Confessing Evangelical

"Artists related to Westminster Cathedral Choir", according to the Amarok music player:

Dagon, Greg Proops, Meateaters, Les Calamités, Syzygys, Jackie Davis, Kathleen Madigan, Youth Pictures of Florence Hen, Acid Jazz, Lionel Moist Sextet

Um, whatever you say, dude.

On the subject of Westminster Cathedral Choir, I'm sure there's a good reason why I don't own this CD, but I can't for the life of me think what it might be.

Following on from my previous posts on the Lord's Supper and the frequency of its celebration, Dr Hermann Sasse has some good thoughts on these topics in his essay "The Lord's Supper in the Lutheran Church", from We Confess The Sacraments.

Dr Sasse opens his essay (originally composed in 1949 as a letter to Lutheran pastors in Germany) by quoting the Augsburg Confession on the subject of "the Mass" (p.98):

We are unjustly accused of having abolished the Mass. Without boasting, it is manifest that the Mass is observed among us with greater devotion and more earnestness than among our opponents. Moreover, the people are instructed often and with great diligence concerning the holy sacrament, why it was instituted, and how it is to be used (namely, as a comfort for terrified consciences) in order that the people may be drawn to the Communion and Mass. The people are also given instruction about other false teachings concerning the sacrament. Meanwhile no conspicuous changes have been made in the public ceremonies of the Mass. [AC 24 1-2]

Dr Sasse argues that this confession of the Lutheran fathers "makes us aware of the quite enormous difference between our divine service and that of the Reformation and how far removed our modern understanding of the Lord's Supper is":

Who of us today would still dare to state that we have not abolished the Mass, the divine service comprising the proclamation of the Word and the Lord's Supper? No Christian of the Reformation, apart from the followers of the Reformation at Zurich and Geneva, could conceive of a Sunday divine service without the Lord's Supper, just as already in the church of the New Testament there was no Lord's Day without the Lord's Supper. And no one would probably dare to maintain that this divine service was celebrated with greater devotion and earnestness than by the Catholics.

The centrality of the Mass is central to the life and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church in a way that should be true of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (and was true at the time of the Augsburg Confession, and for centuries afterwards):

If one asks for the secret of the vitality of the Catholic Church even in our time, one would have to admit that it is not its hierarchical organization, not its cult of saints and relics, not even, as many suppose, its traditional political astuteness that gives it its inner strength and predominance, but the fact that it celebrates the Sacrament of the Altar uninterruptedly throughout the world. This determines its whole life, even its whole theology.

(Though as Dr Sasse goes on to point out, the Roman Catholic Supper has been "mutilated" by the withholding of the cup from the laity and by false teachings, particularly those regarding the sacrifice of the Mass.)

Dr Sasse continues (p.101):

What the church of the Lutheran Reformation possessed and what modern Protestantism has lost, what Catholicism before the Reformation had largely forgotten and what modern Catholicism has largely learned to understand again is the simple truth of faith in the real presence of the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in, with and under the forms of bread and wine in Holy Communion.

Though I do wonder whether Dr Sasse is being a little overoptimistic about what "modern Catholicism has largely learned", and the implication that the Roman position has significantly improved since the Reformation: last time I looked, the Roman Catholic Church was still teaching the sacrifice of Mass, and most Roman Catholic churches seemed not to have availed themselves of the post-Vatican II concession giving the laity access to the Cup. But this is supposed to be a post about the Lutheran Church, not about Roman Catholicism, so let's move along.

Sasse argues that people commune more frequently the more fully they understand what they are receiving when they go to the altar (p.101):

Because they knew what they received there, the people of the old Lutheran Church went to Holy Communion. Because they know that at the altar they receive the body of Christ, Catholics in our time are going to Communion in ever growing number.

Dr Sasse argues that the lack of enthusiasm for Communion among Lutherans stems from a failure by Lutheran pastors to ensure that "the people are instructed often and with great diligence concerning the holy sacrament", which needs to include "instruction about other false teachings concerning the sacrament" (such as the teachings of Calvinism/Zwinglianism). But the start of the process of restoring "the Mass" to the Lutheran Church is to just do it (p.109):

Our first task is to celebrate the Sacrament of the Altar again and again quite seriously, but also with the blessed joy of the first Christians (Acts 2:47).

To be fair, things have improved since Dr Sasse wrote these words in 1949. I was startled to discover recently that a few decades ago most LCMS congregations were still practising quarterly Communion, which I had thought to be the preserve of the Wee Frees and (as mentioned in my previous post) certain ultra-snakebelly Anglican evangelicals.

But if the statistics in the sample chapter (PDF) for this book are to be believed, 35% of LCMS churches have at least one Communion service each Sunday, and fewer than 15% celebrate the Sacrament of the Altar less than once a month. It is to be hoped that the new Lutheran Service Book, with five settings of the Divine Service but no separate "Divine Service Without Holy Communion", will further encourage the trend towards more frequent Communion. Sometimes things don't, after all, go from bad to worse.

This week's choral evensong (or rather, Sung Vespers) on the BBC comes from Westminster Cathedral, home of possibly the finest choir in England. (As my uncle, who sings in York Minster choir, once put it: "Oh yes, they're very good. The bastards.")

Some slight distortion on the sound on the RealAudio stream, sadly, but the music (a mixture of plainsong, Victoria and Palestrina) is glorious. Certainly beats last week's "jazz evensong". Of which the less said the better.

One slightly odd moment comes during the homily, when the preacher states that "The Pope is, in some ways, no more or less human than you or I". Ho. Hum.

If you want to hear more of Westminster Cathedral choir, then their disc Panis Angelicus is one of my favourite choral collections - even if I suspect it was secretly sponsored by the Catholic Truth Society (all those heart-stoppingly beautiful settings of Ave Maria could seduce even the staunchest Protestant heart...).

Revd Alex Klages pointed out in the comments to my previous post that the Lord's Supper is not "the" climax of the Divine Service, but one of two climaxes, the sermon being the other: "Twin towers, as it were, in which God comes to us through His Word". (For the record, I'm quite sure my pastor would agree with this entirely. Equally, I understand why he expressed himself the way he did in his letter about weekly communion.)

These twin peaks of the Liturgy are illustrated very well in the diagram above, taken from a very useful little book called About Our Liturgy by David A. Kind, and published by University Lutheran Chapel at the University of Minnesota.

As Kind writes:

The Divine Service is centered on our Lord’s activity among us through the means of grace. The means of Word and Sacrament form the pivotal structures around which all of our worship is centered. The Divine Service, therefore, can be described as consisting of two main parts, the service of the Word and the Service of the Sacrament; each of which nds its center and acme in the presence of Christ and the giving of His grace.

These means of grace are not simply found in the raw, as it were, but are surrounded by what we call liturgy: the words and music that give expression to our need and to our faith and point us to these means of grace as the answer to both.

That said, I think it is entirely appropriate for the second peak to be shown as higher than the first. To stop after the first cycle of preparation, presence and response is anticlimactic: the preaching of the Gospel will, ideally, point forward to the Sacrament; and indeed this should help ensure the sermon itself is properly focussed on the Gospel. Conversely, the Sacrament is founded upon the preaching of the Gospel, and is a powerful means of appropriating for ourselves the promises of the Gospel that have been declared to us in the sermon.

To have one without the other is unsatisfactory, whether it is "Divine Service Without Holy Communion", or celebrating the Sacrament of the Altar without a sermon. Interestingly, even the Roman Catholic Church has come round to the idea that the Lord's Supper should always be preceded by a homily - to find a sermonless Supper, one's best bet now is probably a midweek Communion service in an Anglican Church.

Our church is about to start offering weekly Communion (or almost-weekly: the fifth Sunday of the month will be a non-Communion service), rather than having Communion only two or three times a month. Our pastor has written a letter to church members informing them of this change, and the reasoning behind it:

Holy Communion is the climax of the Lutheran liturgy and is the vehicle through which Christ gives Himself to us for the forgiveness of our sins.

He then goes on to give the Scriptural and confessional arguments for weekly Communion:

Holy Scripture indicates that the Lord's Supper was offered to God's people each Lord's Day (Acts 2:42; 20:7; 1 Cor. 11:20,33). The Lutheran Confessions declare in our churches Mass is celebrated every Sunday and on other festivals, when the Sacrament is offered to those who wish for it after they have been examined and absolved (Augsburg Confession XXIV, para.34). And Dr Luther in his Large Catechism writes, Indeed, the very words, "as often as you do it", implies that we should do it often. And they were added because Christ wishes the Sacrament to be free, not bound to special times like the Passover (Large Catechism, Fifth Part, para.47).

One of the big concerns people seem to have about weekly Communion is that it makes the Lord's Supper less "special". Indeed, I gather that there are some conservative evangelical Anglican churches that celebrate the Lord's Supper annually, precisely for that reason - because it makes it more "special" when it does happen.

I'm sure that's partly because these churches (as opposed to more Anglo-Catholic churches, which do generally offer weekly communion) do not believe that the Lord's Supper is "the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians to eat and to drink", or that "in the Sacrament forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given us". Once you truly believe that and internalise it, it's hard to see how anyone could not wish to receive this great gift every single week. Conversely, if the Lord's Supper is nothing more than a memorial meal, then celebrating it infrequently can arguably assist us in ensuring we really are concentrating when the annual Communion service comes around.

But another perspective on this question is the suggestion that infrequent communion represents an importing of worldly "economic" principles into the church - principles that the Sacrament of the Altar, understood properly, inverts. This argument is made by Martin Thornton in his book, English Spirituality, as he discusses Julian of Norwich's reflections on "the dearworthy blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ" (p.206f.):

While most of medieval Christendom was worshipping what were believed to be relics of Christ's actual blood, or fragments of the true Cross, Julian was writing "the dearworthy blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ as verily as it is most precious, so verily it is most plenteous".

By worldly standards, value depends on rarity, so the honouring of relics, devout and legitimate as it may be, follows worldly standards. But the Cross contradicts worldly conceptions, and it is this supernatural scale of values that Julian honours. Through the Eucharist, the redemptive blood of Christ becomes an everflowing river in which, overthrowing economic logic, its inexhaustible plenteousness increases rather than diminishes its preciousness.

Julian offers no support to the Protestant idea ... that the Blessed Sacrament would be more honoured by infrequent celebrations. That, curiously, is the same devout error which typifies the cult of relics; it is an attempt to raise the value of supernatural things by reducing them to natural terms.

The redemptive river of blood must constantly flow in the daily Mass, because its preciousness increases with plenty; all the psychological difficulties which arise from daily celebration and communion have to be met, but they are subservient to the ontological facts.

Now, I don't agree with 100% of what is said here. For example, I'm not sure I'd describe the honouring of relics as "devout and legitimate". More importantly, I'm certainly not arguing for daily Communion: this practice strikes me as cutting against the Lord's Supper as the shared meal of all Christians, turning it into an exclusive devotional practice for the especially committed.

However, the overall argument is extremely helpful, not least if we substitute "weekly" for "daily" in that final paragraph. Like the river flowing out of the Temple in Ezekiel 47, which became deeper the further out it flowed, so "the redemptive river of blood" flowing out of our Saviour's side becomes more valuable, more precious and more powerful for our salvation the more it is made present for us on our altars, as we gather together as Christ's redeemed people to eat and drink his body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins, week in and week out until he returns.

The English Reformation wasn't entirely a dead loss, of course. This week's Lutheran Carnival (plus Pr Joel Humann, in the comments to my previous post) reminds us of Robert Barnes, possibly the only truly Lutheran English Reformer, and one who has been unjustly neglected since he was burned for heresy by Henry VIII in 1540.

Today is the memorial, in the Roman Catholic Church, of Thomas More and John Fisher, martyrs of the English Reformation. The Church of England marks the same commemoration on 6 July, 6 July being the date of Thomas More's execution and 22 June that of John Fisher's.

The martyrdoms of More and Fisher highlight the ambivalence of my own position about the English Reformation these days - the sense that I don't really have a dog in that fight any more. On an overall level, I'm rather more in favour of the English Reformation than against it - the overthrow of papal supremacy, restoration of justification by faith and the authority of Scripture, the English Bible and Prayer Book, choral evensong, etc. But when it comes to the details over which the numerous martyrdoms of the English Reformation actually arose, my position is more neutral.

More and Fisher, after all, were executed over their refusal to accept Henry's supremacy over the Church of England - a supremacy I do not accept either. And, as I've posted before, the Protestant Martyrs (Bradford, Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer and the rest) were burned, not for their belief in justification by faith, but for refusing to affirm "the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated elements of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper" - a doctrine that I now cheerfully affirm and embrace.

This calls to mind TS Eliot's words in Little Gidding (fourth of his Four Quartets). Eliot is writing about the English Civil War rather than the English Reformation, but much of what he says is applicable to both. And I only half agree with him in either case, but I'm not going to let that stop me seizing the opportunity to post some Eliot:

If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.

Indeed, this "folding in a single party" has come to pass in the Church of England's current calendar, which commemorates not only More and Fisher, but also many of the Protestant Martyrs.

I've just finished reading Brideshead Revisited (hot on the heels of Decline and Fall). Great book - much better than the (excellent, but snail-paced) TV adaptation - but it's interesting to see how the publishers now find it necessary to market it to a contemporary audience. The blurb on the back of the Penguin Classics edition quotes a Times review as follows:

"Lush and evocative ... the one Waugh which best expresses at once the profundity of change and the indomitable endurance of the human spirit."

I beg your pardon? Putting the best construction on it, I think the reviewer may have been getting it confused with The Little Engine Who Could. As for Brideshead, it's hard to imagine a book which is less about the "indomitable endurance of the human spirit".

Waugh himself describes his ("perhaps presumptuously large") theme as follows:

...the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters...

That's the whole point. These are characters whose lives spend most of the book falling to pieces (in diverse but closely connected ways), whose spirits prove far from indomitable, but on whom "the operation of divine grace" turns out to have been at work all along.

And the crucial line is probably Charles Ryder's prayer - all but the last gasp of his dying agnosticism, as it turns out - at Lord Marchmain's deathbed:

I prayed more simply: "God forgive him his sins" and "Please God, make him accept your forgiveness".

That's exactly what the book is about: it's about God smashing people's attempts to rely on their "indomitable human spirits", and instead making them "accept [his] forgiveness". It shows how far any awareness of divine grace has receded from our society that even a book like Brideshead finds itself shoehorned into the dominant narrative of human self-actualisation.

Time, I feel, to "forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead". Turning our attention away from the week just gone, we can look forward to receiving with thanksgiving "the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians to eat and to drink".

During the week, I happened to come across a wonderful translation of the medieval hymn Pange Lingua, J.M. Neale's version of which is apparently to be included in the new Lutheran Service Book. This version is from a Roman Catholic office book, but if anything is even more "Lutheran-friendly" than Neale's translation:

Hail our Saviour's glorious body,
Which his virgin mother bore;
Hail the blood which, shed for sinners,
Did a broken world restore;
Hail the sacrament most holy,
Flesh and blood of Christ adore!

To the virgin, for our healing,
His own Son the Father sends,
From the Father's love proceeding,
Sower, seed and word descends;
Wondrous life of word incarnate
With his greatest wonder ends!

On that paschal evening see him
With the chosen twelve recline,
To the law he is obedient
In its feast of love divine,
Love divine, the new law giving
Gives himself as bread and wine!

By his word the Word almighty
Makes of bread his flesh indeed;
Wine becomes his very life-blood;
Faith God's living Word must heed!
Faith alone may safely guide us
Where the senses cannot lead!

Come, adore this wondrous presence;
Bow to Christ, the source of grace!
Here is kept the ancient promise
Of God's earthly dwelling place!
Sight is blind before God's glory,
Faith alone may see his face!

Glory be to God the Father,
Praise to his coequal Son,
Adoration to the Spirit,
Bond of love, in Godhead one!
Blest be God by all creation
Joyously while ages run! Amen.

- Pange Lingua, from Morning and Evening Prayer, p.310.

I particularly appreciated the verse printed in bold above, with its emphasis on the spoken word of the Word almighty, received by that faith which "alone may safely guide us/Where the senses cannot lead", as that which makes the Sacrament what it is.

Echoes of Luther in the Small Catechism, in reply to the question, "How can bodily eating and drinking do such great things?" (i.e. give us forgiveness, life and salvation):

Certainly not just eating and drinking do these things, but the words written here: "Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins." These words, along with the bodily eating and drinking, are the main thing in the Sacrament. Whoever believes these words has exactly what they say: "forgiveness of sins."

This translation compares favourably with Neale's version of that same stanza, which reads:

Word-made-flesh true bread he maketh
by his word his Flesh to be;
wine his Blood; which whoso taketh
must from carnal thoughts be free;
faith alone, though sight forsaketh,
shows true hearts the mystery.

For all I know, Neale's may be a more faithful translation of the Latin. But the version quoted above is heartening in its clear concentration on what really counts in the Sacrament: the Word of Christ, and our faith that receives that Word as we eat and drink the Lord's body and blood.

The other day, Thomas drew my attention to Garrison Keillor's Young Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra, in which Keillor addresses three key questions for young Lutherans to consider before joining an orchestra.

First, "Do I have a genuine God-given talent, or do I only seem talented compared to other young Lutherans?"

Second, "do you know what you're getting into?". Bear in mind, Keillor points out, that our Lord and his apostles "weren't in the arts - maybe there's a reason for that":

You play in an orchestra, you're going to be devoting your life to music that sort of swirls around in spiritual mystery. Searching for answers that people could find in the Epistle to the Romans if somebody just showed them where it is.

But if you have decided to go ahead anyway, then the third question to be addressed is:

"Which instrument is the best one for a Lutheran to play?" Which instrument would our Lord have chosen, assuming He played an instrument? And assuming He was Lutheran.

After demonstrating that 95% of the instruments in the orchestra are wholly inappropriate for a young Lutheran even to consider playing (such as the oboe: "In movie soundtracks, you tend to hear the oboe when the woman is taking her clothes off ... You start playing the oboe, you're going to have babies, take my word for it."), Keillor then singles out two areas that are suitable for Lutherans: percussion, and the harp.

And it's his wonderful description of the percussion section as the ideal home for a Lutheran musician that is the highlight of Keillor's essay:

[Percussion is] the most Christian instrument there is. Percussionists are endlessly patient because they hardly ever get to play. Pages and pages of music go by when the violins are sawing away and the winds are tooting and the brass are blasting, and the percussionist sits there and counts the bars like a hunter in the blind waiting for a grouse to appear.

A percussionist may have to wait for twenty minutes just to play a few beats, but those beats have to be exact, and they have to be passionate, climactic. All that the Epistles of Paul say a Christian should be - faithful, waiting, trusting, filled with fervor - are the qualities of the good percussionist.

The King of Thailand has been having a busy week. Fresh from celebrating his 60th anniversary on the throne, King Bhumibol Adulyadej has now been granted a European patent for "weather modification by royal rainmaking technology"

The method claimed by the patent involves the use of chemicals to "trigger", "fatten", "move", "attack" and "enhance" rain and clouds, and the patent also includes details of the traditional background to this method:

The patent application documents the more traditional methods of rain generation in the area. "In the old days, people in this North-East region cleverly launched a firework to function as a traditional cloud seeding device to cause chemical burning underneath the cloud resulting in rainfall. They had to carefully observe behaviour of the frogs in the locality as it is well-known that frogs are animal able to indicate the possibility of rainfall," it says.

[...]

The modern method is, the patent claims, more reliable. "The 'Royal Rainmaking Technology' is therefore developed to make rain to fall onto a target area successfully by applying this invented technology and using aircraft," it says. "This technology provides sufficient fresh water supplies which may otherwise rapidly become inadequate to serve a growing water demand in each part of the country."

The full text of the patent can be found here.

His Majesty has clearly set the pace for his fellow royals. Time for our own dear Queen to come up with a patented cure for scrofula, perhaps?

Following on from my post about Garrison Keillor's comments on liturgy ("where we say words together that are not my words and not your words"), one corner of the Anglican Church that is not normally associated with a positive view of liturgical worship is the Diocese of Sydney. (One Anglican site had a poll a few years ago asking people to identify their position on the Anglican spectrum. The options were: Maximum high church; Some spike is good; Middle of the road; Vaguely liturgical; Snakebelly; I live in Sydney.)

However, the Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen (who is something of a regular on this blog) had some very positive things to say recently about the father of Anglican liturgy, Thomas Cranmer, in an article entitled What to do when God’s family meets (though the URL of that link suggests the article is actually called "What to do when God's family meets Peter Jensen"...).

"One of [Cranmer's] greatest legacies was a clear concept of what Christians should do when they meet," writes Dr Jensen. The reading of Scripture and prayer are central to Cranmer's liturgies, as is a desire for the congregation to be "constantly edified in line with 1 Corinthians 14":

There is no place for a foreign language here, nor is there recourse to a sort of chatty informality which is so often mistaken for spiritual maturity. The people of God are called to be serious in their encounter with God, and are built up in him.

In particular, Cranmer's services of morning and evening prayer mean that:

Generations of Anglican Christians have been nurtured on the psalms of David in a way that has not been true of other denominations.

(And which, sadly, is increasingly rare even among Anglicans, particularly evangelical Anglicans, as the Psalms of David give way to the Songs of Graham.)

But I was particularly interested in Dr Jensen's comments on confession and absolution. This is an aspect of worship that is not normally prominent in evangelical Anglican services (and many non-Anglican evangelicals omit it altogether), and certainly I had never previously come across anything like the direct declaration of God's forgiveness that one finds in the Lutheran Divine Service ("as a called and ordained servant of Christ, and by his authority, I forgive you your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit").

So it is heartening to see ++Sydney - a hugely influential figure within conservative evangelicalism worldwide - stressing that a truly gospel-based approach to absolution should see it as more than simply information about forgiveness:

The services that Cranmer has left us are shaped by the gospel itself. This is clear when we consider what prominence he gave to the confession of sins and the declaration of absolution. At the very front door of our approach to God we are called upon to consider our sinful state, and to do so at depth.

At the same time the minister is called upon, as a minister of the gospel, to declare the forgiveness of sins. This is a strong gospel moment not to be weakened by the contemporary habit of the minister modestly (but wrongly) changing the words from "you" to "we".

(For background: the wording of the absolution in the Church of England's current liturgy is: "Almighty God, who forgives all who truly repent, have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness, and keep you in life eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord." Edit: Chris Jones has rightly corrected my earlier suggestion that there is a "creative ambiguity" in these words, though very few Anglican evangelicals would see the absolution as having "performative force" rather than being merely descriptive. In any event, my main quibble with this formula is its conditionality: it immediately raises the question, "Well, do I truly repent? Was I really repenting 'properly' during the confession?", and so can end up taking away with one hand what it gives with the other. The Lutheran formula reflects Luther's own conviction that the most important thing in confession/absolution is not the quality of our confession, but the unconditional promises of the gospel in the absolution, received by faith as we hear the words pronounced.)

Dr Jensen closes by calling the Sydney Diocese to engage in "a careful study of the Book of Common Prayer":

...so that we may refresh and renew our weekly gatherings with a stronger sense of God's revelation of himself and the gospel of the grace of God which should activate and dominate all the meetings of God’s people.

Which is what liturgy should be all about.

I'm currently reading Jaroslav Pelikan's Mary Through the Centuries, looking at the different ways in which the Blessed Virgin Mary has been understood and honoured throughout the centuries. Fascinating book. Pelikan also wrote the Encyclopaedia Britannica article MARY, which I'll have to check out at some point.

Pelikan points out that the Annunciation is probably the most frequently depicted incident in Mary's career, and the book's colour plates consist entirely of paintings and other artworks on this theme, one of which is this stunning 1898 painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner, above (click the image for a larger version). Definitely one which meets Alan Bennett's definition of a great artwork: namely, one which you are tempted to carry out of the gallery under your coat.

(Incidentally, I was going to put, as a caption to this painting, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word". But looking at it again, I think it is showing an earlier stage in the conversation: the look on Mary's face seems more, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?". If so, I think her expression in this painting can teach us a lot about the difference between a questioning, but genuine, faith - "How shall this be?" - and the scepticism of Zechariah earlier in the chapter - "Whereby shall I know this?")

Rather different from the version by Orazio Gentileschi, dating from 1623, which can be seen here. It's a perfectly fine painting, but it's a bit too obvious that the artist was only using the theme as an excuse to paint the curtains in the background...

Just ordered a wedding present for some friends of ours living in Canada. The order confirmation page on the website included a box for a message that will go on a gift card for the happy couple, with a caption reading as follows (names have been changed to protect the innocent):

Please enter a personal message here, such as "Congratulations Mary-Anne Gabrieli and James Lipton" or "Best Wishes".

Yikes. I dread to think what the shop's idea of an impersonal message might be...

A couple of events over the next couple of weeks for people living in SE London or NW Kent.

Elmstead Baptist Church, a church pastored by a friend of ours (Malcolm Jones, wearing a blue short-sleeved shirt near the centre of the photograph on the linked page) is holding a very interesting-looking talk entitled: "The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fantasy", on Saturday 24 June, 7 pm until 9 pm.

Yes, I know, yet another church doing yet another Da Vinci tie-in. But this one features Dr Garry Williams, Academic Dean of Oak Hill College, and all-round Good Egg, so it should be a cut above the usual. Dr Williams has also written a short book on DVC entitled The Da Vinci Code : From Dan Brown's Fiction to Mary Magdalene's Faith.

For those who can't make it, an MP3 talk by Dr Williams on this topic is available here. I'm guessing that will cover pretty much the same ground.

And then next weekend (Friday 16 and Saturday 17 June), our own church is hosting two talks by Lutheran theologian Dr Bob Rosin of Concordia Theological Seminary, St Louis. Dr Rosin has been described as the LCMS's "finest Reformation scholar", and our pastor thinks very highly of him indeed, which is good enough for me.

On Friday, Dr Rosin will be talking about postmodernism, in a talk entitled "Where in the World are We? Rethinking our place in life". Saturday's talk is "The English Reformation: What was, and what might have been". Details (with link for map/directions) here. Both talks start at 7.30 pm and are free of charge.

TAKE me back to dear old Blighty...

The NME is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the release of The Queen is Dead (currently available for £4.97 on Amazon.co.uk - can you afford not to buy it?) with a special anniversary issue.

As well as various reminiscences by ex-Smiths and other pop luminaries - and some hilarious letters sent to the NME in the 1970s by an earnest young New York Dolls fan by the name of "Steve Morrissey" - the issue includes a reprint of the NME's original 1986 review.

The "10/10" rating given on the online version is retrospective: the original review doesn't include a score, and in some respects it's surprisingly lukewarm. While describing the album as being "as exciting and direct a pop or record as we are likely to hear this year", the reviewer also refers to "one spot of neo-psychedelic posturing and a couple of mediocre singles". Even a later reference to the "uncanny catchiness of seven of these ten tracks - a good ratio by any one's standards these days" seems rather faint praise.

(One of those "mediocre" singles was "The Boy with a Thorn in his Side", for heaven's sake - just how cloth-eared was that reviewer?)

Perhaps the album was one of those that took some to time for its reputation to grow. Perhaps it's the fact that it became the Smiths' "Abbey Road" - the last album released while they were still together being recognised as possibly their best. Or perhaps (to be a little cynical for a moment) it's that the NME in 2006 knows how to sell a few extra copies to nostalgic men in their thirties and forties...

And even the less-than-entirely-reliable 1986 reviewer had the good sense to recognise "There is a Light that Never Goes Out" (surely the Smiths' finest five minutes) as a "pearl".

Further to my previous post, Alastair Roberts has some good thoughts arising from the same interview with Garrison Keillor, in particular Keillor's comments on liturgy as "say[ing] words together that are not my words and not your words", as opposed to the "heroic pose" of much extempore prayer.

By way of contrast, and for the benefit of "Keillorsceptics" such as Theresa (see her comments to my previous post), here's one of my favourite exchanges from The Simpsons. The family are watching a PBS telethon featuring a soft-spoken, bespectacled man (see picture, below), who gives us his update on the "news from Badger Falls":

Man: [quietly] Well, sir, it has been an uneventful week in Badger Falls... where the women are robust, the men are pink-cheeked, and the children are pink-cheeked and robust.

[Audience laughs loudly]

Homer: What the hell's so funny?

Man: At the Apple Biscuit cafe, where the smiles are free, don't you know, Sven Inqvist studied the menu, and finally he ordered the same thing he has every day.

[Audience laughs and applauds]

Bart: Maybe it's the TV.

Homer: Stupid TV. [Hits it] Be more funny!

OK, so I guess Garrison Keillor isn't Lutheran, after all. But this is still a great interview on the CT website.

The interview coincides with the imminent release of the movie version of Prairie Home Companion, directed by Robert Altman (who has clearly forgiven Keillor for his spoof Altman film on PHC, People Standing Around Talking and Using Hand Gestures). PHC the movie does not include any references to Lake Wobegon, but Keillor does hope to produce a film about Wobegon, one planned script for which he describes as follows:

[I]t has a pontoon boat and it has a wedding and it has 24 Lutheran pastors and it has a man who loses his pants. And I really like it. It's sort of a knockdown drag-out comedy. And it would give you a chance to cast the parts of 24 Lutheran pastors, which would be a beautiful opportunity for middle-aged male actors in Minnesota.

Keillor also describes his attempts to teach young, serious students that "comedy is another way of telling the truth":

I feel that among writers of fiction there is a great deal of pretentious gloominess. Gloominess is nothing that an older person has a right to impose on young people. Young people can be very pessimistic and dark all on their own without us adding baggage to what they already have. And I like the idea of being 63 and trying to get people in their 20s to lighten up.

However, the best part of the interview comes towards the end, when Keillor describes his experience of attending St. John the Evangelist Episcopal church in St. Paul, and the contrast between that and the separatist-fundamentalist preaching stations of his youth. He describes the "tremendous preaching" he heard as a child, and how hard it has been for him to find anything to match up to that:

Along with that great preaching came a sort of intolerance that I found unbearable when I was a kid: These were separatist people, an isolated group. So you gave up one in order to get your freedom, but then having gotten your freedom you missed what you have given up and you never found it any other church.

And I loved (and can strongly identify with) Keillor's description of the blessings of attending a liturgical church:

I love the liturgical church where we say words together that are not my words and not your words. That really means a lot to me. I grew up listening to men stand up and invent prayers and the idea was that the Spirit was leading them, but in fact they were composing them in their heads and they were writing in a kind of faux King James style - big prayers and they were impressive, and they were seeking to impress, there is just is no other way around it.

And in the name of Devotion they were doing these big set-piece prayers in which they were bringing in stories from Scripture and admonishing people - that's not prayer. But, when we kneel down and go through a list, and we begin with prayers for leaders of our country and for the nations of the world and then we come down to prayers for other churches and for bishops and priests, and then we come down to those who are in need and those who are sick and we think or we speak their names - to me this is prayer. This is prayer in which one throws oneself before God without a heroic pose.

Running the national football team is very much like running my group, the Fall ... We're friendly but the secret of it is never get too ally-pally. You can have a pint or two together now and again but you don't want to be going round their houses.

Mark E. Smith, lead singer of The Fall - one of my favourite bands, though perhaps not one to everybody's taste - shares his thoughts on the task awaiting Sven Goran Eriksson and the England team in this year's World Cup in an interview with the Guardian (which I strongly suspect was conducted in the public bar of a Manchester alehouse, as the afternoon wore on).

"You want a manager that's hard but not stupid", opines Smith, before going on to make rather a perceptive point about the failure of an England team packed with top-quality players to win any trophies:

The way the England team is now is ridiculous. A team of superstars is like a supergroup. It's like picking the best guitarist in Britain, the best drummer and the best singer, and expecting them to produce something that isn't prog-rock mush.

Smith's solution? Follow Alf Ramsay's lead - "He took players and moulded them, like I do with musicians", explains Smith - and pick a goalkeeper from a bottom-of-the-table club:

You want a goalie who gets bloody shot at every week! You don't want the Arsenal or Spurs goalie or whoever in any national team, because he's never got anything to do! He might pull off the occasional beautiful save, but he's never gonna be any good against a gang of Poles or whoever who know full well they're going to face the firing squad if they don't score.

Apologies to the nation of Poland, there.

Mind you, I'm strongly tempted to follow the example of Michael Henderson, who in a "heartfelt polemic" in this week's Observer explains why he is supporting Germany this time round (contrasting the "cultivated slumming" of England fans with the land of "Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Wagner and all those painters, writers, scientists and philosophers"). Except I can't quite shake off the hope (or possibly fear, given the decades-long national derangement it would cause) that we might just do it this time, and how stupid would I feel then?

The marvels of Google Desktop... Having had a few problems getting the desktop search to work properly, I did a test search using the word "Lutheran". One of the results that came up was a note buried somewhere in my Outlook folders, dating back at least two and a half years to when I was still spiralling slowly towards Lutheranism.

Here is the note, verbatim but with a few changes of formatting and other minor edits:

Lutheranism: "pull", "push" & "fear" factors

PULL FACTORS

1. Emphasis on the Word as the means of grace.


2. Efficacy (by faith) of the sacraments as means of grace actually conveying forgiveness of sins and the promises of God in the gospel: "baptism ... now saves you"; "this is my body".


3. Proper distinction of Law and Gospel.


4. "God in the flesh and God on the Cross"


5. The theology of the Cross.


6. Emphasis on vocations.


7. Combination of dignified, biblical liturgy with sound, evangelical theology.


8. The personality and teachings of Martin Luther; the music of J.S. Bach.

PUSH FACTORS

1. Inability to get [younger son] baptised at current church.


2. Implosion of Anglicanism, and lack of any nearby Anglican church that is neither theologically unsound nor liturgically chaotic.


3. Frustrations with current church: strong baptistic emphasis; lack of Words of Institution in the "Lord's Supper"; Law-heavy preaching; "Happy Birthday" (last but definitely least).


4. Integrity issue: no longer hold to Basis of Faith at current church.

FEAR FACTORS

1. Tiny and marginal Lutheran church in UK.


2. Local Lutheran church may disappoint: small, old, lack of children/creche etc. What if it closed after we joined it?


3. Loss of communion with other Christians.


4. Evangelical friends would misunderstand, be disappointed, think we'd "gone Catholic".

The one comment I have is that most of my fears turned out to be exaggerated. Our local Lutheran church, while scarcely a megachurch, isn't quite as fragile as I'd feared prior to visiting it.

While some of our more alert non-Augsburg evangelical friends are clearly slightly perturbed by the Lutheran approach to the sacraments, on balance I think they've tended to respond well to "the Lutheran take" on issues such as law/gospel, the theology of the cross and vocation. And while being formally "out of communion" may feel a bit awkward at times (especially at Communion services at other churches), overall the "friendship of the baptised" remains strong with all our Christian friends and family members.

And more positively, the "pull" factors remain as strong as ever.

(BTW, if you're wondering what the reference is to "Happy Birthday" in the "push" factors, our previous church developed the unfortunate habit of singing Happy Birthday during the service if it was somebody's birthday that week. Since that happened almost every week, "Happy Birthday" ended up as the only fixed part of the "liturgy" at an otherwise fiercely non-liturgical church. Our current church also sings "Happy Birthday", but after the service, out in the hall.)

(Update: please note the "previous church" referred to in this post was not an Anglican church, but an independent evangelical church we attended between leaving our Anglican church and joining the Lutheran church. See this February 2004 post for the full story of my pre-Lutheran wanderings!)

I've added another link to the "Daily Prayer" section, to the BBC's Choral Evensong page. This includes each week's Evensong broadcast, and details of the schedule for future broadcasts.

As I type this, I'm listening to last week's broadcast, from St David's Cathedral. Some very nice chanting in the psalms, but what makes it a "must listen" is that they're doing the Rose responses, probably my favourite setting, with the possible exception of the Smith responses.

(For those unfamiliar with the service of evening prayer from the Book of Common Prayer, the responses come at two points: the "Preces" at the start of the service, beginning "O Lord, open thou our lips", and the "Responses" after the Creed, beginning "The Lord be with you". Rose's setting of the Lord's Prayer in the "second half" is especially gorgeous.)

31st May (the date of the broadcast) was the Feast of the Visitation of the BVM, so there's a decidedly Marian air to the service. It appears the Anglican practice is that it's OK to sing to the BVM as long as you do it in Latin (so we have a setting of the Ave Maria, and one of Salve Regina), but if you're singing in a tongue that is "understanded of the people" then you can only sing about her ("Now in Holy Celebration Sing We of that Mother Blest").

Mind you, it's not as Marian as the service I attended that evening at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, near where we were staying on holiday that night. OK, technically the Shrine is Anglican, but they don't let that stop them. The service of evening prayer was taken from the Roman Catholic Divine Office, which doesn't feel the need to drop into Latin when addressing the Virgin. (Personally, I could cope with the odd bit of "Hail Mary"-ing in a quoting-scripture, literary-apostrophe sense during the office hymn and the antiphons, but I drew the line at asking her to pray for me later in the service.)