Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-15-24

My old and dear friend Mark Dittmar shares wonderful, brief but profound spiritual thoughts every day through e-mail blasts he calls “Nuggets.”

Recently one of his messages spoke to me more than usual, and on several levels. His title was a question – “How Much Is a Picture Worth?” and the old saying was turned around:

An artist and a writer were arguing about whose work was more significant. “Well,” said the artist smugly, “one picture is worth a thousand words.”

“Hey, that’s good. Who wrote that?” countered the writer.

As someone who is a writer and an artist (come to think of it, so is Mark) I appreciated the points of view. Throughout most of human history, works of art and narratives were inextricably related. The creative expressions had virtually common functions. From cave paintings through scrolls and tapestries, paintings and stained-glass windows, pictures told stories. In the same fashion, as writing became codified, alphabets and books revealed themselves through more than letters and words: illuminated manuscripts; decorative scrolls; fabulous works like The Book of Kells.

Words and pictures – narratives and images – underwent a Great Divorce with the invention of the printing press. Almost overnight, words were“liberated.” Books comprised of only printed type were the norm; and artists were seduced, in a manner of speaking, to be “non-representational,” no longer obliged to tell stories or depict scenes with narrative import.

But at the turn of the 20^th century there was reconciliation of sorts. Stories and graphics, aided by technology and ingenuity and commercialism, discovered each other again in movies, comics, animation, and other plastic arts and expressions.

Again, it could be stated, or argued: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I think it is creative delight that the proposition is an insoluble mystery. But one manifestation I have not yet mentioned is the age-old literary form of the fable… myths… epic poems and sagas… what storytellers and troubadours have done. That is, melding different artistic forms of expression.

Jesus called them “parables.”

Post-modernists think they have invented the “Power of Story,” but they merely have rediscovered, or try to, the mode of “painting word pictures.” He did not say anything to them without using a parable (Mark 4:34). Jesus, maybe more than Aesop or Confucius, dealt in word-pictures.

Mark – my friend, not the ancient Apostle – made reference to a painting that is making the rounds of the Internet. It illustrates a familiar parable, a well-known story: Jesus’s description of the Lost Sheep.

If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray (Matthew 8:12,13).

The parable presents a picture partly because it poses a moral dilemma; at least a “practical” challenge. Would you jeopardize the whole flock to search for one sheep? Would the owner of the flock approve? Did the lost sheep deserve its fate by straying from the flock? These are legitimate questions.

… unless you are that lost sheep.

The Savior of our souls is willing – He was willing; we have the record of it – to sacrifice all, even His own life, so the lost sheep might be saved. The point of the parable, in fact the point of view of God’s plan of salvation, is that He cares for us. He seeks us out. I believe that if the entirety of the human race had been sinless except for one person – let’s say you – Jesus would still have gone to the cross.

Speaking of the cross, we know that Jesus was beaten and whipped and nailed to that cross. But, in truth (imagine this as a picture) He virtually climbed and scrambled up the cross, and invited those spikes… so willing was He to die for you and me, taking our punishment upon Himself.

In the same way, the painting that’s going around the Internet really brought tears to my eyes. It depicts the sheep not merely lost but stuck in mud and muck, struggling. And it depicts the Good Shepherd. He is not viewing the distressed sheep from afar, or calling its name, or tip-toeing in its direction.

No, the Good Shepherd is running, trudging, muddy Himself, desperate to save the Lost Sheep. Picture the scene.

One more artistic expression to add to the miracle of creativity. This parable, this word-picture, this painting, has a holy counterpart in many hymns and Gospel songs. We have “sermons in song,” just as pictures can tell stories. One that moves me the most is “The Ninety and Nine.”

“Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety and nine; Are they not enough for Thee?” But the Shepherd made answer: “This of Mine Has wandered away from Me. And although the road be rough and steep, I go to the desert to find My sheep.”

And all through the mountains, thunder-riv’n, And up from the rocky steep, There arose a glad cry to the gate of Heav’n, “Rejoice! I have found My sheep!” And the angels echoed around the throne, “Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!”

What a picture.

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If any readers are interested in receiving Mark’s “Daily Nuggets,” contact him at mdittmar65@yahoo.com and ask to be put on the circulation list by putting “Interested in Receiving Nuggets” in the subject line.

Click: The Ninety and Nine

3-17-14

Logos. It’s the Greek word for our English word, “word,” from which we also derive “Logic.” Logos is to speak intelligently.

Today’s message is a guest essay by Leah C. Morgan.

When God, who IS wisdom, wanted to communicate with mankind, He sent His son.
“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1,2). God has spoken intelligently. He spoke the Word – the Logos – the Son.

“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. And the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth” (John 1:1,14).

More than 300 years before Christ lived and before His disciple John wrote of the Word becoming flesh, Aristotle presented LOGOS as one of three methods used to persuade another to a point of view. Through logic, reasoning, and sound supporting evidences, the thoughts of an individual can be turned.

He taught PATHOS to be another means of bringing a counterpart to a change of opinion – the process of stirring the emotions, of appealing to a sense of justice over the unfair.

Aristotle identified ETHOS as the third vehicle of persuasion. It is the tool of credibility, lending weight to a point of view when presented by an expert, or by someone of respectable rank or position, on a topic. It is present even in the simple act of trusting, when a relationship exists between the parties of a discourse.
 
John, who writes of the Logos being God and becoming man, also writes of the compelling force behind both. “For God so loved the world he gave His only begotten Son that whosever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). God so loved the cruel ungrateful world that He offers up to that world the transformation of His divine, all-powerful Son into a vehicle of vulnerable flesh.

I find that a convincing argument to love Him back.
 
God offered up Jesus with Ethos. You can’t find anyone more credible than the One who fashioned the universe and upholds it in His palm, deciding to send His offspring to step foot onto a fleck of dust, within the realm of His vast cosmos, called earth. He made it. He operates it.

He visits it; I’ll pay attention to His words.
 
And what Pathos! We respond to the dog tied to the tree in the yard, left out in the summer heat without a drink, or shivering there in the winter exposed to the elements. It’s not right that an innocent creature, something made to be our companion, is so mistreated for no fault of its own. Christ was no dog on the street. But there He was, nailed to a tree, hung up to thirst, exposed to the onlookers with none to pity or defend. The injustice of an innocent One coming to befriend us, to rescue us, dying for our lies and greed, for our meanness and selfishness.

This wrings my heart. It secures my love and gratitude.

God really did set out to commune with us, to convince us, to reason with us. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).

When looking upon the pride of man, the degradation, the violence, God responds not by wielding His hand in wrath, nor by withholding His hand. He extends it. He opens it with the best of heaven’s treasure, the life of His Son.

I’ve read the Logos, and I believe. I’m convinced. I am persuaded “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38 39).
 
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Religion, of course, is mankind’s effort to reach up to God. Christianity is God reaching down to mankind. Leah has limned three major ways God reaches down to us, easy and powerful ways to appreciate His love. The summation of our response? — How can we keep from singing?! Here is the late (and great) Eva Cassidy performing the favorite gospel song. It dates from 1868.

Click: How Can I Keep From Singing?

1-9-12

It’s all over the news now, the disparity between the “99 per cent” and the “One per cent” – or, rather, the resentment and envy that the majority is supposed to harbor against the more wealthy. It is at the core of the “Occupy” crowds’ chants and signs.

Theodore Roosevelt correctly observed that the sin of envy is no less a sin than that of greed. And years ago, a friend from France once gave me the best definition of Socialism (therefore, its most potent pushback). Francois Mitterand had been elected president in his country; the Socialists were coming to power; and among their proposals, in the name of equality, was the abolition of First-Class seats on public transportation.

“Why is it that the Socialists never want to abolish anything that is second-class?” my friend asked.

That riposte has come to mind when hearing so often lately of the Ninety-Nine versus the One per cents. “Versus” is the operative word; a campaign to raise the civic temperature. But something else has come to mind – that Jesus had a different take on the numbers of 99 and one. Nothing to do with current politics… except as those numbers provide a shout-out to our souls.

Let us remember Christ’s parable of the Lost Sheep. It is found in Luke 15:4-7. The gentle shepherd had a flock of 100, but one had gone astray. And he set out to search, high and low, far and wide, for that wayward sheep. The sheep was found, rescued, and restored to the shepherd’s flock.

Many of us have the natural reaction to think that the sensible thing would have been to play safe with the ninety-nine. A similar impulse, in the other parable of the Prodigal Son, is to observe that the other son was slighted after all of his work and obedience, while his errant brother was feted by the father upon his return.

Our problem as humans is that we tend to see ourselves as members of the flock of ninety-nine. “What is one sheep against so many?” We get proud of our accomplishments, jealous of others receiving favor. Our bigger problem is that God sees us as that Lost Sheep, and the son who departed and sinned – not as we see ourselves.

Heaven rejoices when one sinner is saved, when the Good Shepherd has restored the wayward. Our Heavenly Father arranges a lavish feast when we return. In each case we are not rewarded for straying: we are forgiven when we return.

“Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety and nine–
Are they not enough for Thee?”
But the Shepherd made answer, “This of Mine
Has wandered away from Me;
And although the road be rough and steep
I go to the desert to find My sheep.”

Jesus not only seeks us out; He persists. For us to be as THAT “one percenter” we should be grateful… and can take assurance. Occupy God’s flock.

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“The Ninety and Nine” was written as a children’s poem by Elizabeth Clephane in 1868. The great hymn-writer Ira D Sankey read it when on a Dwight L Moody crusade in Scotland years later; he tucked it into his vest pocket. That evening Moody preached on “The Good Shepherd,” and asked Sankey, his worship leader, to sing a hymn. Sankey remembered that poem in his pocket, took it out, and sang this song impromptu, forming the music as he went. It is now a standard of the church.

Click: The Ninety and Nine