Pointing our gaze upward

Trevin Wax on certain welcome trends in Christian worship:

...[T]here’s a clear movement among younger generations toward rooted, established forms of worship—often termed “high church”—with a focus on liturgy, sacraments, and ritualistic elements. Stories abound of young men drawn to Eastern Orthodoxy, increased interest in Roman Catholicism among young Brits, and even Baptists rediscovering liturgical worship.

Simultaneously, a different wave is drawing young people toward passionate, exuberant contemporary worship, in multiple denominations that now display elements often associated with charismatic or Pentecostal circles. ....

Until recently, I had a hard time reconciling these countervailing trends: Why would young people flock both to highly traditional liturgical services and lively charismatic worship? ....

The answer became clear recently when my friend Glen Scrivener shared his thoughts on the quiet revival among U.K. youth. Glen identified the common thread connecting the allure of both low-church charismatic services and high-church liturgical experiences: The attraction is precisely their “churchiness.” Although the forms differ, the substance is similar. Both expressions stand radically apart from secular culture by embracing mystery and transcendence. Whether it’s the fervor of Pentecostal worship or the rhythm of sacramental traditions, both resonate deeply in a flattened, disenchanted world. ....

At their core, both the growing high-church and low-church movements provide a response to an inward-focused spirituality; they offer the possibility of genuine transcendence, a mysterious encounter with God. In many cases, seeker churches end up reducing spirituality to inspirational tips, treating God like a supportive life coach in a self-fulfillment project. ....

Although the “be true to yourself” script of 21st-century America may have succeeded in convincing us we’re at the center of the universe, as if each of us is our own sun, with everyone else (including God) as planets revolving around us, it fails in the existential application. God’s “God-ness” is too glorious to remain on the periphery. The reality of transcendence is too bright to be darkened. ....

The church points our gaze upward. The church beckons us into the mystery of God and the glory of the gospel. The church gives us not a shallow spectacle but scriptural spectacles through which we see the Lord and see each other. The church is rooted. The church is real.

Churchy or not, the great appeal of God’s people is not in becoming more like the world but in pointing clearly beyond it. (more)

Anyone who has followed my blog knows that I am more stmpathetic to the more traditional forms of worship but I welcome any "through which we see the Lord."

Trevin Wax, "Churchiness Is Back," TGC, June 10, 2025.

Heaven

Joni Eareckson Tada reflecting on the hymn "When We All Get to Heaven":

.... Shining in brilliant beauty, with no more pain or sorrow, dementia, or disability. We will shed these travails as we would a heavy coat slipping from our shoulders, and we'll finally comprehend that the whole plan of redemption—all the suffering—was the Father's way of securing for his Son a wonderful gift: a radiant bride. And to think we can brighten that radiance, for it will be made plain how our suffering prepared us for such shining glory! Charles Spurgeon writes:

We make too much of this poor life, for the trials that now weigh us down will soon vanish like morning dew. We are only here long enough to feel an April shower of pain, then we are gone among the unfading flowers of the endless May. So, put things in order. Allot to this brief life its brief consideration, and to everlasting glory, its weight of happy meditations.

Now picture it. You and I among great multitudes of the redeemed, pulsing with joy and infused with light. We are surrounded by the angelic host, and we happily press in line with the great procession of the saved, streaming through gates of pearl, an infinite cavalcade from earth's wide bounds and the oceans' farthest coasts, all in one joyous parade countless generations, all lifting our diadems before God. ....

Joni Eareckson Tada, Songs of Suffering: 25 Hymns and Devotions for Weary Souls, Crossway, 2022.

"Be our strength..."

1 Father, hear the prayer we offer:     not for ease that prayer shall be, but for strength that we may ever live our lives courageously.	3 Not forever by still waters would we idly rest and stay; but would smite the living fountains from the rocks along our way.
2 Not forever in green pastures do we ask our way to be; but the steep and rugged pathway may we tread rejoicingly.	4 Be our strength in hours of weakness, in our wanderings be our guide; through endeavour, failure, danger, Father, be Thou at our side.

"Without our aid..."

Re-posted, updated, from a very early post here:

Know that the LORD is God indeed;
Without our aid He did us make;
We are His flock, He doth us feed,
And for His sheep He doth us take.
Old 100^th

In the KJV, verse 3 of Psalm 100 reads "Know ye that the LORD He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture." Old 100^th reworks the second phrase to read "Without our aid He did us make." I've always liked that. It is an important reminder, particularly to those of us inclined to the sin of Pride, which is to say all of us.

In the late 1980s, browsing through CDs in a music store in London, I came across Psalms of Scotland by the Scottish Philharmonic Singers. It is a wonderful collection, beautifully sung, of twenty selections from the Scottish Psalter. The image here is of that CD. I was pleased to discover this morning that the recording is still available from Amazon here.

There have always been those who believe that only the Psalms should be sung in church. Like Watts, the early Seventh Day Baptist hymn writer, Joseph Stennett, was consequently very careful to establish the Biblical basis for hymns that were not paraphrases of the Psalms. Although singing only the Psalms seems needlessly restrictive, they should certainly be an important part of worship. That is, after all, what they are intended for, and there is a rich heritage to enjoy.

"Dust to dust"

Re-posted because it is so right:

Jonathan Aigner ponders "How To Choose Music For A Funeral." I agree with much (not all) that he writes but very much agree with the following and have made my preference clear to my pastor, relatives, and friends:

One of the things the baby boomer generation has introduced into the liturgical sphere is the “celebration of life” service. That’s quite unfortunate.

A “celebration of life” points to a dead person. A funeral points to the cross.

A “celebration of life” sidesteps grief. A funeral confronts grief head-on.

A “celebration of life” ignores resurrection. A funeral depends on resurrection.

Funerals aren’t celebrations of human life. Funerals are proclamations of another life, a life that ended in a death that ended in a life.

That is the life worth celebrating. The music you choose must point to Jesus, not to the casket. ....

Death sucks. It just sucks. And when we lose someone we love, we remember how badly it sucks. And we helplessly face the fact that we can’t do a damn thing about it.

It’s not supposed to be that way.

But Jesus lives, and so shall we.

And that makes all the difference.

How To Choose Music For A Funeral

A Christian funeral

A post from a few years ago:

I've been thinking about Christian funerals recently, and especially the "celebration of the life" of the deceased in a Christian context. Obviously a funeral or memorial service for a Christian will spend some time remembering the life, the character, the faith, and the contributions — the achievements — of that person. But it seems to me that should not be the primary focus. Of course for a dead  non-believer that may be all that can be said. For a believer the emphasis should be on the Hope we have.

The Book of Common Prayer has a section titled "The Order for The Burial of the Dead," and like every section of that book it rests very heavily on Scripture. The prayers are good, too. I chose readings from this section for my mother's funeral and was somewhat surprised afterwards to be complimented for the choices. I thought they would be familiar to anyone who had attended a funeral. They should be.

The service begins with these words:

I AM the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

More, later in the service:

JESUS said, Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

I HEARD a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord: even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours.

O LORD Jesus Christ, who by thy death didst take away the sting of death; Grant unto us thy servants so to follow in faith where thou hast led the way, that we may at length fall asleep peacefully in thee, and awake up after thy likeness; through thy mercy, who livest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

I AM the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

We believe...

Upon occasion, the congregation in my church would recite the Apostles Creed in the Sabbath morning service. That isn't typical of Baptist worship. Many among us claim to be non-creedal, basing belief only on Scripture. Actually, that means creating a personal creed, since interpretations of Scripture can differ. This summer, the Southern Baptists will consider adding the Nicene Creed to the "Baptist Faith and Message," that denomination's belief statement. A few excerpts from arguments made by advocates of the proposal:

As each generation of Christians since the fourth century has rightly noted, the Nicene Creed’s statements are thoroughly biblical. It covers the full slate of major loci in Christian theology – the Trinity, Christology, salvation, creation, Scripture, the church, and the last things. ....

Affirming the Nicene Creed is not new in Baptist history. The rich confessional tradition among Baptists, both General (Arminian) and Particular (Calvinist) Baptists, has often made use of creedal language. For example, the influential Second London Confession of Faith (adopted in 1689) utilized specifically creedal formulations in its statement on the Trinity and the Incarnation: “one substance”, “begotten”, “proceeding,” “very…God,” and so on. ....

In addition to this general creedal dependence, at least two Baptist confessions included the full text of the three ecumenical creeds. First, the Orthodox Creed, an important seventeenth-century General Baptist confession compiled by the influential Baptist theologian Thomas Monck, affirms and includes the text of all three ecumenical creeds in Article 38. Echoing the language of the Articles of Religion, the confession begins as follows,

The Three Creeds, (viz.) Nicene Creed, Athanasius his Creed, and the Apostles Creed, (as they are commonly called) ought throughly to be received, and believed. For we believe they may be proved by most undoubted Authority of holy Scripture....

So, affirming the Nicene Creed is both biblical and Baptist, but it is also beneficial. Affirming the Creed in our confessional document would have the advantage of endorsing it and commending its use in the context of local church ministry. ....

R. Lucas Stamps & Matthew Y. Emerson, "Why We Support Adding the Nicene Creed to the Baptist Faith and Message," The Center for Baptist Renewal, June 8, 2024.

Working the crowd

I first posted this in 2009. I like the argument. The picture is of the pulpit in the Newport Seventh Day Baptist Church, the first SDB church in North America.

The Wittenberg Door regrets "The Loss of Symbolism," specifically what seems an aversion to the pulpit, which the pastor once ascended to preach the Word. He argues that the pulpit symbolized something very important in Christian — and particularly Reformed — doctrine.

The pulpit comprises a lectern standing upon a raised platform. Being the most important piece of “furniture” in the church, it is positioned in front of the congregation, with all pews facing it. Its symbolic importance can be summarized as follows:

• It’s central—The pulpit’s central placement is important because it is from there that God addresses His people via the preached word. Therefore, it commands the most prominent place in the church.
• It’s raised—The pulpit is elevated because it is upon the lectern that the minister’s bible rests, symbolizing the word of God being over the people.
• It’s solid—The lectern is made of solid wood, symbolizing the sure foundation upon which God’s word stands. Moreover, it’s large enough to obscure most of the minister’s body, thus keeping the focus on the word. For this reason, Reformed ministers stay behind the lectern, so as to stay behind the word of God. ....

Things have changed, though. Pulpits are considered outdated, and even stifling. Like nature, the church abhors a vacuum. In the pulpit’s place sprung the Plexiglas stand, allowing the “minister” to be seen in all of his glory. But this too is seen by some as cumbersome. Why let anything stand in front of the minister, hindering his ability to work the crowd...?

Too harsh? Perhaps. But the transition from the pulpit to more modern elements is symptomatic of a greater problem: a shift from the glory of God to the glory of man; ... a shift from the preached word as a Means of Grace to the advent of a new sacrament—the minister himself. ....

The Wittenberg Door: The Loss of Symbolism

Not about how I feel

Carl Greene is Executive Director of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference. In the current Sabbath Recorder, he writes "Sabbath Liturgy is Not All About Me":

Liturgy is not a word that we drop in our Seventh Day Baptist circles very often. Even less often do we use the word as a positive descriptor of ourselves. We prefer to say that we are non-liturgical and simply use an order of service for gathered worship. We tend to see the label of liturgical as representative of worship that has become routine to the point of mindless repetition.

I will confess. I like the word liturgy. I am out to convince you that liturgy is a lovable word.

Liturgy is derived from the Greek work leitourgia. It gets better. Two words are contained within liturgy: people (laos) and work (ergon). Hence, leitourgia is literally a "work of the people."' Liturgy is not some stodgy approach to worship—it is the intentional way that we worship together as a body. What I like about using the word "liturgy" is that it keeps us focused on Biblical worship rather than attractional worship.

Our only metric for assessing worship can all too easily be reduced to an assessment of if people like it. This constitutes seeing worship mainly as an attraction to get people through the doors of a church building. One way we do this is by directly demanding our worship personal style preferences—because any normal person will agree with my worship preferences. That usually does not end well.

We can also be indirect in communicating our worship wants. We refer to the wants of people who do not attend worship (yet) but we are confident will come to worship if we make some strategic changes. It just so happens that the worship preferences of the currently-not-attending are the same preferences as mine. I do not even have to ask them. ....

...[O]ur practice of liturgical worship is not so much focused on how I feel or what I want but focused on our great God. ....

Carl Greene, "Sabbath Liturgy is Not All About Me," Sabbath Recorder, May, 2024. (pdf)

You can run, but you can’t hide

ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love Thee, and worthily magnify Thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Philip Jenkins on that prayer:

In its present form, it goes back to the brilliant English scholar Alcuin, who worked with Charlemagne in the late eighth century to create a Christian civilization in Western Europe. Let’s say around 790. There is some doubt as to whether the prayer has older origins, perhaps back to Gregory the Great, around 600. ....

In the 1540s, Anglican reformer Thomas Cranmer took this Collect – as he did so much else from the medieval service books – and incorporated it into the regular liturgy of Common Prayer....

Several things come to mind about this collect, but above all the sense of rigorous and absolutely honest self-examination. It comes close to creating the mood of final judgment: whatever fronts or false faces you put up, God sees behind them. Or if you like melodrama, you can run, but you can’t hide. ....

It is a near-perfect prayer for any and all Christian denominations. That is partly because it is so rooted in the Biblical tradition, and specifically the Psalms. See Psalm 139:

You have searched me, Lord,

   and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

   you perceive my thoughts from afar…

Psalm 51 has also left its echoes. ....

Jenkins on how the prayer illustrates the usefulness of liturgy: 

• Like the best parts of any liturgy, the Collect takes essential points about the Christian approach to life, and puts them in simple and memorable form.
• It says these things better, more comprehensively, and more concisely than we could ever do ourselves.
• By saying the words repeatedly, week by week, we learn and internalize them, and learn how to approach our own mental processes. ....
• And as we say the words, we are aware of a tradition that takes us back well over a millennium, and perhaps far longer. We say them together with Thomas Cranmer and Alcuin.
• We see and understand the chain of continuity, and place ourselves within that continuity.

Philip Jenkins, "From You No Secrets Are Hid," Anxious Bench, March 5, 2024.

"We would have hated each other in middle school"

From Russell Moore on "Us and Them and CCM" (Contemporary Christian Music) responding to a new book:

A friend and I were talking once about the first concerts we ever attended. His was Van Halen; mine was Amy Grant.

"Okay, second concert?" he asked.

Him: Mötley Crüe. Me: Petra.

After a minute or two of silence, he said, "You realize we would have hated each other in middle school, don’t you?"

One of us was part of a sheltered subculture quickly passing away. The other listened to music that was a gateway drug to what some say led to riots and rebellion. Turns out, my musical taste, not his, was the dangerous one. ....

Should conservative Protestant teenagers and college students be rightly equipped for the fact that they will be out of step with their peers in modern American culture? Yes.

The problem, though, is that Augustine’s City of God would not sell very well in a 20th- or 21st-century American Christian market. The nuanced truth that "You will be made to feel strange at times for following Christ, but you’re not under persecution (and, by the way, you’re not nearly strange enough in the ways Jesus actually called you to be)" isn’t nearly as exciting as, "This is the terminal generation. The elites are out to destroy you, and you are the only thing standing between Christian America and the New World Order."

"God wants what you want (for you to be happy and healthy and flush with cash)" sells. So does "You’re the real America and everybody else wants to kill you." Messages of actual cross-bearing and a cruciform life, however, do not sell well at all. ....

To some degree, that’s to be expected. The music business is, after all, a business. But, as Payne points out, some reformers (including my now CT colleague Charlie Peacock) warned of ways the business model could be at cross purposes with the teaching power of music—and many artists (such as the late Rich Mullins and Michael Card) charted a different, more theologically grounded and biblically holistic course.

When the consensus determines what’s acceptable as a Christian and what’s not, one cannot help but end up with what The Guardian identified as a "market-driven approach to truth," in which a group ends up "finding most hateful to God the sins that least tempt its members, while those sins that are most popular become redefined and even sanctified." ....

Contemporary Christian music, flawed as any human endeavor is, was a positive force in my life. The music of Amy Grant and Rich Mullins went with me through an adolescent spiritual crisis and are probably part of the reason I came out of it more Christian than I went in. I’m amazed by how much of my incipient theology—convictions I teach to this day—was taught to me by Petra lyrics. I have never, not once in 30 years of ministry, preached Romans 6 without hearing their "Dead Reckoning" song in my mind.

I learned how to read biblical narrative Christologically, how to understand parable and poetry and paradox, from the lyrics of Michael Card. I might be embarrassed to tell you how often, in the middle of dark times, what strengthens me are words like "Where there is faith / There is a voice calling, keep walking / You’re not alone in this world" or "I’ll be a witness in the silences when words are not enough" or "God is in control / We will choose to remember and never be shaken." None of that may be rock-and-roll, but I will die believing that God gave that to me. .... (more)

Russell Moore, "How Contemporary Christian Music Explains American Christianity," Christianity Today, February 15, 2024.

Worship traditions

In Challies' "I Feel At Home in Your Church" he argues that denominational diversity is a strength rather than an indictment of Protestantism. "I choose to see each tradition as highlighting different aspects of God’s purpose for the local church. As a prism refracts the light and separates it into its component colors, the differing traditions refract the Bible’s varying commands and emphases." He is referring primarily to differences in worship practice.

• I feel at home in a Brethren church. I feel at home because of its commitment to simplicity in worship and to the necessity of celebrating the Lord’s Supper on a weekly basis. ....
• I feel at home in an Anglican church. It feels familiar because its worship is so thoroughly steeped in Word and prayer. ....
• I feel at home in a Presbyterian church because of its commitment to sound doctrine and expositional preaching. ....
• I feel at home also in those Presbyterian churches that hold to a strict interpretation of the regulative principle. Such churches will only worship in ways the Bible explicitly commands. ....
• I feel at home in a Dutch Reformed church because it values simple, formal worship followed by warm and charitable hospitality. ....
• I feel at home in many non-denominational churches as well, though most fit at least one of the descriptions above or below. ....
• I feel at home in a Baptist church, for I myself am Baptist. As I search the Scriptures for its instructions on what a local church ought to be and how it ought to worship, I see it describing something very much like a church structured around the London Baptist Confession. ....

And while I am confidently and convictionally Baptist, I do love to experience other churches and consider it a blessing to worship among other traditions that teach the same Scriptures and preach the same gospel. .... (more)

Tim Challies, "I Feel At Home in Your Church," Challies, January 10, 2024

O that birth forever blessèd

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!

O that birth forever blessèd, when the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bore the Savior of our race;
And the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face, evermore and evermore!

O ye heights of heaven adore Him; angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him, and extol our God and King!
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert ring, evermore and evermore!

Christ, to Thee with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory, evermore and evermore!
(Prudentius, 5^th Century)

The dawn will break

Reflecting on the traditional liturgy as Christmas approaches:

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” derives from a far older cycle of Advent prayers called the O Antiphons. From the eighth century, the Western church has prayed these antiphons during Evening Vespers in the final days of Advent (December 17-23), calling out to the imminent Christ by a different title each evening. The vocative “O” resembles, in the words of theologian Oliver Treanor, “the womb of the Virgin in late pregnancy, round and full of Christ,” and each prayer calls out to the imminent Christ by a different title: O Wisdom, O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Rising Sun, O King of Nations, and finally, O Emmanuel.

These different prophetic titles given to Christ offer hearers multiple ways to receive the news of the gospel—that Christ came to atone for the sins of his people. Rich in symbolic imagery, history, and poetry, the O Antiphons speak to the mysterious and paradoxical nature of the Christmas story, in which an all-powerful God enters human history not in a blaze of almighty glory, but as a helpless child, out of wedlock, wrapped in swaddling clothes. ....

In the final title given to Christ in the antiphons, Emmanuel—God-with-us—humans are joined with God forever, as the hyphenation suggests. That God would take on human frailty, would suffer with humanity and in human flesh, is the basis upon which the logic of creation is radically upended: the wolf will live with the lamb, the last will be the first, and the meek will inherit the earth. In this new order even the most intractable human situations, in which hate or vengeance or greed seem destined to persist, become ripe for change. ....

We are far from the first, and won’t be the last, generation to call out for God to, as one of the antiphons puts it, “come and save man whom you made from clay.” The promise alluded to in the prayers is not that the darkness will never close in on us, but that when it does, the dawn will break too, even in a manger, even on a cross, even in a tomb. .... (more)

Megan Dent, "When Obscure Christmas Liturgies Become Relevant Anew," The Dispatch, December 17, 2023.

The hinge of history

On the importance of knowing whose birth we will celebrate on Christmas (John 1:14):

Who then was Jesus, really?

You cannot even ask the question without implicitly choosing among answers. The very wording of the question, in the past tense ("Who was Jesus?") or the present ("Who is Jesus?"), presupposes its own answer. For those who believe his claim do not say that he was divine, but is divine. Divinity does not change or die or disappear into the past. Furthermore, if he really rose from the dead, he still is, and is very much alive today.

The Importance of the Issue

The issue is crucially important for at least six reasons.

1. The divinity of Christ is the most distinctively Christian doctrine of all. A Christian is most essentially defined as one who believes this. And no other religion has a doctrine that is even similar. Buddhists do not believe that Buddha was God. Muslims do not believe that Muhammad was God: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet."

2. The essential difference between orthodox, traditional, biblical, apostolic, historic, creedal Christianity and revisionist, modernist, liberal Christianity is right here. The essential modernist revision is to see Christ simply as the ideal man, or "the man for others"; as a prophet, rabbi, philosopher, teacher, social worker, psychologist, psychiatrist, reformer, sage or magician—but not God in the flesh.

3. The doctrine works like a skeleton key, unlocking all the other doctrinal doors of Christianity. Christians believe each of their many doctrines not because they have reasoned their own way to them as conclusions from a theological inquiry or as results of some mystical experiences, but on the divine authority of the One who taught them, as recorded in the Bible and transmitted by the church.

If Christ was only human, he could have made mistakes. Thus, anyone who wants to dissent from any of Christ's unpopular teachings will want to deny his divinity. And there are bound to be things in his teachings that each of us finds offensive—if we look at the totality of those teachings rather than confining ourselves to comfortable and familiar ones.

4. If Christ is divine, then the incarnation, or "enfleshing" of God, is the most important event in history. It is the hinge of history. It changes everything. If Christ is God, then when he died on the cross, heaven's gate, closed by sin, opened up to us for the first time since Eden. No event in history could be more important to every person on earth than that.

5. There is an unparalleled present existential bite to the doctrine. For if Christ is God, then, since he is omnipotent and present right now, he can transform you and your life right now as nothing and no one else possibly can. He alone can fulfill the psalmist's desperate plea to "create in me a clean heart. O God" (Ps 51:10). Only God can create; there is even a special word in Hebrew for it (bara').

6. And if Christ is divine, he has a right to our entire lives, including our inner life and our thoughts. If Christ is divine, our absolute obligation is to believe everything he says and obey everything he commands. If Christ is divine, the meaning of freedom becomes conformity to him.

Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, IVP, 1994, pp. 151-152.

"Pleasures less fugitive and griefs more endurable"

From ""The Power of Wise Custom" by Thomas Howard:

How should we worship?

It would seem presumptuous in the extreme for any mortal to take upon himself the authority to dictate to another how to worship. "Good heavens, man, are you serious? You are outgodding God. Don't tell me how to worship."

Who, indeed, will presume to legislate here? Surely God loves the spontaneous noises of his creatures: the buzzing of the wasp, the croaking of the frog, the scream of the eagle. Would this not include my own staggering efforts to find impromptu words with which to praise him? The form, or formlessness, of public worship is purely a matter of taste.

Not altogether. Those who urge this upon us forget two things: first, there is no such thing as spontaneity in any regularly recurring public occasion. Quakers, Brethren, and Pentecostals all would testify to this. Anyone from any of those "informal" purlieus will tell us that everyone present knows exactly what is going to happen, and when, and with what phraseology. There is an unmistakable beginning to the "service" and an unmistakable end; and what happens in between is what happened last Sunday, and the Sunday before that, ad infinitum. ....

Anyone who has lived with the burden of producing perennially impromptu prayers knows what an ordeal it is to keep those prayers "fresh". In fact, such a person knows that you cannot. You are reduced to piecing together a sequence of phrases familiar in your tradition. ....

C.S. Lewis felt rather strongly in this matter (though he considered himself a man who did not naturally like ritual; it embarrassed him). Speaking of ritual, he wrote, in Preface to Paradise Lost, "those who dislike ritual in general—ritual in any and every department of life—may be asked most earnestly to reconsider the question. It is a pattern imposed on the mere flux of our feelings by reason and will, which renders pleasures less fugitive and griefs more endurable, which hands over to the power of wise custom the task (to which the individual and his moods are so inadequate) being festive or sober, gay or reverent, when we choose to be, and not at the bidding of chance."

Thomas Howard, "The Power of Wise Custom" (2000), collected in The Night is Far Spent, Ignatious Press, 2007.

Advent

The Christian season of Advent begins this weekend. Advent is about waiting — waiting with anticipation. The waiting that anticipated the coming of Messiah and the waiting that anticipates His coming again. From "Why Celebrate Advent?" by Timothy Paul Jones:

.... Advent links our hearts with those of ancient prophets who pined for a long-promised Messiah but passed long before his arrival.

In the process, Advent reminds us that we, too, are waiting.....

“The whole creation,” the apostle Paul declared, “has been groaning together for redemption.”

In Advent, Christians embrace the groaning and recognize it not as hopeless whimpering over the paucity of the present moment but as expectant yearning for a divine banquet that Jesus is preparing for us even now. In Advent, the church admits, as poet R.S. Thomas has put it, that “the meaning is in the waiting.” And what we await is a final Advent that is yet to come. Just as the ancient Israelites waited for the coming of the Messiah in flesh, we await the consummation of the good news through the Messiah’s return in glory. In Advent, believers confess that the infant who drew his first ragged breath between a virgin’s knees has yet to speak his final word. ....

Journalist Malcolm Muggeridge once suggested that “all happenings, great and small, are parables by which God speaks. The art of life is to get the message.” Advent reminds us to listen for the message that God is speaking, even in the waiting.

Timothy Paul Jones, "Why Celebrate Advent?," TGC Worship, December 1, 2015.

Sabbath

On Thursday (June 1) PBS will broadcast a two-hour documentary called "Sabbath."

From The Washington Post:

In his book The Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that Jews did not build great cathedrals into space. Their great accomplishment was a cathedral in time — the Shabbat, or 24-hour period of rest.

“Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time,” Heschel wrote.

That cathedral in time is part of the filmmaker Martin Doblmeier’s latest documentary, a two-part program called “Sabbath.” ....

As in his previous documentaries, Doblmeier has recruited an A-list of theologians, scholars and clergy to offer insights historical, theological and sociological. ....

The film consists of travels to various religious communities to illustrate their Sabbath practices. The places visited include the headquarters of Chabad, the Hasidic sect in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; a Seventh-day Adventist church in Loma Linda, Calif.; and the predominantly African American Eastern Star Church led by the Indianapolis pastor Jeffrey A. Johnson. .... (more, but probably requiring a subscription)

A manual of spiritual disipline

Alan Jacobs referred today to this interesting post by a Church of England vicar:

The Book of Common Prayer is enjoying a revival in the Church of England, despite the best efforts of some modernists to mothball it. Over the past two years, more and more churchgoers have asked me about a return to Thomas Cranmer’s exquisite language, essentially unaltered since 1662, for church services and private devotions. Other vicars tell me they have had a similar increase in interest. ....

What’s interesting is that the C of E’s Book of Common Prayer revival is overwhelmingly led by millennials. What the 1960s ecclesiastical revolutionaries wrote off, a younger generation is embracing. Brandon LeTourneau, 27, a convert from Judaism and soon to be ordained ministry intern, is hardly a young fogey. He wears Dr Martens and is covered in tattoos. He jokes that from what he can see no one under 40 is joining a church that doesn’t focus on tradition and rigour. ‘Why should I bother with a church that doesn’t challenge me spiritually or a liturgy that doesn’t demand more of me?’ Though he started his Christian life being baptised in a Californian megachurch swimming pool, he found himself longing for something more exacting. ....

It would be a mistake to misinterpret renewed interest in the Prayer Book as a purely aesthetic enterprise, a sort of religious Classic FM. What is clear is that the appeal is not just about Shakespearean language, beautiful though it evidently is. The Prayer Book is theology at its best. It is a manual of spiritual discipline that is as far removed from modern, cringe-inducing ‘wellness’ gobbledygook as can be. Its uncompromising opening, ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts’, is a brick through the window to many facets of modern living including narcissism, egotism and the crocodile tears of identity politics. ....

I have a few editions of The Book of Common Prayer. One of the most interesting, the one I've gone to most often recently, is The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition published by InterVarsity Press ($24.49 at Amazon).

Daniel French, "Why millennial men are turning to the Book of Common Prayer," The Spectator, May 2, 2023.

Vain repetition

I originally posted this YouTube video about ten years ago. That post recently appeared among the "Popular Posts" in the right-hand column. Churches in my denomination don't include a creedal recitation as a part of our worship. It could be a good thing to do since doing so reminds us of orthodox doctrine. I recall a conversation with a Lutheran friend — Lutherans do typically include this Creed — who indicated disbelief in the divinity of Christ. I asked if he repeated the Creed, asserting his belief, without meaning what he was saying. That's what this is about: