Well, what did my Master do?  What did His servants do during the early days of the church that are recorded in inspired history?  When Lazarus died, Jesus wept.  Jesus, who understands the Father’s glorious plan better than anybody, wept.  Jesus, who knew that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead just a few moments later, wept.  Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, wept.  What about Paul, the hero of reformed and Calvinistic churches?  Did he always preach (or write, for that matter) in a calm, cool, collected manner?  Did he lecture?  Nay, he often preached with tears.  He even provided an apologetic for them: “For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you. (2 Cor 2:4).”

Indeed, God is sovereign.  If he decrees that I shall break down in tears, no passage or illustration is safe.  He can use the leprosy passages in Leviticus to bring me to my knees.  He is sovereign over my emotions; I am not.  I am but a servant; the Lord will feed his sheep as He sees fit.  I must seek to be a faithful servant of Christ.  If I maintain my composure–if I am in my right mind–let it be for the glory of Christ and His gospel!  If I am to be a fool and choke back tears in public, let me be a fool for the sake of Christ and His gospel!  If He sends tears, let them be a drink offering and a thank offering, poured out before his throne.  Only let Him feed His sheep.  He must increase; I must decrease.  Here I am, Lord, send me.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

But I am an American evangelical.  I have seen tears abused for wicked and manipulative pretexts by peddlers of the gospel.  Ginning up crocodile tears to pad your wallet or to make a name for yourself is an abomination.  God is not mocked; He will judge, and then the tears of those hucksters will be real.  But should the counterfeit tears of the televangelist cause us to fall into the other ditch?  There is good reason to oppose the syrupy, squishy, evangellyfishy, Jesus-is-my-boyfriend treacle that we see around us, but we need to follow scripture rather than reacting against the prevailing error.  There is a certain aspect of American reformed and Calvinist culture that operates as if our bodies only exist to take our brains to and from church.  I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t been influenced in some way by this.  We are Christians, not Vulcans.  Christianity is incarnational.  Both of these ditches have latent Gnostic assumptions and both of them are inconsistent with the Incarnation.  If you think you can do theology without it erupting into doxology, your theology is wrong.  Period.  I don’t care how many fat books with small type you’ve read.

It’s still a few weeks until I preach.  I may find as I write the sermon that the illustration doesn’t fit with my overall theme, or that it distracts from it.  The Lord may take me in another direction.  That would be a valid reason to exclude it.  A fear of looking foolish is not valid.  As for now, it stays in.  I’ll just make sure to wear my glasses instead of my contact lenses when I preach.

Our Father, we thank You for wondrous love that raised us out of the very dust of death.  You did not withhold Your Son, Your only Son Jesus, whom You love, but sent our great Redeemer to rescue us and turn Your well-deserved wrath away from us .  We praise you for the obedience of our Good Shepherd Who laid down His life for us, the sheep of His pasture.  No one took it from Him, but He laid it down of His own accord.  We rejoice that the grave could not hold Him, and that in Him neither will it be able to hold us.

Let us come and behold the works that have been wrought by you!  You have made great desolations in the earth.  You make wars cease to the ends of the earth; You break the bow and cut the spear in two; You burn the chariot in the fire.  You smote Pharaoh and Sennacherib with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.  You shattered Sihon and Og with a rod of iron.  You crushed the serpentine heads of Sisera and Abimelech under Your foot, using godly women to accomplish the feat for Your glory.  You avenged the betrayals of Ahithophel and Judas.  You outwitted Ahab, and hanged Haman on his own gallows.  So shall all Your enemies perish!

You are a consuming fire.  You broke out against the sacrilege of Nadab, Abihu, and Uzzah.  You struck down Ananias and Sapphira and caused Simon Magus to perish with his money, but You did not consume the bush when you spoke to Moses, neither did you consume your servants Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego when they were cast into the fiery furnace.  In your mercy, you rescued Joseph out of the miry depths of the dungeon and delivered Daniel out of the den of the lions.  Who is like you, O Lord?  You alone are worthy of our praise, which we offer to you in Jesus’ name through the power of the Holy Spirit, both now and forevermore, world without end.  Amen.

Blog changes

Last night I decided to redesign the look of my blog and rename it.   It is now called “Of the Way” which is a possible English translation of my last name.  I borrowed the structure of Chris Pearson’s press row theme and customized it.  I created the banner myself in GIMP while Shelley (an accomplished graphic designer and proprietor of Purple Line Design) only mocked my profound lack of skills a little bit.

Life

In the past couple of months we’ve gone on a couple of long-weekend trips.  Memorial Day weekend we decided on a whim to go see Shelley’s brother’s Jake’s family and her sister Amy in Carbondale, IL.  I got home from work and Shelley jokingly mentioned going to see them.  I thought it would be an adventure, and within a couple of hours we were on the road.  We drove all night and arrived at about 8:0o Saturday morning.  Janelle had a ball playing with her cousins and we thoroughly enjoyed the visit.

Because we’re gluttons for punishment, we took another “ground red-eye” trip (departing at 6:oo p.m. and arriving at 10:00 a.m.) a couple of weeks ago to visit my family in New Hampshire.  The visit went well.  My mom’s side of the family had a reunion, so I was able to see nearly all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins.  The night before we went back home, my grandparents came over and we played forty-fives.  The return trip was brutal.  We got to Cary at 3:30 a.m. and slept in the driveway of our friends’ vacant home.  Then I had class for the Study Center at 6:30 a.m. and work at 8.

Speaking of the Study Center, I just completed my first year there.  My last class was this past Wednesday.  I am very thankful to Christ Church of North Carolina for their investment in me.  The average cost (tuition and fees only) for an independent seminary’s M-Div program was $12,267 per year (and they are cheaper than university-affiliated and college affiliated seminaries).  I paid $300 plus books, which is about 2.4% of the average seminary.  Christ Church obviously didn’t profit monetarily from this.  I am grateful for the work of Gene Liechty, Dell Cook,  and especially Gregory Soderberg, who serves as the director of the study center.  All of these people worked for far less than the going seminary professor rate.

I am scheduled to preach my first sermon on Sunday August 1, 2010 on Psalm 148.  I’m not especially nervous in terms of the public speaking aspect of it, but I am a bit daunted by the weight of the responsibility.  The session of Christ Church is calling upon me, a sheep, to feed the sheep.  Who is sufficient for these things?  May the Holy Spirit provide illumination that I may speak truth in the sight of God in Christ and that I might be used as an instrument to feed the sheep of His pasture.

Blessed be the LORD, who has given rest to His people, according to all that He promised. Our Heavenly Father, there has not failed one word of all Your good promises, which You promised through Your servants Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and your prophets. May You be with us, as You were with our fathers. May You not leave us nor forsake us, that You may incline our hearts to Yourself, to walk in all Your ways, and to keep Your commandments and Your statutes and Your judgments, which You commanded our fathers and fulfilled in Christ.  May you graciously continue to build Your temple of living stones, bringing reformation, unity, and faithfulness to the churches in our land and to the ends of the earth where [name deleted] is proclaiming the gospel to the lost in a Russian prison.  May your church worship You in reverence and godly fear as living sacrifices, being transformed by the faithful preaching of Your word (which is sharper than a two-edged sword) and by the sacraments that all of us may be one, Father, just as You are in Christ and He is in You.  May we also be in You so that the world may believe that You have sent Jesus Christ. Through the Holy Spirit, He has given us the glory that You gave Him, that we may be one as You are one: Christ in us and You in Him. May we be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent Jesus Christ and have loved us even as you have loved Christ.

Lift up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle. We ask that You would reform Your ministers of justice even as You reform Your church.  We ask that they would be a terror to the lawless rather than the lawful and protect Your saints around the world.  Let Your deacons of the sword in Indonesia use it justly to judge between Your people and those who persecute them.  At home we ask that You would conform all civil magistrates to the image of Your Son, from President Obama and Governor Perdue down to local mayors, city councils, and policemen.

The cords of death entangle [names deleted], the anguish of the grave comes upon them; We are overcome by trouble and sorrow.  May they called upon Your name and cry out, “O LORD, save me!”

You, O Lord, are our strength and our song; You have become our salvation. Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous: “The LORD’s right hand has done mighty things!”  Knowing Your Grace and Mercy toward us, we can boldly request that You heal the sick and wounded among us.  Pour out your healing grace upon  [names deleted].  Provide buyers for the [names deleted] homes.

We will give you thanks, for You answered us; You have become our salvation. The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. O LORD, save us; O LORD, grant us success in Jesus’ name through the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

“I want macaroni and cheese, Daddy,” she said.

Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for breakfast?  On Thanksgiving?!   I tried to discourage her, but she was not to be deterred, being a three year old with a hankering for Mac N’ Cheese.

“All right, (silent grumble) I’ll make the macaroni and (silent grumble) cheese.”

It was at this point that I realized that Janelle had a far more thankful and appropriate attitude than I did.  The Triune God of the universe had provided us with food that we didn’t work in the fields to grow, harvest, grind into flour or make into pasta, and I’m grumbling about the fact that it’s not an appropriate Thanksgiving breakfast.  Snap out of it, Mike!

Fifteen minutes later we had a Thanksgiving breakfast feast of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese which was thoroughly enjoyable.  I’m quite certain we’ll have much better food during the rest of the weekend, but I might not have a more important meal.  Sometimes an unusual event such as this which gives us just the tiniest glimpse of God’s providence, can help us to better see the whole picture.

God bless and Happy Thanksgiving!

1.) I recently purchased the Academic/Theological edition of Finale 2009, a music notation program from Make Music, Inc., which I wouldn’t have done unless I was made choir director of Christ Church of NC in January.

2.) I listened to the 1999 Christ Church Ministry Conference on “Poetic Knowledge” which is available from WordMP3.com.  I wouldn’t have done this unless my father in law, Marshall Joiner, hadn’t given me his old edition of the entire WordMP3 library.

3.) I then listened to several years of ACCS conferences in which Matt Whitling talked about the basics of poetry.

4.) One of the members of my church, David Stambaugh went out of town on the weekend of 03/15/09 and asked me to switch prayers with him.  (He was scheduled for the prayer of praise on 03/15 and I was scheduled for the prayer of thanksgiving on 03/29.)

When I received the request to take over the Prayer of Praise on 03/13, I decided to arrange my prayer in verse.  Most of the prayers you see in the Bible are poetry rather than prose, so I decided to take a stab at it.  To quote Adrian Monk, “Here’s what happened:”

Poetry: The discussion of poetry should begin with a disclaimer.  I have little experience writing and studying poetry, so I’m splashing around in the shallow end of the pool here.  I hope that it’s at least marginally better than Vogon poetry.  I set the poem in “Common Meter Doubled”  (8 lines per stanza of alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter).     There are 6 stanzas in the poem, eight lines each.  The first two lines of trimeter rhyme with each other and the last 2 lines of trimeter rhyme with each other.

The stanzas have a chiastic structure.  The first and last stanzas contain Jesus-as-bridegroom imagery. The first stanza dealing more with the establishment of the covenant; the last dealing with the consummation of the covenant.  The second and fifth stanzas are dominated by nature metaphors.  The second stanza dealing more with the attributes of God, the fifth dealing with the nature of the kingdom.  The third and fourth stanzas contrast the wicked and the righteous.  The cross is at the very center of the chiasm, being that which distinguishes the wicked from the righteous.  So without further ado, here’s the text:

Jehovah’s covenant is sure
His name is lifted high
By his own name he swore an oath
To Abram’s seed draw nigh
Those purchased by the blood of Christ
On whom thy favor rests
Predestined ere the dawn of time
The bridegroom’s prized bequest.

Transcendent yet incarnate Lord
Sublime in mystery
For who can know the ways of God
Unless revealed they be?
Unchanging as a mountain high
Or like a cedar tall
Yet like a river giving life
And hearing when we call.

Our enemies and yours decry
Your righteous name in vain
They blasphemously gnash their teeth
And mock you in disdain
They shriek, connive, conspire, and howl
In evil schemes they plot
Your cross, O Lord, has cast them down
And brought their plans to naught.

You save the wicked from the pit
You raise the dead to life
You vanquish sin and Satan to
Secure the Son a wife
The proud don’t understand thy pow’r
In weakness made complete
While elders take their crowns of gold
And lay them at your feet.

Your kingdom like the mustard seed
Grows slowly by design
As fam’lies, nations, tongues, and tribes
Are grafted to thy vine
While principalities and pow’rs
Against your saints inveigh
The order of Melchizedek
Grows stronger day by day.

Lord hasten consummation’s hour
When bridegroom shall return
To claim his chaste, unblemished bride
And make the serpent burn
The goats shall separated be
Expelled by thee for aye.
Thy sheep shall in thy fold abide
And death shall pass away.

Music: Early on in the process of composing the poem, I considered the idea of setting it as a hymn.  I think I started out in G major, but abandoned it pretty quickly to D major, primarily for range considerations based on how I wanted to write the tune.  Since the poem was iambic, I began the hymn with a pick-up note.  I did a little bit of tone painting (“name is lifted high“), but that’s hard to do when you’re setting six verses.

I tried to look at what the verses had in common.  I noticed that lines 5 and 6 of the vast majority of the verses were darker in content, so I dabbled in the relative minor (b minor) there.

I also needed to think of a name for the hymn tune.  This kind of stumped me, so I decided to name the tune “Stambaugh,” since this wouldn’t have happened unless David swapped prayer assignments with me.

The .PDF of the music can be found here.  I was also able to export audio files from Finale.  I saved the hymn as piano, string quartet, pipe organ, and choir (midi).  I also saved one track where each of the four voice parts (bass, tenor, alto, soprano) is isolated in the left channel so people can learn their part easier by adjusting the balance setting on the playback device (or removing the right earphone).  Enjoy!

Edited Legal note: LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE ON THIS SITE THIS HYMN MAY NOW BE FREELY COPIED AND DISTRIBUTED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 3.0 UNPORTED LICENSE.

When people choose to leave the membership of a church for “doctrinal reasons,” I fear that, more often than not, they do so within a revolutionary framework rather than a reformational framework.  In particular, I think of the Baptist who becomes a Calvinist and then jumps ship to a Presbyterian church at his first opportunity.  To generalize, the reformed churches have, by-and-large, been populated by people who have left their churches as revolutionaries rather than reformers.  (Luther didn’t wish to leave the Roman church -  he was thrown out by enemies of the gospel who had positions of power in that church.)  If we are to use the metaphor of the church as a body with many parts, the reformed camp at large is disproportionately represented by gallbladders.

In days when there was only one church in a town and there weren’t automobiles, there was a lot more of an impetus to stick things out and try to work with your borthers in Christ for unity.  There are complexities involved, especially if you have children (since their spiritual welfare is at stake), but what would it look like within a generation if the Baptists who became Calvinists had stayed in their churches (until the church either reformed itself or threw them out)?  We are children of modernity more than we realize, and as such we want instant results.  Our expectations for the Kingdom of God are more like an Air Force flyover than a mustard seed sprouting.  I know it’s easier to leave, but is it better in the long term?  It’s interesting to think of what might have been and what might still be if we do things better from here on out.