272. 'Set Apart' Hymn for Youth

I woke up early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. So, as I often do when that happens, I flipped my laptop open and wrote a hymn, which I had been planning for some time. I selected Jesus' childhood, death and end-time return as the texts to apply to the issue that I remember as a bugbear for faithful youth. In case you think I've missed something important, I know that I could have selected 12 more examples - but another issue I wanted to respect is kids' attention span. I decided to err on the side of knowing my target audience, and so kept it down to three stanzas. You're welcome.

Tune: DU, O SCHÖNES WELTGEBÄUDE by Johann Crüger, 1598-1662.

Jesus, who from childhood carried
Our salvation on Your heart,
Help Your young disciples, harried
With temptation from the start.
See our lives, with pressures thronging!
See our hunger for belonging!
Help us know and feel it true,
Christ, that we belong to You.

Living set apart is lonely,
As You more than all must know!
At Your cross, John was Your only
Student, standing dumb below.
Give us strength; fill us with fitness
That, with John, we may bear witness
To the cup You drank alone,
For Your mockers to atone.

Living set apart is joyous;
Set that truth before our eyes.
Thus, when fickle friends annoy us,
Over wrath and hurt we’ll rise.
For You soon will come with glory
To review Your children’s story,
And will set apart on high
Those who loved Your drawing nigh.

271. Hymn for Students of Theology

I planned this hymn as part of a trilogy with "Hymn for Good Preaching" and "Hymn for the Liturgy." Like those two, it is set to its own original tune, titled SEMINARY and written during the 3 a.m. hour today. While I'm mentioning the time of day when I finished writing this hymn, I hope it will partially excuse the fact that I changed rhyme schemes between stanzas 2 and 3. I honestly didn't notice I had done this until I went back over the whole hymn after penning the last line. At that point, I felt that correcting the versification gaffe would do more harm than good, so I let it be. Perhaps it's for the best. I'll bet a lot of students of theology know all about losing the thread of a written assignment and faking their way through it anyway. Wink, nudge.

Call, Lord, from humble fisher’s net;
Call from the tax collector’s booth—
From ev’ry walk of life—and set
Men’s hearts upon Your word of truth
That, answering our cry of need,
They may Your flock protect and feed.

Teach, Lord, though heads be hard as oak;
Teach into hearts stone-cold and dead
The mind-renewing word You spoke,
The way of life You blazed ahead
That, counting all they know as loss,
They may with joy take up their cross.

Fit them, through study, prayer and pain,
Your holy scripture to explain,
And with pure doctrine form their mind
As one, that they may loose and bind,
According to Your perfect will,
Both hot and cold, both good and ill.

Show them, and give them heart and nerve,
How they must suffer while they serve;
For none who follows You, O Christ,
Can be unused to sacrifice.
Embrace them, lest they come to harm,
With Spirit’s grace, with brother’s arm.

Devote their hearts, without a qualm,
To hymn, prayer, canticle and psalm
So, in the hour when men’s words fail,
The words You give us may prevail.
Teach them to handle holy fare
With all due reverence and care.

At last, in robes of grace arrayed,
On them let holy hands be laid;
Then, Lord, let no one doubt the call
That set apart a few from all
To guard and feed Your hungry flock
And lead the thirsty to their Rock.

We praise You, God, who made it rush
Forth in a sweet, refreshing gush;
We praise You, Son of God, as well,
Who with Your people ever dwell,
With God and with the Spirit one:
Amen, Lord; let Your will be done.

270. Hymn for Good Preaching

I would like to dedicate the following hymn to my former pastor and friend in Christ, the Rev. Randall Bell, pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Augusta, Mo. who always impressed me as an exceptional preacher. I planned it as a "pulpit" companion to this "altar" hymn. The original tune, written last night (and not even harmonized yet) is titled KERYGMA.

Lord, grace our pulpit with a preacher
Adept to teach, that we may hear
Your living voice; and to that teacher
Bend humble heart and open ear.

Though he be full of clever phrases
Or speak as plain as Farmer Brown,
Lead us through him to fix our gazes
On You who from on high came down.

Though he be draped in silken splendor
Or sewn into an onion sack,
If witness to Your cross he render,
No scrap of comfort will we lack.

Away with men who scratch our itches
And pull the Law’s accusing tooth;
Who promise happiness and riches
But set aside the Gospel’s truth!

Give us, instead, one who will spatter
Us head to toe with cleansing blood;
Who points us to the gifts that matter,
By which You, Christ, will do us good.

Give us a man who will correct us
As shepherd would an erring flock;
Who will, through fire and flood, direct us
To You, our never failing Rock.

Bless us, in short, with fruitful preaching,
And let its seed be cast afield
Till, earth’s remotest limits reaching,
A gladsome harvest it will yield.

Acrostic Psalm, Parts V-VI

Before introducing these next two hymns, which are segments of the Psalm 119-ish super-hymn that I've been working on since before the New Year, I would like to give a shout-out to the Rev. Dr. David Scaer. Over the weekend I watched a three-hour video of him defending the doctrine of the atonement against today's "radical Lutherans" and others of their stripe. His lecture both spurred me to finish this hymn at a rapid pace, and inspired me to splash a lot of Christ's blood on it. If the tunes may not seem completely appropriate to the tone of the text, it might be worth pointing out that I had already written them before I wrote these hymns. Or, you could just put it down to the depth of expression that is possible when the melody and poetry combine in a paradoxical way. Whatever. I confess, it was my intention almost until the end to write stanzas for X, Y and Z, but I just couldn't come up with enough appropriate words beginning with those letters to start off the lines. So, the hymn says "A to Z," but it's actually A to W.

268. Acrostic Psalm, Part V
Tune: SELAH, by Yours Truly, sometime last week.

Quake, blood-daubed earth! Be darkened, sun!
Queer was the hour God quit His Son!
Quizzed by the questioner’s barb’d tail,
Quiescent ’neath the hangman’s nail,
Quenched by the quack’s narcotic quaff,
Quelled by the mob queued up to laugh:
Quoth He, “My God!”—but hearts must here
Quite overflow with love and fear!

Reel, mind!—that God should, for your gain,
Renounce His Son in blood and pain!
Roar, heart, in horror at the cost
Revealed when Christ redeemed the lost!
Repent, O soul, before the rod
Raised onto which incarnate God
Reigns age to age, and thus enthroned,
Robs hell of them for whom He groaned!

Speak, lips touched by the Sacrament!
Sing, tongue, cleansed by the blood He spent,
Shed as the sacrificial coin
So we salvation’s choir might join!
Sound string and bell! Blow pipe and reed!
Say from what bondage you are freed!
Selah—rise, music! Israèl
Shall not be swallowed into hell!

Turn, then, barbarian or Greek,
To this, the unknown God you seek;
Turn, offspring of His favored race,
To Him who gazes on God’s face!
Throw off the chains that bind and choke;
Take up His light and easy yoke.
Then, by His promise, You will be
True heirs of life, from sin set free.

269. Acrostic Psalm, Part VI
Tune: MASKIL, also by me, last week

Use, brethren, use the present hour,
Until Christ comes again with pow’r:
Unbind those bound by sin and grief;
Urge them to share in pure belief.
Unsettle those who settle scores;
Unseat the judge; unstop the doors;
Unsteel the foe of love and peace;
Unite as one, and so increase.

Vaunt not vulgarity and vice;
Vie, little flock bought with a price,
Vie one another’s faults to veil;
Vouch for their virtue, kind and hale.
Vex not each other, lest you make
Vain what the Lord did for your sake.
View Christ in them, till all as one
Voice psalms of vict’ry to God’s Son.

Wake, faith and hope; the hour makes haste!
Why do you drowse? Arise, and taste
What is prepared for whom the Lord
Would summon to His wedding board!
White are the fields, the night far spent;
Wan grows the eastern firmament
Where, all at once, we soon shall see,
With living eyes, the A to Z.

267. Acrostic Psalm, Part IV

Continuing this monster hymn, or super-hymn if you will, continues to get trickier, with the letters N and O providing very limited options. Just wait until Q, V, and X-Y-Z! The original tune for this fourth segment of six is titled MYSTERIOUS MIGHT and, I might add, has already been harmonized, along with the tunes for the other five segments - even though I haven't written the lyrics for Parts V and VI yet. I think the effect I was aiming for, in this tune, was something antique and chant-like. Please bear with the (almost) ridiculous amount of alliteration; but, I must say, if you're going to put your back out writing an acrostic psalm, you might as well go all in!

Mysterious Lord and mighty God,
Make known Your majesty abroad!
Mock though they may the maiden’s child,
Move men to mark the martyr mild
Made manifest upon the cross,
Much more to mend man’s mournful loss.
Mute now be reason’s mad misrule;
My Savior’s mouth shall be my school.

Now, risen Christ of wondrous fame,
Nail to our hands, lips, hearts Your name;
Nor leave us hungry in the night—
Nay, nourish us with life and light!
Nerve us to tell our neighbor, too,
News of God’s grace drawn nigh in You.
Noise forth Your word! Give ears to hear:
No gift more needful, none more dear.

O Off’ring, poured out once for all,
Oblation sweet, to You we call:
O’er our offenses waft Your fume;
Obscure the odor of our doom.
Old Adam would, through daily toil,
Oppose Your healing wine and oil;
On each occasion, Savior pure,
Outface his fury; be our cure.

Pure Prophet, Priest and Prince of Peace,
Pierced through with pain for our release:
Plunge us within the scarlet flood
Poured from Your heart, the pledge made good.
Perfect in us Your work of love:
Present us purified above;
Place in our hands the glorious prize
Prepared for them who please God’s eyes.

On the Bondage of the Will

On The Bondage of the Will
by Martin Luther
Recommended Ages: 14+

This is the book Martin Luther (not King Jr.) considered his own best work: a rebuttal to a diatribe by Erasmus of Rotterdam about "The Freedom of the Will." Luther basically takes the position that if any part of our salvation depends on what is in us (such as our free will), the sacrificial work of Christ is all for nothing. First Luther responds to Erasmus' attacks on his own (Luther's) position; then he systematically replies to what Eramsus has to say about the subject; then he lays out a positive argument for the bound will in a tour-de-force of biblical theology. I'm the last person who should sit in judgment of Luther's writing, his theology or his interpretation of scripture – apart from noting that at one or two points, he seems to make an argument favoring double predestination, though he elsewhere (even in this book) condemns that false doctrine. Instead, all I want to say about this book is to make a few suggestions that may be helpful to people who start trying to read it and who then find it difficult.

First: This book, which I read in the Wildside Press imprint, is based on Henry Atherton's 1931 edition, which in turn is based primarily on Henry Cole's 1823 translation with some unspecified emendations based on a slightly later translation by somebody or other named Vaughan. I don't know how reliable these Anglican scholars' witness is to the theology of Luther or whether the occasional phrase or sentence that smacks of Calvinism isn't an artifact of their editorial bias. But I will observe this: Part of the difficulty for readers of c.2019 making an attempt on this book is that most of us aren't used to reading English in the style of Jane Austen's period. An updated translation by someone who knows his way around Lutheran theology might be a step toward making this book more accessible to Grandma Smurf and Uncle Smedley of today's Shepherd of the Cornfield Lutheran Church.

Second: Apart from the prose style, which would not have fazed one of the Brontës, there is the small matter of the typesetting – which is so badly out of order, at least in this imprint, that I think it actually impedes the correct interpretation of the text. Placement and non-placement of commas seems to be out of whack. Perhaps this is another matter of the year So Much in the U.K. as opposed to today in the U.S., but I think it actually goes farther than that: There are sentences that seem to make more sense when you experiment with reading them otherwise than the way they are punctuated. Of course, starting over with a fresh translation would also clear this up, but at the very least, do this. Right. Now.

Third: Ignore the glib, smooth-talking voice on the Lutheran radio program who tells you what to think about this book without actually answering your questions about it, and who suggests starting with the last 50 pages (Luther's positive statement of his position) and then going back to the beginning. First reading Erasmus' diatribe may not be necessary or even recommended. But reading straight through from Luther's introduction to his conclusion actually pulls his case together nicely, as one point builds on another. My advice is not to agonize over it or linger upon passages that aren't immediately clear. My approach would be to read it fast, maybe scribble a note (like, a check mark in the margin) next to something you'll have a question about later, and get through it in three or four sittings without over-exerting yourself. Many things not immediately clear will become clearer from what follows later. Other things can come out in group discussion or conversation with someone who studied theology like (say) your pastor. More to the point: Don't sweat the details. The case Luther makes, in its broad strokes, is overwhelming enough. And if the after-parts to this book (the Wildside imprint, at least) have anything to tell us, it's that Luther was really remarkably restrained in his treatment of Erasmus in this treatise. His final conclusion was that Erasmus was really not a Christian at all, and the case he makes for that opinion is pretty convincing, too.

Three Movie Reviews

A Dog's Way Home – I think this is the third movie in the series that started with A Dog's Purpose, which I didn't see, although I read the book by W. Bruce Cameron that it was based on. Remembering the original book as a sentimental tear-jerker that would appeal to dog lovers, I dragged my parents to see this movie during a weekend visit with them. I think we all pretty much enjoyed it. This movie follows the progress of a dog named Bella (voiced by Bryce Dallas Howard) who is sent away to stay with her owners' relatives while they look for a different place to live when she is falsely accused of being a pit bull – part of a corrupt campaign of retaliation against them by a developer they crossed and the animal control officers in his pocket. It also stars Ashley Judd as the mother of the college boy who belongs to Bella, and whom she tries to find again in a multi-year journey through the wilds of the Rockies. Along the way, she is mistaken for one guy's dog when she helps his actual dog dig him out after an avalanche buries him in snow; she runs with the dogs that beg for food at the back doors of restaurants, only to realize that each of her packmates has a human family to go home to; she almost gets adopted by a couple of nice guys, but he just isn't Lucas; she almost dies of thirst when a hobo chains her up and then kicks the bucket; she befriends a mountain lion cub and almost chooses to become its mom; and everything finally comes together in a stand-off at a veterans' home against a couple of improbably wicked dogcatchers.

Not a subtle movie, this. It has some nice scenery and good human and canine performances, though some of the animal business seems to have been handled with CGI. The connection between Bella and her boy Lucas is adorable. If I was expecting something quite as poignant as A Dog's Purpose, I was disappointed. But I don't recall feeling disappointed. Visually appealing, with a nice journey story-line for the hero dog and a hard-won happy ending, it left me nothing to complain about. Three things that made it for me: (1) The scene in which the avalanche guy rejects not only Bella, but his own dog after they both saved his life. Ouch. Sad as it is, a lot of the pathos in this scene is sold by dog body language. (2) The recurring theme of Bella being tempted to stay and become part of a family where she's at – both with another dog and with a wild cat. (3) Grizzled Wes Studi's resolution of the standoff with the gung-ho dogcatcher.

The Kid Who Would Be King - Louis Ashbourne Serkis, a son of Andy "Gollum" Serkis, headlines this film about a present-day London teen who comes to realize that he is destined to draw Excalibur from the stone and become the "future" part of the Once and Future King. Alex, not Arthur, is his name, and among his central circle of knights are a pudding of a boy named Bedders (Sir Bedivere, anyone), a girl named Kaye (only the girl part is a surprise) and a handsome bully named Lance (like, Lancelot, right?). The latter two are really sketchy converts to the cause, however. Together with a rather flamboyant teenage avitar of Merlin (dude lives backward in time, you know), who sometimes transforms into Patrick Stewart, they travel all the way to Tintagel in Cornwall to learn stuff Alex would rather not know. For example, his book of Arthurian legends, the obsession of his childhood, was not a gift from his mysterious, missing dad but from his mum, who wanted to protect him from knowing that his dad didn't spare a thought for him. In spite of disappointments along the way, however, Alex leads his sidekicks on a pretty successful quest, and they make it back to their school in time to head off an attack by Morgana and the forces of evil.

That's enough to go on with. Three things that made this movie for me: (1) The whole "defending the school" sequence, in which they somehow train the entire student body in swordplay in a couple of hours, while at the same time rigging the gym with anti-demon booby traps. (2) Alex belatedly explains everything to his mum, then proves it's all true by summoning the lady of the lake – in the bathtub. (3) The recipe for Merlin's power-restoring tonic. However, I must add one thing that somewhat un-made this movie for me: All that hand-jive stuff young Merlin does, way too many times during the movie, to execute spells. It really got irritating.

The Mule - Just when you think you can write off Clint Eastwood as a piece of film history, the nearly 90-year-old actor/director pulls this off. Supposedly based on a piece of journalism about an elderly man who smuggled Mexican cartel drugs under the noses of law enforcement before finally surrendering himself to the authorities, the movie is a grim, emotionally stifling spectacle from one end to the other. Clint plays a day lily enthusiast whose obsession has caused him to become estranged from his wife (Dianne Wiest) and their daughter (Clint's real-life daughter Alison Eastwood). Hoping to retrieve the good graces of his family by contributing to his granddaughter's wedding, he responds to a job offer that leads him to become a drug mule, driving a pickup truck to and fro across the country and not asking questions about who takes the drugs out and puts money in while the truck is parked overnight. At first things are going great. He buys a new truck, saves his day lily farm, gets his VFW local remodeled, impresses the fam. But all the while, he gets in deeper and deeper, becoming a trusted favorite of the cartel chief – just in time for a bloody change of management, which puts the old guy on the wrong side of the hombres in power. Meantime, the feds have a confidential informant, with whose help they are slowly closing in; and then Clint goes AWOL in the middle of a drug run to rush to his wife's bedside and hold her hand while she dies, which puts him rather between a rock and a hard place. His survival becomes the matter of supreme suspense, leading to something like a modern-day version of the bittersweet ending of a classic western, where the tough guy ends up all alone.

My dad and I had an argument after seeing this movie. There was a scene where the cartel guys caught up to Clint and were about to kill him, but when they realized why he had gone AWOL they questioned their orders and considered maybe just roughing him up, to teach him a lesson. Clint is all, "I'm ready to take my medicine." Then the scene cuts to him driving down the road with a truckload of drugs and getting caught by the law. Asked how he came to look so badly beaten, he says something like, "I only got what I deserved." I took this at face value: the cartel guys took pity on him and only gave him some bruises and scrapes, then let him continue on his run. My dad, however, is positive that "between the lines," Clint killed the cartel guys and that later, when he pleads guilty on all charges, the murder charges are due to their deaths. I just assumed the murder charges had to do with the court throwing everything at him because he was the only member of the cartel they had to charge with stuff; and if anyone dies in connection with a felony you're committing, you get charged as if you killed them. So, on at least this point, the film is open to multiple interpretations.

Also co-starring in the movie are Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Andy Garcia, Richard Herd and Loren Dean. Three scenes that made it for me: (1) The one in which Earl's (Clint E.) controller, who has gradually warmed to him, is basically forced to tell him they're not friends anymore in front of the new thugs who run the show. Perhaps meaningfully, they never see each other again. It puts salt on a previous scene in which Earl tells the young guy he should get out of the business and find something else that he loves to do. Too late for him, right? (2) The scene in which Clint bamboozles a Texas state trooper into leaving without interfering any further, after he stops him along with the two cartel guys tailing him and starts to give them a hard time. For a minute, you're sure the two Mexican guys are going to waste the trooper. They're pretty sure, too. (3) Clint sings at the wheel of his truck, not caring what the cartel guys who have him bugged think about it. I love the scene in which they start to sing along with him.