Silent Night at Slippery Rock

Last weekend I went to my first Big Ten football game. A musician friend and I saw Michigan play in the “Big House.” In order to take it all in, we drove over the night before and stayed in the farmhouse which has been in my family for exactly 100 years. It was fun to introduce a friend to some family history there.

I had no idea that the next day would also be steeped in tradition. Which just means that I wasn’t thinking about it. Because, without tradition, sport can’t sustain itself.

And what a glorious tradition! From the pre-game show played by the marching band drum line, to the voice of Michigan football (Chicago classical music announcer Carl Grapentine), the Star Spangled Banner, the marching band cum pep band, the honoring of celebrated Michigan athletes . . . Something like six hours of tradition-rich experience.

Well, and for the students, it begins earlier. By the time we were on campus, it was crawling with students. Dance music blared from porch roofs and front yards. Students were decked out in team colors, swarming the campus neighborhoods. This started well before 9am . . . on a Saturday. And they occupied a huge section of the stadium – a solid mass of Michigan maize.

Because I don’t watch televised sports (which people mistake for disinterest) just about everything about the Big House event was new to me. When the opposing team is in a fourth down situation, the band plays the old popular standard, “Temptation.” Wha?!? The marching band takes the field in the same way they did back when I was a lad. (That is to say, when TV still showed the half-time shows.) When the announcer gave scores of other Saturday games, one event, which had not yet begun, elicited a roar from the students: Shippensburg v. Slippery Rock. Again: Wha?!? I didn’t even know that these are actual schools. And there’s a fun story behind this, the gist of which is that Slippery Rock scores are announced at every Michigan game. After the game the band took the field again, to play highlights from their show, to the opposite side of the stadium from which they performed earlier. That post-game show was abridged, but then included three traditional marching band classics: “Temptation” in its full arrangement, “Hawaiian War Chant,” and the university Alma Mater.

I thought of these things in the days following, whilst preparing a lecture for Taylor University church music students: “Integrating Tradition into Contemporary Culture.” I realized that students – no less than all of us – are surrounded by traditions in all arenas of our lives. In fact, Taylor athletics also have a basketball tradition that I would love to experience. It is their “Silent Night,” a December home game during which the Taylor crowd is completely silent until the 10^th point is scored.

These athletic traditions provided a neat introduction into my topic. We don’t need to “integrate tradition” into contemporary culture; culture is tradition. But it raises the question: why is the church so eager to abandon its own traditions?

Why, in athletics, do we celebrate local athletic traditions, including – especially? – those which are unintelligible to outsiders . . . But apologize for the same in Christian worship?

We explain (even if we don’t defend) all kinds of tradition. To paraphrase Calvin, the human mind is a factory of traditions. Whether it’s specific meals, things we do in certain ways, movies we watch during specific seasons . . . we are constantly establishing and living in traditions.

We find ourselves suspicious of people who dismiss or mess with athletic tradition. What if Taylor brought in a new athletic director or basketball coach who thought “Silent Night” was just silly, and tried to do away with it? Awkward! The other day I heard a radio conversation about Chicago team mascots; much of the talk was about the hassles team owners had when they either did away with a beloved mascot, or tried to introduce a new one. “Tradition” is everything in sports.

So why are we so willing to toss out centuries (or even “just” generations) of worship tradition?

I don’t think it’s fair to give the default answer, the unassailable, easy, clichéd answer: “We have to make the Gospel the main thing and strip away anything that complicates or obscures it.” In the first place, no Christian worship tradition was established to complicate or obscure the Gospel. Rather, thoughtful biblically minded people sought through worship design to highlight and celebrate the Gospel. We might choose to exercise temporal humility and try at least to understand the origins, purposes, and Gospel connections of a tradition before we reject it. (Or, for that matter, before we accept it!)

If my generation doesn’t “get” a tradition, it’s probably a problem with either (a) the previous generation’s failure to pass along (the basic meaning of tradition) well, or (b) the pride or arrogance of my generation. When we consider dropping, altering, or even making subtle changes to a tradition, maybe we should reflect on how we would accept the threat to or loss of our own beloved sports traditions. There are probably people in our congregation experiencing the same threat or loss. Over something more – shall we say? – profound.

Maybe people don’t connect with our churches because they sense that they are not as rooted as their own families, or their favorite teams. Let us consider our tradition(s) and, in the spirit of “handing on,” make sure it/they stay in the family. Don’t put them in a museum, but instead explain their purpose and value, as well as their source and vibrant history. And let’s attend to the meaning as well as the forms of those traditions, while at the same time entrusting them to the next generation, trusting that if we have done our work they will appreciate, benefit from, celebrate, and pass on those valuable, meaningful, Gospel-carrying traditions. We will know this is well done when our grandparents come into our churches and feel at home even though everything isn’t the same as they left it.

Elegant

The first time I was a grad student, my Karen and I lived in LaGrange, Illinois, and I commuted by train every day to Northwestern University in Evanston. We had a very generous arrangement with our landlord (Karen's uncle) and couldn't begin to match the deal any where near campus. So each morning I go on the Burlington Northern train at Stone Avenue, in LaGrange, rode into Union Station, walked to the nearest el stop with a purple line train bound for Evanston. In the evening I made the return trip, logging three hours of commute, five days a week.

Then, as now, I enjoyed the train. I always had something to read, and then I knew almost no one on either of the legs of my trip, so I could read without being anti-social. At first, I was gobbling up the new-found glories of musicology. Then one day - early on in my first term, thankfully - Karen said to me, she said out of the blue, "Chuck, I've had enough."* Yes, I easily and quickly fell into academic-speak and everything came out sounding like a lecture.

Apt words, fitly spoken. Karen helped me remember that unless fiction is a steady part of my diet, I am hopelessly irrelevant. So today, I am again thankful for that stack of books Karen brought home recently. Again, while she was reading, she said to me, she said out of the blue, "Chuck, I think you'll really like this book." I had just finished the lovely Yoko Ogawa novel, and was reluctant to start in on another novel. But the echo of that long-ago grad school conversation reminded me that all thesis and no literature makes Chuck a dull boy.

Today I wept as I finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. (Which, I see just now, looking up a link for the book, was made into a 2011 French film.) I'll spare you the details of the story - just find it and read it, why don't ya? - and say that it blends people watching, European philosophy (post modern and medieval), little vignettes celebrating grammar, and beautiful meditations on art, music, and beauty.

Again, because of my thesis antennae, there was much here to make me feel less guilty about reading a novel when my thesis is not yet completed. The chapter on William of Ockham is brilliant. Reflections on time are mystical. Appreciations of beauty remind me how unaware I am of the many places beauty exists without my ever seeing it.

Just a couple of quotations, and I'm out of here:
"Art is life, playing to other rhythms."
This speaks to an idea I am working with in my thesis.

"For art is emotion without desire."
I think here of C. S. Lewis urging us to receive rather than use art.

In a lovely exchange with the elegant Mr. Ozu, the plain, widowed concierge Mrs. Michel says:
"They didn't recognize me."
"It is because they have never seen you," he says. "I would recognize you anywhere."

The book is a dual narrative told through the journals of two women - Renee. Michel, who keeps her intellectual and cultural interests to herself, and the precocious twelve-year-old Paloma Josse. Paloma has the last word in this blog post. We so seldom have a moment like that described here:
"There's a lot of despair, but also the odd moments of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It's as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never."




* veiled Paul Simon reference. Please don't make too much of it.

Like numbers and poetry

I took a break from “The Three Musketeers” – this summer’s adventure yarn on my Kindle – to read something my Karen had just finished. Karen has an unsystematic, and surprisingly successful, way of choosing books from the public library. Sure, she’ll take recommendations and she will pursue authors she has enjoyed. But sometimes, when she’s in a hurry, and it’s summer and just too hot or busy to think about it, she just picks titles off the “Staff Recommendations” rack. She has found some of her favorite modern novels that way.

And occasionally, I have been alert enough to carve out time from my own very systematic reading program(s) to share her pleasure.

The Housekeeper andthe Professor, by Yoko Ogawa, is our most recent shared literary pleasure. It is in English translation from a Japanese author – whom now, I am sure, we will both look for! The narrator is the Housekeeper, the unwed mother of a ten-year-old boy. The Professor suffers from brain damage sustained in a car accident 17 years earlier. A brilliant mathematician, his memory only lasts 80 minutes. (How we has learned to deal with that is just one fascinating feature of the story.) Every day the Housekeeper arrives at his cottage and has to re-introduce herself. She has a son, and when the Professor learns this one day, and that he is a latch-key kid, he is agitated and concerned; he insists that the son come to his cottage every day after school. The only character name in the novel is the nickname the Professor gives the son: “Root” – because his flat-top haircut is like the square root sign. “I’m going to call you Root. The square root sign is a generous symbol, it gives shelter to all the numbers.” (27)

The Professor makes sense of his limitations, and his world, and his relationships, through number. The math in the book is way beyond me, but not in a way that interferes with the story-telling. Indeed, the math is the story-telling. (Now that I think of it, this is like the 18^th-century details in the Patrick O’Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels; they just throw the reader into the world of the novel.) In this novel, the poetry is in the explanation. Prime numbers, perfect numbers, number relationships . . . a world of order and beauty from the pages of “God’s handbook.” The writing, like the math, is sheer poetry.

From the earliest pages, I easily justified reading The Housekeeper as compatible with my MA thesis. Not that evening pleasure reading has to be justified! But here was a nice coincidence. I am currently working through a thesis chapter showing how Baroque composers understood music as a vehicle for conveying meaning. Bach was among the last European composers to retain (to some degree) the ancient notion that music was one way of expressing (and discovering) divine order. From Pythagoras and Plato on into the 17^th century, the science of music was related to the order of the universe (musica mundana) and the proper ordering of human life (musica humana); only accidentally, so to speak, was the performance of actual music (musica instrumentalis) important. When the Professor describes ‘amicable numbers’- a completely new concept to me - he says, “They’re linked to each other by some divine scheme, and how incredible that your birthday [220, February 20] and this number on my watch [284] should be such a pair.” (19) That notion of divine order sneaks its way through the novel. Delightful.

Oh, and baseball! Of course, baseball is a game of numbers, statistics, distances, velocity, etc. , and has spawned its own share of engaging writing. The Professor and Root bond through a mutual love of baseball, and the novel takes place over the span of a single season of Japan professional ball. So there you have it, a philosophical, mathematical, poetical baseball novel. The most beautiful thing I’ve read in a long time, and I imagine I’ll pick it up again. How long till next summer?

Coming up for air

Today I made my first editorial pass on a very rough draft of the third chapter of my thesis. Coming up for air, I'd love to write up several book reviews and commentaries on my reading from the past two months. For now, I'll simply cite this tantalizing quotation from Laurence Dreyfuss, Bach and the Patterns of Invention. Styles, he says, "lend a special identity to a genre by imparting a specific meaning congruent with the kind's values." (page 193)

Now, this has something significant to do with my thesis. It also speaks to my personal, grander project (my soap-box, if you will), namely, that musical composition - including style and genre - is not theologically neutral.

In my reading and writing for this chapter I have been excited to stumble upon current literature that takes seriously the idea that music (that is, the stuff of composition, independent of text) has the potential to carry meaning. OK, yes, it is a little irresponsible to just set that out there without all the cautions and guidelines that keep us from going overboard with this. But the literature does exercise that caution, and my job in the thesis is to mind my step and keep the guidelines in front of me.

What interests me and excites me most is that the various authors come at this subject from differing disciplines and philosophical perspectives. And none are explicitly religious, which (it may be surprising to say) actually bolsters the argument I make in my theological thesis. However, at the same time I have heard excellent lectures by Ken Myers, who makes exactly these points, from a Christian perspective:
Epiphany Lectures "Ears to Hear: The Possibilities of Musical Meaning."

I'm pretty sure they are lectures during the Epiphany season, but they will be epiphanous for many listeners. The lectures are each an hour long, so - you know - you probably won't have time to listen to all four. If you care to, Lecture 3 - "Form, Meaning, and Listening" - is a good place to start. Lectures 3 and 4 are a good place to go if one is generally literate musically. Those interested in the big idea, but with little musical knowledge would do well to begin at the beginning. (That is, if you always and only listen to songs that last about 3 minutes, you will benefit from the whole series.) If I had my way, every ministry staff in every Christian church would listen to Lecture 3, together, and talk about it, with a music staff person and/or a music professor. Even if this were a single stand-alone lecture in a M.Div program, I have to believe it would begin to make a modest impact on the way pastors think about music in worship. But to be clear: these are NOT lectures about church music!

Look for more from the reading, now that I am in editing mode.

Laurence Dreyfuss, Bach and the Patterns of Invention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

A Humble Quest

When my college friend, Jon, sent me my introduction to A. J. Jacobs, I wasn’t quite sure how to take it. The note included in the gift said simply, “When I saw the title, I thought of you.” The title of the book: The Know It All. Hmm . . . Not usually a compliment, “know it all.” But author A. J. Jacobs is, after all, reasonably modest, and “One man’s humble quest to become the smartest person in the world” (the book’s subtitle) is an hilarious* romp through the Encyclopedia Brittanica, from cover to cover. And, whatever Jon may have meant by his note, yes, reading systematically through the encyclopedia is not far fetched for me. (I’ve actually been described that way, as in, “I don’t know Chuck well, but he strikes me as someone who would read through an encyclopedia.” Why, thank you! I take that as a compliment. I still prefer to look up words in a dictionary, and concepts in an encylopedia, because one always finds such interesting things along the way.)

A. J. Jacobs is a non-religious Jew (“I’m Jewish in the same way that the Olive Garden is Italian”) who writes (now is an editor) for Esquire magazine. His memoirs demonstrate his humble brilliance, and he is laugh out loud funny. (His wife, Julie, is a fair match for him, as he generously demonstrates.) But this particular “Humble Quest” has a touching serious personal dimension to it. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’sHumble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible was prompted by the author’s serious contemplation of his role as a father, by his concern to equip his son (and, by the end of the year, sons) for life in a whack culture in a dangerous world. Should he attend more to the religious aspects of being Jewish? What would that look like, and to what end?

Without belaboring each day, as the weeks go by we find Jacobs grappling with the implications of obeying, as literally as possible, all the commands of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. (Is it a function of his secular upbringing, or some assumption about who would read the book, that Jacobs does not refer to the two parts in the scholarly, and political, terms: “Hebrew” and “Christian” scriptures?) He makes quite a bit of the Judeo-Christian heritage, and at the same time clearly chooses to identify specifically, and ultimately concretely, with his Jewish roots. Along the way, Jacobs introduces us to his team of spiritual advisors – rabbis, ministers, pastors, scholars – who answer his questions, introduce him to people, concepts, and movements he should explore, and give him perspective. He dances with the Hasid, and attends a snake-handling church; he pillories the Creation Museum, and is surprised to find Thomas Road Baptist Church (Jerry Falwell) full of nice people. He is clearly most surprised to learn that much of our characterization of others is based on stereotype.

Each section of each chapter is headed by a biblical verse or aphorism; generally a command. This opens the way to reflect upon such arcane commands as not wearing clothes of mixed fibers, not taking the mother with the young “if you chance upon a bird’s nest,” or blowing the trumpet at each new moon. He struggles with the concrete, daily implications of commands: how will he know whether a woman is in her period, during which he should not touch her? (Here, his wife’s delightful humor is on display, as Jacobs comes home one evening to find that she has sat on all the chairs, out of pique for the oddity of this restriction.) Will he be able to find and stone an adulterer? (Another hilarious moment.)

But what struck me was how Jacobs grew in wisdom, as the scriptures describe it. He fights his own type, and our culture, to keep the Sabbath; and in the end embraces it with delight. He struggles with the daily little white sins about which the Bible has so much to say: lying, gossip, coarse jesting. His Esquire editor throws him a special challenge, to interview Cameron Diaz and not commit the sin of lust. His struggle with all these is honest and all too familiar to any who try to take the Bible seriously as a guide to human behavior. Jacobs finds that his mind is being changed by his attention to the Bible, and for the most part, he likes it. Perhaps of greatest value to him is the birth and nurture of genuine gratitude; he learns to give thanks for everything, and his outlook is changed.

It’s easy to read The Year of Living Biblically and simply observe that, well, after all, of course we can’t literally follow all the commands of the Bible and to do so is simply legalism. Granted. But in the end I admire the Humble Quest, and wonder at how little effort I make to follow any commands of the Bible; how much I need to grow in wisdom; in what danger I am in when I rely on justification by faith apart from works and neglect the works that flow from justification; how I could use a little more of the literal. Even if I only got as far as unceasing gratitude and genuine sabbath rest, I’d be farther along than I am today.

* I just can’t shake the quaint use of the article “an” preceding nouns that begin with the letter “h.”

Ramblings

My reading is pretty focused these days - thesis! - but I'm not finishing much. I'm eager to wrap up my evening, bedtime read, The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs. I got such a kick out of his earlier memoir, The Know-it-All. (subtitled: One man's humble quest to be the smartest person in the world) There are some fascinating insights, some important reminders, and a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in the book I'm trying to finish now. And then, it looks like I'll have to find and read Jacobs' Drop Dead Healthy: One man's humble quest for Bodily Perfection.

Thesis reading has taken me down a surprising road this month. I'm behind my own writing schedule, for reasons not entirely in my control; but the month has been fascinating. In short - much more on this later - some of the work I thought I was going to have to do, I find has been done for me. At the  moment I'm thinking specifically of the potential of music to carry meaning, to represent; the prospect that music may be (within careful bounds, and cautiously) interpreted. This is important for my thesis, but beyond that it gets at my larger project, namely, that music matters (that is, the notes, the tunes and accompaniments) and supports or undercuts the words used in worship. Oh, so much more on this, later.

Then, there are all those blog posts that people paste into their Facebook statuses. I don't spend a lot of time following bloggers. I do, but am not the guy who starts or ends each day checking in on favorite sites. I have many more book-marked than I can get to each week, and I generally look at them while I'm filling spare moments between things. There has been a vigorous flurry of posts about why young people are leaving the evangelical church. In general, I note that most of the solutions skirt the issue of gathered worship . . . even though the churches many young evangelicals are leaving for are historically liturgical. There seems to be a blind-spot in non-historical, free-church evangelicalism that believes if we just get our theology and the gospel right, young people will stay with our a-historical, culture-driven, rootless worship services. Now, I don't think the evangelical church needs to adopt the Book of Common Prayer to keep its youth. What I do think is that  evangelical churches need to commit to some historic, theological, liturgical structure - in keeping with their tradition (they have one, they just don't know or admit it) - and work in that context to serve the present age. Solid old theology, dumb new worship; go figure.

Which brings me to a post I was pointed to this morning. I don't know who Paul Washer is, and frankly I don't have the time or interest to find out nor to read what I'm sure is an excellent series of books. And as far as I know, I've never read Tim Challies' blog, and no I won't bookmark it and follow it. Though I have no doubt that I would benefit from doing so. But thanks to a Facebook friend's status and link, I appreciated these thoughts today. Challies interviews Washer about the "New Calvinism." After affirming some positive aspects of the movement, Washer ticks off seven concerns. The first four I recognize, but  have not rubbed shoulders with "new Calvinists" who exhibit these traits. Two of the last three, though. Oh my:
5 - embracing the great doctrines of the Reformation, without letting go of unbiblical models of ministry.
7 - the attempt of many young reformed to appear "contemporary, hip, cool, or even avant-garde."

Which simply sets up a critique I've kept to myself for a while: when it comes to worship especially, this movement would rather be trendy than right.

A Privilege I Don't Covet

I admire good preaching. For three decades I have had the privilege of planning Christian worship centered on well-crafted, intelligent, thought-provoking, life-changing preaching. I have worked with four senior pastors, good preachers all but not at all like each other in the pulpit. I’m a church musician whose métier is planning a service around the sermon scripture; it’s a partnership I thrive in . . . and currently miss.

Over the years, I have had a number of opportunities to preach. My earliest sermons are embarrassing, my later ones personally unsatisfying. Thankfully, I believe that God blesses sincere preaching that comes from faithful study of God’s Word, and the Holy Spirit graciously sorts out the preached word to accomplish divine purposes in expectant listeners. Otherwise, you know, I’m pretty much hosed as a preacher!

I’ve had good models for preaching all my life. But when I came to College Church seventeen years ago, I was thrust into a hothouse of expositional preaching. First, the examples of two sermons every Sunday, all year round, with duties shared by an amazing pastoral staff led by a world-class preacher. That sort of rubs off on you. But there were also the annual Workshops on Biblical Exposition – a “spring training” event for preachers of all levels of experience and ability. As a member of staff, this was one of those other duties as assigned, and it wasn’t limited to being the music guy who got the workshop singing, then went back to his – you know – job. No, I was politely required to participate fully in the workshop: study certain texts in advance, sort out how to preach them, then in a small group of (actual or wannabe) preachers make my case for preaching a passage in the way I had arrived at.

Intimidating? Well, yes and no. Yes, because I was always the one in the group who wasn’t preaching or aspiring to preach; I was out-gunned. No, because after all I was the “music guy” and no one really expected that much of me. Thankfully, some of the small group leaders over the years didn’t let me off that easily, and encouraged me along the way. Still, this was always going to be a required course, and preaching a sideline at best.

I will say this: those Workshops helped in my personal Bible study, in my occasional role as a Bible teacher, and especially as a worship planner. While I never spent anywhere near the time in a sermon passage as the preacher would, I grew immensely in my ability to work from the preaching text to song selection and service order. And for that reason alone, I have long encouraged other church musicians to find some similar enterprise. (And I still wonder, why aren’t more preaching pastors bringing their worship leaders to such workshops? Actually, I have a cynical answer to that, but that’s for another post.)

Over the years, I will admit, I’ve been pleased with one or two sermons. A 20-minute sermon on Israel’s monarchy (part of a series in the Storyline of the Bible), preached in an Evensong context. In a series on the Women of the Bible, I got to choose and preach on Deborah, the judge of Israel. (They wouldn’t let me preach on the Whore of Babylon.) I rather liked that one. I like to think I can put together a rather nice homily for a funeral or a wedding. In those contexts, I’m your 12-minute preacher. (Time me.) For the most part, though, preaching has always been added to my regular duties, and I have felt that the sermons did not get the time they warranted.

All of which is just some background to the delightful opportunity I had to worship with, and preach for, the Lombard Mennonite Church this past Sunday. My friend Curtis is the chairman of the congregation; he invited me to preach in their summer series on the Fruit of the Spirit. I was handed the “love” card. The church is in a pastoral interim, and the summer series was covered by members of the congregation  and guests like me. It was a privilege, enhanced by the warmth of the fellowship of the congregation, the thoughtful worship leader, and vibrant a cappella singing.

Still, I was reminded why I am not a preacher, and reminded again that preaching is a privilege I don’t covet. There is a certain something that distinguishes preaching – an ethos, a connection to peoples’ lives, a knack for making the scripture come alive and for vividly making application to real life. I know it when I hear it, and I always know when it is missing from my own sermons. I realized that it is not just a matter of having “enough time” to prepare in the midst of other pressing duties: after all, in my current transition, time is a gift I have in abundance. Still, I have this confidence that the God who speaks is not bound by human frailty; that the Holy Spirit always accomplishes more than we can expect or predict. And that, in any case, someone will come along next week to preach again. And as long as I’ve been diligent and faithful, perhaps I will have done no harm.