In Awe-Struck Wonder, a Reflection on the Day of Epiphany

I read an interesting article this morning called “The Science of Awe,” published in 2018 by the Greater Good Science Centre at UC Berkley. It surveyed some of the recent scientific literature on the human experience of “awe,” and described some of the fascinating effects such experiences can have on the human psyche. This article defined “awe” in terms of two specific characteristics: a “perceived vastness” and a “need for accommodation.” Humans experience awe, in other words, when we encounter something that we perceive to be so immense that it violates our normal understanding of the world. In order to accommodate such experiences epistemologically, we are required to “change the mental structures we use to understand the world” (p. 3). Notably, these “experiences of vastness” can be literal (like seeing the Grand Canyon), or figurative (like “being in the presence of someone with immense prestige”).

According to the research, such experiences have a measurable, positive impact on those who are “awe-struck” in this way. Experiencing awe can increase our feelings of social connectedness, expand our perception of time, improve our critical thinking, increase our positive mood, and decrease our materialistic impulses. Awe makes us kinder, humbler, and more generous. (In one study, “people who stood among awe-inspiring eucalyptus trees picked up more pens for an experimenter who had ‘accidentally’ dropped them, than did people who stared up at a not-so-awe-inspiring building” (p. 4).)

You can read the entire paper here if you want.

But here’s the fascinating thing: the research suggests that people are more likely to experience awe who are more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Awe is also closely connected with a number of positive character traits, including creativity, gratitude, and an appreciation for beauty. One study even found that the wiser you are, the more likely you are to experience awe (wisdom being defined here as an ability to learn from mistakes and an appreciation for one’s own limitations).

I call this fascinating only because in my experience, there are some expressions of Christianity that place a high value on things that actually make “experiences of awe” less likely, things like an insistence on certainty and a discomfort with ambiguity, a fear of mistakes and a suspicion of beauty. (I’m thinking here of the conservative, neo-reformed, semi-fundamentalist expressions of a particular kind of evangelicalism I’ve seen, known, and been part of in the past.) Of course, I’ve also encountered expressions of Christianity that are comfortably at home among unresolved ambiguities, that are almost fecundly creative, that lovingly cherish beauty as a window onto the divine—all the things that seem to increase our propensity for awe.

It left me wondering: could it be that some “ways of being Christian” make us more likely to stand in awe of God than others?

It’s a question worth pondering deeply and prayerfully, given the number of distinctly Christian virtues that, according to the science, regular experiences of awe promote in the human heart: kindness, generosity, joy, humility, social connectedness, and so on. 

How many church discipleship initiatives have you seen that intentionally encouraged participants to sit long and soak deeply in some of the theological ambiguities and unresolved mysteries of the faith, or nurture their creativity in some vulnerable way, or develop a deeply-rooted Christian aesthetic? And yet it could be that one of the best ways to walk the path of discipleship well is simply by developing characteristics like these, things that predispose us towards being awe-struck by God.

It’s worth pondering any time of year, but I’m thinking about it especially today, since it’s January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany, as I write this.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Christian calendar, the Feast of Epiphany is the day we commemorate the arrival of the wisemen at the star-marked spot where the baby Jesus lay, kneeling in awe to worship the newborn Messiah. 

(The word itself comes from a Greek word that means “to reveal,” and it signals the fact that the wisemen recognized that manger-cradled baby to be the Lord’s Messiah only as a result of direct divine revelation; certainly he was not revealed in this way to Herod, nor to any of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who were “in an uproar” when the wisemen showed up on their doorstep, asking where the “King of the Jews” had been born.)

Besides referring to this sacred celebration in the Christian year, however, the word “epiphany” can refer more generally to any experience where you suddenly come to understand something in a whole new way. On a philosophical level, “epiphanies” are moments of perfect clarity, where you catch an ephemeral glimpse into the essential nature and deepest meaning of a thing that up until that point had been entirely opaque to you. Epiphanies, in this philosophical sense, are experiences of profound insight that often lead us into to “awe-struck” moments, as the immense meaning of something previously unrecognized overwhelms us.

One of my favorite examples of an epiphany in this second sense of the word is that strange scene in that even stranger movie, Joe vs. the Volcano, where Joe glimpses the moon in all its splendor while he’s stranded at sea.

Of course, these two meanings of epiphany—the "arrival of the wisemen" meaning, and the “sudden moment of clarity” meaning—are probably more closely related than we could ever know. After all, when those gift-bearing Magi encountered the little Lord Jesus like that, they were coming into contact with a divinity so immense that it would have utterly overcome them with awe, if they could have glimpsed it in all its glory. And even the tiny glimpse they did receive, for all it being veiled in infant flesh and bone, still it sank them to their knees in epiphanic wonder.

If the science of awe has anything to add to our understanding of that moment, it suggests that when they did bow down in awe-struck worship like that, they were actually opening their hearts to all the good things Lord wants for his followers: wisdom, kindness, joy, community, and clearer eyes with which to see the world. And if we would join them, not only on the day of Epiphany but throughout our life of following him, we may find the same things burgeoning in us, as we stand in awe of the divinely revealed Son of God.

3 Minute Theology 5.4: Call and Response

Standing in the Gap: a Reflection on Worship

A while ago, a friend of mine was reading through the Bible, cover to cover for the first time.  She did pretty well with Genesis and Exodus, but when she got to Leviticus, things started to get rocky.

“Why the sudden obsession with cleanliness and animal sacrifice?” she wondered.

While all those elaborate rituals and detailed sacrifices in Leviticus may seem strange to modern readers like us, they’re actually crucial for understanding the person and the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Because the theological vision underlying the Leviticus is that, whatever else God is, he’s transcendent.  The word transcendent means that God is completely other, absolutely unlike anything in Creation.  Like it says in one place:  “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways above your ways.”

Now, we tend to think in spatial terms, so we tend to picture it in this way—that God is “above us” or “far away.”  But in Leviticus, God is not “far away.”  He is the Creator of everything, after all, so he’s always present to the creation; and what’s more, the story of Leviticus is that God has actually come to live right in the midst of his people, in the Tabernacle that Moses made.

God’s Transcendence has to do with his nature, not his location.  God is completely holy, whereas humans sin.  God is completely eternal, whereas humans are tainted by death.  God is pure light in which there is no shadow at all, and humans are ...well, you get the picture.

This is the theological dilemma driving the Book of Leviticus: God is always right there with us, and at the same time, he’s wholly transcendent.  How do you live with a God like that?

In Leviticus the answer is through the ministry of a priest.  A priest must “go between” for the people, in the way that God prescribes, according to rituals he describes, rituals which not only “represent” God’s transcendence to us, but also “bridge it” so that we can in fact, live with him.

So ritual washing, for instance, reminds us that God’s pure and we’re unclean, but it also deals with the problem, by making us clean.  And the rituals of animal sacrifice address the fact that it would mean death for flesh-and-blood creatures like us to stand in the presence of a Holy God, but it also deals with this problem.

The whole Bible agrees with Leviticus on this one:  God is completely transcendent and yet, at the same time, always there.  And because of this, there is no way for Humans to do life-together-with-God—to worship, or pray, or celebrate him—without the work of a Mediator like this.

Someone needs to enter God’s presence on our behalf, bringing “the things of humanity to God,” and bringing the “things of God to us.”

And this is where Jesus comes in.  Because Christians, of course, while they may share the vision of God that Leviticus describes, they don’t actually observe any of the rituals it prescribes.

And this is because the writers of the New Testament kept insisting that Jesus is the fulfillment of the vision for life with God that we find in the Torah.  He is the Great High Priest, but he is also the sacrificial Lamb.  He is the Tabernacle where God’s Glory dwells, but he’s also the Perfect Mediator who enters the Tabernacle for us.

This is why the teaching that Jesus is both fully God and fully human matters so much, because only a fully-human-fully-divine saviour could bridge God’s transcendence for us, brining the things of God to us, and at the same time, bringing human being like us into the divine presence.

For the Christian every aspect of our life with God is really just a participation in the Priestly Ministry of Jesus, who stands as our human representative before God.  Through faith and by the Holy Spirit, our worship, our prayer, our ministry, our very lives are untied with the worship, prayer and ministry that Jesus offers the Father on our behalf.

And because it’s offered in him, it is accepted as holy: pure, perfect and pleasing to God.

Jamming with the Maestro, a thought on prayer

One of my favorite viral videos is of a violinist performing a solo piece in concert.  The audience sits enraptured as the performance reaches its majestic crescendo, and then someone’s cell phone thoughtlessly breaks the spell.

But what this maestro does with the interruption is amazing.

So: the way this maestro graciously incorporates the harsh music of that cell-phone into his performance provides us with a helpful starting point, I think, for understanding Christian prayer.

Now: it’s a basic axiom of the Christian life, that Jesus Christ acts on our behalf as our Great High Priest in Heaven, interceding for us before the Father. Our prayers always come to God in, through and with the prayers of our Mediator, the God-man Jesus Christ.

We see this principle at work in some fascinating ways in the New Testament.

Take the well known “Lord’s Prayer,” for instance.  The disciples see Jesus praying, and ask him to teach them to pray.  And the prayer he taught them goes like this: “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Towards the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus himself is praying, in a garden called Gethsemane.  It’s right before his crucifixion, and Matthew says Jesus prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to pass from me, then thy will be done.”

Right before his obedient death on the cross, Jesus himself prays perfectly the prayer he taught his disciples to pray—that the Father’s will be done.

In Mark’s Gospel, we see the same thing from a different angle.  In Mark’s Gethsemane, Jesus prays these words:  “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you; take this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.”

The word “Abba” is an Aramaic term for Father that expresses intimacy and familiarity—the word “Dad” maybe gets us close to it in English.

But in another place in the New Testament, it’s talking about our life with God, and it says this:  “We are all children of God ... who have received a Spirit of Sonship, and by the Spirit we cry out ‘Abba, Father.’”

In other words: the Holy Spirit puts Christ’s prayer in us when we pray to the Father, and by the Holy Spirit, our prayers become part of the beautiful, trusting, ‘Abba Father’ prayer he prayed in Gethsemane.

What all this means in practical terms, is that when Christians pray, our prayers are united with Jesus’s own prayers to the Father.  He gathers them all up into himself, perfects them in his own self-giving, and then offers them for us in his one glorious prayer:  “Abba, Father, Thy will be done.”

But what does this actually look like?  If Jesus prays for us, does the actual content of our individual prayers mean anything?

Well: imagine a violinist performing in the great concert hall that is heaven.  His music is sweeping and rapturous, and as he performs , sometimes-well-meaning, sometimes-thoughtless, but never especially musical ringtones break the moment.

To the extent that we never know how to pray as we ought, and even when we try, our humanness always gets in the way—in that sense our prayers are those garish ringtones.

The difference, of course—and it’s the difference that makes all the difference— is that rather than seeing these ringtones as thoughtless interruptions, this maestro joyfully welcomes them.

Because he’s the consummate artist.

And he’s able not just to transform them into music, but to weave them seamlessly, effortlessly, and joyfully into his performance, so that they thrill the audience, and without ever losing their original quality, sound as if they always belonged.

This is what Jesus does with our prayers, as faltering and imperferfect as they always are, he gathers them up into his own liturgical self-giving to the Father in heaven, uniting them with his own perfect prayer and offering them with his, to the Father.

In this way our prayers become part of his glorious masterpiece: Yes, Abba Father, Thy will done, on earth as it is in Heaven!

The meaning of worship, the meaning of life

Most Christians would agree that worship is right at the heart of a thriving life with God.  One old description of the Faith says it’s the very reason we were made: “To know God and Glorify Him forever.”

What Christians don’t tend to agree on, however, is what worship actually is.  If you were to ask a bunch of Christians to define worship, you’d probably get a range of answers.  Some would  talk about singing songs about how much they love Jesus.  Some would talk about taking part in the traditional ceremonies of the Church, like communion and baptism.  Some would describe the feelings of awe they get when they’re out in God’s creation.

So what actually is worship?

Maybe it would help if we looked at some key passages in the Bible where people actually are worshiping God, to see if we can’t detect a pattern in what’s happening.

One of the central stories in the Bible, for instance, is about how God rescued the People of Israel when they were slaves in Egypt.  Right at the start of the story, it says that God heard the people groaning in slavery, so he sends Moses to tell them that he’s going to help.  And in Exodus 4:31, it says that when the people heard that the Lord was going to help them, they bowed their heads and worshiped.

God acts, and the People respond.

In another place, after King Solomon built the Lord’s Temple and was consecrating it to the Lord, it says that the fire came down from heaven and the glory of the Lord filled the Temple, so that the priests couldn’t go in. And then it says this “When all the people saw the fire and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down and worshiped.”

Again: God acts, the people respond.

The same pattern is there in the New Testament.  In the Gospel of Luke it tells how Peter met Jesus for the first time.  Peter’s been fishing all night but caught nothing.  Along comes Jesus, who tells Peter to cast his net into the deep water, and when he does, the catch of fish is so huge that they need another boat to help them bring it in.  And then it says, when the Peter saw it, he fell on his knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord, I’m a sinful man.”

Or how about this one.  After Jesus’ resurrection, Doubting Thomas is ... well ... doubting.  And the Resurrected Jesus appears to him and tells him to put his fingers in his wounds.  And when Thomas sees the nail-holes of the cross, he says, with a voice of awed worship: “My Lord and My God.”

This pattern is consistent throughout the Bible.  It always starts with God showing himself in the life of his people.  And the people see God at work.  And then they respond accordingly.

Sometimes we call this the “Revelation-and-response” pattern in worship.  Worship does not begin with us; Worship is what happens when God reveals himself to us in some way, and evokes a response from us that is appropriate to the revelation.

This revelation can happen in all sorts of ways: hearing the Story of Jesus and realizing how much God loves us; reading something in the Bible that puts its finger smack dab on something we’re going through right now; working among the poor and the marginalized and discovering the presence of Jesus there; being reminded of the awesomeness of the Creator by experiencing the beauty of his creation.

God can and does reveal himself to us through all these things and more.  But the key is that worship happens when God shows himself in our lives, and then we respond in ways that his revelation evokes in us.

It may mean raising our hands and singing our hearts out.  It may sitting in overwhelmed silence.  It may mean weeping because we realize something’s not right between us and God.  It may even mean a drastic overhaul of our lives.

But however it happens, in that response to God, we’ll be discovering the meaning of life.

Seminary Flotsam (III): Jesus Christ and the Mediation of Worship

Paper:  "The Things of God to Man and the Things of Man to God":  Jesus Christ and the Mediation of Worship

Overview:  This paper develops a theology of worship around the theological concepts of God's immanence and God's transcendence, using the biblical theme of the mediation of Christ as the central motif.

Thesis: To maintain an authentically Christian tension between God’s transcendence and immanence, the church’s worship must reflect and confess the Christological reality that both God’s “human-ward” movement in revelation and our “God-ward” movement in response happen in the person of Jesus Christ.

[Click here to download]

Ba'al No Longer, a devotional thought

There's this haunting line in Hosea 2:6 that richly rewards deep meditation and honest reflection.  The Lord's talking about how he intends to restore and renew Israel to relationship with himself, and he says, "In that day, you will call me 'my husband' and you will no longer call me 'my master.'"  I call it haunting, in particular, because the Hebrew word for "master" that's used there is "ba'al," which simply means "lord," or "master," but has gone down in infamy because it's also the name for "Ba'al," the pagan deity who has competed for the hearts of YHWH's people, since the somewhere around the Book of Judges onward.  It gets even more haunting when you notice that the very the next verse uses the word "ba'al" to refer specifically to that foreign god: "I will remove the names of the Ba'als from your lips and their names will no longer be invoked."  

Here's what I think it all means: there is a way of relating to God that is, for lack of a better phrase, "ba'alistic": seeing him as a distant, detached, impersonal "Force to be Reckoned with," who has to be cajoled and manipulated and bargained with if you want to get anything out of him, but who, if he is suitably cajoled and manipulated and bargained with, is beholden to "pony up" and give you what you're asking for.  If and when we relate to God like this--like a sycophantic slave to an imperious Master--we are calling him, in effect, "our Ba'al."  And as far as Hosea is concerned, this is not at all how God is, or how he wants to relate to us, and to come to him as though he were just another "Ba'al," is the most heartbreaking kind of idolatry.  

It's heartbreaking, especially, because relationship he wants with us is one where he loves us and cares for us and communes with us, in the way a spouse loves and cares for and communes with his beloved.  But this kind of relationship just can't thrive if we have a "ba'alistic" view of God, anymore than a marriage can thrive if one partner is always trying to appease the other, or manipulate them into giving them what they want.  

It's important to note that it was Israel herself--the People of God--who had this distorted picture of their relationship with him; they were the ones calling him "ba'ali."  Could it be that it's actually those who have been doing life together with the God longest who are at greatest risk of slipping into this kind of "ba'alism"?  I'm not sure, but at the very least Hosea 2:6 challenges me to take careful stock of my own relationship with God: in the way I relate to him, do I call him "ba'ali" (my master), out of duty and drudgery?  Or do I call him "Ishi" (my betrothed) in delighted abandon? Because it's the later that God desires for us, and its in the later that we really find him.

The Worship Blinders, a devotional thought

There's this interesting place in 2 Kings 23, where King Josiah, in an effort to purge and reform the spiritual life of his nation, orders all the "articles made for Baal and Asherah" to be removed from the house of the Lord. The way the story's told, the impression it gives is that he brought all the people of Judah together (v.2), read the Book of the Covenant to them all (v. 3) and then, in plain sight of everyone, started bringing out all the idolatrous nick-knacks that had accumulated in the Temple.

What strikes me here is that, as far as the people were concerned up to that point, there was nothing especially wrong with the baalistic syncretism that had crept into their worship. It must have been quite shocking to stand there in that crowd and see all these articles brought out of the temple and find out that they didn't, after all, have any place in the House of Israel's God.

It sort of makes me wonder: "What would Josiah have to pull out of the North American Church in the sight of everyone, if he were to 'spiritually clean house' today'?"  It's probably not what we'd expect, any more than the people of Judah expected to see the altars to Baal and the Asherah poles thrown on the 'discard pile' of their worship practices.

It all leaves me praying that God would remove my spiritual blinders, and help me identify any idolatrous "clutter" that I've maybe let accumulate in my life with him; that he would do some spiritual 'house cleaning' in my worship of Jesus, and give me single-hearted devotion to him.

The High Places, a devotional thought

You can't spend any serious amount of time in the Book of 2 Kings without eventually asking some difficult questions about "the high places" in your life.  2 Kings 15:31-38 is a good example.  It's talking about a King named Jotham of Judah.  It starts off by saying that "he did right in the eyes of the Lord"-- and for the record, this is pretty rare, in of itself.  Most of the Kings who get mention in 2 Kings are noted for their wickedness.  Of very, very few is it said that they actually did right in YHWH's sight.  So this should cause us to sit up and take notice.

But then comes the qualifying small print:  "Only," it adds, "the high places were not removed.  People continued to sacrifice and burn incense there" (v. 35).

The idea in 2 Kings is that, unlike the surrounding pagan nations, that would have had shrines and temples to their Ba'als and Ashteroths sprinkled all over the countryside, God's people were meant to have one single place of worship for the people, the Temple in Jerusalem.  This is a big deal in the Hebrew Scriptures.  There's only one place where YHWH can and should be worshipped, and maintaining that one place helps to ensure that his worship doesn't get watered down and mixed up with the worship of other things and other gods.  The "high places" in 2 Kings compete with and muddy-up the single-minded, single-hearted devotion to him that God wants for his people.

And it's interesting: however good any of the kings in 2 Kings might have been, it's (almost) always qualified with this disclaimer:  only they didn't tear down the high places.  And we're meant to find something, I think, humbling and challenging in this.  Because like Jotham, we, too, have things that compete with, or muddy up, single-minded devotion to God.

I won't go into detail on the high places in my own life, except to say that Jotham's example leaves me praying, that God would gently but surely point them out to me, and help me put an end to any sacrifice or worship that may be going at their altars.  May his mercy give us all grace to tear down the high places.

On Gratitude and Awesomeness

This year for father’s day I was taking the kids off to the local Chapters store so they could spend some gift cards that had been burning a hole in their pockets, when my wife, on the way out, suggested I buy myself a book. It’s a bit of a long story. We’d agreed not to do father’s/mother’s day gifts this year, but at this last minute she thought a little something couldn’t hurt, and told me to treat myself. So my kids came home with the next installment in the Warrior Cats series (or some such), and I came home with The Book of Awesome, a book I stumbled across on the “staff picks” table.

It was a serendipitous stumble. The Book of Awesome is the book edition of a blog called 1000 Awesome Things which author Neil Pasricha launched back in 2008, after a divorce and the tragic loss of a good friend left him in a dark place and he felt he needed to nurture a more positive outlook on life. 1000 Awesome Things is just that, a running list of simple pleasures and overlooked blessings we tend to take for granted, but when you actually stop to think about them they turn out to be awesome. The smell of rain on a hot sidewalk, giving a baby a high-five, peeling an orange in one shot, arriving at your destination just as a great song on the radio ends, all get their turn in the spotlight, along with your first shower after not showering for a long time, and hitting a bunch of green lights in a row. By turns hilarious, thoughtful, heart-warming and wise, The Book of Awesome was (wait for it) awesome.

No, really. His entry on the colon had me laughing so hard I thought I was going to split mine; and I was reading it in public, at the Swiss Chalet, with the kids wondering what had happened to their Dad.

The reason I’m talking about it today, though, is because it struck me while reading The Book of Awesome, just how much I take for granted, how many profound pleasures pass me by every day without my notice, how big a sense of entitlement I really carry around with me, and how much it all sucks the life out of things, my ingratitude. Before The Book of Awesome, I wouldn’t have thought of myself as an ungrateful wretch, but then again, before The Book of Awesome, it never occurred to me just how awesome photosynthesis is, or laughing so hard you make no sound at all, or gym pain, or salt.

I remember a theology prof of mine once pointing out how thankfulness is the fundamental posture of the Christian life. He was preaching on Ephesians 5:20 at the time (“always give thanks to God the Father for everything”), and he had grander things in mind than illegal naps and high tens (both entries in the book). But then again, maybe gratitude for the lofty things, the weighty things, the deep things, grows in our gratitude for the simple things, the light things, the surface things: dancing with your children and weeping with good friends and a well written poem and the smell of a Russian olive tree off in the distance.  (I’ve been working on my own list).

In 1 Timothy 4:4, Paul tells us that “everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I wonder if the reverse is also true, that nothing should be received without thanksgiving. And perhaps the strongest evidence of our commitment to the doctrine of creation (even more, maybe than what we say about the best way to interpret Genesis 1) is the degree to which we move through this creation with deep gratitude for everything the creator has made.

At any rate, I’m working on gratitude this fall. It is, after all, a very good world; even marred by the worst of human ingratitude, it still bears the fingerprints of a perfectly wise, breathtakingly artistic and even, at times, beautifully playful Creator who deserves only praise and thanksgiving. Adrenaline (#934) and and the sun (#66) and the smell of freshly cut grass(#838) were all in his mind before any of them came to be, and are each awesome if for no other reason than that.

In Ordinary Time, a poem

But nothing I've discovered
is ordinary in life with you--
the depths that you've uncovered
reveal the hope of all things new.
So as we count the weeks
after that fleeting glimpse of Triune Love
may everything my spirit seeks:
wings & flame & voice & dove
be but the waiting penult of your perfect rhyme--
You make nothing ordinary in its time.

Lift Up Your Head, a song

A gidjak is a musical instrument from Central Asia that is a little bit like a violin (inasmuch as you play it with a bow), a little bit like a cello (inasmuch as you play it upright) and a little bit like a banjo (inasmuch as it has a skin that vibrates with the strings). It's hard to describe, but here's some YouTube footage of someone playing a gidjak.



My Aunt and Uncle worked as missionaries in Tajikistan for a number of years, and, knowing my penchant for exotic musical instruments, they brought me back a traditional gidjak. Mine actually looks almost identical to the one in the video above. Of course, I had no clue how to tune it or play it, but thanks to the wonders of YouTube technology, I was soon underway. I won't be playing Carnegie Hall anytime soon, but I did write a song (2005) with a couple of parts in it for the gidjak, and even a gidjak lead break. I posted a rough recording of it a couple of years ago, along with some theological musings about ethnodoxology and the travesty of musical homogeneity in the church. You can read all that here. Last fall I re-worked the song and made a new recording of it, which I'll post here for your listening pleasure. See if you can't pick out the gidjak in the arrangement.

Lift Up Your Head (prayer for Persia)

[listen]

Brown land, like a cracked and calloused hand
Dry land, flesh of stone and bone of sand
Lift up your head

Long night, like the ash of phoenix flight
Dark night, red the dawn the longing light
Lift up your head

Lift up your head and see, the lamb was slain to set you free
The phoenix flame will rise again and perch upon the holy tree
Lift up your head behold, the child you welcomed once of old
With myrrh and frankincense and gold
Is now the resurrected Lord
He comes to heal your land
Lift up your head

Ancient place, like a lined and noble face
Antique place, mist of myrrh and tear of grace
Lift up your head


Night skies like the gleam of veiled eyes
Eastern skies, see afar his star arise
Lift up your head

Lift up your head and see, the lamb was slain to set you free
The phoenix flame will rise again and perch upon the holy tree
Lift up your head behold, the child you welcomed once of old
With myrrh and frankincense and gold
Is now the resurrected Lord
He comes to heal your land
Lift up your head

Musical Mondays (XIV)

Here's another song from "echoes" to start your week off. By way of explanation, let me say that Zoe is the Greek word for "life" and the lyrics are meant as an ode to life in Christ. By way of credit-where-credit's due, let me say that the mandolin solo towards the end is a medley of two traditional Irish jigs (St. Patrick's Day, and The Priest's Leap). And in the spirit of Ephesian 5:18, let me say that the song (and my performance thereof) is my best effort at writing a worship song that sounds for all the word like an Irish drinking song. Cheers.

Download the song here.

Zoe

Zoe is dancing again in the daylight
She comes to me lovely and full of delight
Skipping and spinning with all of her might
She sets my heart free
Richer than milk and sweeter than honey
Stronger than wine, more precious than money
A blue sky divine, all brilliant and sunny
She dances lovely

Life!  Springing up from the
Ground, like nothing that I've ever
Found, on this sweet earth
Joy! Filling my heart like
Wine! Now that I know that you're
Mine, I'm filled with mirth

Zoe is shining again in the twilight
She's burning like stars in the darkness of night
She's casting off blindness and putting on new sight
To make my heart see
Flowing like water, burning like fire
Sent from the father to like me higher
Anointed with laughter, delight and desire
By Christ my master

Love!  Bubbling up in my
Soul!  Your mercy has made me
Whole, and gave me new birth
Zoe!  Foaming out like a spring
You teach my spirit to sing
To sing your worth

Zoe is running again in the rain
She is leaping and falling and rising again
She's there in the joy and there in the pain
The life Christ gave me
Richer than milk and sweeter than honey
Stronger than wine, more precious than money
A blue sky divine all brilliant and sunny
She dances, lovely

Life! Springing up from the
Ground, like nothing that I've ever
Found, on this sweet earth
Joy! Filling my heart like
Wine! Now that I know that you're
Mine, I'm filled with mirth
Love! Bubbling up in my
Soul! Your mercy has made me
Whole, and gave me new birth
Zoe! Foaming out like a spring
You teach my spirit to sing
To sing your worth

On Awe

The other day I came across this fascinating talk about the “biological advantage of being awestruck.”


The Biological Advantage of Being Awestruck - by @Jason_Silva from Jason Silva on Vimeo.

It left me, if not awestruck itself, quite eager to be awestruck. And it confirmed a hunch I’ve had for a long time: that there is something about worship that enlarges us, emotionally and psychologically, and that being fully alive and fully human requires regular experiences of worship-inducing awe. And it suggests that the marginalization of worship in secular culture actually has ethical implications.

But since it also shores up Ecclesiastes 5:7 with empirical data, I’ll let my words here be few, and stand, instead, in awe of God, at the good Teacher’s advice.

Musical Mondays (VII)

Ninety Nine Rhymes

Ninety nine rhymes, and I'm still speechless
Ninety nine rhymes and your glory's unsung
Ninety nine rhymes and I still haven't sounded
The clouds and thick darkness
That's wrapped all around you
Concealing your mystery
Like ninety nine rhymes

Prayer for the Offering (5)

God, as we prepare to worship through this act of offering today, we invite your Holy Spirit to remind us that really, we all come to you empty handed.

We have nothing to offer the Creator of the Universe that isn’t yours already. We have nothing to give a perfectly pure God that isn’t somehow muddied up with our human ambition and agendas. Nothing to do for the Lord of the whole Earth that you couldn’t do for yourself.

We’re empty handed.

And yet by your beautiful and mysterious grace, God, you invite us—empty handed though we are—you invite us to be part of your plan to heal and renew and bless this world through the unconquerable love of your Son Jesus Christ.

Thank you for that invitation, God. And as we give back to you now a portion of what is yours to begin with, Lord will you transform this offering into just one of the many ways we say “yes” to your gracious call on our lives?

Purify our motives, transform our agendas, and bring our ambitions into perfect alignment with Jesus, because it’s in his name and for your Glory that we pray. Amen.

***


Loving God, in Jesus we’ve discovered that you are generous beyond our ability to imagine.

So as we prepare to give back to you a portion of the money that you’ve entrusted into our care, we remember what he taught us.

He said: whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much… and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much… And he said: If we’ve not been faithful in handling worldly wealth, how can we expect God to trust us with true riches?

God, we invite your Spirit now to show us the true riches that you want to entrust into our care: riches like the grace, hope and love that is ours in Jesus Christ; riches like the good news about his immeasurable love for this aching world that is ours to share so generously; riches like the real life-purpose, the meaningful mission in the world, the beautiful destiny as His people that is ours to spend so freely.

O God, help us to see those riches today.

And then God, can you make us faithful in handling this worldly wealth here, today, so that we might learn in a small way what it means to be faithful in handling of the invaluable things of God?

Can you teach us, in this act of offering today, what it means to be trustworthy with the small things like money… so that we will grow more and more trustworthy with the big things… the good news of Jesus and the generous gifts of his Spirit. Make us trustworthy with those things, we pray, in his name, and for his sake. Amen.

****


God, in your book you tell us not to put our hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put our hope in you, because you richly provide all things for our enjoyment.

And you tell us, too, to do good, to be rich in good deeds, to be generous, and willing to share. You said that in this way, we might take hold of the life that is life indeed.

So we ask, Lord, that you would show us where we’ve been putting our hope in uncertain wealth instead of in you. Show us where we’ve been spiritually poor, despite our material wealth. Teach us how to become truly rich in generosity and good deeds.

O God, make us want, more than anything, to take hold of the life that is life indeed. And then Lord, take this offering today, and transform it into a sign of that desire in us, the passion for heavenly things that you are kindling in us.

We pray in Christ’s name and for his sake. Amen.


***




Father in heaven,

Thousands of years ago, one of the wise teachers you inspired looked at the way people are with money and he called the whole project “a chasing after the wind.”

He said things like, “whoever loves money never has money enough and whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.” He said things like, “The sleep of a poor labourer is sweet, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep.” He said things like, “I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth is hoarded, to the harm of its owner, or lost through some misfortune.”

“This, too, is vanity.”

God, thousands of years later we still stand under those all-wise words. And if we’ve been losing sleep over our money, or hoarding money to our own harm, or never satisfied with our income, Lord, I invite your gracious, loving Spirit to convict us of that vanity today.

Set us free from chasing after the wind, and set us, instead, to chasing after the Way of Jesus. With all our heart, soul, mind and strength may we live as his servant-followers and sibling-friends.
It’s in his name and for his sake we pray, amen.

The end of the song and the end of the age

I once heard a lecture by theologian-of-the-arts Jeremy Begbie, where he talked about the connections between musical cadence and Christian eschatology.

In music, he said, cadence is essentially about the resolution of tension. The initial note creates a tension, disrupting silence with sound, and then, as we move away from that initial "home" into new and varied sounds-- a sub-dominant chord, a relative minor, a dominant-seventh and so on--we find ourselves in tension, our ear naturally listening for the melody to arrive back at its starting point in some way. Intuitively we want the tension created by the sound to resolve.

Cadence is one of the building blocks of music, and waiting for the tension to resolve and the song to arrive "home" is part of what keeps us listening. For example, here we move from a D major (tonic), into an A7 (Dominant 7th) and back again; the dominant 7th creates tension, but it also assures the ear that resolution is coming. And when that final "D" does land, no one has to tell us we've come home. The ear just knows.

Cadence is often used for key modulations, too. In this example we modulate from the key of C to the key of F:

Of course, we're not there yet. And the tension created by that last note sort of just hangs in the air, almost begging for resolution. We want to come "home." I once heard a myth/urban legend/joke that if Mozart were to have heard an unresolved Dominant 7th chord like that, he wouldn't have been able to sleep at night unless he heard this:

In his lecture, Begbie talked about the spiritual tension that musical cadence can create for us, and then he drew these poignant lines between cadence, resolution and eschatology. Because essentially, cadence is about looking ahead. It's about knowing that "home" is just on the horizon; and knowing also that the tension's not yet settled, but hearing at the same time that resolution is pending-- it's hanging on the air-- only a measure away.

Cadence, he said, is about hope.

But then he went on to say that sometimes unresolved cadence can be the most hopeful of all. Because sometimes when that unresolved sub-dominant chord or dominant sus4 is left hanging in the air, with no tonic chord to bring it back to earth at last, sometimes the breathless anticipation created in that musical space can teach us to be, if not at home with unresolved tension, then at least hopeful in it.

And the faith, too, is about knowing that home is on the horizon, and that the final resolution of all godless tensions is only a measure away.

And hopeful in unresolved tension, I'm learning more and more, is a very Christian way to be.

I've never forgotten Jeremy Begbie's lecture; and I've never listened to those unresolved suspended 4ths in U2's best work the same way since. I hear them now as these beautiful clarion calls evoking the almost-but-not-quite-yet longings of the heart.

A number of years ago I played this guitar arrangement of "Holy, Holy, Holy" in church, which starts in D and ends on an unresolved Asus2. I asked one of the musicians I was playing with what he thought (with none of this preamble about Begbie, cadence and eschatology). He wasn't sure. "Something," he said, "something feels sort of unfinished."And I thought: "Exactly."

Prayer for the Offering (4)

These posts of liturgical "prayers for the offering" receive more traffic-- both in online hits and in off-line comments from other pastors-- than I would have ever expected. I never would have expected, either, that I'd find it so challenging and inspiring to write them, when once a week every week I'm forced again to think through the theological significance of those little chips of metal and slips of paper (and blips of light on the bank machine screen) that carry so much power in this world.


For the record here are a few more offeratory prayers we've done at the FreeWay:

Perfectly-Wise God,

We remember how the Book you inspired tells us so bluntly:

“Keep yourselves free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God himself has said ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’”

You asked us there, God, to long for your faithful presence in our lives more than any material thing this world has to offer. And you asked us to let your faithful presence in our lives teach us to be content with the stuff we already have.

God, that goes so against the grain of this world we live in, where “discontent” seems to be the only measure of things and “more” the only thing worth desiring.

So we invite your Spirit to set us free from the love of money today, and ask you to give us deep contentedness. Make us fully satisfied in the promise of your unfailing love.

Cut against the grain in us we pray, so that we might give this offering today out of that contentedness; the peace of Christ which passes all understanding.

It’s in his name and for his sake we pray. Amen.

***


God, We think about the all-wise Law that you gave your ancient people long ago.

You told us: When we’re harvesting the land and we’ve missed some of the grain in the field, just leave it there. That way the homeless, the orphan and the widow will have something to gather too...

And when we’re picking the fruit off our trees or grapes off our vine, don’t go over the branches a second time. That way there’ll be something there for the homeless, the orphan, and the widow.

And God, in that all-wise Law, you taught your people to remember: The outcast. The powerless. The downtrodden. And to remember that we were once where they are now. Or we might have been. Or we might one day be.

And you reminded us that wringing every last drop out of life—just for ourselves—squeezing every last bit out of the land—just for ourselves—grabbing and hoarding and consuming– just for ourselves. That’s just not your way.

So God, as we make this offering of money today—in this world where so few of us actually gather grain or grapes anymore—God, can you make this offering of money today a reminder of those very same things?

And then, God, can you give us the wisdom we’ll need to use this money in your mission in the world: to include the outcast, to lift up the powerless, to defend the downtrodden. And to show the world that wringing out every last drop for ourselves alone... that not the way of Jesus.

It’s in his name, and for Your glory we pray. Amen.
***


God, In this act of offering today, can you show us where our hearts are at?

Because we remember how your Son Jesus told his followers: don’t store up treasure on earth, where things rot and fail and get stolen. Instead, he said, instead store up treasure in Heaven—imperishable, unfailing, unsteal-able treasure in Heaven— “Because where your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be, too.”

That’s what he said.

So God, can you show us where our hearts are, today, by showing us what our treasure really is? Let this moment here be about more than just putting some money in the plate as it passes by; let it be about discovering where our treasure really is—what we really trust in, and what we really hope for.

And God, if we’ve stored up earthly treasure, as a substitute for heavenly treasure, O God, as hard as it might be to see, can you show us that, too? Because we want hearts fixed on heavenly treasure today: the imperishable hope, the unfailing faithfulness, the unsteal-able love that you’ve offered us in Jesus Christ. It’s in his name, and for Your glory we pray, Amen.

***


God: you taught us that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

So we pray now that you would increase our blessings: give us many opportunities to give, deepen the wisdom we show as we give, and multiply the joy we discover when we give.

Teach us to distinguish between uses of money that enrich life, and uses of money that actually kill the life in us. And save us from making these gifts today a substitute fo the gift of ourselves. Instead, may they be outward signs of our inward commitment: an act of total self giving, for Jesus' sake, in whose name we pray, Amen.*

*based loosely on a prayer found in W. B. J. Martin. Acts of Worship. Nashville: Abingdon, 1960. p. 186.

Prayer for the Offering (3)

Not that I'm planning to make this a regular feature or anything, but with the blog-well running a bit dry these days, and feeling like, after all, a bit more theological reflection on the offering couldn't hurt the Evangelical tradition, I thought I'd post few more of the offeratory prayers that we've prayed at the FreeWay over the last few months:


God, behind this offering lies the busy world of our working life—the market, the classroom, the office, the shop, the home, the open road. You gave us this work to do and you were present with us in it all. So we ask your blessing on those places, now, and the people we work with: bosses, clients, colleagues, partners and peers. Can you make us lights of your grace and goodness towards them all?

And Jesus, can you spare us from creating a world where wealth accumulates, but our souls shrivel. Let this act of offering today remind us of what you taught us so beautifully: that if we gain the whole world but lose our souls, we`ve really profited nothing.
Because it`s in Your name and it`s for Your glory we pray. Amen.




God, we remember how your word says:
“The one who’s stingy with the seed at planting time will have a stingy harvest; And the one who’s generous with the seed at planting time, will have a bountiful harvest."
We want a bountiful harvest, God;
so can you help us to sow seed generously today?
Not just our money,
but our time, and our talents, and our spiritual gifts
our availability to each other and our encouragement of each other
our availability to you, and our commitment to your ministry in this world
our laughter with those who laugh, and our tears with those who mourn
our love for Jesus, and for his people, and for our enemies
forgiveness and compassion and reconciliation and peacemaking
God, can you make us generous sowers of these kinds of seeds today?
So that we’ll also reap these kinds things richly at the harvest?
And can you make our act of offering today that kind of a seed-sowing?
And a sign of the generosity that you’ve begun to sow in our hearts.
Make us into the bountiful people of Jesus, in whose name we pray.
Amen.

Praying through the Prayerbook of Christ

I've been spending a lot of time in the Psalms these days. I'm preaching through some of them as part of the Lent season at the FreeWay, and I'm discovering both how beautiful they are, and how easily mis-read. This is partly because of our ego-centric tendency to ignore that small Hebrew word that starts almost every Psalm, and jump almost immediately to make these prayers, praises, petitions and pleas our own. Of course, this "works" when the prayer is "Surely goodness and mercy will folow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." But it's a little awkward when the plea is "strike my enemies on the jaw, break the teeth of the wicked." And it is downright risky when the petition is, "examine my heart and my mind ... for I continually walk in your truth."

To be honest, I could never pray that last one and be honest. And were I to try-- to ask God to examine my heart because I've continually walked in his truth-- He would only see the depths of my self-deception there.

And that's why that one little word makes all the difference. The word is "of David." In Hebrew it's just four letters. But they're the four leters that transform this Psalm, because they remind us that these prayers, praises, petitions and pleas, they're not ours. They're David's. The Anointed's. The Christ's.

And of, course, not even David could pray them perfectly, but the Shining Christ of whom he was but the Shadow, the perfect Christ who alone walked continually in Yaweh's truth, he could. These prayers for vindication, petitions for deliverance from death, appeals to complete innocence, they belong to Jesus, who alone can pray them perfectly and purely. Only in Jesus can these prayers become ours, as the petitions of God's people (and still they're not mine before they are ours).

Bonhoeffer helped me get this. He insists that we must read the Psalms first and foremost as the “Prayerbook of Christ.” He says: “The same words that David spoke ... the future Messiah spoke. … It is none other than Christ who prayed them in Christ’s own forerunner, David.” And of course, this is how the New Testament writers read the Psalms. They continually and consistently put David’s songs of praise in Jesus’ mouth. For instance, in Romans 15:8-9, Paul applies Psalm 117:1 directly to Jesus: “I will praise you [God] among the Gentiles; / I will sing hymns to your [God’s] name.” Specifically here Christ’s “hymn of praise” is “sung” to the tune of his servanthood among the Jews, whereby the Gentiles “glorify God for his mercy” (15:9b). In a similar way, the author of Hebrews puts a psalm of praise on Christ’s lips: “I will declare your name to my brothers / in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises” (Psa 22:22). Here Christ’s “praise” takes the form of his willingness to identify as “brother” with those whom God has brought to glory through his own suffering, those who could never merit glory on their own.

This goes beyond merely reading individual psalms as messianic prophecy. The Book of Psalms as a whole gathers together in itself all the lamentations and celebrations and heart-cries, “every need, every joy, every thanksgiving, and every hope” (as Bonhoeffer would say) of God’s people; and Jesus, the Messianic “Son of David,” gathers them together in himself and offers them in his own perfect self-offering on the cross, on behalf of his brothers and sisters. This is why Hebrews 13:15 insists that our “sacrifice of praise” can only be offered “through him,” and must always be an acknowledgement of his name, for as with all our responses to God, our praise must participate in the perfect praise of Christ, our mediator.

Okay. Maybe that's all just so much Ivory Tower Theology.

But watch what happens when we read the Psalms as the prayer book of Christ. Psalm One insists that the way of the wicked perishes and the way of the righteous prospers. And if I read this as my own personal prayer, then I wonder: my "way" has been prospering of late, does that "prove" my "righteousness"? Or maybe: my way has not been propsering of late, does that "prove" my "wickedness?" And suddenly I'm spiralling in this snare of works-righteous, health-and-wealth theology that's so disconected from the gospel of Jesus it would be laughable if it weren't so tragic and so real for so many people.

But if I read Psalm One as Christ's own prayer, then I discover the beauty of its promise: the "way" of the righteous Christ will prosper; he will become a tree planted by water, bearing beautiful, life-giving fruit in season. And Christ's way is to take broken, weak, guilty sinners like me an make them forgiven, heart-strong and whole in him. And as Psalm one assures me: he will propser in this way. Because he alone has not walked, stood or sat in the Way of sinners, He can't fail in this.

I'm not the righteous Tree. I'm just the fruit of Its righteousness.

And that's really good news.