Entries Tagged 'Literature/Poetry' ↓

I’m currently reading Holiness by J.C. Ryle.  It is a very good book.  One of the things I like about it is that it makes me think even when I disagree with him.  However, his chapter called “The Church Which Christ Builds” had me flabbergasted.  Here is one of the giants in the history of the English-speaking church whose shoes I am not worthy to untie, and yet he spends several pages trying to say that a phrase means almost the exact opposite of what it does.

“Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18

Ryle states that “By that expression [the gates of hell] we are meant to understand the power of the prince of hell, even the devil.”  He then goes on to tell about how the history of the church is that of being constantly assailed by Satan.  The church “has always been a bush burning, though not consumed—a woman fleeing into the wilderness, but not swallowed up.”  Our goal is essentially to endure the assaults of Satan without apostatizing and all of our hope in heaven.  Most of what he says is okay as far as it goes, but there is one problem:

GATES ARE NOT AN OFFENSIVE WEAPON.

When have you ever seen gates advance upon somebody?  Unless you interpret this passage in a Macbeth-style “never vanquish’d be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him” fashion, there is no way to conclude that the gates represent an offensive onslaught.  That would be like saying that fire represents a waterfall or Michael Jackson represents masculinity.  To paraphrase C.S Lewis, we are apt to break out the fire extinguisher in a flood.  I don’t have a problem with stating that there are times that Satan attacks, but we need to keep in mind that they are desperate counter-attacks. Satan has been on the defensive ever since Jesus cried out “It is finished,” and the writing was on the wall long before that (Genesis 3:15).

Whether you see the life of the Church as one of hunkering down in a bunker and trying to merely survive while the world goes to hell in a hand-basket or whether you see it as one of plundering the strong man’s house and storming the very gates of hell will have a profound effect on your daily life. The boldness of great martyrs of the church throughout history has been a boldness that stormed the gates of hell, knowing that the gates would not prevail.

Every soul that is converted to Christ is a conquest over territory once held by the enemy.  Beyond that, your individual sanctification is offensive warfare against the powers of hell.  Every time you confess and forsake your sin, apologize without passing the blame or making excuses, and reconcile yourself with your brother, you are slamming a battering ram against the gates of hell.  If your wife has done something to upset you and you know exactly what you could say to make her burst into tears but refrain out of love for her and love for Christ (especially when you would have sinned in that manner a year ago), you are catapulting a boulder into a watchtower of Satan’s city.  When we assemble corporately on the Lord’s Day to worship the Triune God according to His word, how much more do we prevail!  Not only do we strike our most powerful blows against Satan’s principalities when we worship rightly, but we are also there equipped for our battle throughout the week ahead.

I know that things may look bleak at times.  You can look around and see the apparent demise of Western Civilization.  You can look to Washington and shudder.  You can look at our pulpits and see hucksters trying to manipulate people into signing a card and calling it a “conversion” or would-be gurus trying to lead you on a twelve step program to inner peace.  You can look to our congregations and see grown men shaking and barking to lyrics the Vogons would be ashamed of.  On the other side we have Calvinists who are right about the doctrines of grace (at least on paper), but are so preoccupied with intramural squabbles that we marginalize our influence on the world and the rest of the Church.  You can look at families where parents (at least the good ones that don’t commit infanticide) abandon their children to daycare at the age of six weeks and to government schools and latch-key lives at the age of six years.  There is certainly still much territory occupied by the enemy.  But do we get our theology from the six o’ clock news or the Bible?  If Jesus has said that He will build his church, we had better believe Him.

When the 12 spies went into the land of Canaan, 10 of them admitted that the land was good, but could only talk of the giants and the high walls, and the fortified cities.  Only Joshua and Caleb had enough faith to say “we can take ‘em.”  Certainly the principalities and fortified cities of Satan are more impressive than those of the Canaanites, but Jesus has said he will build His church.  He himself has said “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.  Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Matthew 28:18b-20).”  Now are we going to respond to this with a hearty “Amen!” or are we going to say “No, Lord,” and try to take the Lord of Glory aside and rebuke him?

Be encouraged and rejoice.  We have been winning; we are winning now; and we will win.  Let Christ be true and every man a liar!

This was a read-aloud book to my daughter, which I hope will become a yearly tradition.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough.  The book isn’t just a story about a Christmas pageant; it’s the gospel lived out.  Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners.   The Herdmans were the worst kids in the town: low class, disruptive, violent, thieving, destructive, disrespectful.  They were without God and without hope in the world, just like us Gentiles were.  But then they encountered Jesus.  The book is hilarious, but contains tremendous depth.   I got a little misty-eyed while reading the last chapter.  Grade: A+

Protestant Biblical Interpretation is a textbook of hermeneutics, which the author defines as the “science and art of Biblical interpretation.”  This was assigned reading as part of my “Thinking Biblically I” class at Christus Rex Study Center.  There is a lot of good material in this book, and there are only a couple of untranslated German quotations.  The book is conservative and protestant in nature.  As such, it is critical of liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism.  There are a couple of aspects of the book that I find questionable at points.  First, while Ramm defines hermeneutics as the “science and art” of Biblical interpretation, he seems to have little value for “the art.”  Again and again Ramm extols science and scientific interpretation.  I’m not sure that modern science is the best model for biblical interpretation.  Is it truly the case that engineers in general would make better interpreters of scripture than poets or chemists than musicians?  Ramm also tends to inflate the role of “scholars” relative to the interpretation of the Bible with a bit of a modernist chronological provincialism.  Scholarship is not the pillar and ground of the truth; the Church is.  Ramm seems to imply in a number of places that scholars are the ultimate arbiters of what is true (see p. 183).  God has made no promises about scholars, and the New Testament is very critical of the prideful Scribes.  In his wisdom, God has chosen to entrust his Word to the primary care of pastors and elders.  Again, there is a lot of good stuff here.  I found a paragraph in the Epilogue particularly wise and edifying: “There is a prevailing danger to let differences in interpretation interrupt the unity of the Spirit.  When differences are sharp, feelings are apt to run high.  With foreboding storm clouds of oppression billowing on the distant horizon, it is well for conservative Protestantism to discover bases of fellowship rather than divergence.  If we stand together in the great truths of the Trinity, of Jesus Christ, and of Salvation, let us then work out our interpretive differences in the bounds of Christian love and endeavor to preserve the unity of the Spirit.  A hermeneutical victory at the expense of Christian graciousness is hardly worth winning.”  Amen to that!  Grade: B+

It’s interesting how God works things together some times. If any of the following recent events did not happen to me, I probably would not have ended up writing a hymn.

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!

Legal note: Permission is hereby granted to make photocopies of the sheet music for the following purposes: worship in any Christian Church, family devotional worship, educational purposes, psalm/hymn singing  gettogethers (best accompanied by good, dark beer), and just about anything else that won’t make you money.  If you come up with a way to make money with the hymn, I’m all ears, but I still reserve all rights.  You can contact me about it.

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 on them death shan’t prey

To Father, Son and Holy Ghost
One God, world without end
Be glory, honor, laud, and praise
In Jesus’ name, Amen
(The previous two lines are part of the Sunday prayer but not of the poem/hymn)

I might compose music to go along with this. I’ll edit this post and supply the tune if/when I do.