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  • How can I keep from singing?

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    How Can I Keep From Singing?

    Lillian Daniel First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Glen Ellyn, Illinois

    Scripture: Luke 1:46-55, The Magnificat Hymn 426, New Century Hymnal, “My Life Flows in on Endless Song”

    This sermon moves back and forth between the words of the preacher and the voice of a soprano soloist, singing one verse at a time of the hymn “My Life Flows on in Endless Song.”

    (A soprano soloist sings verse 1) My life flows on in endless song; above earth’s lamentations, I hear the sweet, though far off hymn that hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear the music ringing. It finds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?

    In a true story from the Chicago Tribune, a bride to be whose wedding was planned for September 9 found out on July 28 that her fiancé was carrying on with another woman. The evidence was irrefutable, and the wedding was less than two weeks away. The bride, Kyle Paxman, called off her wedding. But not the reception. The bride and her mother found that while they could cancel the band, the florist, and the photographer, they would still be responsible for the whopping bill for a four course dinner for 125 people. So the bride decided , in her own words, “to turn this into something positive.” She rearranged the guest list slightly, removing all the men. Can you blame her? Then she turned this women’s only party into a benefit for two charities, one to help poor children in her home state of Vermont and another to empower women in developing countries . Instead of bringing wedding gifts, the guests wrote checks.

    And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

    For yes, those wedding guests who had expected a grand and luxurious wedding did leave with their purses a little emptier, but I doubt they left with empty hearts, for in their emptiness, the hungry could be filled with good things. This is a bride who didn’t get to wear her wedding dress, didn’t get to feed her husband the wedding cake, and didn’t get to throw her bouquet. She did, however, go on her honeymoon in Tahiti. She took her mom. When I read this story in the Tribune, I loved this woman. She reminded me of

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    Mary, faced with a radical change in plans, but unwilling to be undone by it. When her own situation might have overwhelmed her, she turned her attention to the poor and hungry and to a hurting world. By turning disappointment into an occasion for generosity, this bride was a woman who could not keep from singing.

    (Soloist sings verse 2) What though my joys and comforts die? My Savior still is living. What though the shadows gather round? A new son Christ is giving. No storm can shake my in-most calm, while to that Rock I’m clinging. Since Love commands both heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

    This beautiful hymn is called “My Life Flows on in Endless Song,” and in various 19th century hymnals, it was attributed to different poets, including Anna Warner. We don’t know very much about it. We just know that it speaks to the power of the human spirit when it is centered on God. But the one verse we do know more about is the third verse, which was written in the 1950’s and added on. While this hymn appears in Methodist, Unitarian, Universalist, and Disciples hymnals , the United Church of Christ hymnal includes the third verse that was written later and became famous outside of the world of church music. The song went on to be recorded by Pete Seeger. Bruce Springsteen recorded it in his 2006 cover album “We Shall Overcome – the Seeger Sessions.” And now, a hymn that had been forgotten by the 1950’s is one of our favorites once again, all because ofthat new third verse. It was written by poet Doris Plenn, when her friends were imprisoned during the McCarthy era. At this time in American history , citizens lost their jobs, their friends, even their freedom, for being (or simply being accused of being) communists or communist sympathizers. Cartoonists like Walt Kelly, entertainers like Zero Mostel, pastors like the Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, and Boston Community Church’s Don Lothrop, and yes, this poet Doris Plenn stood up publicly against this persecution of friends and strangers.1 Whatever you may think of communism as political ideology, historians look back on the McCarthy era as a time when we fell far short of our nation’s promise. This country, founded as a haven for those seeking religious and political liberty, lost sight ofthat purpose in a time of fear. We became the thing we hated, a land where people could be persecuted for their political beliefs. That is a history worth remembering because, at any time we could find ourselves living it again. And when that day comes, or if it has come already today, let us pray that we have the saints and poets to raise a protest song. So what gave a poet like Doris Plenn the courage to stand against the imprisonment of artists and thinkers? Raised in North Carolina, she had learned this song from her Quaker grandmother who told her, “Honey, this is my favorite song, and I want you to always remember it. It was made up years ago when people like us were being thrown in jail for their beliefs.” For people who are persecuted for their religious beliefs or for their political beliefs, Doris Plenn added this verse because she could not keep from singing.

    (Soloist sings verse 3) When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, and hear their death knells ringing; when

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    friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing? In prison cell and dungeon vile our thoughts to them are winging. When friends by shame are undefiled , how can I keep from singing?

    Mary, a young teenager, had almost nothing to her name except the security that came with being engaged. Her fiancé Joseph had probably come into her life through the economic arrangements made between one poor working family and another. Yet Joseph would be Mary’s ticket to safety, for without a home ahead of her, she would be absolutely vulnerable in a society that still viewed women as property. There would be no grand wedding with a four course dinner for 125 people, but instead a long journey to Bethlehem for the couple to be registered. Mary lived in an age of political repression that would make the McCarthy era here look gentle and tame. Their country, Israel, was occupied by the super power of the day, the Roman Empire. And when the emperor called you to register yourself, for the purposes of taxation without representation, you did it because you had no choice. And so, to a young woman who had few choices, appeared an angel, who said, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High….” Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?” An angelic announcement was how Mary discovered she was pregnant. An unwed, pregnant teenager, Mary was in a situation where now she had even fewer options. Could she tell Joseph that she was pregnant with the child of God and appear to be insane ? Or would it be better to offer a more logical explanation that would mark her as unfaithful? She decided to tell the truth, as strange as it was. Mary, betrothed, at least for now, and off to register in strange land, chose to do more than accept her fate. She rejoiced in it. In fact, we are told, she sang a song based upon the scriptures that had come before, a song we now call the “Magnificat,” which begins with the extraordinary words, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” You know how this story goes, and you know how it ends. Mary tells Joseph the truth, he stands by her side, and her child is born and later chased by Herod, a bloodthirsty king. The little family flees to Egypt. You know how this story goes and the hardships that follow, but you also know this: Mary was about to give birth to a force of love that would forever change the world. So in her pain, her fear, and her lack of choices in life, she realized that she did have one choice. She could cry, or she could sing. And such was Mary’s blessing to us: she couldn’t keep from singing. (Soloist sings verse 4) I lift my eyes; the cloud grows thin; I see the blue above it. And day by day, this pathway smoothes, since first I learned to love it. The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart, a fountain ever springing. All things are mine, since I am Christ’s – how can I keep from singing?

    Note

    1. Carl Scovel, Never Far from Home: Stories from the Radio Pulpit ( Skinner House Books, 2004), 78f.

  • A little lower than God

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    A Little Lower than God

    Psalm 8

    Caroline M. Kelly

    Central Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia

    When I lived in Washington, D.C., one of my favorite places to visit was the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall. I loved to go and watch the IMAX films andlookattheWrightbrothers’ airplane and the Apollo 11 that carried Neil Armstrong and his colleagues to the moon. But my favorite exhibit of all was tucked away on the second floor in a small, dark theatre, where you could go to discover the wonder of life in all its glory, from the smallest molecule to the vastness of the entire universe! As the film started, the camera hovered just over Miami, focused on a group of sunbathers. Like a telescope in reverse, slowly the camera would pull back from the sunbathers. Suddenly, the whole of Miami Bay came into focus and then all of the United States. Within seconds, you had lost sight of the sunbathers and were looking at a picture of the whole planet. And this was long before Google Earth, my friends! But it gets even better. After a few more minutes, the picture (still focused on the spot where the sunbathers lay) brought the solar system and then the whole Milky Way galaxy into focus. In another few minutes, the galaxy had become just a tiny speck in the middle of all the other 99 million galaxies that make up the universe. The camera remained at that level for a few seconds as I watched in awe. Then gradually, the camera started to hone in on the earth, the United States and finally back to Miami, with the sunbathers coming into full focus once more. But the camera didn’t stop there. Instead it continued to magnify the picture, and after a few more minutes of probing, you had entered the skin of the sunbathers right down to the molecular level. It was amazing! Whenever I had friends in town, I would take them to that little, dark theatre on the second floor of the National Air and Space Museum. Usually we were the only ones watching it, and we had the whole place to ourselves. The demonstration was a wonder to me and a powerful reminder of the awesomeness of God’s creation ! It would also leave me pondering my role in the vast world and whether it mattered at all. Isn’t this the same question posed by the psalmist in Psalm 8? Some say it is the question of our time.

    O Lord, our sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

    Actually, there is no question about whether we matter or whether God cares for us. The real question is why? Why are you mindful of us, God? Why do you care for us?

    For you have made us a little lower than God, and crowned us with glory and honor. You have given us dominion over the works of your hands; you

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    have put all things under our feet.

    As overwhelming as our smallness is when compared to the vast universe, it is even more awesome that God should care for us and give to us such responsibility and power. I like the way one writer puts it: “The wonder of it all is that the God who formed the heavens and the earth, whose glory is shown in the silence of a sunset and the cry of an infant, who sustains all things…, actually has put [God’s ] trust in us to manage the resources of the earth wisely. We are small, certainly. We are weak and confused and selfish and destructive and often hateful. Yet we are the ones on whom God is banking for the care of the wonderful creation.”1 We do matter. And the National Air and Space Museum film confirms this. It begins and ends with a picture of sunbathers, placing them in the context of the universe at one end and then in the context of molecules at the other. The camera’s focus always comes back to them. And our lives often reflect an understanding that the camera of the universe is always focused clearly on us. During the last ten years, tests to measure human consumption of carbon-based energy have become widely known and talked about. Despite the arguments about whether the measurements are accurate and how we should respond, the discovery of how much energy it takes to drive our cars and planes, to grow and transport our food, and heat and cool our homes is mind boggling. It is hard to ignore all the ways we impact our world through our desire to have what we want when we want it at the price we want it. In our world, convenience and instant gratification determine most of our lifestyle choices. Does it matter how animals are raised and slaughtered so long as we get the choicest cuts of meat? Does it matter how the crops are genetically manipulated so they can be available to us whenever we want them? Does it matter how much fuel is used to produce and transport the inexpensive clothing made in East Asia? Does it matter how our choices impact the lives of those who don’t have the same choices we do – how trash is dumped in their neighborhood and how polluted runoff water is dumped in their streams and ponds? The Psalm says it does matter. The Air and Space Museum film begins and ends with us because we directed and produced it. But the message of our sacred text is different. It begins and ends with God. In the beginning, God spoke, and everything came into being. In the end, God speaks again, saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”2 Likewise, the psalm also begins and ends with God. “O Lord, our sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” Everything that is said about us and the whole of our story with God is bounded on both sides by this praise for God. The camera in our sacred texts is focused on God. We are a part of the story, but the focus always comes back to God. And therefore, what we know about ourselves as people of God can only be known in this context. Without these boundaries, we easily forget that we are a creation of God and that our lives, as well as the rest of the created world, are a gift from God. Why God, are you mindful of us, do you care for us? Clearly it is not because of anything we have done. No, we are insignificant compared to the grandeur of God’s creation. It can only be because of God’s amazing grace that God cares for us. Therefore, in gratitude, we join the psalmist with our hymns of praise. O Lord, our

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    sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! And we are called to use our dominion over creation not just for our desires and needs, but to glorify and praise God. This point is highlighted by the use of royal metaphors in the psalm. God is the sovereign, the king of kings, over all creation. Certainly this imagery is hierarchical and patriarchal, but its logic is effective. According to the Psalm, God is God, and we are just a little lower than God. We are entrusted with the power of dominion over creation as God would entrust power to a royal in ancient times, crowned with glory and honor, and set up as a king over all the other creatures. Old Testament scholar James Mays puts it this way:

    The picture is one familiar in the world of the psalmist, that of the installation of a vassal king by the ruler of an empire…. The vassal’s authority is delegated; his rule occurs within the reign of his Lord, whose policy guides his [and our] decisions and whose purpose sets his [and our] goals. The dominion here portrayed as the role of human beings is not selfserving justification to use their power against other creatures and creation as though no desire or needs but their own matter. It is instead a critique and conversion of that view, a claim that human dominance is to be undertaken as a vocation whose source and significance lies in the reign of God, maker of heaven and earth, who created all things and found them good.3

    Our knowledge of this period tells us that the ideal king was not a tyrant, but one expected to rule for the sake of his subjects. Likewise, “Humankind is called by God to use the power given it in obedience to the reign of God and for the sake of all the other creatures whom its power affects.”4 Does God care for us? Indeed God does. Do our choices matter? Indeed they do. Does our dominion of the earth and its resources reflect the glory of God? In case we are prone to put ourselves first and to “think that the fate of the earth is completely in our hands…today’s psalm brings us back to where we started.”5 Not back to the sunbathers in Miami, but to God. O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

    Notes

    1. William Long, Longing for God: Prayer and the Rhythms of Life (Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993), 190-95. 2. Revelation 22:13, NRSV. 3. James L. Mays, “What Is a Human Being? Reflections on Psalm 8,” Theology To-day 50 (January 1993): 518. 4. Ibid. 5. Long.

  • When death no longer determines our living: Matthew 28:1-10

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    When Death No Longer Determines Our Living

    Matthew 28:1-10

    Kimberly L. Clayton

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    Just as the two Nativity stories in Matthew and Luke have become melded into one seamless “memory” in many of our minds and Christmas pageants, so the four Easter stories meld into one glorious “Alleluia! He is risen!” among us. Oh, there are some differences in detail, like Matthew’s description of the earthquake that rumbled as an angel of the Lord descended and rolled back the stone from the tomb. It is Matthew, too, that details the official cover-up story for how a dead body disappeared, despite the efforts of guards, chief priests and a governor to make the tomb “secure.” “As secure as you can,” Pilate ordered, which just goes to show that homeland security never has worked all that well. The four gospels do not agree on the number of angels or the number and names of the women at the tomb either. Despite these subtle and occasionally jarring distinctions, most of us come to this morning waiting to hear the familiar and mostly seamless story of Easter. The story of how those sad women, carrying spices and worrying about the stone, were surprised by an angel (or two). And how they were even more surprised by an empty tomb and a risen Lord. And how they ran—away, to the eleven. We remember how the disciples thought the women were as crazy as the story they told. And that only after they had seen him for themselves did the disciples believe, and even then they were still scared…”terrified,” is how Luke puts it. They were scared to death., .scared of death— thinking that when they saw him they were seeing a ghost. This is the story I was ready to recall and re-tell this Easter morning. So, imagine my surprise when I opened a new commentary on the Gospel of Matthew by Stanley Hauerwas and read how he begins his study of Matthew 28. Hauerwas does not begin with sad women carrying spices to anoint a dead body. He says: “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary believe what Jesus has promised, that after three days he will be raised.”1 Because they believe what Jesus has promised, they go to see the tomb. Indeed, there is no mention of spices. No worry lines on account of the stone…they go, Matthew says plainly, to see the tomb. Matthew has been training us to “see” throughout this gospel,2 to see all the way from Abraham through the generations to Joseph and Mary and Jesus; to see from Isaiah and Micah and Jeremiah and Daniel to Jesus. These two women, along with many other women who had followed Jesus from Galilee to Golgotha saw him teach and heal; saw his crucifixion; and because of all of that, at least two of them came to see the tomb. They came to see that it was empty—just as he had promised. Yes, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary left the tomb quickly, with fear but also with great joy. Fear and great joy combine here into something more akin to awe than terror. So it is no wonder that when Jesus suddenly meets them, these women take hold of his feet and worship him in awe. They know who he is: their risen friend; but more, the risen Lord. If only our own “seeing” of the risen Christ were as keen. Even after all these centuries of hearing this story and being his disciples, too, we have trouble seeing him,

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    worshipping him in awe, or believing that the promised resurrection is real. Our eyes grow accustomed instead to the continuous video feed displaying death: another car bombing in Baghdad, a new round of mortar attacks in Afghanistan, the latest young woman missing and presumed a victim of foul play in one of our cities. It was a blind person who once pointed out eloquently that we who have “eyes to see” so often don’t. Helen Keller, who lived all but the first nineteen months of her life deaf and blind, wrote an article in 1933 for The Atlantic Monthly. It was entitled “Three Days to See,” and there Keller named all the people and places and objects she would see if somehow she were granted a three-day reprieve from blindness. After describing in aching detail how it felt to touch the smooth skin of a silver birch or the rough bark of a pine, she imagined what it would be like to see the face of her beloved Teacher, Anne Sullivan, and so to know her more deeply than touch can allow. Keller wrote, “It is a great pity that in the world of light the gift of sight is used only as a mere convenience rather than as a means of adding fullness to life.” Keller “saw” more than most of us and lived remarkably therefore in the fullness of life. Strengthened by a faith of great joy, she once remarked that “Active faith knows no fear, and it is a safeguard to me against cynicism and despair.”3 Both the angel and Jesus say, “Do not be afraid.” What is remarkable in Matthew is that the women do not act afraid. Neither do the disciples for that matter, who get up and go to Galilee as they were directed to do. All through his life with them, Jesus had been teaching his disciples to see…to see the world differently from the way most people saw it and lived in it. Jesus showed them the world of the Beatitudes, where the poor in spirit, the mourners, the merciful, the hungry and persecuted turn out to be the blessed ones. He showed them a world where people did not exchange an eye for an eye, but offered a cloak to the one who just stole your coat. He showed them the world where loving your neighbor is right, but loving your enemy is necessary. He showed them the world God intends, where diseases are healed and storms do not sink boats. He showed them active faith that knows no fear. Jesus showed them that even swords and high priests and false witnesses and denials do not have the last word. So by Easter morning perhaps the women were ready to see that even death did not get the last word. And his disciples, who had been afraid often enough as they followed him, later on Easter day perhaps weren’t afraid anymore either. After all, what was there to fear? Jesus had been raised from the dead as he had promised! And Jesus—whom they had denied and abandoned—had sent for them and had called them (them!) his brothers. Some people are afraid, of course. But in Matthew, the ones who are explicitly described as fearful are the governor, the guards at the tomb, and the chief priests. These people had placed their bets on the world they had mastered—the world of political power or military might or religious privilege and authority, all fueled by large sums of money. But Easter made it clear that none of those visible, oh-so-real sources of power had been enough to keep Jesus dead and buried and their world settled. It is terrifying when every idol you have trusted in to keep your life secure, comfortable and safe rolls away. Especially if the emptiness you are left to face looks like death instead of promised resurrection. The best Easter sermon, then, preached by the angel who lit up the empty tomb and by Jesus who shattered death’s silence with his vigorous, “Greetings!” is short and to the point: “Do not be afraid.”

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    Not everyone gets the same thing out of the same sermon, however. The guards shook and fell over like dead men while the women ran to tell the joyful news to others. I have some sympathy for those guards, having been afraid and shaken and immobilized a few times in life when my own securities and idols were rolled away. The empty space before me, I feared for a time, was a place of death. But Easter has come to us— for us—so even ordinary days we hear the Easter sermon: “Don’t be afraid.” Resurrection announces that it is, that God is, more than a match for any emptiness we face. Resurrection announces that the grip of death is not the last hold on us, so death no longer determines our living.4 When death no longer determines our living, “when Jesus draws us into a way of life so compellingly true…then we have no time to be afraid.”5 So we step over those guards and go to Galilee or anywhere else we’re sent to see what is next for us now that Easter has arrived. We do not have to be afraid, for Jesus has taught us how to see the world and also how to live in it with an active faith. In other years we are given the gospel room to be fearful, to doubt, to hide. But in this year of an ongoing war, a presidential election, economic struggles and religious squabbles where we must discern and decide who we are and where are going together, Matthew puts this bold Easter story in front of us. Now it is time to get on to Galilee, with fear and great joy—with awe—to worship him and serve him, unafraid.

    Notes

    1. Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press), 245. 2. Hauerwas, 245. 3. Edward R. Murrow, This I Believe series, 1951. 4. Hauerwas, 244, 245. 5. Hauerwas, 245.

  • Songcatchers: Psalm 23

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    Songcatchers

    Psalm 23

    Gary W. Charles

    Central Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia

    A favorite, somewhat obscure, film ofmine is Songcatcher. It tells the story of an Ivy League musicologist at the turn of the twentieth century who leaves the comfort of her academic life to live in the harsh environs of the Appalachian Mountains. In this remote and rugged area, she meets a surprising community of songcatchers. Some songcatchers gather by the bank of a creek to play the mandolin. Some plow rocky fields to the steady beat of a heartrending ballad. Some sit in rocking chairs on front porches, singing stories to their young ones about the joys and struggles of life. What soon shocks the sophisticated musicologist is that these songcatchers are not singing new songs. They are singing songs of their distant ancestors from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, songs that have lived in these remote and ancient hills ever since their ancestors first crossed the ocean. Over time, these songcatchers added their own mountain dialect to the lyrics, but the melodies survived, connecting songcatchers over a chasm of centuries and distance. I am thankful for songcatchers who have enriched, and even saved, my life in so many ways. During Lent, I am especially thankful for songcatchers. This season has a way of touching me at depths deeper than I care to go and connecting me with love and loss that I don’t dwell on every day. During this sensitive and vulnerable season, I am thankful for songcatchers who have passed down songs that I still sing in times of great love and loss. And well beyond this season, I am thankful for those special songcatchers who have an ear for music that should never die, music that I hope I will never forget. Whether we consider ourselves musical or not, it does not take a great ear to pick out music that makes our minds race, our hearts pulse an extra beat, our wills engage, our souls soar. This is the music that enriches and saves, the music that true songcatchers pass on. Perhaps more than any other night, I was thankful for songcatchers on the night of 9/11 when through collective tears, we sang, O Beautiful for Spacious Skies at the Old Presbyterian Meeting House, just a few miles from the cratered Pentagon. I thanked God that night for the songcatchers Katherine Lee Bates and Samuel Augustus Ward who had passed down the stirring music and words of America the Beautiful On that holy night when life seemed anything but beautiful and we were living in gutwrenching fear of what might fall next out of the spacious skies, I sang those words like never before, in a prayer for what might yet be. I have found that songcatchers are absolutely invaluable in the face of death and tragedy. Too often in times of death, many of us are struck mute not knowing what to say, while others of us should be struck mute. Soon after 9/11 and almost always in times of death, I hear people say things that they don’t necessarily either believe or fully understand. They say something, because to say nothing doesn’t seem to be a viable option. People stumble through the words “God must have a plan,” as if we would be less than Christian if we confessed, “I don’t begin to understand why so many

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    died so senselessly and left such a huge hole in so many lives.” Whatever the time and for whatever the reason, death challenges us not only to do something – bake a cake or bring some flowers – but to say something, and something with meaning, something about God. I have stood with many people in times of death, and many friends have done the same for me when my father and then mother and then brother died. I have spoken many words of consolation at the time of death, and many words of consolation have been spoken to me. The words that have held the most meaning for me and for those whom I comforted are not new words at all. They are words of consolation and promise that would have long since been lost had it not been for the faithful persistence of songcatchers years ago, songcatchers who sang the community to sleep to the soothing melody and assuring words of this song. The song begins: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” The 23rd Psalm was first written and sung in the Hebrew language, but over time, songcatchers have translated it into Greek and then Latin and then into a thousand different languages. To give you a sense of its beauty and musicality in various languages, listen to this Psalm now, with the first line read in Hebrew, the second in Greek, the third in French, the fourth in Swahili, the fifth in Kikuyu, and the last verse in Spanish, [readers, preferably native readers, stand and read the first line of Psalm 23]. As a child, I learned the 23rd Psalm in the poetic cadence of the King James Version of the Bible that we just read in unison. Long before I acted in my first Shakespearean play, I learned to love the way that “thou” and “art” and “annointest” and “runneth” rolled off my tongue and caressed my ear. The power of the psalm is in more than its poetry; the power is in its theology. This Psalm does not explain why any of us have to watch loved ones gasp for their last breath or waste away into mental oblivion or crawl into booby-trapped caves in Afghanistan or end lives too soon because of car bombs in Baghdad, but it does teach us to sing and believe this promise: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. I suspect that this song has lasted for centuries and has been sung in thousands of languages because death does not respect any generation or ethnicity or language, any sexual orientation or social class. We will be reminded of that harsh reality again in the near future when you and I will walk with Jesus through a horrendous week that the church dares to call: holy. Early songcatchers heard the psalmist’s song as one that time dares not erase; one that must be shared whenever life is fragile, suffering real, and questions abound. Psalm 23 does not answer all the complex theological questions that death provokes, but it does offer solid ground on which you and I can stand when the earth seems to be one long seismic tremor. Early in my life, special songcatchers taught me to sing: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.” When I was young, I heard this song as a lucky charm, a promise that if I toed the religious line, then God would bless my life with an unceasing array of good things, and more importantly, would shield my life against a barrage of bad things. As my faith grew up, I realized that the song promised no such nonsense. This psalm does not promise that Jews and Christians get the good from life while the rest of the world gets the dregs. This is not a prosperity psalm in the modern usage of the term “prosperity,” as if God is waiting to fill our material treasure chests if we

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    are just good enough. This is definitely not a pain-free psalm offering the key to a painfree religious life. How could it promise that to the often long-suffering people of Israel or to their Christian kin who follow a crucified Lord? As my faith grew up, I realized that the same One in whose house you and I will always dwell is also the One whose nature is that of goodness and mercy. That’s why the song begins: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want” and ends “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.” If you and I can never travel to where God is absent, if we can never descend so low as to step outside of God’s loving presence, then what more could you and I ever want or need or even desire? Learn this song by heart, because it is one that can even tame the despair of Lent. I am so thankful for songcatchers who did not let the 23rd Psalm become an ancient relic or a distant memory. I am grateful that they have passed along these words that can make even the darkest Friday good. As I think of what you and I will leave behind to those who follow us in the faith, I pray that one day it will be said of us: “Thank God, for those faithful songcatchers.”

  • And can this newborn mystery?

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    Page 33

    And Can This Newborn Mystery?

    Brian Wren

    Chilmark, Maine

    And can this newborn mystery,

    an infant learning how to feed,

    defeat the grim and chilling powers

    of domination, death, and sin?

    The One whose tiny hands and eyes

    suspend our breath and tug our heart

    awakens some to joyful praise

    while others whisper, “Is it true?”

    For sin infects, deceives, ensnares,

    and domination towers and gleams,

    and death, dispatched to foreign lands,

    will turn again, and find us all.

    This child, full-grown, shall shine with love

    for outcast, righteous, rich and poor,

    withstand the powers with healing words

    and then be crushed, betrayed, destroyed.

    And some will feel the Spirit’s power

    and some will doubt, or cling to faith

    and some will hope but never know,

    and some will joyfully believe.

    And so, with doubt, or hope reborn,

    or anxious certainty, or peace,

    we worship, trust, and rise to serve

    an infant learning how to feed.

    Tunes: Try “Dickinson College” or “Gonfalon Royal”

    Poetic Meter: 8.8.8.8. (Long Meter) Brian A. Wren. Copyright © 2005 by Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved. Used by permission. For permission to copy or project this hymn, use your CCLO or OneLicense if you have one or go to http://www.hopepublishing.com.

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    Notes on the Hymn – For Preachers, Teachers and Others

    This Newborn Mystery

    If you enjoyed reading the Harry Potter series, will you read some of the books again and again? Or will you find that once you’ve got to the end and found out what happened, you have less interest in revisiting it, except perhaps to enjoy J. K. Rowling’s inventive imagination with magical characters (Hagrid, Thestrals, Dementors, Death Eaters, Dumbledore, Snape et al) and names such as Kreacher the house elf (so much more interesting than “creature”), Malfoy (bad faith), and Voldemort (flight of death)? Is it basically a terrific tale whose secret ceases to be compelling once you know it? Or is there an element of mystery that enriches you each time you approach it? The hymn celebrates the mystery of Jesus, whose story (and stories) continually fascinates and beckons us.

    Grim and Chilling Powers

    Jesus came to break the age-old patterns of domination and submission and to live into God’s new reality of peace, service and forgiveness. The hymn recognizes the attraction of domination (it “towers and gleams”) and the pervasiveness of sin, which “infects” (spreads like a disease), “deceives” and “ensnares” (traps us and holds us captive). In saying that “death, dispatched to foreign lands, will turn again, and find us all,” I do not intend to support the delusion that “we must fight terrorists in Iraq so that we don’t have to fight them here.” I have in mind the way domination systems (even in a democracy) make successive U.S governments all too quick to project killing power elsewhere, with little regard for the human beings who get in the way. But we are mortal, and death will take us all.

    Is It True?

    Now, as in his lifetime, people react to Jesus in different ways: faith, doubt, and disbelief among others; as in Simeon’s words to Joseph and Mary in Luke 2:33-35: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed .” We preach to people who doubt, hope without knowing, cling to faith, or feel the Spirit’s power as they joyfully believe. It may be worth unpacking some of these phrases together with the conclusion that, from our different responses which also include both peace of mind and “anxious certainty,” “we worship, trust, and rise to serve an infant learning how to feed.”

    Journal for Preachers

  • Great expectations

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    Great Expectations

    Luke 1:39-55

    Caroline M. Kelly

    Central Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia

    Every year at this time, Mary comes into the spotlight in a way that she does only one other time, at the foot of the cross. Like a bookmark, her presence in the story signifies where the human story of Jesus begins and where it ends. As significant as it seems this time of year, the story of Jesus’ birth is recorded only by two of the four gospel writers: Matthew and Luke. In Matthew’s birth story, Mary never says a word. She is mentioned five times during the story, but always identified as the wife of Joseph or the mother of Jesus. Matthew doesn’t give us much of an opportunity to get to know her. Reading only Matthew’s story, you could easily imagine that Mary is only a submissive and silent wife and a humble mother. But when you get to know Luke’s Mary in today’s story, you realize that Luke isn’t having any of it. Luke gives Mary a major role in the birth narrative, mentioning her name twelve times. While Matthew’s angel comes to Joseph in a dream to announce the birth of the child, Luke’s angel appears directly to Mary in the light of day. Mary and the angel have a conversation in which Mary receives and responds to the overwhelming news of her miraculous pregnancy. Having heard this news, Mary heads off to the Judean countryside to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Neither Joseph nor Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, makes an appearance in this story, only Elizabeth and Mary. Once again, Mary enters the conversation, giving voice to her own thoughts and feelings. Luke’s Mary is no pawn. Not only does she serve as the bearer of the Christchild , but she is God’s messenger, giving voice to God’s deepest desires for the world. In her song, she begins by praising God for bestowing her with favor and doing great things for her, a lowly servant. She is a young, unmarried woman with no status in the society in which she lives. “You couldn’t get much lower in those days than to be a woman in a patriarchal society, a Jew under Roman occupation, and a peasant in a land of plenty.”1 She magnifies the Lord because the same God who has shown her favor also lifts up the lowly and fills the hungry with good things. She rejoices in God her Savior because of God’s intervention into the lives of those of no account. I can sing that tune. And oh how I long to join the choir in singing Pergolesi’s setting of this well-known canticle that they will offer later in the service. But there’s a part of me that, frankly, does not want to join them, not just because I haven’t attended a single rehearsal, but because I do not know if I can make her song my own. I mean, don’t you get what she’s saying? This is no sweet lullaby she is singing in anticipation of the birth of the baby Jesus. This is no quaint confession of a personal relationship with God. It’s a downright revolutionary political statement about who God lifts up and who God brings down. The same God whom Mary praises for lifting the lowly also brings down the powerful from their thrones and sends the rich away empty. “Mary sings not just

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    a solo aria about her own destiny, but a freedom song on behalf of all [who are young or poor or refugees] in the land. She sings a song of freedom for all who, in their poverty and their wretchedness, still believe that God will make a way where there is no way.”2 And frankly, I fear that I belong to the crowd that gets brought down. “Can Mary’s God truly be our Lord and our God ~ the God who overturns the way the world works, who elects the least and the last to bring in the kingdom, whose judgment in every sense will save the poor, the wronged, and the oppressed? Can the God who is going to knock the powerful off their peacock thrones, their stock exchange seats, their professional chairs, and their benches of judgment really be our God? Can we really praise this God – Mary’s God?”3 Lest we think this song is some starry-eyed naïveté, some great big mixed-up expectation on the part of Mary, look at what God is already doing in the story of her visit with Elizabeth. Elizabeth is an old, barren woman, scorned for her inability to bear children. And Mary is an unmarried, pregnant teenager living in poverty and facing shame. What in the world is God doing here? According to Luke, what God is doing is making known God’s vision for the world, not through someone accorded status in society, not through someone to whom people would actually listen, but through these two miraculously pregnant women who are themselves preparing to birth a revolution. Imagine that, if you can. “If Mary’s song is [the song of the season in which we wait for the coming of God in the flesh], then Mary’s God has a future, and her God will bring us the future. And this is the point of Advent ~ indeed, this is the turning point ~ not only for Mary, but for us all.”4 We know that God will bring us the future because God is already bringing in the future- a revolutionary future where the long ago memories of failing minds are honored as if they were priceless gifts; where Jews and Muslims and Christians open their homes to one another instead of plotting the others’ destruction; where parents of murdered Amish children care for the family of the murderer instead of calling for his head; and where homeless men bring into their only shelter a medically -fragile man who has wandered away from his home in the dead of winter so they can bathe him, clothe him, and feed him. See what future God is bringing to our lives, a future in which we can imagine ourselves. “So sing it again, Mary. Sing to us of your God. Sing on, Mary, sing on, till your song at last becomes ours. Sing, till all the world hears you and makes your lines its own. And when your Son returns with his angels in power, may we join them and you and the whole company of heaven in singing, ‘Glory to God in the highest!’ Glory to the God of Mary, the woman whose freeing Son, and whose freedom song, will yet be our own.”5

    Notes

    1. Joyce Holladay, “Living the Word,” Sojourners Magazine Online (December 1994-January 1995). 2. James F. Kay, “Mary’s Song -And Ours,” Christian Century (December 10,1997): 1157. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid.

    This sermon was preached on December 12,2006.

    Journal for Preachers

  • Woe to us: Jeremiah 17:5-10; Luke 6:17-26

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    Woe to Us*

    Jeremiah 17:5-10; Luke 6:17-26

    David Bartlett

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    I. A few weeks ago, eight of us from this community attended an evening Bible study at a church in Budapest. The Bible study group was a wonderful mix of ages, vocations, gender, sexual preference, and theological convictions. As the pastor introduced us to the church, she made clear that this church had a reputation as perhaps the most open and welcoming congregation among the Reformed Churches in Budapest. Then she passed out English Bibles and announced that the text for discussion was, in fact, the text I just read, the Gospel text assigned by the Revised Common Lectionary for next Sunday. She led us through a careful study of Luke’s beatitudes:

    Blessed are you who are poor, for God’s kingdom is yours. Blessed are you who are hungry, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep, for you will laugh.

    The whole group entered into a lively discussion with active participation from Columbia Seminary students. What was the relationship between faith and blessedness ? Were these promises to be understood historically or eschatologically? All of us were clear that Matthew’s account of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount has a more spiritual view of blessedness. In Luke’s telling of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, the issue is not being poor in spirit, but being poor; not hungering for righteousness, but being hungry; not eschatological mourning, but the grief produced by stunning violence and awful death. And all of us were clear that the mission of the church— in Hungary and the United States as well— included that dimension that is so essential to Luke’s Gospel: good news to the poor. And then, just as our time was running out, the pastor said, “Perhaps we’d better look at the last part of the passage.” And there it was:

    Woe to you who are rich; you’ve had what you’re going to get. Woe to you who are full; hunger is coming; Woe to you who laugh because you will mourn.

    One of the group, a nurse at a pediatric hospital, said something in Hungarian, and all the Hungarian folk nodded. The Pastor translated: “Luisa said that at this church, we love the beatitudes and ignore the woes.”

    IL Us, too. It’s hard enough to muster the courage to preach about God’s preferential

    * This sermon was preached in Columbia Theological Seminary’s chapel on February 6, 2007.

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    option for the poor—how much harder to risk saying a few words about God’s preferential annoyance at the rich—at us. Most of us are stuck not just with the original sin attributed to Adam, but with the original sin that comes with being American and middle class. We are complicit from the day of our birth to the day of our death—from our insurance covered births to our very expensive deaths. And the hard fact, sisters and brothers, is that the only way we can take the blessing of this passage seriously is to think seriously about the Woes as well. I hope there’s a better world a’coming, not just in the hereafter, but in the here, and I know that a better world for the many will mean a more modest world for the few—for me and my family, too. Some years ago when I was a pastor near the University of Chicago, the lectionary handed me a text from Amos, as tough as the text from Jeremiah we just heard. I wrote a pointed sermon reminding the members of my congregation that they lived in middle class and upper middle class wealth in a tiny little section of the city surrounded on three sides by poverty and on the fourth side by Lake Michigan. It was a stunning sermon. As I sat at the typewriter (this was a long time ago), my adrenaline surged with righteous indignation. Then I made a risky move. I showed the sermon to my wife, Carol Bartlett. “And where do you live?” she said. “And how many Rockefellers exploited how many workers to build your splendid Baptist pension fund?” I shifted the sermon. Instead of speaking for the prophet, I tried to listen to the prophet.

    III. I’m listening still. And it’s still hard. All things considered, I’d always rather stop with the beatitudes and skip the woes. Two things have helped a little bit in the years of my ministry—each a gift from a kind of mentor. The first mentor was James Gustafson, the Christian ethicist and theologian. He sat weekly in that congregation where I preached on Amos, and if my spouse hadn’t gotten me on Saturday, he would have gotten me on Monday. Gustafson had sat through yet one more seminary conversation about how the mainline church was losing power and authority and how we longed for the good old days when the local newspaper covered the sermon and clergy got discounts at the department store. “Listen to yourselves,” he said in his most pastoral way. “Don’t you know that week after week you get to speak about the gospel to the people who can help to change the world?” “Listen,” he was saying, “Words still have power. When you preach good news to the marginalized, you are also preaching good news to the powerful—tough news, but good news. Things can change. People can help.” The other mentor was William Sloane Coffin whose sermons I heard regularly for several years. I don’t remember the sermon, but I remember the illustration. It was from Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy, and it was the dialogue between a French officer who had collaborated with the Nazis and a friend who had been part of the resistance. The collaborator was going on and on with his own version of the woes. “Woe is me for this and shame on me for that.” Finally, the resister had had enough: “I don’t want your guilt,” he said. “I want your responsibility.” That’s the word, sisters and brothers. If this word from Luke’s gospel makes us feel guilty, that doesn’t much help. If the word from Luke makes us feel responsible, then it’s good news indeed. Woe to us. Blessing to us, too. Journal for Preachers

  • Protagonist corner [vol 33 no 3 2008]

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    Protagonist Corner

    O. Benjamin Sparks III

    Richmond, Virginia

    Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32)

    The greatest challenge to mainline Christianity is not the loss of members or the fragmenting of generations into sociological interest groups whose needs require the gospel to be adjusted or fine tuned. It is not worship wars or the exponential growth of “me-centered” mega churches. It is not the soul-withering processes that have asserted control of denominations and governing bodies that sap the life out of congregations and pastors. The challenge is simpler and deeper; it is the pearl of great price that rescues authentic faith and faithful discipleship from the dustbin of ecclesial history. It is prayer: prayer to the living God in the Spirit, prayer which is regular, disciplined, and communal. Upon such prayer hang the prayers of individual disciples and church members. This notion has been growing in me for a number of years, but I trace its beginnings to the practice of prayer and scripture reading in my family of origin, to the prayers offered in chapel by the president and faculty of Union Seminary (now Union-PSCE), and to my membership in the Iona Community with its daily office, twice weekly Eucharist, and once weekly “Quaker service.” Those experiences and training in Christian practice have now been enlarged by three trips to Africa and my observation of the extraordinary faith and prayer of a church which is poor in things and rich, oh so rich, in soul. I believe that a sure sign of this need for prayer (for real communication with God) is worship renewal within the mainline in recent years: the introduction of Evensong, Midday Prayer, and Compline, the use of the term Eucharist for the Lord’s Supper, and the incorporation of the Sanctus, Memorial Acclamation, and Great Amen into the Prayer of Thanksgiving – even in Presbyterian Churches. All of these practices link us to the holy, universal church. Further, there is the astonishing fact that in a mere four decades, Advent Wreaths are available in Baptist/Evangelical Bookstores. Five decades ago in the South, Advent was the practice of Episcopalians and Catholics. I would argue that such evidence is an indication – even a flickering – of “established” Christianity’s hunger for mystery and transcendence – even hunger for God. Experiences in Africa helped confirm my suspicion. When my wife and I first arrived in Ghana almost ten years ago for me to be attached for a month to a downtown church in Accra as a visiting associate pastor, we were met at the airport and taken to our lodgings. Immediately after we crossed the threshold, water was brought and opened and offered; then prayers of thanksgiving, welcome, and hope were offered in English which is, of course, not their native tongue. We heard prayers of shaming eloquence and sincerity. Such an occasion happily contradicts the notion that sloppy, emotional, off-the cuff prayers (“Lord, we just, I just… “) which are so often selfcentered , telling God about us and how we feel, are somehow more authentic than disciplined, articulate praying. The prayers which I hold up as examples are spoken

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    to God – and are not about us. Further, in 2006, members of our congregation and I visited St. James Congregation in Malawi, which is in the Blantyre Synod of the Central Church of Africa, Presbyterian. We arrived in the dark by bus three hours late and were welcomed by nearly 100 members and elders with prayers and unaccompanied singing. Then there was a tour of the church. As we entered the sanctuary at nearly 10:00 p.m. we heard whisperings and exclamations coming from a dimly lit balcony in the center of the building opposite the chancel – and we asked what it was. The sounds were of people at prayer (not Pentecostal but Presbyterian!). It was explained to us that people were always at prayer in that balcony, twenty-four hours a day, except for the occasions (Sunday morning, Saturday night, and Wednesday evening) when the space was used for worship. Think what might be accomplished in urban congregations all across America with such a twenty-four hour security system, and how much might be saved on monitored security systems to be channeled into mission projects. In addition while were in Blantyre, we discovered that on every holy occasion, year round (first in Advent, in Lent, Easter, Christmas, and perhaps in times of great need: outbreaks of violence or witchcraft) men in the congregation – led by elders – go up onto a nearby mountain and pray and fast for twenty-four to thirty-six hours. This occurs in a church of 7,500 members with one pastor and 500 elders, where the clerk of Session is a woman. This congregation is only ten years old. What would happen to us – who are in the midst of a great spiritual revival and are mired in intractable ethical conflict – if the governing bodies of our congregations went on retreats – and threw out the consultants, extinguished power point presentations , and all those tedious, secular decision-making processes? What if we prayed and fasted for twenty-four to thirty-six hours? Such occasions would require the use of scripture and discussion, silence, liturgy and extemporaneous prayer. It would also be an opportunity for more experienced elders to train younger elders in the practices of prayer spoken directly to God. Such events might begin to break down the kneejerk , artificial barrier between liberals and conservatives. We assume that conservatives pray and liberals do not. What would happen to us – if a local governing body and a pastor nominating committee met for twenty-four hours before issuing a call to a new pastor? Or if a governing body, facing a vote on a controversial change of direction in a mission program, met for thirty-six hours, seeking the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit? No flip charts needed! Six months into retirement, I have been visiting churches all over Richmond, Virginia. I have listened to announcements of compelling programs, of exciting music and art events, and of new non-traditional worship services. But there was nary a word about the practice of prayer. Who will meet the challenge?

    Journal for Preachers

  • Yet another traumatic Christmas memory, perhaps

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    Yet Another Traumatic Christmas Memory,

    Perhaps

    Mary Kennan Herbert

    Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York

    Tulsa, OK?

    An Oklahoma fragment.

    I am perched on a stool by the ubiquitous

    family radio, there is always a radio

    in old photos, in Norman Rockwell paintings

    for magazine covers crumbling into our past,

    even as I speak.

    Bing Crosby is singing “I’m Dreaming

    of a White Christmas” just to me,

    while I stare dreamily at our tree,

    that ominous balsam, that deep, dark green

    monster in the living room, bloated

    with its gleaming balls reflecting

    lost light.

    Oddly, it reveals its fearful visage

    only in daytime. Yet, in the twinkling

    evenings, the lights are plugged in, and instant

    sparkle reassures and quarreling shadows

    are sidelined. Der Bingle sings and rings

    three little chimes, rhymes, echoes

    to elevate my young heart.

    All so simplistic, and how people love

    that song! Even a love-struck girl age five,

    learns how words can tame a gothic forest,

    sometimes. Guests arrive,

    she is requested to sing a carol, a hymn

    to the holiday, “Silent Night,” while perched

    on a stool, a stage, feeling naked.

    Advent 2008

  • Barth

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Charles Raynal

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    Eberhard Busch, Barth. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008.

    Eberhard Busch gives us a brief and glad introduction to the life and work of the joyous Reformed theologian, Karl Barth. The author, who was Barth’s assistant, has previously written several important interpretations of the great theologian’s life and work. This one, in the Abingdon Pillars of Theology series, is only 83 pages of text, with a few footnotes and a nice bibliography. The series aims to serve seminary and college classrooms, but preachers and church educators who face the weekly challenge to be thoughtful in preaching and teaching can, with this little book, become reacquainted or get to know for the first time Karl Barth’s theological mind, heart, and imagination. The book has three short chapters on Barth’s life, each beginning with one of his memorable quotes that is revealing for the biography and theological work. “God is God” was Barth’s watchword and discovery in his early years while he was a preacher and became so disappointed with his theological teachers who supported the German militarism that caused World War. “The one Word of God” was the concentration of the Barmen Declaration of May 31,1934, the theological confession of United, Reformed, and Lutheran pastors and lay people who took a brave stand against the emerging conformity to the Nazi state by the established protestant state church. “Not only your loved ones,” was Barth’s answer to an inquiring woman at one of the frequent discussions he loved to have in his older years with all sorts of people who wanted to ask him heartfelt questions. She asked him, “Herr Professor, can I be sure that I will see my loved ones in heaven?” He replied, “To be sure, you will see not only your ‘loved ones’!” We can see from these quotes, particularly the last one, that Busch brings new material to this introduction. He shows how paying attention to the rich, larger-than-life biography, especially the pastoral and teaching work of Karl Barth, gives compelling interest to his theology. The fourth chapter is an outline and commentary on some salient points in Karl Barth’s theology. How could one summarize the ten thousand pages of the major theological work Church Dogmatics, which Barth began to write in Germany in 1932, was still composing when he retired in 1962, and never finished. Most other summaries are pedantic and dull. However, Busch offers an outline organized around themes that embody the moves and emphases of Barth’s work in the nine sections, each of six to eight pages. His sections are lively and include little-known references and insights that come from his life-long study. Chapter 4, like the previous ones, also begins with a telling quote that characterizes Barth’s theology: “To think is to think after.” Barth wanted to emphasize that theology may begin its work because the people in the church have spoken and speak of God. Sometimes they speak in a “terribly distorted and confused way.” Theology’s task is to help the church speak of God in a correct and appropriate way. Theology is possible and necessary because God has spoken and

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    speaks to humanity in Jesus Christ by the action of the Holy Spirit. The test and guidance for the proclamation of the Christian Community is Holy Scripture which contains the defining witness to God’s speaking to humanity. Theology guides the thinking, action, and new speaking by the people of God for their witness today. Theology is “The Faith That Seeks Understanding” (Busch’s Section 4.1 and 4.2). Following this affirmation and exposition of the doctrine of God’s revelation, Barth introduces the doctrine of the Trinity at the beginning of Church Dogmatics as the main theme to which he would return again and which Busch describes as “The Freedom of the Triune God” (4.2). Then he presents Barth’s exegesis and exposition of “The Covenant of Grace Made with Israel and Fulfilled in Jesus Christ” (4.3), “The External Basis for the Covenant and the Internal Basis of Creation” (4.4), “The Content of the Covenant-Law and the Form of the Covenant Promise” (4.5), “The Exposure of Sin in Light of Its Overcoming” (4.6), “The Justification and Sanctification of the Sinner” (4.7), “The Gathering and Sending of the Church” (4.8), and “the Resurrection of Jesus and Our Hope” (4.9). Two examples from Busch’s account of Barth’s affirmation and fresh interpretation of theological points illustrate the value of this little book. Justification, especially important for Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism, became a topic that attracted a wide Roman Catholic reading of Barth. The resurrection of Jesus from death on the cross in the New Testament challenged theological Liberalism and historical studies of the Bible. In examining the sources of the Reformation emphasis on justification in the Bible and in the history of theology, Barth both affirms its Old and New Testament roots and its historical value for guiding the voice of the church today. Even though he aimed to help overcome Lutheran and Calvinistic differences, when asked what he had against the Lutheran focus on the doctrine, Barth answered,

    What I have against it is that in I Corinthians 1:301 read: “Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness, and sanctification and redemption.” This is a bit more than the narrow pass into which Lutheran theology.. .entered during the sixteenth century when everything was reduced to the common denominator of this concept…. It was disastrous that one did not first receive this: “Jesus Christ…” and from there go on to Mark 2: “Your sins are forgiven.” And then, set back on one’s feet: “Take up your bed and go home!”

    Barth emphasized what he read from Paul, summarized in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19: “All this [the new creation] is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” (NRSV). Barth’s binding of sanctification to justification is typical of Calvinism, but Barth also wanted to expand justification to include our vocation and ministry in service to the world. Barth also rethought and reaffirmed the resurrection of Jesus from death on the cross. In his student days he was strongly influenced by his teachers who followed Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), the German Reformed theologian. Accepting critical historical method typically led them to deny the factuality of the resurrection or to conclude that the facts behind the New Testament writings

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    were inaccessible. This way of using historical research typically led them to deny the importance of the resurrection of Jesus for modern believers. Schleiermacher concluded that the New Testament presented a picture of Jesus that was sufficient to inspire us to the Christian faith in God, without making the resurrection essential to the church’s teaching about Jesus Christ. His theology did not need the resurrection of Jesus. He thought that when modern Christians believe in the resurrection, it is because it is “written down” in Scripture, and their view of the Bible’s authority requires it. To affirm the resurrection of Jesus grew out of a literalistic view of the Bible, not because it was theologically necessary for faith in Christ. Barth grew suspicious of dispensing with the resurrection of Jesus. He did not respond by a simple argument that the New Testament reports of the resurrection were factual in a sense accessible to modern historical criticism. He rethought the biblical testimonies to the resurrection. The biblical witnesses to the resurrection present “an event in which God alone acts,” writes Busch interpreting Barth. The resurrection happened. As in God’s original act of creation and God’s providential interaction in the world, its possibility precedes, and its actuality is not bound by the normal course or the usual understanding of ordinary historical physical events. Barth both challenged the use theologians put to historical method and affirmed the centrality of the Easter message as the indispensable foundation of Christian speech and action that are faithful to God. The examples of Barth’s re-thinking of justification by faith and the resurrection of Jesus are two of many points that Eberhard Busch’s book invites us to think about. Richard and Martha Burnett have made a very readable translation. This little book is a welcome help for a reminder about or a first introduction to Karl Barth’s theology.