Confessing Evangelical

John H January 26th, 2006

The Evangelical Christian Union at Birmingham University has its bank account frozen and is prevented from using university facilities following suspension by the Student Guild.

The principal grounds for the suspension were:

• the Christian Union refused to open its membership to non-Christians; and
• the CU’s constitution also included references to the words “man” and “woman”, which the Student Guild considered “could be seen as excluding transsexual and transgender people”.

Banning Christian Unions because they’re unions of Christians is old hat, but banning the words “man” and “woman” is a new one on me. I’m lost for words – which is just as well, since there clearly aren’t too many words left that it’s still permissible to use…

Update: Ruth Gledhill – The Times’s (surprisingly foxy) religion correspondent, who broke the news earlier this week – has posted more material about this story on her blog, including a link to this post (fame at last!).

It is also worth clarifying that it is only the CU’s actual voting membership that is restricted to Christians. Its meetings are open to all.

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John H January 15th, 2006

Good stuff from Dietrich Bonhoeffer (via Conrad Gempf), on the subject of “the future of the church”:

The future of the church does not depend on youth but only on Jesus Christ. The task of young people is not reorganisation of the church but listening to God’s word; the church’s task is not the conquest of young people, but the teaching of the gospel.

A good reminder that the task of the church, and the purpose of mission and evangelism, is not to make the church, or Christianity, “appealing” – but to declare the gospel message of forgiveness, life and salvation in and through Jesus Christ.

It is then the Holy Spirit, not our appealing music, carpeted floors, Powerpoint projectors, spacious car parks and professionally-printed materials, who (in the words of the Augsburg Confession) “effects faith where and when it pleases God in those who hear the gospel”.

That said, it’s possible to go to the other extreme and operate on a false syllogism that says, “We are to be faithful to the gospel rather than attractive to outsiders; we are deeply unattractive to outsiders; therefore we are being faithful to the gospel”.

How do we strike the right balance? 1 Corinthians 14 is an excellent place to start, especially verses 23-25:

If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if all prophesy, an unbeliever or outsider who enters is reproved by all and called to account by all. After the secrets of the unbeliever’s heart are disclosed, that person will bow down before God and worship him, declaring, “God is really among you.”

In other words, there are things we can in church that we as Christians find very enjoyable, and consider (or rationalise) to be “helpful” to us, but that are obstacles to the clear proclamation of the gospel. For example, in the context of the Corinthian church, the unrestrained use of uninterpreted tongues.

On the other hand, the proclamation of the Word, of law and gospel – which is at the heart of the “prophesying” to which St Paul refers in this passage – while it may also be seen as very “unappealing” or alienating to those outside the church, is the means by which people’s hearts are laid bare and they can be brought to faith in Christ.

The test of any aspect of our worship or church life is this: does it assist the clear proclamation and understanding of God’s Word, or does it get in the way? How we answer that question is a matter for the application of godly wisdom in each case, but it is what makes the difference between true reformation of the church, and the equal and opposite errors of traditionalism for its own sake and chasing after “appealing” novelties.

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John H January 14th, 2006

HT: Revd Klages.

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John H January 8th, 2006

For Epiphany Sunday this morning, we had a special service of lessons and carols. This included seven readings from Isaiah, Matthew and Luke, and I found the headings given for each reading quite illuminating:

1. Isaiah 60:1-6: The Epiphany is foretold.
2. Matthew 2:1-12: A star makes the Epiphany known.
3. Matthew 2:13-18: An attempt to prevent the Epiphany.
4. Matthew 2:19-23: The Epiphany is ensured.
5. Luke 2:21-32: I have seen the Epiphany.
6. Luke 2:33-40: Epiphany touches the hearts of many.
7. Luke 2:41-52: They saw the Epiphany and were astonished.

Some very apposite responsive sentences, too:

P: The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear?

C: The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom should I be afraid?

P: Hear my voice when I call, O Lord;

C: be merciful to me and answer me. I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

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John H January 8th, 2006

Each week in our church’s bulletin/service sheet, our pastor includes a short item headed “What does this mean?”, explaining the meaning behind some aspect of the church’s worship. (For non-Lutheran readers, “What does this mean?” – or, in the original German, “Was ist das?” – is the question repeated throughout Luther’s Small Catechism.)

This morning’s example was particularly good, both in terms of the useful and interesting information it conveyed about the meaning, purpose and nature of the Divine Service, but also as an indication of where our pastor is trying, gradually, to take our church (particularly in terms of frequency of Communion):

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? DIVINE SERVICE

The Divine Service is the service of Word and Sacrament, the chief weekly service of the parish.

It was the practice of the early church and Lutherans to celebrate the Lord’s Supper each Sunday. The custom of having the Sunday Service without Communion was a late development which worked its way into the Lutheran Church as a result of Pietism and Reformed theology. These traditions elevate the sermon and devalue the Sacraments.

Divine Service comes from the German Gottesdienst, literally meaning God’s service. Foremost is the idea that it is God serving those whom He has gathered in Word and Sacrament. Secondary is the idea that those who are gathered serve God (worship). Divine Service is therefore a more appropriate term for Lutherans than Worship Service.

For more on this concept of the Divine Service as Gottesdienst, as God’s service to us rather than the other way round, see my late-2004 post, The God “who gives but does not take”, which looks at Luther’s distinction between beneficium and sacrificium in worship (that is, between worship as divine gift, and worship as human work). Key quote, from Luther:

All of worship, and the Mass in particular, must be viewed as a beneficium of God, “who gives but does not take” – who gives freely out of pure mercy for the undeserving, asking only to be confessed and glorified.

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John H January 6th, 2006

“In Berlin, things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, they are hopeless but not serious.” – Karl Kraus, 1914

British politics has moved firmly into “hopeless but not serious” mode this week. First, we have the spectacle of Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, becoming the first leader of a British political party to admit to being an alcoholic, and to having lied repeatedly about this to his fellow MPs and to the press over the past decade. So far he doesn’t seem to think this should disqualify him from remaining in his post. Bless.

And then we have the spectacle of George Galloway – a man for whom the word “egregious” could have been specifically invented – appearing on Celebrity Big Brother. The fact that he’s an MP and that Parliament is currently sitting is, it seems, no obstacle to his spending up to a fortnight on a reality TV show. Mind you, his constituents in Bethnal Green and Bow are probably relieved/surprised to see that he has been able to tear himself away from the US lecture circuit for a brief stay in this country.

Some of his more ungrateful constituents have set up a website that helpfully provides a running update of how much Gorgeous George’s sojourn in the BB house is costing the Great British Taxpayer.

Oh well. Beats living in a dictatorship, I guess.

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John H January 5th, 2006

A fun photoset here, as Tux (the Linux penguin) and Gnu (the GNU mascot) visit the European Parliament in Strasbourg, presumably in grateful recognition of the Parliament’s overwhelming (648 votes to 14) rejection of software patents last year.

I bought a stuffed Tux for our elder son recently, but that Gnu is also seriously cute. I want one!

(For those of you as yet unacquainted with why software patents are a terrible idea, this article provides a good introduction, comparing software patents to “literary patents” that would allow monopoly rights on plot concepts.)

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John H January 2nd, 2006

If you enjoyed Michael Praetorius’ Lutheran Mass for Christmas Morning (which I posted on back in December 2004), then you should check out the follow-up disc from Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort & Players, the Bach Epiphany Mass (US readers click here – that link also has samples of every track, unlike the UK listing).

This recording reconstructs the Hauptgottesdienst (High Divine Service) as it might have taken place on the Feast of the Epiphany in the Thomaskirche, Leipzig, during Bach’s last decade (c. 1740). This includes a Lutheran Mass setting by Bach, as well as a a couple of cantatas and numerous chorale settings and organ pieces. Nor is it 100% Bach – Johann Pachelbel gets a brief look-in too at a couple of points in the service.

This recording of a 1740 service makes an interesting contrast with the Praetorius disc, which presented a complete Divine Service for Christmas Day c.1620. While it’s not a period I know much about myself, I’m sure that those with an interest in the development of Lutheranism during the period of “Lutheran Orthodoxy” between 1600 and 1750 would find these discs fascinating.

The music from the 1740 Divine Service is more stately and formal than the 1620 recording, and more intricate – very much the prosperous and respectable city church. By contrast, on the “1620″ recording you can almost hear the peasants stamping the snow off their boots, and the singing of the hymns is far more exuberant and exhilirating. As a result, the Bach disc is more of a slow burner than the Praetorius, but still a glorious listen.

One of highlights of this disc is the singing of the hymns. The fashion of the time was to sing the hymns achingly slowly, with an improvised organ interlude between each line – presumably as a way of giving people chance to catch their breath. (And perhaps this is where the odd Lutheran habit of sitting down for hymns comes from…).

On this recording, while the organists use surviving 18th-century examples of this practice (from Bach and another Leipzig composer named Georg Friedrich Kauffmann), they also use Bach’s “flamboyant and rhythmically free” examples as a basis for further improvisation. As the liner notes put it:

The harmony is also varied boldly, attempting to recreate the “mixture of many strange tones” for which Bach was criticised in his own hymn accompaniment at Arnstadt.

In other words, they pull out all the stops both literally and metaphorically. The result is strange at first, but the cumulative effect over the course of a hymn (>10 minutes in some cases) is compelling. That said, I have so far resisted the temptation to emulate this practice at our own church – not least because it would lack a certain something when attempted on a Clavinova.

Finally, one of my comments on the Praetorius disc was that “The only thing missing is the sermon … and the notices”. This recording goes one better than that by actually including a sermon – or at least, a six-minute excerpt from one of Luther’s sermons for the Feast of the Epiphany. While this falls a long way short of the one hour (at least) to which the good people of Leipzig would have been treated in 1740, it’s still a nice touch. After all, what sort of Lutheran service would it be that didn’t include the preaching of Law and (above all) Gospel?

Unfortunately, judging from the Amazon delivery estimates it looks like both US and UK readers may have difficulty getting hold of a copy of this by Epiphany this year. But, just like the Praetorius disc, this recording is for life, not just for Christmas.

Why are you still here?

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John H January 2nd, 2006

Installed a great extension for Firefox yesterday called StumbleUpon. It adds a toolbar (below) that helps you discover interesting new web pages:

Having configured StumbleUpon by telling it what kind of sites you’re interested in, you then click “Stumble!” and it takes you to a random site. You can then say whether you like that site or not using the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons, and your choices are made publicly available to help finetune the system further. It is alarmingly addictive.

A couple of goodies I’ve come across so far (from my list of pages I liked). Fly Guy is a compelling interactive flash animation in which you control a character who flies round the screen interacting with other objects you come across (better than it sounds!).

Join the campaign to abolish the mouse-click at DONTCLICK.IT.

And best of all is Pandora, which feels like the sort of site I should already have heard of: you tell it an artist or song that you like, and it then creates a personalised radio station of other similar music that you may also enjoy, based on the taxonomies of the Music Genome Project.

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John H January 1st, 2006

Today was one of those days when I wish we were a little more “high church” at our church. It would have been great fun to have the full rigmarole of Gospel fanfare, procession, candles, incense, etc etc, perhaps an organ prelude and a canticle or two as well, all being swung into action to surround today’s Gospel reading, for the Feast of the Circumcision:

And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

And, er, that’s it.

Our pastor got a good sermon out of this short text, though. The circumcision of Jesus is packed full of significance: prefiguring the cross as our Lord spills his blood for the first time, prefiguring the resurrection by taking place “on the eighth day”, the start of Jesus’ fulfilment of the law on our behalf.

But this is not something we could understand just from viewing the events, which on the face of it were no different from any other first-century Jewish boy’s circumcision. What makes this event significant is the revelation of God: “he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel”. This divinely-given name, Jesus (meaning “God saves”), is what tells us that these events are “for us and for our salvation”.

At one point our pastor told a story from when he was at university, where his political science lecturer was also a Southern Baptist preacher – and taught political science in much the same way as he preached.

At our pastor’s graduation, this preacher-professor was called upon to say the opening prayer. Even though this was, as our pastor put it, some years before political correctness, the normally-forthright professor did not mention Jesus once in his prayer. Presumably he didn’t want to offend anybody. Instead, he addressed his prayer to “that great being who is out there”.

Our pastor’s comment was that, as he sat there listening to this prayer, his thought was, “This isn’t any God I know”. But without the Word of God, and specifically that Word that is summed up in the name “Jesus”, this is the only God of which anyone could have any inkling: a great-but-vague “being” who is “out there”, somewhere.

The only way in which we can know God, and to know that he is “for us”, is to know him not as “that great being who is out there”, but as that apparently weak and insignificant being who is down here: as a baby in a manger, as a man dying on a cross. Even today, it is not the God “out there” who we can know is for us, but the God who is “down here” under the seemingly insignificant and unimpressive forms of preaching, absolution, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

When we go to church, just as if we had been present at our Lord’s circumcision, it is only the Word of God that gives what happens there any significance or meaning, that turns it into something that is “for us”, something by which “God saves” us in Jesus. It is by the Word of God that a man speaking at the front of the church becomes a messenger from God for us, declaring to us God’s promises in the Gospel. It is by that same Word of God that water becomes a life-giving Baptism, and bread and wine become the body and blood of our Lord, given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins.

Which is why even if we had spent five minutes this morning swinging incense and wandering around with candles before and after this miniature Gospel passage – nice though that would have been – it would still be that one short sentence that was the truly significant event.

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