Monday Morning Music Ministry

2-3-14

I recently have re-read “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan (or re-re-re-read, actually forgetting the number of times I have read it). It is the most remarkable of books, once held to be the most printed book in the English language after the Bible. Despite our culture’s sudden and virtually total disassociation from it, that record might still hold.

Bunyan’s book is an allegory: the journey through life of the everyman hero, Mr Christian. It once was required reading in schools, beside the Bible – yes, in bygone times – but also for its masterful allusions, exquisite language, and impressive construction. The hero’s name, and those of myriad characters (Valiant-for-Truth; Worldly-Wiseman), were not crudely conceived of an impoverished imagination but to be clear about metaphors and symbols. Bunyan was teaching a lesson.

He wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress” while he himself presumably was being taught a lesson. The Englishman Bunyan, who lived 1628 – 1688, had been a poor tradesman of relatively loose morals, but was converted to Christianity when he heard the voice of God. Like Martin Luther more than a century previous in Germany, he became conscious of his sinful nature, and grew to faith in fear of God. He was moved spontaneously to preach, and attracted a following. But at that time, in England, it was forbidden to preach unless ordained by the Crown’s church.

During two prison sojourns Bunyan wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” The texts were received, the writer said, through visions, in the manner of St John transcribing the Book of Revelation on the Isle of Patmos.

Quotations from this great book strike us like lightning-bolts through the centuries. Its truths are still true. The nature of humankind – our needs and temptations and failures and hopes and triumphs? There have been no changes to our natures: we still need the message!

“What God says is best, is best, though all the men in the world are against it.”

“A man there was, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away the more he had.”

“The man that takes up religion for the world will throw away religion for the world.”

“It is my duty to distrust mine own ability, that I may have reliance on Him that is stronger than all.”

But the most significant allegorical aspect of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” – in any event, the metaphor on which the narrative depends – is the Road. The Path. The Way. The journey’s channel; the Highway. Mr Christian proceeds amidst detours, roadblocks, false advice… toward the Destination, the Cross. To Heaven.

“Now I saw in my dream, that the Highway, up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.”

The Highway to Heaven is an allegory easy to comprehend. But it is hard to travel! As hard as the poor, beleaguered Mr Christian found it. Bunyan likely was under no illusions that his book would turn the world upside-down. Indeed it had great impact – it is possible that millions have accepted Christ because of it through the centuries – yet it can only be expected to speak to readers one by one. One by one.

Despite books of old and mass-media today, the personal appeal of the gospel, which in fact was the mode of Jesus and the Apostles, is just that: a PERSONAL appeal. God’s plan… Christ’s Great Commission… the Holy Spirit’s ministry. “Go and make disciples.”

It is a temptation of human nature, and a specific spiritual malady of contemporary Western culture, to think that knowing ABOUT the “Highway,” being generally supportive, is enough. Or that wandering down detours at least corresponds to good intentions. Or that “other” Highways are efficacious, if the traveler, after all, means to arrive at a similar happy place to where the cross stands.

These relativistic lies and deadly heresies will result not only in others (and ourselves) walking aimlessly through life… but being “lost.” Fatally lost. Eternally lost. The Bible makes clear that all other roads lead to destruction. God is a guide; the Bible is our road map; and millions of sermons, songs, allegories, and books like “The Pilgrim’s Progress” graciously have been laid before us as spiritual MapQuests.

Even more, God allows U-Turns, as my friend Allison Bottke has called her ministry. However, He doesn’t allow short-cuts. He has not cancelled, nor even postponed, our journeys. And to use another Web-Age reference, it is Jesus’s voice we hear in the GPS, reminding us that there is no way to Heaven – no other way – but through Him.

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“Walking Up the King’s Highway” is a standard song in many hymnals. It is a favorite of the Black church, written by the great Thomas A Dorsey and Mary Gardner. Here it is performed in rousing fashion by more than a hundred “Gospel Legends,” giants of influential Spirituals of the past half-century. The late Rev Donald Vails leads the singers. Billy Preston is on the organ.

Click: Highway To Heaven

2-15-13

Can God make a rock so big that even He cannot lift it? That age-old wise-guy challenge from skeptics is supposed to stop believers in our spiritual tracks. But it is a syllogism, more correctly a syllogistic fallacy. It does not confront the Creator of the Universe in an existential contradiction, but rather exposes puny human minds, especially the smug skeptics (and more than a few of us believers, too) unable fully to comprehend the vast, all-encompassing, limitless powers of God.

It is, besides, a fallacy built on the inherent strictures of language and linguistics. And a philosophical “gotcha” whose purpose is not seeking truth but annoying the faithful. Christians, if they engage in certain debates, should rely more on the “God is God” response: if we could explain EVERYTHING (especially to hostile people), well, God would not be God, because we would be obviating the necessity of His being. No, I am grateful for mysteries.

Skeptics are not at all concerned with God, anyway; nor rocks; nor our souls, except to introduce viral doubts. The character Matthew Harrison Brady in the play “Inherit the Wind” delivered a great line that is constructive: “For my part, I am more concerned with the Rock of Ages than the age of rocks.” Or their size or weight.

Oh, rocks count. So do mountains. I heard someone say this week that if mountains were nice and smooth, they would be impossible to climb over. It’s hard enough! – but those crags and rough peaks and jagged crevices, when all is said and done, make it easier to climb over than a vertical, smooth monolith. Yes, we are talking metaphors here.

God’s metaphors and similes, Jesus’ parables and analogies, fill the Bible, for the benefit of our emotional comfort as well as our spiritual understanding. Many of them are related to rocks and mountains. And many of them address the old conundrum I quoted above – the powers of God, and our thoughts about His imputed limitations.

I was frustrated recently by the inability to sublimate certain troubling thoughts in my consciousness. Did you ever have trouble falling asleep because you can’t get something off your mind? I realized: I can do funny things with my eyebrows and tongue, even make my nostrils flare, and make children laugh. I can cross my eyes and, somehow, make the pinkie of my foot shift atop the toe next to it, without using my hands. These all involve muscles. The brain is a muscle. Why can’t I make IT stop doing something when I want?

We remember things, even when we don’t want to; and sometimes we are annoyed that we forget things, also when we don’t want to. In these things we are reflections of God – imperfect reflections, that is. Which confirms our humble status before the awesome magnificence of God. You see, I am remembering the metaphors.

We must climb mountains. But God talks to us of His faithful people moving mountains. We surely are impeded by “rocks” in our path. But we all know of one stone that was miraculously rolled away in the Bible. We talk about “fiery trials.” But we are assured that God has been there for His children to endure the fiery furnace, and be delivered. He created mountains, rocks, and fire. I am quite happy to know that God saves us from such physical and metaphorical challenges; I don’t have to know HOW, except by the lights of my limited understanding, my faith, and the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

Speaking of our limited understanding, here is syllogism that skeptics seldom point to… because it reveals a loving God, not a confused self-contradiction. Can an all-knowing God be aware of your sins, and yet forget them?

How can that be? It can’t… unless you are God. As rocks thrown into the sea of forgetfulness, He promises to forgive – and forget – our sins when we repent. A God who knows all, can “forget” something? Yes. Is there much better news laying around?

It is useful for us to remember: Sometimes when we pray, and pray, and pray again, about some matter of guilt or sin, we can be reminding God about something He forget and promised not to hold to your account.

Finally, countless sermons and prayers and hymns have dealt with the other spectrum of a worry we have about God in our imperfect minds: not that He will forget sins, but the chance He might forget US! “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”; the Bible account of Blind Man Bartimaeus, worried that the Lord will not notice him; the doctrine of public confession, so when the roll is called up yonder… and so on.

As believers we know that God cannot forget us. It is a mystery that He can cancel His memory for the sake of His children’s salvation; and it is joy unspeakable that His memory reaches down to the humblest among us. And remembers. Not only on Judgment Day, but every day, every moment in fact, he remembers our needs, and cares for us.

Remember the rock in that skeptic’s riddle? How thankful we should be that there is NO rock that represents our burdens that He cannot lift and roll it away.

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A great song about God’s forgetting, and remembering, is “He Will Remember Me.” A standard gospel song of Black and White churches alike, it was associated with Albertina Walker, the Sensational Nightingales, and the Staples Singers, as well as the Statesmen and the Blackwood Brothers. It was written by E J Bartlett, mentor of Albert E Brumley. Bartlett also wrote “Everybody Will Be Happy Over There,” “Just a Little While,” and the greatest camp-meeting song, “Victory in Jesus.” This link to a video is priceless session of “Gospel Legends” letting loose over the profound message of the lyrics, “O yes, He heard my feeble cries, from bondage set me free; And when I reach the pearly gates He will remember me.” Featured are the great Rev Donald Vails, Jessy Dixon, and the Barrett Sisters… and a hundred other joyful souls.

Click: He Will Remember Me