Palm Sunday

Time for an odds and ends post.

Today was Evan's last official day to sing in the children's choir. His voice is changing. He still has soprano notes, although not as high as in the past, but he is developing his lower range and struggling with his mid-range. He will continue attending Schola Cantorum rehearsals through the end of the year, helping out our novice program (welcoming new young singers), but we have told him he doesn't have to sing with the choir any more after today. Seeing as how I don't have anyone waiting in the wings to take his place, it would seem my choir mom days are over (sigh).

Here are a couple of pics, serious and silly, of our group today. We sure do love them.

We were hoping one of the above pictured choristers would agree to sing the solo stanza of "A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth" at the Good Friday service, but there have been no takers. Today when I told Evan that it is looking like his dad or I might have to do it, he was quite alarmed. But it's supposed to be a child's voice! Yes, son, I know. Evan is thinking he might just have to step up to the plate one more time.

In other news, we had some hail the other day.

The storm chasers were around the very next day leaving flyers on doorknobs.

College kids will not be home for Easter. Silly academic calendars. But four weeks from today I will drive to Missouri to pick up Caitlin, and a few days after that we'll all go to Fort Worth to see Trevor receive his Master's degree in music! Speaking of Trevor, he has accepted an invitation to pursue his Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Iowa. He is receiving a full tuition scholarship plus a teaching and accompanying stipend. We are very, very happy!

This past week I wrote an article on the Benedict Option which got a little traction. Then yesterday I posted something seemingly unrelated on Facebook. And yet as I think more about the previous link, which is about the shortage of organists in the Church, I am starting to connect it to the Benedict Option. The basic idea of the Benedict Option is that many who would claim the name "Christian" are losing touch with what that actually means. In other words, we call ourselves Christian, but we aren't living and worshiping so as to preserve and pass on the faith to future generations. While the Church in other parts of the world is growing, here in America (and other parts of the Western world) it is shrinking. The Benedict Option calls for Christians to see the gravity of this situation and take steps to turn it around. Author Rod Dreher argues that before we can share our Christian faith with others, we need to reclaim it for ourselves.

So how does that connect to an article about the shortage of organists? As I think about my own church body, which is often called the singing church because of the emphasis it puts on music, it seems to me that we are in many quarters losing touch with that part of our identity. After I posted the above article on Facebook there was much discussion about the difficulty of finding musicians, paying for musicians, and supporting congregational song. Many churches are giving up and going to recorded tracks. This is a terrible, terrible development. The more we rely on such measures the more likely it is that there will be even fewer church musicians in the future.

I am starting to think that, while it's great that we send missionaries to foreign lands (and my husband is one who goes), we might need to give some thought to what we can do to shore up our own churches and our own worship. It doesn't appear to me that we are doing what needs to be done to preserve our musical and liturgical heritage. It's not something that is just magically going to survive because we want it to. In the same way we need to be intentional about living out our Christian faith, we need to be intentional about passing on the gift of music and liturgy. There is so much more we could be doing, and it deeply frustrates me how as a church body we give lip service to it but don't really do anything about it.

Enough of that for now. The hour has come. A blessed Holy Week to you and yours.


Palm Sunday Verse/Hymn of the Day from Cheryl on Vimeo.

It burns, Precious! It burns!

*sigh*

The LCMS triennial worship conference is going on right now and I am not there. For many months I had planned to accompany my husband, who is teaching and playing, but when it came right down to it we could not justify the cost of my attendance. It has been a summer of unusual expenditures, with more to come as we launch our second-born into college. So I decided to be a grown-up and make the mature decision. Of course, having made the mature decision, it now makes utter sense for me to take to my blog to whine about it.  ;-)

I would have liked to have been there for many reasons. Here are a few: Harrison, Kleinig, Vieker, Wilken, Weedon, Stuckwisch, Peters, Hildebrand, Soulek, Curtis, Muth, Blersch, Esget, Kohrs, Starke, Magness . . . . The list could go on. And then there's the worship. Oh, the worship. I know, I know. I get wonderful worship every weekend. I have the best cantor in synod, after all! :-) But my husband does not have the major responsibility for worship this week in Seward. He wrote a new setting of Psalm 85 and will be playing it, but I think that is all he is doing musically, which means for most of the liturgies he will be in the pew. Oh, that I could have been sitting beside him, something I so rarely get to do. :-(

I would have also liked to have been there to attend Phillip's sessions. He is teaching a seminar (3-day course) on "Bridging the Gap" (in worship) as well as a workshop on leading hymns from the piano. I have instructed him that I will be expecting nightly updates on the day's proceedings. He has promised to comply.

The silver lining to this dark cloud is that by staying behind I am maximizing my time with two whose days under this roof are drawing extremely short. (The third has quite a few more years to go.) As for Phillip, I am anticipating another 40-50 years under the same roof with him. :-)

So here I blog, and watch from afar, and live vicariously through my husband (as I am wont to do). Not a bad deal, if you ask me. I guess it doesn't burn so much, after all. :-D

All of you who are there, the best thing you can do for those of us who aren't is to soak it all in. Bask. And then come home and rub off a little of the heaven on the ones you left behind.

Rethinking Worship

This is one of the best things I have read on worship in a long time.

"Many congregations lose the Divine Service in what turns into little more than a performance. Other congregations, on the other hand, take a functionalistic view. As long as there is an organist, six or seven hymns we all like, and a liturgy, we’re fine.

Can I just say that neither attitude, it seems to me, really upholds the Divine Service and the gifts Christ gives in it?"

Read the rest here.

Installation Sermon

Phillip's installation at Immanuel-Broken Arrow was on August 18. Here is a link to Pastor Wilke's excellent installation sermon. It was, of course, particularly meaningful to us on that day, but I commend it to all my Lutheran readers, particularly those with a special interest in music, liturgy, and the song of the Church.

http://www.immanuelba.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/sermonaug1813installationservice.mp3

What Is Essential?

Just preserving a thought I had a few days ago. It has to do with music and worship. As my friends and long-time readers know, I believe the historic liturgy of the church is a gift of which we are foolish to deny ourselves. It is, after all, nothing more than God's word for His people, and to jettison it in favor of something less grounded in Scripture is to impoverish our worship life. I think this is the primary problem with that modern worship phenomenon known as the praise band. Typically, to make room in the service for the band's songs, portions of liturgy are removed. The problem is not primarily one of instrumentation but of substance.

But there is another problem, one having to do not with substance but with logistics, that is more typical of praise band services than it is of traditional services. In my experience the service that utilizes a praise band relies so heavily on the band that were the band not there, there would be very little service left. There would be a few prayers and a sermon, but without the band there to lead (perform?) lengthy musical medleys and interludes, there would not be much else. I think this is a problem. No liturgy should stand or fall on the presence (or lack thereof) of any one musician or musical ensemble, and the congregation should not come expecting to hear a certain soundtrack. And I think in most traditional settings such is the case. The focus is not on who is sitting on the organ bench, or which cantor is leading the psalm, or which choir is assisting with the liturgy and hymns, but rather on Word and Sacrament. But in a service that takes its identity from the presence of a praise band, what happens when that group is not there? Does it all fall apart? Is the thing that remains, or that which is substituted, so foreign to those assembled that they don't know what to do or how to participate? Do they feel as though they have been deprived? If so, that is a problem.

To be fair, I think it is possible for the same pitfall to happen in traditional worship. If worship is no longer worship because it is not led by a pipe organ or because a certain preacher is not in the pulpit, that is a problem, too.  

Ashless Wednesday

Last night was our first Ash Wednesday at our new church. Even though it was Ash Wednesday, we didn't have imposition of ashes. When I discovered our new church doesn't "do" ashes, I was disappointed. For years, both as a Lutheran and previously as a Roman Catholic, I have associated the beginning of the season of Lent with the receiving of ashes on my forehead. Last night as we drove to church I decided I better let Evan know there wouldn't be ashes. I was surprised at how disappointed he was--so much so that he cried a little. To comfort him I tried to help him to see that the ashes are only a symbol--a meaningful one, for sure, but still just a symbol. I contrasted the imposition of ashes with Baptism and the Lord's Supper, pointing out that the sacraments are not symbols but are means by which God gives to us His grace and forgiveness. We need them--our spiritual life depends on them. But we don't need the ashes. God does not work through the ashes. We will not be deprived of what is truly needful if we don't get them. Maybe all of this seems terribly elementary, but I think it helped Evan to see the difference between something that is a symbol and something that is not, and to realize that the symbol might be a nice tool to aid our remembrance and our reflection, but it is not essential to our salvation and therefore not necessary to our worship life.

Guess what? I don't think any of us missed the ashes last night. The service was so beautiful and rich in God's word and sacraments, and the theme of Ash Wednesday so powerfully communicated in the liturgy, that the message came through unequivocally without them: "We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead to the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." (Romans 6:4) If our new church ever decides to include imposition of ashes, or if we ever attend a church in the future where we have the opportunity to partake in this outward acknowledgement of our sinful, mortal flesh, I will probably participate. But I don't need ashes on my forehead to tell me what I already know: I am a poor, miserable sinner who, like Adam, was formed from dust and will return to dust. What I absolutely do need, to redeem me from that awful truth, is the salvation and forgiveness of sins that come through Holy Baptism and Communion, which are not mere symbols but conduits of the Father's love and grace.

To read one Lutheran pastor's thoughts about why his confessional, liturgical church has made an intentional decision against the imposition of ashes in its Ash Wednesday service, click here.

"Contemporary" Worship

I was recently talking to someone and the topic of "Contemporary Worship" came up. I capitalize and put the term in quotation marks because I don't think "contemporary" is a bad word. Worship that happens in the here and now is by nature contemporary. But the type of worship that has come to be known as "Contemporary" is something else, and I think the words of the person I was talking to are particularly revealing. She said that she hoped her adult son, who is visiting for Christmas, would get a chance to go to her church's Contemporary Worship service because he had never "seen" it. She didn't say he had never "participated" in it or "attended" it or "worshiped" at that service. She said he had never "seen" it. And that is a huge tell.

Drive-By Post

I'm not supposed to be here. But this is such a cool story I have to drop in long enough to tell it.

Yesterday to wrap up a rather long, hard week we decided to treat ourselves to lunch out. Actually we didn't need to treat ourselves as our wonderful choir did so by virtue of the gift card they gave us for Christmas. So after church Phillip, Caitlin, Evan and I went here. There are several locations in Chicagoland; we went to the one in our neighborhood.

During lunch (which was wonderful) we struck up a conversation with out waiter, a charming young man in his twenties. As we talked, he volunteered that after graduating from high school he had left home for college but had a little trouble settling into a good routine. In his words, when he got out on his own he found himself rebelling somewhat against his "strict, conservative, Lutheran upbringing." As he shook his head with sincere regret we tried not to spew our water all over the table.

We told our new friend that we know all about strict, conservative, Lutheran upbringings because that's pretty much what we do, and we shared that we just happen to attend a strict, conservative, Lutheran church where my husband is Cantor. Imagine our surprise when he informed us that he graduated from our church's day school about 13 years ago. We just missed him by a year. We moved to this area 12 years ago.

Further conversation revealed that our waiter did not attend our church when he was younger but instead, along with his parents, attended a sister church in the area that is known for a more pop-oriented style of worship. His parents have since moved away and he is living on his own, working as a waiter, and trying to finish college. Of course we invited him to church. He asked for worship times (he needs to attend early so that he can get to the restaurant for his Sunday shift) and then wanted to know if the early service had traditional worship. We told him all our services have traditional worship and he smiled: "Good. I always liked that best."

As the meal progressed we continued to enjoy getting to know this interesting and intelligent young man. Before we left he made a point of double-checking the worship time and wrote it down, along with the website address of one of our pastors. As I consider the events that led to our ending up in that restaurant with that waiter on that day, I smile again in wonder at the perfect way that our Lord works, turning the seemingly random and chaotic pieces of our lives into a picture that not only makes sense but that has surpassing order and beauty. Please pray for a young man named Josh. We are hoping to see him again very soon.

Perchance to Dream

Pastor Peters' post today strongly resonated with me. He writes of being told that his is a "special" congregation. Not understanding what was meant by that, he sought clarification and was provided with a list of features that he was told caused the other person to come to that conclusion. The list included things like the upholding of the liturgy, the placing of a high value on worship and music, the preaching of Law and Gospel, a functional and attractive facility, and a strong sense of mission. Pastor Peters concludes:

In the end, I find myself more and more mystified with his comment. He gets around to a lot of Lutheran (nearly all LCMS) parishes across the states and for him to suggest that our parish is "special" is less a compliment to us than, perhaps, a cause for concern about the others. For we are not extraordinary but rather ordinary. We use the hymnal, we preach the lectionary, we invest in worship as the primary activity of God's people in this place, we care about those outside our parish and our community, and we use the Confessions and Catechism as the documents that both inform and norm our parish teaching and practice. I would expect that every Lutheran parish would do so. In fact, I would hope that we are ordinary, normal, and fairly typical for Lutheran parishes out there.

I can relate to this post, not (obviously) as a pastor, but as someone who has also been told that I belong to a "special" or "exceptional" parish. It is a viewpoint I don't understand because I think if you were to ask my pastors they would say that our church is only doing what Lutherans have always done. Maybe some of the externals are different from those in some other parishes, but at the core, we are just being Lutheran. That is not to say that other solidly Lutheran churches will look exactly like ours. They won't. Each congregation has an identity that is the result of its unique gathering of souls at a particular spot on the space/time continuum. But to be Lutheran means to share certain essentials. Or it should. And being faithful to those essentials shouldn't make you "special."

More from Pastor Peters:

The more I think about it, the more this whole thing bothers me. I know that there are strange Lutheran incarnations out there but I have always believed that they were a distinct minority. My hope, prayer, and, maybe, my private illusion, is that the vast majority of Lutheran parishes were not so different from mine. I do not believe that I am more than your average Lutheran Pastor and I do not believe that we are special or unusual in all that many ways. If it is true, then it is not a compliment to me or to my parish but a cause for serious concern about the health of Lutheran congregations and their Pastors. So let me say it again. I am an ordinary Lutheran Pastor and Grace Lutheran Church is a typical Lutheran parish. Or it should be. I cannot wish for more Pastors to be like me (believe me, I know my faults and weaknesses more than most of you readers). But I do wish and pray that more Lutheran parishes would be like us in that their worship and teaching flowed seamlessly from their Confessional identity, that it was powerfully evangelical and faithfully catholic, that it was unashamedly and unabashedly Lutheran, and that it was deliberate and determined to be not only a Lutheran island where the parish is located but a Lutheran mission to shape, encourage, and live united with other Lutherans -- not as some minority splinter group but as the essential core and typical expression of our Lutheran identity within the congregation. If I am wrong, please do not tell me. Allow me this small waking dream of hope . . . .

Pastor, I don't think you're wrong. But if you are, I hope you hang on to the dream, because it's the right one, and you are not alone in praying for it to become a reality.

The Tree of Life

Last week I posted a video of my large, suburban Chicago congregation singing Graham Kendrick's "Shine, Jesus, Shine" accompanied by piano and brass choir. Although my church has a top-notch organ which is prominently featured in our worship services, we are also blessed with many musicians who desire to use their talents in the service of God's Word, and the Cantor tries to make full use of them.

There are many churches out there, however, who do not have either organ or organist at their disposal. Does that mean they have no recourse but to sing a cappella, or perhaps, to resort to a recorded accompaniment?

No. While I personally love a cappella singing and think it to be a worthy sacrifice of praise, I also love instrumental music and understand the desire to use it to lead and adorn corporate singing. So I am edified by this video from a Lutheran (LCMS) mission congregation outside of Detroit. The congregation is small and worship attendance numbers less than 50. They currently meet at a school, so having no building of their own, they also have no organ. That does not prevent them from singing hymns and liturgy with only the voices and instruments in their midst. You will hear on the video a lovely rendition of one of my favorite contemporary hymns, Rev. Stephen Starke's "The Tree of Life." The small "orchestra" consists of a guitar, flute, oboe and violin.

I hope you will listen, enjoy, and be blessed. You will note that the balance in the video is not ideal--the microphone was placed so that it is instrumentally heavy. You can rectify that, however, by picking up your Lutheran Service Book and singing along!

More details on the video and those behind it can be found here.

Birds in Church

Yesterday at church the Hymn of the Day was "Consider How the Birds Above" (Lutheran Service Book 736). Our bulletin contained the following note on the hymn:

"The Hymn of the Day is a contemporary hymn with words by LCMS pastor Stephen Starke and a tune by Daniel Zager, an LCMS church musician and doctor of musicology at the Eastman School of Music. The text is rich with Scripture, drawing not only from today's Gospel reading (Matthew 6:24-34) but also from 1 Timothy 6:8-10 and 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. With or without the music, this hymn provides a wonderful spiritual exercise, reminding us of God's loving care for us in our daily lives that we may be kept mindful of His grace and trust His promises: 'For He who faced for you the cross will give you strength to live each day.'"

When it came time to sing the Hymn of the Day I heard a few high notes from the organ, then silence. My first thought was that the Cantor must have made a mistake--maybe he started to play and then realized he had the wrong registration and stopped to fix it. Or maybe he just hit a few stray keys by mistake. It happens to the best of us. :-) But then it happened again: random-sounding high notes played in various combinations and rhythms that didn't seem to be connected. Then as I listened the randomness disappeared and it all began to make sense: BIRDS! I'm hearing birds! The bird sounds continued intermittently as the hymn introduction began in earnest and as the congregation sang the first stanza:

"Consider how the birds above
Feed day by day with carefree ease--
Does God not keep them in His love?
Are we not worth much more than these?"

Once I figured out what the organist (a.k.a. my husband) was up to, I leaned over to Evan, my 7-year-old, and called his attention to it: "Evan, listen! Birds! Do you hear them?"

He did, and his eyes lit up as he listened. I then showed him the title of the hymn and told him that it was about what we had just heard in the Gospel reading: how if the birds see no reason to worry we don't need to either, since God loves us even more than he loves them! Evan smiled with understanding, and when it came time to sing he joined me and made it through almost the entire hymn without a loss of attention. (Such is not always the case.)

I share this story to demonstrate how the tiniest detail can focus the mind and spark the imagination, not just for children but for sleepy grownups, too. The "birds" in the Hymn of the Day turned something abstract--the words on the page--into something concrete. Suddenly we weren't just singing about birds--we were hearing them! And that hearing led us to give more attention to the words of the hymn and consider its message and connect it to the larger theme of the service. It was such a small thing, yet it accomplished so much.

If you're a parent trying to teach young children to worship, keep your antenna out for things like this--things in the service that appeal to the senses that you can utilize to draw your children in. Don't be afraid to talk to your children during church and point out elements of the service that they can easily grasp because of their concreteness, and then use those things to discuss the larger, more abstract picture of what is going on in worship.

And if you're a pastor or musician, look for ways to highlight what is happening in worship in a way that illuminates the message for those in attendance (both young and old). It doesn't take a high level of skill, but it does take planning, which in turn takes time. But if our worship is as important to us as we claim that it is, doesn't it deserve a measure of both?

Just Stop Talking, Please

Pastor Messer at Abide in My Word is asking for comments on a video he recently posted. It is a great example of what many of us mean these days when we use the term "Contemporary Worship." (I capitalize the words to make a distinction between worship that is Contemporary and worship that is contemporary. All worship is by definition small "c" contemporary since it is something that happens in the present.)

Anyway, I encourage you to watch the video and participate in the discussion. As I was doing just that, I came across another video from the same church, Faith Lutheran in Troy, Michigan, that I think is quite lovely. It is a flute choir, accompanied by piano, playing an arrangement of "Be Still, My Soul" as the Prelude to the service. Whereas my church would never present anything musically comparable to the video posted at Pastor Messer's blog, I could easily see us doing something like this. It is a reverent instrumental interpretation of a hymn from our synodical hymnal (LSB 752) presented at an appropriate time in the service. The problem comes when the Prelude is over. Instead of embracing the stillness and quiet of that moment when the music is over and the service is about to start, the "audience" breaks into applause. What happened to "Be Still, My Soul"? And then, wouldn't you know it, the pastor has to come out and add his own two cents about the whole thing (starting at about 3:40 in the video):

"Praise God for instruments, right? I hope that that music that was played would help set your minds on, as the Bible says, things above, not on earthly things . . . . When we come in to worship . . . that's God's doing, and He's here, right with us, and He helps us to worship, Amen?" That comment is followed by an introduction and additional chatter.

Before I opine further, here's the video:



Again, I think the music is very nice. The applause and the pastor's comments ruin it. How much better if once the Prelude were over the service continued, without interruption, into the Confession and Absolution. No discussion needed. Just confess the sins and get the absolution. It's almost as if by talking about how God is present, the pastor is trying to convince himself and the congregation of the fact. The pastor is correct in saying that worship is "God's doing" but then he contradicts that statement with all his talk. And that's the problem with much of the Contemporary Worship I see. The people so often seem to be trying to convince themselves that God is acting by their talking and singing about how they feel. If we trust that God is present in Word and Sacrament we don't need to talk about it, we don't need to demonstrate it, and we don't need to look to others to demonstrate it to us. All we need to do is soak it in.

In sum, we don't need to try so hard.

Celebration Day

This afternoon Evan and I played in the snow. After coming inside we made hot chocolate (for him) and coffee (for me). As we sat together warming up with our respective beverages, Evan made an announcement: "Today is Celebration Day!"

"Really?" I asked. "What are we celebrating?"

"That Christmas is a week away!"

Why, yes it is. How could I forget?

Evan again: "To celebrate, we'll be singing Kyrie I. Do you know what page it's on?" By this time he had pulled a hymnal off the shelf next to our kitchen table and was looking through the book.

"It's in the back, sweetie. I think it's in the 800's." (Wrong on my part. Turns out it's in the 900's.)

Evan: "After Kyrie I, we'll sing Kyrie II." A pause, as he turned to the front of the hymnal, the Advent section. "Then 'The Advent of Our God.'"

He named several more hymns in the Advent section, but I don't remember what they were. We started our Celebration Day observance by singing both Kyrie's as promised (Kyrie II was sung in both Greek and English). Then there was a change of plans and we sang another Kyrie--"Kyrie, God Father"--on the preceding page. By that time we had to clean up and prepare to leave the house for a 2:00 appointment, so there was no time for hymns. But even though our celebration was cut short, Evan seemed satisfied.

What I think is revealing here is Evan's embracing of the sanctification of time and the liturgy. Something special is happening. He wanted to mark and observe it. How did he do so? Through ritual and ceremony. Through order. Through the liturgy. He started as many of our church services do: with the Kyrie. Then he proceeded to sing a hymn. And not just any hymn, mind you, but one appropriate to the season: an Advent hymn.

Tomorrow is the fourth Sunday of Advent. Evan is well aware of that fact and is looking forward to singing "Light the candle of hope today" while the acolyte does just that on the Advent wreath. Evan knows that in a few days the blue paraments will be changing to white and the lights on the sanctuary's Christmas trees will be lit for the first time. He told me today that the reason we are having "Celebration Day" is that we are celebrating that Jesus is coming so that He will be able to die for our sins. Then his eyes lit up: "And on Easter we'll get a new candle!" (He was speaking of the paschal candle, which gets replaced each Easter Vigil.)

People say that liturgical worship is boring for children--that what children need is not candles and paraments and ritual and hymns and liturgy but rather, entertainment and fast-paced excitement. I think Evan would have something to say about that. In fact, I think he already did.

Prepare the Royal Highway

One of my favorite Advent hymns is "Prepare the Royal Highway" (Lutheran Service Book 343). We sing it a little differently at my church, courtesy of my husband the Cantor. I love how he plays it, capturing in music the anticipation of the people of God as their King approaches: "Hosanna to the Lord, for He fulfills God's Word." The people of our congregation love it: just listen to the singing! And the children love it: it is one of the hymns they most often request. Enjoy! And be joyful! The King is coming soon!

(P.S. You can see my two younger men in the front row of the congregation, a tall one in a green shirt helping a short one in a red shirt to follow the hymn in the hymnal. Oh, and that very pretty acolyte--the one closest to the camera--is my daughter.)

Prepare the Royal Highway - Lutheran Service Book 343 from Cheryl on Vimeo.

Praise Chorus?

Today the Church catholic (meaning the Christian church around the world, not just the Roman Catholic Church) celebrated the Second Sunday of Easter by hearing the story of Thomas, who when told by the other disciples that they had seen the Lord, replied, "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe" (John 20:25). Because of his insistence on seeing Jesus, for himself, in the flesh, Thomas has long had the adjective "Doubting" attached to his name. But I think Thomas had it right. He wanted to see his Lord, and when he not only saw Him but touched the wounds in Jesus' hands and side, he believed and confessed: "My Lord and my God!" In that short sentence, Thomas models the spiritual life of the Christian who, when called to faith by God and confronted with Law and Gospel in the person of Christ, can do no other but exclaim, "My Lord and my God!" It is one of the best stories in all of Scripture.

Today at my church, a congregation of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, we heard the choir sing the traditional Tanzanian song "Nimemwona Bwana" (the song was sung by the junior high choir at one service and the adult choir at another). The full text is simple--

Nimemwona Bwana, anapendeza.

Here's the translation:

We have seen the Lord, and He looks good!

(Sometimes instead of "good" the translation is "nice" or "beautiful"--but I really like the word "good." What is the Lord if not Goodness incarnate?)

Anyway, it strikes me that there are those, maybe even some of you reading, who might not appreciate this text being sung for a church service. If you don't like what has come to be known as a "praise chorus" in Christian worship, you might not like this song. It has some of the elements of what some object to in contemporary Christian praise and worship songs: the text is simple, it appears to be light on doctrine, it doesn't tell the full salvation story, and it is repetitive (my friend Susan recently wrote about that last item here). AND it has percussion and swaying bodies!

Yet I think this was a perfect song for this day. Think about it: we hear about Thomas, who wanted to see, and who when he did, believed. And then we hear joyfully proclaimed by the choir the words, "We have seen the Lord, and He looks good!"

I don't like praise choruses in church either. But I loved this song in our liturgy today. So I had to wonder, in light of the similarities listed above, how is it different from a praise chorus? Well, to help answer that question, I have posted a video of our junior high choir singing the song. Please note that there is nothing in the performance that overtly calls attention to the performers or their personal experience of the song. There is no brandishing of microphones (no microphones at all in fact--those young soloists are projecting entirely on their own), no exhorting of the congregation to respond to the "performance" (to show that they are feelin' it, too, donchya' know), no effort to repeat the chorus ad infinitum in order to "prepare hearts" to receive the Word. The song is presented in a completely declamatory way, and I think this is why it does not fit the popular definition of "praise chorus." The goal is not to express the feelings of the singer or manipulate those of the worshiper but rather to proclaim the Word by telling the story.

"Nimemwona Bwana" from Cheryl on Vimeo.

(If you really want to know, the Cantor tried to get them to loosen up a bit more than this, and you can see a few who took his encouragement to heart, but it's not easy to take the suburbs out of suburban Chicago kids!)

Forrest Gump

Sometimes I teasingly call my husband Forrest Gump because he always seems to be showing up wherever news is happening. Here he goes again, getting interviewed by religion writer Terry Mattingly for the Scripps-Howard News Service:

Lutherans and the Worship Wars

For Your Consideration

My liturgically and musically-minded readers might want to consider visiting Lutheran Kantor. He has a fine blog that is currently featuring some excellent topics and discussions.

Commercial

My husband (this guy) will be a guest on Issues, Etc. tomorrow afternoon, discussing the topic of children in worship.

Be there or be square.

Easter Wrap-Up

Phew! Nine liturgies in four days, and I was at eight of them, four this morning alone! I am pooped, and I did nothing compared to the Cantor. I only had to play piano or organ on a few choir numbers (Yes, I really played organ! No feet, though). My dearest has been burning the candle at both ends for days now, rehearsing soloists and groups large and small, practicing organ, proofreading bulletins, setting up equipment, and making sure all kinds of people are in the right place at the right time. As Pastor said this morning, "Honey, I don't know how you do it." (Okay, okay, so Pastor didn't call him "Honey," but the sentiment was the same.)

I was up too late last night. We didn't get home until about 9:30, and between getting Evan settled down, doing some house tasks, setting up the coffee for the morning (can't forget the coffee!) and blogging about Easter Vigil, I didn't get to bed until about 11:30. The alarm went off at 4:45 a.m., and by 6:00 Phil, Trevor and I were en route to church for our 6:10 a.m. choir warm-up call. (Caitlin stayed home with Evan, who was picked up a few hours later by Pastor's wife; the bad news is that Caitlin is still running a fever and had to stay home.)

Services were at 6:30, 8:30, 10:00 and 11:30; the first three included adult choir and full brass, and the 11:30 service featured children's choir and youth brass. Easter breakfast was served from 7:00 to 10:00, and an Easter egg hunt was staged on the church grounds at 10:45 a.m. We were blessed with a slightly cool but beautifully sunny day for the hunt.

Here are some of the hunters waiting for the starting "gun." (Evan is in stripes in the front; notice he is the only child in short sleeves. He had a coat but his space cadet of a mom left it inside.)





The hunt is on!

Found one!

Me and the Cantor, a little bleary-eyed after a long morning, but still not looking too bad if I do say so myself.

It was a stunning morning. The choirs and musicians outdid themselves, but far more important, the Easter Gospel was read and preached and the Lord's faithful fed at His table. From where I sat, there were only two downsides to the day. One, already mentioned, was that my daughter did not get to attend any Easter services. She came down with a fever Friday night and in fact sang her solo (see Good Friday post) while rapidly going down hill. She has been in bed ever since. When I called her from church this morning to check in, she started crying on the phone, devastated that she was missing worship this weekend, of all weekends. She wanted to run, like Peter and John, to the tomb to find her Lord! I told her that whether she was at church or home in bed, she could rejoice that Christ is risen! She responded as Christians throughout the ages always have: "He is risen indeed! Alleluia!"

The second not merely sad but tragic event was the death of one of our congregation's elders on Good Friday. He was only 42 years old and had suffered for years from a tumor pressing on his spine. Even people in our congregation who did not know him well recognized him as the smiling sacristan that did not let the need for a cane prevent him from assisting with Communion. Neil was one of those people whose cheerful outlook in the face of great adversity is an example of faith for us all. Over the years he experienced several periods of responsiveness to treatment, but finally the cancer was responsive no more, and Neil went to be with his Savior. He is survived by his wife Holly and an 8-year-old daughter, Laura.

The moment of Neil's death came during the Communion liturgy of our Friday afternoon service; when I heard a bell ringing during the Words of Institution I had a flashback to my Roman Catholic days, when bells ringing during Communion were a matter of course. This bell, however, was Pastor's cell phone, which he had forgotten to turn off before church. I can't help wondering if the Holy Spirit had a hand in that oversight. It turned out the call was from Holly, letting Pastor know that Neil's earthly battle was over. There were many tears shed this morning as news of Neil's death spread, but they were tears not just of grief but also of great joy, for there is no doubt in the mind of anyone who knew this steadfast layman that he is today enjoying eternity with his Father in heaven. And because of Jesus' victory on the cross, we who cling to that cross can join Neil and all the saints in heaven and on earth in saying, "Oh grave, where is thy victory? Oh death, where is thy sting?"

We got home at about 1:30. Lunch was frozen pizza. Then the grown-ups enjoyed a nap. Now I am enjoying the sounds of Evan and his dad having a water gun fight in the back yard. Does it get any better? To all my readers: a most blessed Easter season to you. And to think the celebration has just begun!

Visiting Memorial-Houston

Speaking of homes away from home, whenever we are in the Houston area, our church of choice is Memorial Lutheran. We got to go there yesterday. Not only were we blessed by Word and Sacrament, beautiful music, and Gospel preaching (from Pastor St. Onge), but we got to see some old friends!

Pastor Murray was not around--who does he think he is, going on vacation? (just kidding!)--but we did get to see friends Tom DuBois and Cantor Jan Muth. Caitlin and Evan enjoyed working with Cantor Muth at the LCMS worship conference this summer, so for them this was something of a reunion. (We tried to get a picture with the children and Jan on the organ bench, but Evan wouldn't go near the balcony rail. He's not used to a loft!)

We also enjoyed a tour of Memorial's recently completed building project. Feast your eyes (while reciting the 9th and 10th commandments) on their new music room . . .

nursery . . .

and (hold on to your hats) youth room.

How wonderful to see God at work among our brethren in the Houston area! And what a treat to be able to be among them! Memorial is blessed indeed, with gifted people like Cantor Muth, Tom DuBois, and six--count them, six--pastors on staff.

And to top it all off, we got to have lunch at La Madeleine (see previous post)!

It was a lovely day. But I'm still looking forward to going home tomorrow.