Nielsen’s Nook

I happened to come across this album (if we may call it that), which is a recording of the Cistercian Monks of Stift Heilgenkreuz. If ever music could compel one to long to lay cruciform for hours before the altar of the LORD, this does. If ever the human voice could sound forth with symphonies of glory, the voices on this piece do merely that. I hope it brings as many worshipful tears to you as are beheld by this music.

If you’d like a copy, buy one through Amazon.

Webber, Robert E. Ancient-Future Worship : Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008 $14.99 (paperback) 192 pages. “Worship does God’s story,” writes Robert Webber. Those four words are the rubric for the entire book published as the final volume of the Ancient-Future series. Written on the popular level, Webber argues for a return to the ancient paradigm for worship as the way forward.

Ancient-Future Worship is a decent introduction to the liturgical world. The book is directed to Evangelicals who are perhaps weary of over-programmed church-growth oriented church life. Its aim is to call Christians to a worship that “discloses the work of Jesus Christ.”[1]

The book is divided into two parts, preceded by an introduction that serves as a summary to the book as a whole. The first part, Rediscovering God’s Story in Worship, seeks to inform the reader of the scriptural and historical basis for the four pillars of worship in Webber’s paradigm. Worship is the reenactment of God’s redemptive work in space and time and in this sense worship does God’s story. Worship also remembers the past and anticipates the future works of God in the present. Consequently, the fullness of worship encompasses the fullness of the biblical witness in both the Old and New Testaments.

The second part of the book deals primarily with the application of the rediscovery of Part One to the tripartite transforming worship of the Christian Church (i.e., Word, Eucharist and Prayer). Webber explains that the role of the Word of God in worship is to transform participants by implicating them into the Divine Narrative in History. The Eucharist transforms worshipers as they participate in the presence of God. The section on prayer seeks to return the reader’s paradigm towards public prayer. “The story of God,” Webber writes, “is the substance of the inner content that shapes the outer form of public prayer. Worship prays God’s story.”[2]

In his conclusion, Webber informs the reader of the primary and secondary sources that have impacted him in his journey towards “Ancient-Future Worship.” Church Fathers such as Ignatius and Athanasius have composed the ancient component of Webber’s sources, while his contemporary influences are almost exclusively Eastern Orthodox. Last, the Appendix is a call to Evangelicals to turn away from the modern and cultural trappings that “camouflage God’s story or empty it of its cosmic and redemptive meaning.”

Each chapter employs a reader friendly layout, using headings and including summary sections at the conclusion of each chapter.

The recapitulation of redemptive history is set forth as a core purpose of worship. As such, an emphasis on Trinitarian worship comes to the fore. Redemptive history entails God’s work in the Garden of Eden to Christ Jesus’ Second Advent bringing Paradise with Him. Consequently, worship is the convergence of the past and the future into the present, concentering divine transcendence and immanence.

There is iterative concern for the fullness of God’s story being brought to bear upon Christian worship. Webber reflects on why congregants may struggle with liturgical worship saying, “one reason is because we tend to be New Testament Christians rather than Bible Christians.” [3] To put it another way, embracing the entire Christian metanarrative in Sunday worship is an exercise of implicating oneself (participating) in God’s story and shaping one’s worldview for worshiping the Lord in the mundane.

Related to the Christian metanarrative in Scripture is a welcomed emphasis on the objective nature of worship. This objective worship is embodied not merely propositional, a corporate endeavor not a private enterprise, a weighty calling not comfortable entertainment. “The primary focus of worship then and now is not me, the worshipper, but God, who redeems the world.”[4]

This reader deeply appreciates the concern given to the worship of God in Ancient-Future Worship. Webber circumscribes the liturgical question of how form relates to content and provides constructive avenues for Christians concerned about historical worship to traverse.

While the discussion and interaction with the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church is fruitful, Webber’s more or less exclusive commitment to the Eastern Liturgy seems arbitrary and at times dismissive of the Western Tradition, which ironically shares much of the same liturgical traditions. This is especially true in Western Rite Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholics.

Evangelicals from a certain Reformed perspective more oriented to Redemptive History may inadvertently feel a bit slighted. The emphasis on the Christian metanarrative has historically been central to theologians like John Calvin, Gerhardus Vos, and more recently in the field of worship, Hughes Oliphant Old.

Overall, Ancient-Future Worship is worth the read. Its irenic tone will engage the reader in a much needed conversation with the self, the contemporary culture, and the Church as God’s people have worshiped the incarnate-risen-and-exalted Christ throughout the centuries.

[1] Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Worship : Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 108.

[2] Ibid., 151.

[3] Ibid., 67.

[4] Ibid., 97.

The Church has been the recipient of Christ’s redemptive work in history and is itself part of that redemptive history.  Every Sunday the story of Redemption is reenacted an proclaimed in Word and Sacrament.  But did you know that every year the Story of Redemption is told through the Church Calendar.

That’s what the Christian seasons are all about. From Christmas to Easter and back again, the Church calendar is a reenactment of the redemptive narrative that God spoke in the person of Jesus Christ in which we participate today. Fr. Bob Corley, Curate at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Dallas, has written a short article on the Church Calendar that I think you might find informative and helpful.

I have a feature in my blog engine that alerts me when people cite a post I have written. While that sounds like a cool feature, it was quite strange when I saw today for the first time a citation of an article I wrote, entitled “A Reformed Liturgical Diet,” from October 2006. The article itself is an exegesis of the Westminster Shorter Catechism which was aimed to show that Reformed churches have historically had a much higher view of the Sacraments than present day instances.

As one who deeply loves, cherishes and practices expository preaching, you can imagine my shock when the name of the post citing “A Reformed Liturgical Diet” was entitled “Expository Preaching under attack.” I would have appreciated the opportunity to interact with the post 2 years ago; however, since I didn’t then, I will do so now. So before you go any further, please take a moment to do the following:

1. Read my original post A Reformed Liturgical Diet
2. Read Expository Preaching under attack at the Two-Edged Sword blog including the comments.

A Two-Edged False Dichotomy

First, for the record, I believe deeply that expository preaching is crucial in the churches of Jesus Christ. So I take exception to the way I have been misrepresented. Preaching is “Christian storytelling” and it is every bit as sacramental as the Lord’s Table. God, after all, is not words of any language. He certainly transcends the confines of vocabulary and exegesis. Nevertheless, the Church has been picked up and carried throughout history through the Spirit’s attending to the preaching of the Word of God. In fact, I would say that to the extent we unfold the Word of God to the people is the extent to which God empowers the sermon. The point of my article is to urge readers back toward the balanced liturgical diet given us in the Scripture of Word and Sacrament. To pit the preaching of the Word over against the Sacraments is a false dichotomy, at least in the Christian economy.

Second, historically speaking the Reformers were fighting for an increased frequency of the Lord’s Table in worship. At the time of Luther the Eucharist was celebrated only once a year and then the laity only received the cup. Calvin is fairly clear that he would have preferred a weekly communion but had to settle for quarterly with the council at Geneva. So it is a bit strange to me, historically speaking, to hear modern-day Reformed so dismissive of sacraments for which our tradition gives instances of those who were once willing to give even their lives for them. Calvin’s seminary graduates had a life expectancy post graduation of about six months. Influences on Calvin, perhaps we should call them teachers, such as Peter Martyr Vermigli in turn had great impact on Thomas Cranmer such that the 1552 Book of Common Prayer is dedicated to Vermigli.

Third, when “Mr. Baggins” comments that “These guys don’t know what they’re talking about. They are attacking preaching itself,” I am compelled to remind us all that my piece was an exegesis of the Westminster Shorter Catechism on the subject of the Lord’s Table itself. I have spent a bit of time in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, in particular to study the nature of the Sacraments in the life of the Reformed churches. I do not want to impute such lack of engagement to Lee at Two-Edged Sword; however, Mr. Baggins makes assertions without even hobbit sized amounts of substantive argumentation. Consequently, it is hard to see how he is not dismissing the Westminster Confession and significant influences on its development like John Calvin and other Magisterial Reformers all in one broad stroke.

In short, I would expect that Lee and I have different universes of discourse in approaching the question of the role of the sacraments in the life of the Church. John Chrysostom would never have gone for preaching apart from the sacraments and yet he is held up as substantiating Mr. Baggins assertions. What I leave you is not a gauntlet (for I have no desire to engage in polemics here); but, instead an exhortation to consider how Chrysostom, himself a huge influence on Calvin and other reformers, would approach the balance that has historically always existed between Word and Sacrament.

It occured to me this morning, while observing fellow parishoners receiving Holy Communion, that there seemed to be a distinct impression from the Reformation in the distribution of the elements. It is my understanding that in the period prior to the Reformation churches celebrated the Eucharist generally once a year and when it was celebrated laity received only the bread, never the wine.

One of the things the Reformation fought to recover in the Church Catholic was both the frequency and unity of the Eucharist that they perceived present in the Church Fathers. It is communion with the undivided Christ that is promised in the Eucharist. As such both kinds, bread and wine, which the Lord commissioned, should be used. Further, with such weighty thing as communion—communion with the Living and Incarnate Christ being offered—it made sense to incorporate the Eucharist back into the regular corporate worship of the Church.

I do not know at this point how this plays out in Roman or Eastern Orthodox churches (or for that matter churches outside of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Dallas); however, what I see at St. John’s is that it is the Lay Eucharistic Minister and the Sub-Deacon, both being laity, who serve the consecrated chalice to the parish during Holy Communion. Perhaps this is a visible reminder that the chalice has been returned to the people that they might celebrate their full and gracious bond to the undivided and perfect Christ.

17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

“That is,” writes Farley, “they are to manifest the Lord’s life on earth, as His Body.” ¹ I remember one of the extremely helpful and paradigmatic books I read in seminary by Benjamin B. Warfield. In this little booklet that he wrote to incoming students to Princeton Seminary, he encouraged us that there is never a time that we would turn from worshiping the Lord to our books or from the study of our books to the worship of the Lord (to paraphrase). ²

Warfield, Farley and St. Paul all resonate symphonically together here. The strange thing about truth is that it transcends all kinds of boundaries, traditions, cultures, and time. Colossians 3:17 underscores union with Christ the paradigmatic element of Christian theology and life. This union is in fact a participation in the divine energies (workings, ενεργη) and is most profoundly proclaimed at the Lord’s Table, where Christians by faith receive the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus—where God gives us himself and we give Him ourselves. And so we say during the consecration of the Bread and Wine:

And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him. ³

This is of course a continuation of the theme we find in John 15, where Christ makes plain his desire that we abide in Him and He in us, as He—the Second Person of the Trinity—abides in His Father. In this way Christians graciously participate in the divine life given to us in Christ Jesus. “[Our] life is His life. [Our] existence is to be one continuous outpouring of thanksgiving to God in His Name. The Christian calling is to be a eucharistic man.” ⁴

__________

¹ Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 186.

² Warfield, Benjamin B. The Religious Life of Theological Students.

³ Book of Common Prayer, 336.

⁴ Farley, 187.

Our rites have tended to domesticate God within the images of Western culture projected into the heavenly places. Liturgy is most authentic when it is experienced as awestruck praise, the creature standing at the threshold of the Holy. … Annie Dillard has summed up the point, saying, ‘I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed.’

__________

Weil, Louis. “The Gospel in Anglicanism.” The Study of Anglicanism. Stephen Sykes et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 62-3.

I was reading through a forum recently where Protestants of a variety of types were addressing the Church season called Lent. In dismissing Lent, there were phrases like, “the scriptures do not command it” and “ungodly superstition.” After all, one person smugly noted, Lent gave us Mardi Gras and that of course has to prove that Lent is wrong.

The scriptures don’t command that we go to church on Wednesdays, but Christians all over the world, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant all go to church on days that are not Sunday. The scriptures do not command that we celebrate Easter or Christmas and yet those Christian holidays seem to be practiced ubiquitously. So what’s the problem with Lent?

Is it superstitious? Is it ungodly? If I might quote from A Handbook for Lent that St. John’s Episcopal Church, Dallas, Texas put out this year, I’d like to establish from the perspective of a group celebrating Lent, what the season is about:

Lent is a penitential season of the Christian Year, forty days in length, in which Christians focus on repentance and personal devotion in light of the coming celebration of Christ’s resurrection at Easter. The forty-day period alludes to many Scriptural events which are important in salvation history: the forty days of the flood; the forty-year Exodus of the Hebrews in the Sinai wilderness: Moses’ forty days on Mount Sinai when he received the Law; Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the desert, during which time the Father prepared him for his public ministry.

In this quote, I think we can see that the length of forty days has historical precedence and is purposed to connect the Church today with the Church of History that transcends the ages. Lent is a time of personal devotion and repentance in preparation for Easter. Is it personal devotion, repentance or Easter that is the problem? It is hard to believe that if truly considered that any of these three core components of Lent could be considered “ungodly superstition.”

Mardi Gras of course is the debauchery in New Orleans, Louisiana in which people impale themselves on as much sin as possible with the unbelievable assumption that then they would give up such sinful practices during the Lenten season. This actually has nothing to do with the Lenten fasting. During Lent one gives up good things (alcohol, meat, etc) with a view towards laying hold of the best thing, the reward God promises his people, Christ himself. There is never a time when Christians are permitted or encouraged to sin in order to worship God. To say that Mardi Gras demonstrates that Lent should not be practiced, is analogous to saying that because Christmas is a time when people gorge themselves in a feast of materialism that we should not celebrate the ancient Christian holy season of Advent. It is in this vein that we must conclude that Mardi Gras is a godless aberration of Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday), is in no way a Christian practice, and has no bearing on whether one should celebrate Lent.

Lent is not something we of course observe as individuals, but as the Church. It is a season of preparation for Easter, when Christ Jesus rose from the dead, swallowing death and hell whole. For “if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19, ESV). Lord have mercy upon your Church that in this age her members might finally learn how to play charitably as you came and gave us charity that we never imagined. Amen.

The Church Liturgy is divided into two parts: 1) the Word Spoken and 2) the Word Broken. In the first part one will experience the reading and preaching of the Word of God. There is in our church an Old Testament reading, the singing of a Psalm, the Epistle reading and then the reading from the Gospel. There is a processional from the altar to the middle of the sanctuary, in the midst of the people, where a formation occurs and the reading of the Holy Gospel occurs. The formation looks something like this:

The crucifer (i.e., the person carrying the crucifix) stands at the head of the formation. The torch bearers stand to either side and forward, shining light upon the Gospel Book held by the Lay Reader in between them. And at the foot of this cruciform formation stands the priest who reads the Gospel. Something is profoundly and purposefully communicated to both clergy and laity, that is to everyone, at this point. Whatever the Gospel is, we come to it at the foot of the Cross. It is a visible lesson on hermeneutics, that we must always seek to understand Jesus at the foot of the Cross. We cannot read His book on any other terms than the terms that were given at the foot of the Cross. Thus, it is that St. Paul has told us that he decided to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2).

Want to learn more about Christian Liturgy? Check out Thomas Howard’s Liturgy Explained.

Translation

2 For the fire (which made the appearance of a vaulted ceiling, [1] like a ship’s sail being filled by wind) completely enclosed [2] the body of the martyr. It was there in the midst of the flames, not as burning flesh, [3] but as gold and silver being smelted in a furnace. For we also noticed such a fragrance like incense rising [4] from a thurible [5] or some other precious perfume.

[1] καμάρας vault, vaulted ceiling, arch. This word appears only once in all of scripture and does not seem to appear frequently in general. Psalm 40:22b (LXX) reads ὁ στήσας ὡς καμάραν τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ διατείνας ὡς σκηνὴν κατοικεῖν, … [It is the Lord] who erected the heavens as a vaulted ceiling and stretched it out as a tent to indwell (author’s translation).

[2] BAGD renders κύκλῳ περιετείχισεν as completely surrounded. καμάρας is imagined in a three dimensional way (i.e. as a vaulted ceiling with supporting walls and floor), so we render κύκλῳ περιετείχισεν as completely enclose (or perhaps envelope).

[3] ἄρτος ὀπτώμενος, ἢ ὡς (”a loaf in the oven or like”) is noted by Lightfoot as being questionable, perhaps “nothing more than Irenæus’ own comments.” (Lightfoot, Joseph Barber, and J. R. Harmer. The Apostolic Fathers. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1891) 195). Consequently, we are opting for the shorter reading as preferred and omitted this phrase from our translation.

[4] πνέοντος breathing out, giving forth (BAGD, 679).

[5] λιβανωτοῦ (λιβανωτός) incense or censer. Here we break with previous translations. Lightfoot renders λιβανωτοῦ πνέοντος as “wafted odour of frankincense,” which is to us aesthetically less pleasing. While Lake and Holmes do a much better job aesthetically rendering the phrase as “the scent of incense,” we feel translating λιβανωτός as thurible (i.e., censer used in religious worship), more specifically connects with the worship tropes running throughout the work (e.g., §14.2) and, perhaps, more explicitly the eschatological worship of Revelation 8:3-5.