“Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bands” performed by choir and congregation of the Te Deum Conference at Concordia University (2015)
This moving hymn by Martin Luther comes to us through Englishman Richard Massie (1800-1887). The tune is a modification of a chant by German Johann Walther (1496-1570). The Psalter Hymnal Handbook states Luther may have worked on this arrangement as well.
1 Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands For our offenses given; But now at God’s right hand He stands And brings us life from heaven. Therefore let us joyful be And sing to God right thankfully Loud songs of alleluia! Alleluia!
2 No son of man could conquer death, Such ruin sin had wrought us. No innocence was found on earth, And therefore death had brought us Into bondage from of old And ever grew more strong and bold And held us as its captive. Alleluia!
3 Christ Jesus, God’s own Son, came down, His people to deliver; Destroying sin, He took the crown From death’s pale brow forever: Stripped of pow’r, no more it reigns; An empty form alone remains; Its sting is lost forever. Alleluia!
It’s Holy Saturday, so let’s begin with a few words about Christ.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53:8-11 ESV)
As for other subjects:
Read good books: Reading thoughtfully, like having a good conversation with an author, may be the very thing you need to reset your soul and rebel against the spirit of the age. “Christians who immerse themselves in creative writing are good stewards of their time — not wasteful — because writing, reading, and ruminating on words can glorify our Maker.”
Read and walk too: Some people have taken to walking while reading; some of them really can’t see where they’re going.
Booksellers New Friend?Once considered the embodiment of everything that was wrong in bookselling, Barnes & Noble is succeeding and many indie booksellers are rooting for it. (via ArtsJournal)
Isaac Watts’s “Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed” set to a common Irish folk melody
Good Friday. I have a book I want to review, but I’ve got to address more important things on the holiest weekend of the year.
Above, a beautiful rendition of O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, with words I’m not familiar with. The hymn’s origins are complicated. The original poem, of which this hymn is just a section, was written either by St. Bernard of Clairvaux or by Bishop Arnulf of Villers-la-Ville. The section was translated into German by the famed Lutheran hymn writer Paul Gerhardt, a pastor who suffered greatly during the Thirty Years War. The traditional setting is by no less a composer than Johan Sebastian Bach. The traditional American translation of the text came from James W. Alexander, a Presbyterian churchman and scholar.
To my mind, this is the best Lenten hymn. But there are many other fine ones out there too.
I want to write about a point of apologetics tonight. I’ve probably laid it out here before. But it seems to me the absolute, rock-bottom argument for Christianity.
Your mileage may vary. I may even be talking through my hat. All our proofs, I am certain, will whirl away like autumn leaves when we behold the One whom Father Ailill likes to call the Beloved.
Ask anyone what’s the most important thing in the universe. Doesn’t matter who. Christian, Jew, atheist. (This may be different in countries with non-Abrahamic religions – I know less about them. But I’m addressing my neighbors, my fellow Americans and Europeans.)
You know what the answer is: Love. Love is the answer. Love is all you need. The greatest of these is love.
But does this make sense outside of the Christian faith?
I’m sure there are lots of atheists around who also say, “Love is the answer, love is the greatest thing.” They take it for granted. It’s the minimal place-holder for religion they’ve been raised with (even if they were raised by other atheists).
But if there is no God, what does that mean? If the ultimate truth of the universe is impersonal, how can love be the answer? Objects don’t love. Energy doesn’t love. Rocks don’t love. Trees don’t love.
Only persons love.
If some Person doesn’t lie behind all the material things we know, then love means nothing. Because sentient creatures will die out eventually, and then love will go away. And it won’t be the answer.
Christianity says that a Person made the universe, and loved us, and demonstrated the greatest love conceivable in the atonement and resurrection.
Blab about love all you want, but if you don’t believe in that God, then it seems to me you’re just surviving on the scraps you picked up under Christianity’s table.
You could choose Judaism or Islam, I suppose, but there’s no parallel act of love.
“Ride On, King Jesus” performed by the youth choir of Washington Ghanaian S.D.A. Church, Columbia, Maryland
Today’s hymn is a spiritual that has been arranged by many musicians since it gained common ground over 150 years ago. The words easily apply to Palm Sunday, as demonstrated by the Scripture read at the beginning of this video.
Ride on, King Jesus, no man can a-hinder me. no man can a-hinder me. In that great gettin’ up morning, fare ye well, fare ye well.
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double. (Zachariah 9:9-12 ESV)
Our Lord comes in humility and cuts off the warcraft of his enemies. Should that apply directly to our public discourse, to our perception of the culture war?
Bach’s greater Passion has a lot of moving parts: two choirs, four soloists, a narrator, an orchestra, and an organist. And in last week’s performance [2019], there was also the audience, as Saint Thomas participated in the German Lutheran Good Friday tradition of singing congregational chorales surrounding the main musical event. Saint Thomas’s associate organist, Benjamin Sheen, played Bach’s prelude to Johann Böschenstein’s “Da Jesu an dem Kreuze stund” (“When on the cross the Savior hung”), and then the audience was encouraged to sing along in English.
Prayer: Can prayer make your anxiety worse? “My self-centered pity party lamented my situation always instead of rejoicing in the Lord always.”
Manhood: There’s a new book that claims it’s good to be a man, and it’s isn’t that the world still needs isolated rebels with personal agendas.
Photo: Rube & Sons Shell gas station, Kingston, New York. 1976. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Let me just say at the outset that this may have been one of the best days of my life. I can’t give you details because that would be betraying a confidence, but a development happened in my life that ought to improve my happiness about 50%.
This development happened, I should tell you, soon after I determined for the first time to pray about it daily. Just sayin’.
I’ve been listening to Norwegian Christian radio on my cell phone, as I’ve told you. And because of that, today I thought I’d post a performance of Carolina Sandell’s famous hymn known in English as “Children of the Heavenly Father.” Very familiar to all us Scandinavians, but I believe it’s known to more benighted groups as well. The rendition above was done by the choir of Bethel College — but it doesn’t tell me whether it’s the Bethel College in Newton, Kansas of our own Bethel College (now University) here in Minneapolis.
I hesitate to mention it, but just as I sat down to post this, my Norwegian station played it. Gave me the shivers.
I don’t know how many congregations sing this gospel song by Connecticut Methodist Jefferson Hascall, but Hymnary.org claims it has been published in 183 hymnals since 1860. This tune is not the original, but the meter of the lyric is so common, you could sing it any number of ways. William Batchelder Bradbury gave us the current tune, entitled, “The Land of Beulah,” published in 1862.
1 My latest sun is sinking fast, my race is nearly run; my strongest trials now are past, my triumph is begun.
Refrain: O come, angel band, come and around me stand; O bear me away on your snowy wings to my immortal home. O bear me away on your snowy wings to my immortal home.
Thursday was the anniversary of the completion of Paris’s iconic ironwork project, The Eiffel Tower, named for the owner of the company that proposed and assembled it by March 31, 1889. They were aiming to have it up for the 1889 World’s Fair to be part of the centennial gala of the French Revolution. Philadelphia held a similar one in 1876.
The architect proposed using large stone monumental pedestals at the base and glass halls on every level of the tower. It’s final, simplified design was constructed in 18,000 parts in Eiffel’s factory about three miles away. The measured every piece carefully and mathematically configured the lattice work to minimize wind resistance. Two and half million rivets hold together the 1083-foot tower.
Viewing the construction for a few weeks before completion, journalist Emile Goudeau wrote, “One could have taken them for blacksmiths contentedly beating out a rhythm on an anvil in some village forge, except that these smiths were not striking up and down vertically, but horizontally, and as with each blow came a shower of sparks, these black figures, appearing larger than life against the background of the open sky, looked as if they were reaping lightning bolts in the clouds.”
Beauty: Where would we be without beauty? It enlivens the heart; we value it, even if the beautiful thing isn’t useful–putting aside the inherent beauty of some useful, well-designed things.
Symphony: Robert Reilly says, “There is a steadiness in Haydn’s music, a sense of normalcy. At the same time, it is filled with wonder at what is—at its goodness.” Haydn was told his sacred compositions were too cheerful; he replied that his heart leaped for joy at the thought of God. As an example, here’s a performance by the Chiara String Quartet of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words of Christ.”
Isaac Adams: “The race conversation often feels like talking to each other at the Tower of Babel. We may be trying to build together, but we’re frustrated and speaking past one another.” Adams’s book, Talking About Race, intends to inspire healthy conversations on this subject and bring us together.
Here’s a hymn I hope all of us know well. “For All the Saints Who from Their Labors Rest” was written by the “poor man’s bishop” William W. How (1823-1897) to an original tune composed by the great Ralph Vaughan Williams.
1 For all the saints who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest. Alleluia! Alleluia!
2 Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might; thou, Lord, their captain in the well-fought fight; thou, in the darkness dread, their one true light. Alleluia! Alleluia!
3 Oh, may thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold fight as the saints who nobly fought of old and win with them the victor’s crown of gold. Alleluia! Alleluia!
This may be my favorite hymn for as long as I can remember. The original Irish words are attributed to the monk Dallan Forgaill in the poem, “Rop tú mo Baile.” They have been used in Christian services in Ireland for several hundred years. The folk tune, “Slane,” may go back to the 4th century. Both the words and tune are said to have been inspired by St. Patrick’s protest of King Logaire of Tara’s order forbidding any fires until after he lit the sacred fire of the spring equinox. Patrick ignited a fire for Easter on Slane Hill as a way of saying Christ is the king of heaven and earth.
I appreciate the group Celtic Worship for including the oft-skipped third verse in this hymn.
Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power
