
I traveled to Rome earlier this year to gaze at the statue I had adored in pictures all my adult life; It seemed to me the most perfect of all sculptures. I could have spent the whole afternoon there, staring in wondrous silence. My patient daughter smiled at me as an adult daughter might smile at a long-widowed father who has fallen in love.
As a work of technical skill, the Pietà has no equal. Contemporary opinion was summarized by Vasari:
“It would be impossible for any craftsman or sculptor, no matter how brilliant, ever to surpass the grace or design of this work, or try to cut and polish the marble with the skill that Michelangelo displayed. It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have reduced to perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh. Michelangelo put in to this work so much love and effort (something that he never did again), that he left his name written across the sash over Our Lady’s breast.”
Staring at the Pietà, I could not help but agree with Vasari. The scene looks less like stone than ivory. Or, if not that, stone in an almost liquid form. One senses it is almost too perfect. Or, rather, it is a perfection of an ideal, that is, a Platonic ideal.
For Plato, contemplation of the beautiful form led to a greater understanding of the essence of reality, and an ascent to the transcendent realm, the world beyond this world of matter.
As Catesby Leigh notes in a wonderful essay in First Things, much of Michelangelo’s early works,
…reflect Plato’s interpretation of eros in his Symposium, which Michelangelo must have encountered after entering the household of Lorenzo de Medici at age fifteen, when he was already recognized as a prodigy. Another member of Lorenzo’s household was the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, a renowned scholar and priest who, as one of the principal thinkers of Renaissance humanism, endeavored to harmonize Platonism with Christian belief. The young Michelangelo was imbued with the conviction that the contemplation of beautiful forms can serve as a step on a ladder that leads man out of the world of the flesh and into the realm of the spirit.
This is why, despite the subject matter, there is an idealized peace and harmony about the Roman Pietà. Indeed, this could be the only criticism of the piece. The quote from Vasari above even hints at this: “a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh”. And the perfection of the human forms seem little touched by the manner of Jesus’ death. The wounds on his hands and feet are minuscule; the torso bears no marks from the whip, nor the brow from the crown of thorns; he could almost be sleeping or lying in calm repose. Mary, although looking down on her murdered son, nevertheless appears at peace. The two figures appear idealized despite such sorrow, reflecting the Neo-Platonic ideals of beauty on earth reflecting God’s beauty; the beautiful figures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus are echoing the beauty of the Divine.
Michelangelo was much criticized for making Mary so lovely and young, instead of a 50-year-old peasant woman. But Michelangelo was not stiving for historical accuracy, but for the ideal, the transcendent, the eternal. Mary and Jesus represent, at this level, not murdered son and grieving older mother. Rather, they represent idealized man and woman, together, in their triangular unity, reflecting the image of the Triune God.
Catesby Leigh: “Michelangelo knew that man is the cosmic point of intersection between the realms of matter and spirit. The structure and proportions of the human body are integral to God’s supreme organic creation, and therefore the human figure is art’s supreme symbolic form.”
Michelangelo himself put it this way:
Every beauty which is seen here below by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come…
My eyes longing for beautiful things together with my soul longing for salvation have no other power to ascend to heaven than the contemplation of beautiful things.
This is the thought that guided his hammer and chisel: beauty, especially of the idealized human form, is a both a reflection of God’s beauty and a climbing pathway in which the person of perception may ascend, in some way, to heaven itself.
I gazed at the Pietà until the guards began closing St. Peter’s. My daughter asked if I wanted a picture with it. I declined. It seemed disrespectful. As we went out into the night, I thought I would never see another work of human hands that would move me the same way.
I was wrong.
I was soon to wonder at another Pieta, also from Michelangelo, but made at the end of his life; It is quite unlike the first. Its differences illustrate in eternal stone the spiritual journey of the great artist. But that is a story for tomorrow.
Now all thank God with heart, mouth and hands; He does great things for us and all our purposes; He for us from our mother’s womb and childish steps countless great good has done and still continues to do.
• • •
Sermon: Title (1 Thessalonians 4.9-12)
Now concerning love of the brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anyone write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another; and indeed you do love all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, beloved, to do so more and more, to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you, so that you may behave properly towards outsiders and be dependent on no one. .
• • •
One of the teachings of Martin Luther that led me to practice my faith in the Lutheran tradition is the doctrine of VOCATION. Luther emphasized that one of the most important ways God works in the world is through human beings as they fulfill their daily, ordinary callings in the world.
In Luther’s day, people made a distinction between ordinary work and religious work. If you were a priest or a monk or a nun, you had a higher vocation that was of more merit before God. If you were a farmer, a shopkeeper, a housewife, or tradesperson, you had a lesser calling and were not as close to God as his religious servants. And you were dependent on them to help you gain acceptance with God.
Luther, on the other hand, abolished these distinctions. He made the point that the works we do in fulfilling our callings are designed to serve our neighbors, not to earn us any particular place of merit before God. And all vocations, all callings are necessary and important. As Gene Veith writes:
This is the doctrine of vocation. God works through people, in their ordinary stations of life to which He has called them, to care for His creation. In this way, He cares for everyone — Christian and non-Christian — whom He has given life.
Luther puts it even more strongly: Vocations are “masks of God.” On the surface, we see an ordinary human face — our mother, the doctor, the teacher, the waitress, our pastor — but, beneath the appearances, God is ministering to us through them. God is hidden in human vocations.
This is why the Apostle Paul could encourage the Thessalonians to live quiet and peaceful lives, to focus on taking care of their own affairs, and to work with their hands, doing what God had called them to do. This, Paul said, is how they would truly bring God’s love to others around them.
Take, for example, this piece of paper I hold in my hand. This is the sermon I wrote for today. But I had lots of help in producing this sermon. In fact, you wouldn’t believe how much help I had!
We could start almost anywhere in the story of this sermon, but let’s start with a tree. In some forest, a tree grew. One day, a crew came to cut this tree down. I assume they wore the appropriate clothes and hard hats and gloves for their work. Someone designed their clothing, someone manufactured their clothing, someone sold their clothing. On the other end, someone earned the money to purchase their gear and some train or truck or plane likely transported it and a delivery person delivered it so they could have it.
They probably took trucks and some other vehicles to go into the woods to cut down that tree. Somebody designed those vehicles, manufactured them, sold them. Someone in their lumber company had the job of buying vehicles and there were people who made sure all the correct paperwork was done, the money exchanged, the vehicles delivered. Workers in the company maintained those machines. Those vehicles ran on fuel that was part of large supply chain that began with people discovering oil, extracting it from the ground, refining it into fuel, sending it to a distributor, and getting it into the trucks themselves.
That lumber crew had tools to cut down this tree. They too were designed, manufactured, marketed, sold and bought, maintained and fueled up so that the team could cut down the tree.
So they cut down the tree. Then it had to go to the lumber yard and ultimately to the paper plant. If you stop and think about it, there were dozens, maybe hundreds, probably thousands of people who made that possible. Then, after the paper was processed, it was bundled and sold to distributors who marketed it and sold it to buyers who worked for other vendors. Planes, ships, trains, and trucks may have been involved in getting that paper order to the store where it would be sold to the public.
The store itself doesn’t run itself! It has owners, managers, clerks, warehouse and stock people, people who keep the books and take the money to the bank, and a corporation that oversees each individual store. All of them are necessary to the operation of that store.
One day I went to that store to buy a ream of paper. I dressed myself in clothes that came to me from a huge supply chain of people doing their jobs. I got into a car that likewise came to me from a long and complex process of people working, fueled by folks in the petroleum industry doing their jobs. I drove on roads that road crews built and maintained, stopping at stop lights and following signs that have been designed and put in place to get me to the store safely. Maybe I stopped at the bank. There’s a whole other system filled with people doing their work. Maybe I drove through MacDonalds and got a drink on the way. Another entire supply chain of people fulfilling their vocations.
I arrived at the store and went in and bought the paper. I took it home. Then I began to write my sermon. I researched it using books that came through a complex system of authors, publishers, editors, book manufacturers, warehouses, transportation systems, stores and online dealers, and delivery services.
I type my sermon on the computer. Oh my goodness, the computer connects me to a web of systems and workers and infrastructure that is beyond my wildest dream. I finish my sermon. I print it out on my printer, which is yet another piece of equipment that was designed, manufactured, marketed, and sold by others. I just put a new ink cartridge in it, which required another entire system of people.
I take my sermon off the printer. I drive to church. Do I have to tell you how many people did work to make that possible? To make this place possible? And here I am. I hold in my hand the end product. One single piece of paper on which my sermon has been typed.
How many people are responsible for helping put this sermon on this one piece of paper? Do you see how much we need each other in this world? Do you see how God uses this wondrous web of people fulfilling their vocations to bring his love to the world?
Everywhere I go and everything I do depends upon a wondrous web of people who are fulfilling their vocations, from lumber crew to office store clerk to the person who made the key that opens the door of the church. They mask the common grace and goodness of God, who keeps this world turning and holding together and functioning with life and strength and skill. He does his work through our hands. By virtue of that wondrous web, and the Spirit who animates it and keeps it operating, here is my sermon for this morning.
Next week, we’ll do it all over again.
Until then, let us live quiet lives, mind our own affairs, and do our daily work well and with God’s strength. In this way, we’ll be part of the wondrous web of humanity that brings God’s love and peace to the world. Amen.
Mrs. Tennent has arranged these psalms to fit with many familiar and accessible tunes. For example, the five tunes above are the tunes for (1) Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee, (2) Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, (3) Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, (4) Come, Thou Fount, and (5) Brethren, We Have Met to Worship (from Sacred Harp).
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