piphany is like that lost holiday that no one really knows what to do with. We’re so ready to get back to work or get back to school after the “holidays” are over that we seem to forget that Christmas isn’t the end of things. Traditionally, Christmas has been a season, not an event, and that season leads up to Epiphany on January 6.

Why does this even matter? Epiphany isn’t that attractive as a holiday in our culture. There are no gifts to be bought, no new clothes to wear to church, no long trips to see family members, no marketing campaigns from Hallmark to make us feel guilty about not purchasing a card or trinket, no jewelry stores accusing every man within 60 miles of not caring about his wife, there’s none of that. That’s probably not a bad thing. Strip all of the excess away and epiphany is really about the same thing Christmas is about: joy and gratitude.

Epiphany celebrates several things, all wrapped around one theme. First, the visitation of the wise men from the east to see Jesus. Second, the baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan. Third, Jesus beginning his public ministry by miraculously turning water into wine at Cana. The theme: Christ is revealed to all people. Jesus is not confined as simply the Jewish Messiah - though he was nothing less - he is the only Savior for the world. Epiphany completes Advent and Christmas. In Advent, Christ is promised. In Christmas, he comes. In Epiphany, he is revealed to the world. As Simeon sings when Jesus is presented at the temple, Jesus is “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2.32)

Presbyterians, like me, have not been good at all at giving Epiphany its proper due and celebration. There are two hymns in the Trinity Hymnal section labeled Epiphany. (And that doesn’t even include “From the Eastern Mountains”, a terrible omission.) Thankfully, God has not left us alone. The Lutheran and Anglican churches have rich hymnody concerning this celebration.

From the Eastern Mountains
Godfrey Thring, 1873

From the eastern mountains, pressing on, they come,
wise men in their wisdom, to his humble home;
stirred by deep devotion, hasting from afar,
ever journeying onward, guided by a star.

There their Lord and Savior meek and lowly lay,
wondrous Light that led them onward on their way,
ever now to lighten nations from afar,
as they journey homeward by that guiding star.

Thou who in a manger once hast lowly lain,
who dost now in glory o’er all kingdoms reign,
gather in the heathen who in lands afar
ne’er have seen the brightness of thy guiding star.

Gather in the outcasts, all who’ve gone astray,
Throw Thy radiance o’er them, guide them on their way.
Those who never knew Thee, those who’ve wandered far,
Guide them by the brightness of Thy guiding star.

Onward through the darkness of the lonely night,
shining still before them with thy kindly light.
Guide them, Jew and Gentile, homeward from afar,
young and old together, by thy guiding Star.

My English teachers from my past would be shocked to read the following admission: I like essays. And now to properly nuance that statement: I like reading other people’s essays. Much like short stories, I find essays valuable to read because they often deal with issues in much more concise ways than entire volumes. Also, reading an essay allows me to feel like I can read material in managable chunks, rather than try to read an in-depth analysis and feel guilty that I can only sit through 40-45 pages before I become completely bored with the subject matter.

I’ve been reading a collection of essays on Christian Worship by John D. Witvliet. Dr. Witvliet is the director of the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, MI. He is both a musician and a theologian and is able to wed the two disciplines in his writing. Here is a selection from the essay “Soul Food for the People of God” that is appropriate as we prepare for the Advent season:

Good music can also inoculate us from spiritual disease. Consider the prominent spiritual disease of sentimentality: religious experience as candy-coated happiness and bliss. If we feed our souls a steady diet of musical candy, we will have little spiritual protein to sustain us. This is no more true than at Christmas. Here is a time of year when broken and hurting and grieving people often hurt the most. And yet it is a time of year when we most often serve up rank sentimentality in our music. This can happen as easily with music sung by pop artists as with music sung by English choir boys. Even really good choirs often sing many songs that are lullabies to Jesus or that are about three ships sailing in or about unknown words such as fum or about swinging steeple bells or merry gentlemen not being dismayed — all of which prevent us from focusing on the incomprehensible paradox of the incarnation. When the incarnation does come through, when we do sing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” (one of the most theologically profound of all carols) and actually attend to the meaning of the text, our souls are fed with the protein of deep spiritual life.

from “Soul Food for the People of God” in Worship Seeking Understanding by John D. Witvliet, p. 235

Often, it’s hard to trace back how I’ve made my way through the internet to a specific blog post. Unlike Hansel and Gretel, I’m not prone to leaving a trail of bread crumbs behind me. (Okay, so that was a really bad metaphor. Fill in the previous sentence with one that makes more sense to the predicament of me not caring how I get places on the internet.) Tonight, I ran across a challenging post by Paul Lamey called The Problem of Scripture-less Worship.

Lamey writes about something that all of us who plan worship services should know instinctively, the primacy of the Word of God. Here is a brief quotation, I recommend reading the entire article.

Brothers, read the Scripture to and for your people so that they might hear God’s voice and be changed. The means of evangelism and the continued sanctification of God’s people is the reading and proclamation of His Word. The Church has the distinct privilege to be the pillar and support of what God says and ministers have the unique opportunity to insure that a steady diet of Truth is administered into the ears of the congregation. The only time some will hear the Psalms read (or sung) will be on Sunday mornings. The only time some will ever dive into the dark continent of the “older testament” will be when they hear it read or preached by a Christian minister. The only time many will hear The Gospel (outside of a tract) will be when it is read from one of the four Evangelists.
Do whatever you have to do to make it happen. Cut short the announcements or bump Sister Susie’s solo but heed the words of J. R. Miller who wrote that “The reading of the word of God ought to be an event.”

This past weekend, I spend a lot of my time finishing Eugene Peterson’s book Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work. Peterson is one of the finest writers on pastoral theology around today. This book, written in 1980, uses patterns from the books of Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther to inform pastoral practices for today. On page 183, in the section on Ecclesiastes, Peterson writes concerning worship:

[N]either Bible nor church uses the word “worship” as a description of experience. Pastors hear this adjectival usage in sentences like, “I can have a worship experience with God on the golf course.” That means, “I have religious feelings reminding me of good things, awesome things, beautiful things nearly any place.” Which is true enough. The only thing wrong with the statement is its ignorance, thinking that such experiences make up what the church calls “worship.” The biblical usage is very different. It talks of worship as a response to God’s word in the context of the community of God’s people. Worship is neither subjective only nor private only. It is not what I feel when I am by myself; it is how I act toward God in responsible relation with God’s people. Worship, in the biblical sources and in liturgical history, is not something a person experiences, it is something we do, regardless of how we feel about it, or whether we feel anything about it at all. Experience develops out of worship. Isaiah saw, heard, and felt on the day he received his call while at worship in the Temple — but he didn’t go there in order to have a “seraphim experience.”

This past week, I’ve worked at Christ the King’s 2006 Vacation Bible School. I’ve played piano for our large group times and I’ve taught the kids in a designated choir time as part of the VBS week. In many ways this was, as this entry is titled, going back to my roots. I have a degree in music education and worked as a music teacher for two years before enrolling in seminary. So, rather than being scared to death of being put in front of 4-9 year olds, I walked into the week expecting to really enjoy myself. (I actually was scared to death of being in front of 2 and 3 year olds, but that’s a story for another posting.)

From what I’ve been told, this is the first year that the VBS has incorporated anything like choir time into the curriculum. I asked for it for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to be able to spend time teaching the kids and, second, I wanted to be involved in every stage of planning how music would shape our VBS. In our large group times, I’ve assisted two very capable leaders and during choir time, I’ve been doing a one-man show. We’ve been learning and rehearsing a song that our Director found on one of the “Seeds” albums. It’s a direct setting of this week’s key verse, John 3:16 , called “Eternal Life”.

I’ve arranged “Eternal Life” to be sung Sunday morning in our worship services as a Children’s Anthem along with our musicians. (I think it’s very, very important that kids sing along with real instruments rather than pre-recorded music whenever possible.) In the middle of “Eternal Life”, the kids sing the “Amazing Love…” chorus from “And Can it Be”, which is the first hymn that the congregation will sing. Immediately after the anthem is over, the organist transitions the congregation into “And Can It Be”, which I’m going to at least introduce to the kids tomorrow morning. I’ve tried to design the service so that the kids aren’t a spectacle up front, acceptable simply because they look cute, but they sing and participate in the service just like what they are - important members of our congregation.

That’s the plan anyway. Of course, all plans are subject to changing variables, and I’m going to see about 250 little variables running around having fun tomorrow morning.

The staff here in the families with children area have done a great job taking the curriculum and rewriting it so that it is Gospel centered and focused on Jesus. It’s a shame that most children’s ministries don’t have this focus. We need to recapture Psalm 78 for our churches. Here’s just a bit of Isaac Watts’ setting.

Let children hear the mighty deeds
Which God performed of old,
Which in our younger years we saw,
And which our fathers told.

That they remember God to be
Their rock eternally,
And know that only God Most High
Can their redeemer be.

Thus shall they learn in God alone
Their hope securely stands;
That they may ne’er forget his works,
But practise his commands.

“¡Adios niños!”

H is risen indeed!

A blessed Good Friday to readers of the notebook. This year, like last year, I’ll be spending my Good Friday with Bach (and Jesus). I plan on listening to the St. Matthew Passion and again being overwhelmed by my sin and my need for a savior.

I wrote the following for a class last spring in which we were assigned to evaluate the St. Matthew Passion. I hope it rings as true for others as it did for me.

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Believe it or not, Bach has just as much to teach preachers as he does musicians. I could write on and on about the compositional techniques that Bach masterfully used, his incredible knowledge of instrumental textures and the like, but the most striking thing about the St. Matthew Passion should be how personal it is for the listener. The passion account is not a story to be told annually, but something to be lived. One author quotes Luther’s general disapproval of such musical settings, “The Passion of Christ should not be acted out in words and pretense, but in real life.” Surely, this idea weighed heavily upon Bach who was able to wed the words with real life. Those who communicate the gospel must be able to do this – to force the hearer to answer Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” Bach, of course, has answered this question for himself in the Passion:

He hath us all so richly blessed,
The blind he hath returned their sight,
The lame he leaveth walking,
He tells us of his Father’s word,
He drives the devil forth,
The troubled hath he lifted up,
He took the sinners to himself.

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I hope that you are afforded the same opportunity as I to listen to the piece but if you have to pick between the Bach and Jesus, pick Jesus. It’s what Bach would have done.

Palm Sunday can seem to be a little schizophrenic. If you grew up, like me, in a tradition that was very much opposed to observing the church year (save for Christmas and Easter), Palm Sunday was a bit of an abberation. Maybe we celebrated it a little bit because the kids looked really cute waving those palm branches around. I don’t know. I do know that the preacher’s sermons confused me.

Because the last thing we wanted to do on Easter morning was have a “downer” service, we’d cover all of Holy Week on Palm Sunday. That meant we’d start off with the triumphal entry (complete with a story about Jesus’ donkey for the kids) and end with the crucifixion. Talk about an emotional roller coaster!

While that may not have been the best emotional roller coaster to go on, Palm Sunday isn’t the easiest day to figure out. On the one hand, we celebrate the king coming into Jerusalem to take his rightful place on David’s throne. That’s certainly what many of the contemporary Jewish people thought was going on.[bibleblock]Matthew 21:9[/bibleblock]
Their cries of “Hosanna!” (which is an exclamation meaning “save!”) echo Psalm 118:25-26.[bibleblock]Psalm 118:25-26[/bibleblock]
And who is “he” who comes in the name of the Lord? The Davidic king. Who rides on donkeys? Kings and those in authority. (See the books of Judges and Samuel.)

The Spirit of the Reformation Study Bible says in commentary on Psalm 118:26:

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. A reference to the king, who led the armies in battle against the enemy. In the New Testament, the crowds welcomed Jesus into Jerusaleme with this cry, thinking him to be the new divine warrior. He would win the ultimate battle against Satan (Mt 21:9), but the people would fail to understand or acknowledge it.

Jesus was welcomed as king. We sing Psalm 24, “Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates. Behold, the King of Glory waits.” Jesus was welcomed as king but he came to do a very unkingly thing in their eyes (and in our eyes, if we’re honest). He came to die. That’s the other side of Palm Sunday. We celebrate Jesus’ entry but we know why he was entering.

Lest we lose hope, however, as somber as Holy Week may be, the story doesn’t end in death. That’s why though on Friday we grieve, on Palm Sunday (and Easter Sunday) we celebrate the king.

The Roman Mass uses the words of the Triumphal Entry in what is known as the Benedictus. Many composers have written settings of the Benedictus to be sung by Christians around the world to celebrate Jesus’ kingship. The words exist in some form in many of the liturgies of the church and are especially poignant to pray today.

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Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.

εὐλογημένος ὁ ἐρχόμενος ἐν ὀνόματι κυρίου

בָּר֣וּךְ ֭הַבָּא בְּשֵׁ֣ם יְהוָ֑ה

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.