Monday Morning Music Ministry

11-18-24

Lately, every time I log on to the web, I see pop-ups. Well, that’s not lately – the Internet is always one big commercial, dishing up propaganda, spooky algorithms (“How did it know I was thinking about sandals made in Brazil???”), and invasive seductions, with occasional bits of news and useful information. At least there is a pause in political pop-ups, but they will resume soon.

However, two categories of messages glom up my in-box lately, and not to my regret. Past and future, in a manner of speaking. I am inundated with videos about prehistoric architecture, pyramids around the world, and ancient civilizations. Fascinating discoveries and intriguing questions. And the other category on the web… I should say Webb, because we are continuously seeing more galaxies, probing deeper into outer space, and learning more about what we don’t know as humankind. Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope.

We not only “see” farther and more clearly than ever before, but lenses, filters, and spectrometry – and pinpoint transmissions – provide indications of where things are, what they are made of, and, ultimately, myriad things we don’t know.

look up

Being a city boy, I am always awestruck by clear night skies in sparse areas of the world where I have visited and looked up. Not the points of constellations observed by the Ancients and given names because they vaguely resembled objects – a primitive connect-the-dots exercise. No, the thousands of stars that blanket the night sky. But now we begin to know what the first humans who looked Up only guessed at.

There are more than thousands of stars. There are trillions of stars.

There are more than trillions of stars, because those “stars” often are entire galaxies with trillions of their own suns and stars.

There are more than suns and stars, because, as in “our” solar system, there are planets and moons too.

The very tiniest dot of light we now see in Webb’s image-captures might in itself be a distant but gargantuan galaxy with its own trillions of constituent members. “Universes” by themselves, metaphorically speaking. The “heavens.”

Where does the universe stop? Does it have an “end,” a wall? … and then, what is on the other side of that wall? When will it end? Ever? When did it begin? And How?

If your brain is hurting, as mine is, it means not that you have special insight or an enlightened curiosity; it means that you have a pulse. “Primitive” cultures and squads of PhDs alike, and all of us in between, wonder about those generic conundrums – where we are, how we got here, what’s out there, and such. It is why myriad superstitions and belief systems and religions have sprouted. The basic but inchoate wonderment has inspired thinkers and poets and, thank God, now even governments and entrepreneurs to employ technology and reach “out.”

Whether archaeologists and anthropologists explore the past, or scientists and philosophers speculate on the present and future, mistakes have been made. Well-meaning, often; presumptuous, frequently; foolish, occasionally. The latest explanation of the what-when-where-and-how of the universe’s origin is the “Big Bang” theory.

Speaking personally, my brain doesn’t hurt about the Big Bang theory. My face does, from laughing so much about it. Skeptics and presumptuous atheists challenge Bible-believers on the matter that the Bible has the answers to the questions asked above. “Where you there when the universe began?” they challenge. Of course not, is the answer. But my God was, and He has told us all about it.

Back to that Big Bang, we can ask the same questions – what was before the Big Bang? Just where in this “empty universe” did the Bang happen? If it is still happening at its extremities, where can it end; whether its expansion is linear or 360-degree, and (the latest speculation) if it is forever growing and contracting… we are no closer to answering the what-when-where-and-how of it all.

Notice that there is no Who in that set of questions. Humankind – or much of it – in its arrogance and, ultimately, foolishness insists on reaching for and embracing every answer but the God Answer. Oh, it gets close: blathering about the “God Particle” and Intelligent Design, and such. They are deflections; euphemisms.

“All the saints and sages who discussed [Omar the Tentmaker wrote centuries ago] /of the Two Worlds so learnedly are thrust / Like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn are scattered; / Their mouths are stopped with dust.”

The scoffers go further when they use the recent cascading discoveries of this virtually unfathomable universe to challenge our faith: There must be uncountable other planets with life and life-forms and civilizations out there… if there is a God, why would He place us in a faraway corner of an unimportant universe and galaxy?… When we realize the vastness of space, don’t we realize how insignificant we are???

• Well. We do realize certain things. If there is creation… there must be a Creator.
• Read Genesis. That is the Big Bang, explained in step-by-step fashion.
• Uncountable other explanations of creation (including scientific answers) have been abandoned or discredited or superseded by other theories. Yes… we do note that this current “answer” is nevertheless termed by its proponents a theory.
• The God of the Bible – excuse me, the Creator of the Universe – has been so reliable through every other detail of history, prophecy, and fulfillment, that we can be assured that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof”… but, more, that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork (Psalm 19:1). And if there were “other” worlds, as with the superstition about reincarnation, the Bible would have told us. Not so.

Who, What, When, Where, and How? God, God, God, God, and God. His Creation pleases Him. But let us ask the other “standard” question – WHY? We – you and I – are His children, the apples of His eye, a purpose of His Creation, we are told.

We look at these images of a crazy-vast universe; of its unending space and its parts; of its wonders and beauty and mysteries… and do we feel insignificant, as scientists and skeptics tell us we should feel?

NO! As grateful believers in the Creator God… we feel anything but insignificant. As His children, we are His creations too! And we are special. We are significant. Let us respond every day in every way as we should. Our “brains may hurt,” but our souls are at peace.

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Click: The Love of God Is Greater Far

10-9-23

Toe-stepping alert. Some will be offended here; maybe a greater number of you than usually happens. But as they say in legislative debates, I rise on a Point of Personal Privilege. Or, I don’t know… what cats do with hairballs.

Recently I wrote about how Jesus was treated in the days leading to His crucifixion “by us.” What I mean was that there is no reason to think that any of us would have acted any differently in those horrible days than the people who, just days before, welcomed Him with Hosannas, or even His closest friends who abandoned and denied Him despite three years spent in His entourage, seeing miracles, knowing His love.

Yes, we can be fickle. We often revere the most common things in life. And we often are casual or even dismissive of the holiest.

Exhibit A: It is amazing – and to me, personally, annoying – how many people, even nominal Christians, who refer to God Almighty as “the Man Upstairs.”

It is almost like a superstition, a fear of calling the Most Holy God, Creator of the Universe, Love of our souls, by any of His many proper names. It seems like trying to hold two like-poles of a magnet together. But it is, in reality, an insult.

Would it be much different than God referring to us as “Those little fleas down there”?

Except, maybe, as matter of degree – like physical abuse or cruder insults – disrespect is disrespect, we might be dangerously close to acting like those abusive crowds in Jerusalem. Even those of us who have repented of our sins and asked forgiveness were, as it were, virtually among those crowds who despised and rejected Him, when we choose to continue to live in sin; when we choose to show proper respect before Him. Which we always are: before Him; in His presence.

Do I paint an extreme picture, go too far? You don’t think so? Would you have acted differently back then? Are you as resectful of the Savior… as He deserves? Even His disciples mostly scattered like autumn leaves in a windy street when things got rough, before our Savior was mocked, kicked, and spat upon, betrayed, seized, jailed, accused, tortured, and killed. And then “we” hid in fear for three days until He rose from the dead and had to show Himself to us.

You know, sometimes I wonder – if such a thing could be measured – whether “Jesus Christ” is uttered more as a curse than a blessing or in prayer across the United States every day. Possibly so. Shame on us.

The “Man Upstairs” must be awfully disappointed.

When He comes again in Glory it will be humankind’s second chance. Will He be despised and rejected by us again? Take your pulse, as it were – will we hide our faces from Him? Will you “esteem Him not” (as Isaiah predicted 700 years before Jesus was crucified)? When He returns will He be kicked and punched again? Will you spit on Him?

Will He be called names?

Yes. He will.

Will it be “Son of the Man Upstairs”? Will it be “Je-sus Christ” as in some bitter curse? Or… will we call Him King of kings, Lord of lords; Savior of our souls?

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Click: Rise Again

5-2-22

The Shroud of Turin is back in the news. New scientific tests and findings; new “expositions” – displaying of the actual cloth and exact replicas; 3-D formations; analyses of the cloth, even minerals and pollen found in the fibers.

Old mysteries, new debates; old debates, new mysteries.

A summary for those who have not heard of the Shroud or followed its occasional appearance in news stories. The lengthy piece of cloth (approximately 14.5 feet by 3.5 feet) is reputed to be the burial cloth of Jesus, or in any event a man who was laid upon the cloth which then was brought forward to cover the front of the body. That is, not wrapped like a mummy.

The Shroud was imputed to be that of Jesus because there is a faint yet detailed image of a man fitting the details of a body abused as described in Bible accounts.

Mysteries immediately present themselves:

Why have people thought the man was Jesus? First, the man’s features are that of a Palestinian Jew, with beard and hair in the style of Jesus’s time.

Further mysteries: there are apparent bloodstains and wounds and hematomas, and many of them. That the Shroud did not hold an average prisoner or random tortured criminal (besides the fact that the condemned would not have been afforded careful and honored burials in such shrouds) is another evident mystery: a great number of the evidences of the man of the Shroud correspond to Jesus’s Passion and death.

The mysteries of those bloodstains: Bloodstreams from thorns thrust on the head. A wound on the side (Jesus was pierced with a spear between the ribs). Other “stripes” – evidence of whippings and scourging as recorded in the Bible. Bruises, particularly on the face, correspond to the accounts of how Jesus was beaten.

There have been accusations and suspicions of forgery which skepticism is a reason the Shroud is frequently in the news: the wounds where spikes would have held the body on a cross are through the wrists, not hands. For centuries, Christians traditionally assumed that nails pieced Jesus’s hands – which is only the case in a general or poetic sense, but not by correct anatomy. Relatively recently, researchers nailed corpses to crosses; through the hands, the body’s weight ripped through the hands and the bodies fell. But because the wrist has many bones, the bodies were upheld. The man of the Shroud shows nail wounds through the wrists. Ancient forgers, if there were, did not depict that; innumerable artists  of ancient times depicted the crucified Jesus with nails or scars in the hands.

The biggest mystery is the image itself. It is faint; it shows a man as described in the Gospels, brutalized and naked. Through the centuries, people wondered, however, why the image appeared in sepia tones and “almost” real. But somehow “backwards” or reversed. Why? When the Shroud was first photographed in the late 1890s, its photographic negatives startled the world: HERE was a virtual photograph of a man fitting the Bible’s descriptions.

A mystery: the Shroud was a virtual photographic negative! What? Why? How?

Books have been written, and will be; but I will try to condense and summarize the facts, doubts, proofs, tests, and… mysteries. Ownership of the Shroud could be traced back only to about 1300. It was either forged then, or, as claimed, was hidden, cherished, then kept from Moslem invaders of churches in Turkey that claimed to possess such a relic.

How was the image made? It is not of paint or dyes; the image does not permeate the cloth; and (years before the atomic age) the idea was advanced that at the moment of Resurrection, a supernatural burst of some sort scorched the Shroud, transferring the image we see.

There are strange patches on it today. They were sewn when a fire occurred in a church where it was housed centuries ago, and its silver reliquary melted and burned in the folded cloth. Speaking of its being folded, the Shroud might explain the mystery of “Veronica’s Veil,” an ancient legend of a cloth that mysteriously took on the face of Jesus when a sympathetic woman wiped his sweat as the cross was carried to Golgotha. The Shroud in ancient times evidently was displayed in folded form, showing only Jesus’s face… perhaps inspiring that legend.

So the Shroud evidently was seen and venerated for decades after the Resurrection… went missing through persecution and wars… and for a thousand years has been traced in castles and churches, now residing in a basilica in Turin, Italy.

Skeptics have demanded proofs; and even the Vatican is neutral about its authenticity. Historians, doctors, experts in geography, agronomy, fabric analysis, and forensic science have debated. On both sides. Mysteries arise and are stoked: disagreements on the types of cloth weaves… the explanation for pollens on the Shroud from the area around Jerusalem (that is, not in a European forger’s studio)… measurements of the anatomy of the man of the Shroud… explanations for the absence of paints and the presence of blood serum. And so forth.

Back in the 1970s, when many discoveries were made and hotly debated, I became very interested in the Shroud, and researched all I could. I acquired rare publications from the 1890s, when the world became curious; I purchased documentary materials and even delivered lectures with a slide show. “The Mysteries of the Shroud.”

The church’s handlers allowed for a small portion of the Shroud to be cut, and undergo Carbon-14 dating analysis… whose conclusion (without explaining the manner of the image’s transfer and other mysteries) was that the Shroud was about a thousand years old, not 2000 years. Yet mysteries were compelling.

For instance, new technology has enabled the formation of 3-D models based on scans of the image on the Shroud. I was present at its display – a perfectly formed body of a man, every aspect in perfect proportions. Imagery even identified details on the coins placed on the body’s eyes… but that are disputed by others. Pollen, tiny seeds, the fabric composition, so much more, was explained… or explained away.

Meanwhile, Carbon-Dating has been found often to be unreliable, and easily contaminated. Some mysteries might have been answered this week, from a new technology that has dated the Shroud as from the time, and place, of Jesus’s life. Specifically, almost an exact match with fabrics from the siege of Masada, 74-55 B.C., in Israel.

“Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering,” or WAXS, measures the natural aging of flax cellulose. A scientist from Bari, Italy, described its superiority to carbon-14 spectrology: “Molds and bacteria, colonizing textile fibers, and dirt or carbon-containing minerals, such as limestone, adhering to them, in the empty spaces between the fibers that at a microscopic level represent about 50 per cent of the volume, can be so difficult to completely eliminate in the sample cleaning phase, which can distort the dating.”

As I said above, we have old mysteries, new debates; and old debates, new mysteries.

I invite you to think about the mysteries as much as about the Shroud, compelling as that is. Whether old or half-old, authentic or forgery, plausible or impossible… it is a matter of faith. And what is that “matter” of faith? – only something that can excite our curiosity and engage our interest.

At best – and I write as someone who is quite persuaded that this actually held the body of Jesus Christ – the Shroud is a relic. An object. As a relic, let it not persuade you (as relics have, sadly, throughout history, persuaded people) that it is holy; that it can save your soul; that it can heal you; that you should venerate or pray to it.

I have been to many sites in Europe where relics are housed and displayed: fingers of saints; locks of hair; skulls of martyrs. A favorite church near my favorite hotel in Rome, the Basilica of St-Paul-Outside-the-Wall, as it is known, has a wall of boxes and shelves with many of these “holy objects.” If all the “pieces of the True Cross” in European churches were put together, it would look like a redwood forest…

If I am dismissive, why have I pursued and maintain an interest in the Shroud? Very simply, because it is a graphic display, miraculously detailed, of what our Savior endured for us. It illustrates how He was tortured. It reveals everything He experienced. It documents, life-sized, every detail of humiliation, rejection, suffering. Eyes closed, somehow at peace – released – it visually explains what He allowed Himself to go through…

… to suffer and die as a substitute for the punishments we deserve as sinners. I cry when I think about what Jesus did for us; I cry when I look into the face of the Man of the Shroud. I rejoice that it exists – to remind me of the Cross and what He did for us.

I believe the Shroud survived to be that Holy Reminder for us. It explains what the Bible’s words tell. A Forgery? If so, why, then, didn’t forgers manufacture dozens of fake shrouds, instead of only one? Skeptics says that the image on the Shroud must have been “borrowed” from the way Byzantine artists depicted Christ – meanwhile never considering that, on the contrary, those countless painters depicted Jesus according to what they saw on the Shroud. Mysteries, yeah.

The real mystery? To me, it is that people can keep themselves from being moved by the story of His death on the Cross. And it is a mystery that people venerate relics instead of the Truth behind them.

In these days between the observances of the Resurrection and Jesus’s Ascension to Heaven, contemplate what is not a mystery – that the Creator of the Universe loved you so much that He sent His Son to live among humankind to suffer like this, and miraculously rise to life again. And all of which we can understand more powerfully through the Shroud. It is, literally, the Message of the Cross.

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Click: Rise Again

4-3-17

A guest essay by one of my favorite writers, Leah C Morgan

Winter serves its purpose necessary for cycles of life and growth. Including sorrow and darkness. But no one mourns its departure. There are no weeping farewells, no fierce clinging to its coattails. Winter’s last cold breath could easily be mistaken for a communal sigh of relief.

But Spring. . .

Spring is like hope, often suppressed by doubt and crushed by fear before finally bursting out of the barrenness with such lush beauty we would think it audacious if it were a woman crossing the landscape.

Or a dream on the horizon.

But Spring is so universally pined after, we allow her to paint the town in pastels and festoon it with flowers. To declare a new season and prophesy a resurrection of all dead things. We are so in need of warmth, we want to believe.

Snow comes just as we’re tempted to forget coats and gloves; and we’re buried again in self-doubt, certain that winter is eternal. And that second chances, green buds, and fresh starts are myths.

Then the smallest patch of sunlight shines its way indoors, warming our faces. A song of warbled notes reaches our ears, and the perfume of living things wends its way to our senses. Our hearts thaw. Something flutters within and pushes its way forward like a new beginning.

And there we are against all odds, in spite of the dead branches and brown grass, joining the parade, waving banners, and getting all caught up in the longing. We believe in the getting up, in the rising again.

If forgotten bulbs buried beneath the frozen ground can resurrect their remembrance, and dormant plants survive long months of deprivation, if distant birds are spurred to make lengthy migrations in expectation of better days, and insects lie quietly in wait for a feast about to commence, how can the human heart settle for dearth? The very bowels of the earth offer up an invitation to rejoice. To hope. To muster up enough courage to try again.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Spring is the season to put away the wool and furs, the weighty things that make for despair.

It is the reminder that buried things are not always dead things, and that dead things can live again.

Spring is the occasion to pray for the miraculous, for rebirth and resurrection. It is the opportunity to enjoy perpetual youth. Nothing is so young as new life, and new life can sprout in the faith of a fertile mind, coming to life in a fresh idea. It can spring up in the purpose of heart, taking the shape of brilliant creativity.

Buried talents, forgotten intentions, failed attempts – they all want to be born again, and Spring makes the yearning reasonable. If daffodils can fan out their pretty bonnets after keeping still for a year, what unexercised muscle of faith might be stretched out in the light of understanding?

The time for understanding has come. Flamboyant Spring steps forward on a pale, monochromatic stage to pantomime the Gospel in living color. The Old Man Winter is past, and now a light shines in the darkness, its transformative power producing new life. The fields and forests are born again, their naked knolls and branches clothed in glorious wardrobes. They develop, mature, producing fruit and dropping seeds. The seeds are buried, left to die and decay, before shedding their form to be resurrected, coming forth from the ground in a new body.

“Sown in weakness, raised in power” (I Corinthians 15:43). How we begin is not how we’re destined to remain.

A sweet, scented breeze is blowing, whistling a melody. And a voice that sounds a lot like Spring sings:

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

 The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away” (Song of Solomon 2:10-13).
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Click: Rise Again