Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-31-15

When I was a “baby Christian” I had been familiar with scripture verses and Bible stories, but was new in the personal knowledge of the salvation message and a relationship with God in Christ. When “born again” I often prayed in a certain way that I thought was appropriately humble.

I began my prayers – and sometimes filled them and ended them – with confessions of unworthiness. I was conscious of my lowly status before God. A sinner who felt presumptuous to approach the Throne of God. This realization was humbling, and I thought was a step forward in my proper relationship with God. A spiritual breakthrough.

In fact, it is just the opposite. The pilgrim’s progress on the way to Heaven, to the presence of God for eternity, certainly has way-stations of setbacks and also, yes, those of clear realizations. It is hard to move to the next spiritual step until we approach, appreciate, and pass by the stages that include, say, the overwhelming understanding that the gulf between a Holy God and us, lowly sinners, is enormous.

The consciousness of sin, and the awareness that we cannot save ourselves, is essential in our walk. Likewise the full knowledge of God’s awesome holiness. But…

… these steps come during our journey, not after we are assured of Heaven and the security of forgiveness and acceptance. When we achieve Heaven there will be no shadow of turning, no doubts, no anxiety about past transgressions, no nervous feelings that we have sins yet to be dealt with.

In fact we can know that peace now. No Pearly Gates, no giant book with ledger-sheets of good and bad.

When we are saved, we are saved. The Bible speaks of judgments, yes, and also crowns and treasures delivered after we are in Heaven. Whether we can “lose” our salvation before Heaven is occasionally debated by theologians… but not that we can lose it in Heaven. These are all mysteries that fill us with joy, but not with dread or even insecurity. God does not issue counterfeit entrance passes. There will be no U-Turns once you get to Glory.

The Joy Unspeakable we can know now is because of a simple fact. When we invite Jesus into our hearts, where He lives and reigns after our happy surrender to Him, God looks at us and… sees Jesus. He sees the “new” us. And the Bible tells us that when we receive Him, and receive the forgiveness He promises, we are forgiven indeed.

He casts our sins over His shoulder into a sea of forgetfulness. God can do anything, but in that mystery He forgets our sins: He chooses not to remember them. Not only in Heaven, but now, He remembers our transgressions no more. A neat trick. Thank God. Literally.

And that means those prayers couched in abject humility as a sinner, groveling in guilt and unworthiness, are out of place in the life of a born-again, saved and redeemed believer. Once upon a time, appropriate – even necessary – but no more! We stand on our feet, washed and covered by Jesus’s Atonement, and approach the Throne of Grace! He looks at us, and sees the Blood.

There is another side to the coin. Just as we tend, unnecessarily, to remind God of sins that He has forgotten, how often do we forget our prayers that He has answered? How often do we neglect the Source of gifts and good things? How often do we fail to thank Him for uncountable blessings?

In my case, I’m afraid the answer is “often.” Probably with you, too.

Those items of Neglect are sins. God is the author of all good things, and whether we rudely fail to acknowledge His move in our lives, or simply (?) ignore the grateful responses due Him, we horribly fall short. Salvation is not free – the sacrifice paid by Jesus made God cry, not only Mary – but it is easy, and it is eternal.

Surely, after He has forgotten our sins forever, we can occasionally remember His forgiveness, His blessings, His love.

We have traded our dirty clothes for shining robes, and a crown, and diamonds in that crown. Remember what awaits. We have foretastes even now. Let us act like we know it!

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Click: A Diamond in My Crown

8-24-15

Angel-mania seems to have cooled off in our culture. A few years ago there was a spike in television shows and movies about angels. Angels who adorned jewelry and ornaments were common. In these manifestations, among the unchurched as well as with Christians, there was an acceptance of angels that transcended their biblical roles.

No: “transcended” is the wrong word. Angels in our commercial culture generally are separate from the angelic beings of scripture. As such, caricatures. Or counterfeits.

Many Christians ascribe to angels powers that don’t exist. Sometimes people who attend church faithfully will pray to angels, which is error. I wonder whether in America there is more superstition than spiritual clarity associated with angels. The fads in jewelry, fiction, and the World According to Hallmark have abated somewhat, but almost are a permanent part of our culture.

Some people are determined to be dogmatic about things that are not even Dogma.

I am not disputing the existence of angels. No, I believe in the Bible, and therefore – as Jesus did – I believe in the existence of angels and demons, Heaven and hell, in the account of Creation, where angels are described; and in End Times, where angels likewise are depicted.

But I invite a thought about angels that is different than those who perch on our shoulders with cute devils in cartoons, or the angel Clarence who tends to George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Angels are real; created before mankind, which means we are “a little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8:6); and of course Satan and his minions were rebellious angels. St Michael the Archangel is, roughly speaking, the counterpart of Satan in heavenly disputation. The devil is not, therefore, the opposite of God, nor Christ, which should remind us of how little power we should grant him. There are multitudes of descriptions of angels in scripture, and we inherit portraits of their glorious beings, their specific roles and assignments… and the Bible’s metaphorical references to them.

We shall linger in the metaphorical. That there are varying allusions to angels in the Bible reflects God’s multi-faceted glory, but also, a little bit, the occasional paucity of the English language. “Angel,” the word, derives from the Greek “aggelos,” and the related Latin “angelus.” The most employed Hebrew word we translate as “angel” means “messenger.”

This helps us understand the job description of angels! We know that they praise God before the Throne; always have, always will. But we know from the Bible that they indeed have been messengers, sometimes imparting specific news or warnings in earlier dispensations. And sometimes they are (in another translation) “ministering spirits,” a sweet picture.

Angels cannot be in several places at once; they have no more wisdom and no more knowledge of God’s ways than we do – otherwise they would be as God.

We should never be envious or jealous of these heavenly figures. They are created spirits whose roles are ordained, and without sin… but as such, unlike us “lowly” humans, they cannot know the joy of salvation, the loosened shackles come by repentance, the unspeakable gift of God’s forgiveness, or be recipients of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. No angel can ever sing – and feel the power of – “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…”

But I promised to address angels in the way the Bible occasionally does: metaphorically. The same words translated from Ministering Spirit and Messenger are also used to describe things like the Pillar of Cloud the Israelites followed in the desert, and plagues. St Augustine took the larger, metaphorical, point and wrote angelus est nomen officii – that is, “angel is the name of the office.” In other words, God wants to speak and minister to us in supernatural ways, and sometimes He administers through spirits called angels.

Sometimes, by other means.

I have a friend who has a five-year-old daughter, the same age as my granddaughter. The little girl has been away for the summer, although in daily phone contact with her mom. She was reared a Christian but was going through… well, some typical behavioral things all five-year-olds go through. On a recent phone call, the upset girl confessed to wanting to be closer to Jesus, feel Him nearby, talk to Him.

It was time for an innocent little girl who knew the Truth to act on it. Five is not too young! She understood, and her mom asked if she wanted to give her heart to Jesus, which she did. Right over the phone. “Jesus on the main line.”

I tell the story because – back to metaphor – my friend, a Christian mom, surely had been a ministering angel to her daughter. The power of this moment of dedication, and many more to follow, reveal that little Sophie will, perhaps many times, likewise serve the role of angel to her mom Jen. Christian mothers never forget such moments, and there will be reminders to come.

We may be angels to each other. Think of the times someone has made a difference in your day, in your decisions, in your life. Metaphor? If we are “to be Jesus” to others, as the Bible directs, it cannot be wrong to consider that humans can sometimes do the work of angels, too.

Angels are not only pieces of jewelry and cartoons. Nor are they only cherubim, seraphim, and archangels, “all the company of Heaven.” Metaphorically, they can be kids. Neighbors. Strangers.

Yourself.

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Click: Sending Me Angels

8-17-15

Well… actually, that’s a lie. If it really were simple, in America and many places in the world, there would not be hot debates, policy fallouts, family feuds, “litmus tests,” stockpiles of weaponized arguments, court cases, broken churches, broken families. Or, often, broken women, erstwhile moms, bitter regrets. And, not recalled enough: tens of millions of dead babies.

But I hope any pro-abortion, “pro-choice,” readers will stick with me here. I acknowledge the “issue” is not simple… and my thoughts here, which have evolved through my life and I feel have arrived where they should be, might yet be a snapshot in time, evolving still. I think theology is clear, but public policy is difficult. Family management, counseling friends, is challenging.

And my theological point of view – where colleagues might part company – is that I believe the Bible is clear, although without the preponderance of specific references, on the proper spiritual and ethical attitude toward abortion. But I do not think that it is the Unpardonable Sin. It should not be encouraged in or out of the family of God… but mothers who made the euphemistic “choices” to “terminate” should be welcomed, not shunned, by Christians.

Friends know that I once was quite comfortable with the practice (not alone among other issues I have abandoned). Even before Roe vs Wade it was legal in Washington DC, where I went to college, and there was a culture that was very mechanistic – arguments about affordability, family “planning,” the soulless nature of blobs.

In truth, two attitudes fueled that culture, in those days: Washington, with its large black population, was a focus of abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood, whose founder, Margaret Sanger, frankly targeted her work, hoping to minimize or eventually eliminate the black population in society. Ugly, but true. And in the 1960s and ‘70s there was the attitude, if not explicit argument, that abortion simply was after-the-fact contraception.

My views changed through the years, the closer I drew to Jesus; but, also, the more I thought about the “issue,” the implications, the repercussions, the legacies. Abortion says something about the women, and men, involved. It says something about the society that permits – or encourages – it. It says something about dead babies. Not aborted fetuses: shut up. Dead babies.

The “issue,” once thought settled after Roe vs Wade, is more contentious than ever in America. Less settled. Science has made astonishing advances, both in maintaining viability of the pre-born, and in determining what, frankly, is a human – what is life, who is living – after conception. Traditionalists often are labeled “anti-science” about issues like evolution and global warming, but science is on the side, today, of the anti-abortionists. Or pro-life advocates.

The “issue” has invaded politics. Candidates might disagree on war and peace, the economy, government snooping, the threat of Iran, anything and everything… but (to employ the extreme labels) killing babies or a woman’s “right to choose” are defining issues of the age.

The “issue” is such today that almost every day its implications rise before us. At least for me. The news stories, of course, that disclose videos of Planned Parenthood leaders discussing the sale and efficient harvesting of babies and their organs. (Opponents fulminate against the hidden cameras, or the relatively small profits, shamelessly ignoring the horror of it all.) This week is the anniversary of my granddaughter Sarah’s birth. She lived nine days, a fragile preemie, and I look at the photo of my daughter Heather holding the tiny baby; I still cry to see the hope in Heather’s smile – and then I look at tiny Sarah and cannot help, today, picturing “scientists” and abortionists who would have swept in and carved her up at so many cents per pound. I watch an afternoon of Smithsonian documentaries about primitive societies and realize, peripherally, how many practiced infant sacrifice. Primitive. societies.

I believe abortion is current-day infant sacrifice. We appease the gods of convenience, guilty conscience, and callous morals.

History has a term for these primitive, and contemporary, practices writ large: infanticide. China long has practiced selective – and mandatory – abortions and infanticide in order to manage its economy. And the world shrugs.

Again, not an issue easily discussed or dispatched. Does it come down, after all, to women grasping for a legal sanction to resist biological, as well as moral, imperatives? Five Supreme Court justices aside, there still are differences between the sexes, and always will be. We have a generation of women – I know not all, despite the implications and claims of surveys, or, rather, poll-takers – who refuse to be women, at least in the most defining, distinctive, and glorious, way possible: motherhood.

Theodore Roosevelt once said (a propos expanding women’s right to vote), “Equality of rights does not mean equality of functions.” He did not mean cooking and cleaning; he meant to resist the revolutionary and degenerate aims of his contemporary, Margaret Sanger.

Of course there are the assertions, whether sincere or convenient, of those who argue that many children born to disadvantaged families are abused; that one “mistake” of passion should not be “punished by a baby,” as President Obama rationalized; that our planet cannot support more people. With these arguments the “issue” finds itself shifted alongside those of barbarians, Nazis, and ethnic cleaners.

To me, certain responses are increasingly hard to resist:

If death is determined by when a heart stops beating, why is life not measured when a hearts begins beating?

If fetuses are not human, why are their little body parts considered human?

We are told that people have rights to health care, to food, to schools, to hospital care; why not a right to life?

If a single cell were discovered on a distant planet, the world would celebrate life existing elsewhere in the universe. If it were found in a woman’s womb, why is it not considered life?

Women abort – let us say, kill their children – when babies are inconvenient. Under Hitler, Jews were deemed inconvenient; their mistreatment was legal; their slaughter not punished. Are pre-born babies guiltier, more deserving of execution, than Jews?

If these unborn babies can be dismissed as tissue masses and “blobs,” why do we not discuss “blob control,” so nice and antiseptic, instead of “birth control”?

This is not a man/woman perspective. I know as well as any man can, how life-altering an “unwanted” pregnancy can be. Well, there are millions of women who cry for babies, their own and others, who are more militant than I. There are uncountable women who were spared being aborted, sometimes at the last minutes, who thrive today – happy, healthy, and grateful for life. There are women who decided to give their babies up for adoption – maybe the second most wrenching decisions they could make – and those children live amongst us.

Our society is not sensitive to fathers of “unwanted” babies who are bound to support their child until majority; but have no say if their girlfriends kill the baby. I have met women who were consumed with grief for being misled, for killing their babies, and have lived with their “choices,” to use the hallowed word. One I know, have interviewed, is Norma McCorvey – the “Jane Roe” of Roe vs. Wade – remorseful and a pro-life advocate today.

But still, not an easy issue. This is my determination, and a plea to my allies – celebrate life, all life; welcome sinners (as we all are) who repent; wrap them, as we wrap ourselves, in Jesus’s love; and exercise forgiveness. As God offers forgiveness to us.

To those who still wrestle with the morals and ethics of the abortion issue, I close. Like it or not, there is a Heaven and a Hell. And as we understand God’s mystery, in Heaven we will all have “perfected” bodies. More than that we really don’t know. But consistent with what the Bible teaches, one’s aborted babies will be there, too.

Can you imagine looking into the eyes of these? “Why, Mommy? Why, Daddy?”

You might think you would answer, “I was afraid I would fail you. I was afraid you would stumble through life…”

And what if the answer is, “But what if you had not failed but succeeded? And what if I had not stumbled, but blossomed and flown and danced… and lived?”

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The poignant lullaby by Stephen Foster, sung by Alison Kraus:
Click: Slumber, My Darling

8-10-15

It has been said that Jesus, by the evidence of Bible accounts, displayed more mercy and forgiveness, certainly more compassion, to sinners He encountered, than to Pharisees, Scribes, and members of the religious establishment of the time.

Post-modernists often run with that scorecard and flame the embers of anti-clericism still glowing from at least the glory days of the French Revolution. But the angels are in the details. Just as Christ called the love of money, not money itself, the root of all evil, so must we notice that Jesus scorned the corrupt and empty religionists in His midst – the whited sepulchers. Their corruption, not their robes.

A tendency in the church since the start has been pick-and-choose Christianity. Believers and skeptics alike often are readier to say “Aha!” than “Amen.” Quick to say, “Gotcha!” and slow to pray, “God bless…”

The post-modern church, if a church it be, and the “emergent” movement, tend to seize upon half of Jesus’s teachings… indeed half of His messages, parables, and even simple sentences. I quickly confess that traditionalists like I am, and orthodox friends, are often guilty of these sins too. We all must constantly check our thoughts, words, and deeds against scripture.

But the contemporary church, and many theological writers amongst us, often discard the traditional views of sin, of heaven and hell, of the need for forgiveness, of the efficacy of evangelism… even personal salvation, Absolute Truth, and the Divinity of Christ. We don’t sin, we humans, they say: we make bad choices. These people are Enablers, but call themselves Christians.

Actually, many of them insist on identifying themselves instead as “Christ followers.” Whatever. They play more words games than you’d find at a Scrabble convention, intoning about “relational truth” and claiming to know that if Jesus returned to earth now, He would be more concerned with “community” and being “welcoming” than about those old biblical injunctions to believe in Him and seek eternal life.

These folks stick their thumbs in Jesus’s eye, no more – and no less – than their ancestors, the heretics of the ages. In the Apostolic Days and the first centuries of the Church, disciples and bishops were obliged to combat error and heretics. Seeking to adhere to Jesus’s teachings, and the inspired texts, delivered by and tested against the invocation of the Holy Spirit, Christian leaders convened Councils and wrote the basic creeds that define our faith (and often preemptively answer false doctrines). We need the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and the truths of the orthodox creeds, no less today than in past crises in church history.

Those who would distort the gospel – and the very lessons inherent in the gospel accounts – point to the criticism, Jesus’s visceral anger, with the religious leaders. So should we all be vigilant against corruption in the church, not just those attacking from outside. Of course. More so, in fact, than against secular leaders and the laity. Leaders must be held to higher standards.

But I have sat with, discussed, and hotly debated contemporary “Christian” writers and celebrities who insist that Jesus’s mercy, His frequent lack of condemnation, toward sinners, adulterers, prostitutes, meant that He “met people where they lived.” Indeed He did. He did not avoid, and often sought, their company. And as He did not condemn, neither should we, these new popes say.

But there we have the Half-Gospel that is overtaking the church in America.

Jesus usually did not condemn sinners in these Bible accounts. But He never endorsed anyone’s sin. In fact He would always tell the person to “go and sin no more.” He loved sinners so much that He desired that they turn from sin. Today? Jesus might go to a biker bar, say, or a gay rights parade. And I don’t believe He would overturn tables or bring out the lash. But He WOULD discern their sinful ways, and He would lovingly forgive, coupled with His invariable injunction to “sin no more.”

Jesus came to be the Savior of sinful humankind, not its Holy Enabler. Otherwise Bible prophecy, His ministry, His suffering and sacrificial death, the Atonement, His resurrection, is insulted – a useless charade designed by God Almighty. Heaven forbid.

A friend of mine, Harvey Corbitt, recently shared the thought: If Jesus DID return right now and preached the messages that many of our pastors and priests preach, He likely would not be perceived as an opponent of the corrupt world system… nor seized, nor put to death. Sad. True.

Enablers do not save people. But the Savior enables people to know forgiveness, to be redeemed, and to have the hope of eternal life.

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Kris Kristofferson tells the story behind his salvation experience and the writing of the iconic “Why Me, Lord.”

Click: Why Me, Lord

8-3-15

Hard Times. A relative term. Not only within our own situations, but compared to others… America, compared to other nations… our days, compared to the past. Truly, materially at least, we are blessed.

I have been sad, but not in sorrow. I have been in debt, but never destitute. I have had regrets, but never grief. How many of us can share such relatively comfortable testimony? In my case, to whatever extent I rightly judge my “insulation,” it is largely due to my standing as a Christian – receiving joy that passes understanding. But we also have to credit modern life, in America, with its technology, medicine, and general prosperity. Right?

Hard Times happen in America, but somehow many of the crises have the lengths of TV mini-series, and when not, the public grows impatient for the next one. Our culture has a sound-bite mentality. We used to face our challenges; but now we are distracted with the modern equivalents of the Romans’ “bread and circuses” — pop entertainment, push-button gratification. The Bible paints a picture of awful distress in earth in the End Times, and we are not prepared for that.

In many ways this indicates that we are not advancing as a culture. I’m not sure we are “going backwards,” either, because that might actually be beneficial. Giuseppi Verdi (yes, the composer otherwise known as Joe Green) once said, Torniamo all’antico: Sara un progresso — “We turn to the past in order to move forward.”

I got thinking of Hard Times in America when I pulled an elegant old volume off my bookshelf. Folk Songs was published in 1860, before the Civil War. This book is leather-bound, all edges gilt, pages as supple as when it was printed, a joy to hold. The “folk songs” of its title refers not to early-day coffee houses, but to poems and songs of the people, in contradistinction to epic verse or heroic sagas; the way the German word Volk refers to the shared-group spirit of the masses.

Many of the titles are charming: “The Age of Wisdom,” “My Child,” “Baby’s Shoes,” “The Flower of Beauty,” “The First Snow-Fall”… However, such sweet titles mask preoccupations with children dying in snow drifts, lovers deserting, husbands lost at sea, fatal illness, mourning for decades, unfaithful friends. No need to guess the themes other titles from the index:”Tommy’s Dead,” “The Murdered Traveler,” and “Ode To a Dead Body.”

It reminded me that people 150 years ago were not gloomy pessimists: they were not. But Hard Times were a part of life, and therefore part of poetry and song. On the frontier, life could be snuffed out in a moment. In the imminent Civil War, roughly every third household was affected by death, maiming, split families, or hideous disruption; yet anti-war movements never gained traction; life went on. A young Abraham Lincoln had almost lost his mind over an unhappy love affair; his wife likely did lose her mind when her favorite son died in the White House. Theodore Roosevelt’s young wife (in childbirth) and mother (of salmonella) died on the same day in the same house. Hard Times, I’d say.

Also before the Civil War, a composer named Stephen Foster wrote a song called Hard Times. He is barely recalled today, sometimes as a caricature, but he might be America’s greatest composer. He wrote My Old Kentucky Home; I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair; Old Black Joe; Carry Me Back to Ol’ Virginia; Way Down Upon the Swanee River / Old Folks At Home; Oh, Susanna; Camptown Races; Beautiful Dreamer… and Hard Times, Come Again No More. This last song has been resurrected lately to a certain repute, or at least utility. In some circles it has become an anthem for charities and lamentation of poverty. Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, even the Squirrel Nut Zippers, have sung it. It has taken on the air of a secular anthem. But in fact, although Stephen Foster did not embed a Gospel message in the lyrics, he had written many hymns in his life. It is clear that the “cabin,” and its door, in the song are metaphors, endowing a spiritual subtext to the song.

If we can turn back our minds to the world of 150 years ago — it is clear that the Hard Times he wrote of were the world’s trials, to be relieved in Heaven. We have a haunting melody, but a clear truth: Hard Times will be endured and become things of the past. We must keep them in perspective. Trust in Him. God provides a joyful relief from life’s disappointments when they come. By and by, they will “come no more.”

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Here is a memorable video to evoke the reality of life’s Hard Times, the promise heaven holds, and the beauty of Stephen Foster’s music to you. The seven singers are from the amazing project of a few years ago, “The Transatlantic Sessions” — singers and musicians from America (US and Canada), Ireland, and Scotland singing old and new “folkish” songs in a living-room setting.

(By the way, they are, left to right, Rod Paterson, Scotland; Karen Matheson, Scotland — hear her incredible soprano harmony on the left channel; Mary Black, Ireland; Emmylou Harris, US; Rufus Wainwright, his mother Kate McGarrigle, and her sister Anna McGarrigle on the button accordian, all Canadians. The other musicians are fiddler Jay Ungar — he wrote the haunting “Ashokan’s Farewell” tune of the PBS “Civil War” series — and his wife Molly Mason on the bass; and the project’s shepherds Shetland fiddler Aly Bain, and American dobro player Jerry Douglas.)

The lyrics are printed out under the link:

Click: Hard Times Come Again No More

Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh hard times, come again no more.

Chorus:
‘Tis the song, the sigh, of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times, come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times, come again no more.

There’s a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o’er:
Though her voice would be merry, ’tis sighing all the day,
Oh hard times, come again no more.