Monday Morning Music Ministry

12-11-23

As Christmas celebrations draw closer, people tend to think more about Jesus than they do at most other times of year. … or, anyway, what He might have looked like and acted like during His earthly ministry.

Speaking personally, I am grateful to movies like Passion of the Christ and TV series like The Chosen because, if nothing else, their producers dared show a Jesus who was realistic (as we must assume) – laughing, crying, feeling pain, experiencing betrayal and suffering.

In the Year of our Lord (giving credit where credit is due) 2023, however, the impressions of our childhoods persist. People can be forgiven, to coin a phrase, if their conception of Jesus is of a fair-haired, well-groomed, moon-faced, smiley guy with children always nearby to sit on His lap. Artwork on Sunday-school pamphlets told me so.

Throughout my life I have heard Christians and skeptics alike ask why Jesus “had” to come to earth 2000 years ago – so far back in time, so far away. Believers say their faith would intensify if they could just see Him. Non-believers and agnostics have a similar desire – that if they could just see Jesus, they would believe.

Well, we should remember that the Apostles who lived and ate and walked and talked with Jesus for three years, hearing His teaching, and witnessing miracles… if they betrayed and denied Him, and scattered when things got a little tough, would we be much different? Get real. Remember what Jesus said to Doubting Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.”

But Christmas displays have got me to thinking. Not that Jesus is a plastic Savior-figure for sale at the Dollar Store; nor a blow-up plastic baby-in-the-manger for a lawn display; nor a face on T-shirts of the worship band at the new church down the street. But I wonder what Christianity would be like if Jesus had come to earth in our lifetimes. How would Jesus present Himself?

• We don’t have many “Lords” and “Ladies” any more, so those terms might have to be altered. What is the modern-day equivalent of Lord? It would sound strange – “President God”? Would we be told to address Jesus as “Boss”?
• Very few guilty criminals are put to death these days, and when they are, the Cross is virtually obsolete. Would Christian gift shops sell trinkets of syringes, if that is how Jesus would be put to death, by lethal injection, today?
• Would people wear necklaces with little electric chairs instead of crosses?
• The Great Commission – “Go into all the world and preach the Good News” – would be the same. But today, the spread of communications (and, I’ll admit, employing some 20-20 hindsight in my scenario here) might alter the message of the Apostles and evangelists.
• Today the Disciples would be seen as recruiters and motivational speakers. But if they could know what becoming a follower of Christ entails, even modern sales techniques would present some challenges. Consider:

– Become a Christian! When you commit to follow Jesus, your family might resent you, friends might leave you, strangers might persecute you!

– Become a Christian! Share what you believe and you might lose a job! Neighbors will regard you as nuts!

– Become a Christian! If you heed His call and perhaps go into missions work, you can be harassed, even martyred, like so many Christians in history… and still, today!

– Become a Christian! Among the perks – not certain, but very common – you will be misunderstood, criticized, ridiculed… sometimes by those you love the most!

Those are some of the “perks” of being a Christian. They are not much different than any time in the past 2000 years. But I would suggest, if you think about “Lord” versus “Boss,” and symbols of crosses versus electric chairs, that today’s evangelistic “sales pitch” might be more challenging than in times past.

In fact, everything is more challenging than in times past. As we slouch toward Gomorrah – in the words of the William Butler Yeats poem and the book by the great Robert H Bork – as our culture is ever more engulfed by moral relativism and secularism, the challenges of being a Christ-follower are increasingly stark.

Generally, we live in a post-Christian age. Thank God, literally, the DNA of the twenty-first century church seems to be healthier in the southern hemisphere. Christianity, as it always has, thrives in lands of persecution; believers, that is, one by one, refined by fire. Africa, once the destination of missionaries, now sends missionaries to apostate societies in Europe, the United Kingdom, and North America.

There is hope.

And by the way, regarding the premise I posed at the beginning – “If Jesus were alive today…” Here’s the dirty little secret, which is not so dirty; not so little; not so secret –

Jesus is alive today.

+ + +

What does it cost to be a Christian? What DID it cost 2000 years ago, when Jesus was born? Remember the “Slaughter of the Innocents” – the command to slay all baby boys under the age of two; the Establishment’s effort to deny the coming King. Hostility threatened Christianity then… today its stark enemy is indifference.

Click: Rachel’s Lament

12-19-22

Do we realize that the birth pangs of the first Christmas were not Mary’s alone?

The Bible tells us that all the aspects of Christ’s Birth were not unalloyed joy. The birth pangs of Mary were prophesied in Scripture, even from the Garden, and birth pangs are frequent Biblical metaphors for the distress believers will endure, even persecution unto the End Times.

Specifically at Christmastide the reference is not solely to one mother’s labor.

There was the grief of Judean mothers. It is ironic, especially in our secular time when the Divinity of Jesus is questioned – even in the pulpits of “liberal” churches – yet the pagan Roman ruler Herod acknowledged the mysterious, incarnate Savior to the extent that he ordered the slaughter of little boys under the age of two when he was told of prophecies.

This is no surprise when we remember that the devil himself acknowledged Jesus as the Christ, Son of the Living God. Herod was an amateur when we consider other enemies of Christianity; and the devil ultimately will be defeated (was defeated at the Resurrection). Yet birth pangs, too often, enflame the faithful, from tearful mothers of those baby boys, to mighty saints and martyrs.

Please, at least for a moment, put aside the Hallmark cards and boughs of holly. It is important to remember that He came… why He came… and how He came. In fact, Jesus was born amid tears; He dealt with tears; and He died on the cross – which was His mission – amid tears. Even 700 years before His Birth, Jesus was identified as a Man of Sorrows.

He shall grow up… as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned each of us to our own ways; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and he opened not his mouth…(Isaiah 53)

What has come to be called the Massacre or the Slaughter of Innocents today, as a historical fact, is described in Matthew 2:16-18. It has become a symbol, too – a twisted, evil inspiration to uncountable people around the world who slaughter innocents today. The abortion nightmare is not waged to thwart a Savior, but to save peoples’ comfort and convenience. I am in no way callous to the angst of these mothers when they make tortured decisions; believe me, I am specially tender, but we must always opt for life.

Some believe – or want to believe – that America marches lock-step with the contemporary world on this “issue.” But the US, with Communist China and North Korea, is virtually alone among nations in allowing the cruelest of procedures, and late-term deaths. Merry Christmas, by the way, to all survivors.

One of the most beautiful-sounding Christmas tunes is the lullaby we know as the Coventry Carol. Mother sings to child, “Bye, bye, lully lu-lay,” a transliteration of Old French. It is sweet, certainly; but many have forgotten that the mother in this lullaby is whispering good-bye to her son, about to be slaughtered. It is so named because this song, in Old English first called “Thow Littel Tyne Childe,” had its origins in a “Mystery Play” of Norman France and performed at the Coventry Cathedral in England. The play was called “The Mystery of the Shearmen and the Tailors,” based on the second chapter of Matthew. The earliest transcription extant is from 1534; the oldest example of its musical setting is from 1591.

How can it be that the grieving, almost insensate, lullabies of mothers, their dead babies in their laps or facing imminent slaughter, can reflect a matter of foundational faith? That is a question I cannot answer, either as a man or as a reflective Christian. Yet the Coventry Carol tells the story of this awful occurrence in a way that is achingly haunting and beautiful.

Many people – many mothers – superficially think the ancient carol with its Old French roots of English, “Bye, bye, lully, lullay…” is merely a bedtime song. Yet the lullaby (which word derives from the lament) is a reminder of the hideous opposition the world harbors against the Gospel; and it commemorates the price, sometimes, of being a Christian. For all its beauty, it is the lamentation of an innocent mother cradling her innocent slaughtered child in her lap: a horrible reflection of birth pangs.

Its plaintive melody is one of the great flowerings of polyphony over plainsong in Western music.

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

+ + +

Click Video Clip: Coventry Carol