550. St. Luke

The feast of St. Luke the evangelist is Oct. 18, and the readings for it are Isaiah 35:5-8, 2 Timothy 4:5-18 and Luke 10:1-9.

The Luke of whom we speak is the author of both the third gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. A companion of Paul, he speaks of himself in the first person in the opening paragraphs of both books, and includes himself in the story as part of "we" in certain passages of Acts. Paul mentions him by name three times, describing him as "the beloved physician" in Colossians 4 and as a fellow laborer in Philemon, and reporting that he alone stayed with Paul during his imprisonment in 2 Timothy 4. Two of those mentions occur within a sentence or so of a mention of Mark, suggesting a close connection between the two evangelists.

Luke apparently addressed his writings to a patron named Theophilus and he wrote in an elegant, well educated style of Greek. Early church authorities held (or at least guessed) that Luke was one of the 70 evangelists Jesus sent out in Luke 10, and possibly the "brother" whom Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 8 as being commissioned to travel with Titus. Whether he was a Gentile Christian or a Hellenistic Jew has been debated; Paul seems to exclude him from the list of Jews among his coworkers in Colossians 4. Rumor has it that he died at age 84, either by hanging or of natural causes, in or around Thebes.

In my introduction to the St. Matthew hymn, I mentioned some things that Matthew gives us in distinction from the other evangelists. Luke gives us a lot of important stuff, too. He describes the conception and birth of John the Baptist, the angelic annunciation of Jesus' conception to the virgin Mary, her visitation to John's mother Elizabeth, the songs of Mary (Magnificat), Zacharias (Benedictus) and Simeon (Nunc dimittis), the best known version of the birth of Jesus (with shepherds, angels and the Gloria in excelsis), some stories about the childhood of Jesus, and a genealogy that runs from Jesus (via Mary, I would argue) all the way back to Adam. In contrast to the structure of Matthew's genealogy from Abraham through Joseph to Jesus, Luke's purpose seems to be portraying Jesus as the Son of God in relation to all of mankind.

Luke shares a lot of material with both Matthew and Mark (not for nothing are they called synoptics), but he also gives us a goodly share of unique material. Parables of Jesus found exclusively in Luke include the two debtors (chapter 7), the good Samaritan (10), the rich fool (12), the lost coin and the prodigal son (15), the crooked steward (16), the rich man and Lazarus (also 16, if indeed it's a parable), the Pharisee and the tax collector (18) and the minas (19). Miracles only found in Luke include the great catch of fish (chapter 5), raising the widow's son (7), cleansing 10 lepers (17) and restoring the severed ear of the high priest's servant (22), along with some notable healings. Only Luke portrays Jesus' encounter with "wee little man" Zacchaeus and His weeping over Jerusalem (19), and several of his "seven words on the cross" (23). Luke is the only evangelist who details the resurrected Jesus' appearance to the two Emmaus disciples (24). And of course everything we know about the first spread of the gospel after Jesus' ascension into heaven comes from Luke, with some support from Paul's epistles. So, while not much of a character in the New Testament's dramaturgy, Luke is a significant source of information as well as liturgical lyrics and fodder for meditation.

Lord, bless Your church with watchful eyes
And voices sure
To teach, yea, to evangelize
And still endure
Though as drink-offerings they are poured,
That in our midst, in deed and word,
Christ may be praised with one accord
And reverence pure.

Take from our eyes the scales that blind;
Unstop our ears!
Let heavy tongues Your lightness find
And join the spheres
To swell the glory of Your name,
Your justifying grace proclaim,
Unclean no more, no longer lame—
We pray through tears!

When all men have forsaken us,
Stand with us, Lord.
When trials have overtaken us,
Your strength afford
So that Your message may resound,
Till from the nations all around
A fruitful harvest may redound
Upon Your word.

And when at last our struggles close,
Remind us, Lord,
Who once a dear physician chose
To pen Your word,
That You still heal the heart that faints,
Still hear our querulous complaints,
And evermore by all the saints
Shall be adored.

ART: Holy Evangelist Luke, Russian Orthodox icon, 18th century, tempera on wood, public domain. Note the winged bull, a symbol of Luke.

Goat

I'm not sure whether this movie's title is Goat, as in "its main character is an anthropomorphic goat," or GOAT, as in "Greatest Of All Time." The movie plays with this equivocation quite a bit. Apparently based (loosely, I'm sure) on the story of basketball star Steph Curry, it tells the story of a small goat named Will from the mean streets of Vineland who has dreamed since childhood of playing professional roarball, which is kind of an extreme sports version of basketball. Ordinarily, he would have no chance. Fortunately for him, the Vineland Thorns have a cheapskate owner who doesn't really care if her team wins or loses, headlined by a panther named Jett who habitually hogs the ball, plays like the rest of her team isn't there, and is determined to win a Claw (the league championship) before age and injury end her career. Ultimately, Will owes the fact that he makes the hometown team to a viral video of him playing one-on-one with a tough, stallion pro named Mane. Signal a season of roarball action featuring quirky characters of varying species, gradually coming together as a real team and giving both Jett and Will a real shot at sports immortality.

The basketball, um, I mean roarball, scenes are fun, to be sure. But the heart of the movie is grounded in Will's persistent pursuit of his seemingly impossible dream, which ties into his tireless campaign of chipping through the armor Jett has built up around herself and injecting spirit into a team that has all but given up on themselves. A major audio-visual theme that contributes a lot to the texture of this movie is its hyperawareness of sports media and social media, like a mash-up of ESPN and Animal Planet where everybody has their phone out and is live-streaming footage for later editing as Instagram reels. It's glitzy and frenetic and loud, with color commentators putting in their bit, dramatizing the team's buildup to their big shot at the Claw and the final showdown with Mane and his team of bigger, badder animal jocks.

I'm not much of a sports watcher, but I am always up for a sports movie. They usually hit the target, from a storytelling and emotional standpoint, and this Sony Animation Studios picture is no exception – though the "glitzy and frenetic and loud" pushed the limits of what my nerves could absorb. I am also, don't forget, a guy who could never be persuaded to see a "Fast and Furious" movie after the first one gave me a splitting headache. The laughs, the characters and relationships, the emotional rewards of the story kept my butt in the seat where a movie that failed to deliver on these points might have seen me walk out before the end. So, kudos for that.

Scanning through the cast for actors whose names mean anything to me, I see Gabrielle Union (Bring It On) played Jett. David Harbour (Stranger Things; 2019's Hellboy) voiced Archie the rhino. Frequent voice actor Nick Kroll (Sing, Captain Underpants, etc.) plays Modo, the bizarre Komodo dragon. Steph Curry himself voiced Lenny the giraffe. Playing the team's warthog owner, Flo, is Jenifer Lewis, who also voiced a character named Flo in the Cars movies. Wayne Knight of "Hello, Newman" fame (cf. Seinfeld) plays Frank, Will's gerbil landlord. A bunch of pro basketball players, male and female, also show up in the cast list. And Patton Oswalt puts in the role of Coach Dennis, a monkey with a huge schnoz.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Upon learning that Flo has hired a goat to be the team's sixth player, Jett threatens to eat Will – a threat he takes seriously. It's a reminder that in a version of the present-day world filled with anthropmorphic animals, there's a limit to how anthropically they morphize. On a similarly diet-related note, whenever Will feels peckish, he takes a bite out of a tin can – even provoking Jett to remind him that there's food inside the can. (2) Just about any scene featuring Frank and his ridiculously numerous offspring. The poor guy is stressed by having so many mouths to feed, and yet at the outcome of the Thorns' drive to compete for the Crown, he declares that he feels like having another dozen kids! (3) The fallout when Jett, sensing that her dream of winning a Claw may be about to slip out of her grasp, suddenly loses the faith she has started to have toward her team – basically the final crisis of the story, apart from the championship-level gameplay.

549. St. Michael & All Angels

I somehow don't seem to have written a hymn for the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, Sept. 29. The readings are a doozy: Daniel 10:10-14 and 12:1-3, Revelation 12:7-12 and either Matthew 18:1-11 or Luke 10:17-20. I think the angle Lutherans generally take regarding this feast, if they observe it at all, is to focus on the idea that, thank God, He sets angels to watch over us. We don't go very deep into the subject of Michael as such, I think. And perhaps I haven't focused a hymn on it (though I did write an "Angels of the Lord" hymn) simply because some excellent hymns are already available to fill the scarce need. Well, I guess the time has come to check that assignment off.

A quick search for occurrences of the name Michael in Scripture finds mentions of several earthly, mortal persons, not the archangel, in Numbers, 1 and 2 Chronicles and Ezra. An angelic figure (possibly Gabriel; cf. Daniel 8-9 and Luke 1) speaks to Daniel about Michael in Daniel 10 and 12, describing him as "one of the chief princes" (10:13) and "your prince" (10:21), "the great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people." What the angel Gabriel calls a great or chief prince apparently translates, in Jude 9, as "the archangel" who contended against the devil over the body of Moses. Jude seems to know a lot of things that aren't public knowledge. In Revelation 12, John depicts a war in heaven in which Michael and his angels fought with the dragon and his angels.

Putting together what Gabriel, Jude and John tell us about Michael, his story seems to be that of a high-ranking warrior among the armies of (usually) invisible warriors who defend the faithful against the spiritual forces of evil, and of unseen battles fought behind the scenes of history that are more significant, from heaven's point of view, than any events and conflicts we know about. It brings to mind Psalm 34: "The angel of the LORD encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them." There are a number of accounts of angels acting in a martial manner, such as the one that threatened Balaam and his ass in Numbers 22, one that routed the Assyrians in 2 Kings 19, 2 Chronicles 32 and Isaiah 37, one that sprang Peter from prison and killed Herod in Acts 12. Especially, I find myself thinking about 2 Kings 6, when the Syrians besieged Elisha, and his servant be like, "What'll we do?" and Elisha prayed the Lord to open his eyes: "and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha."

So you see, the story of Michael and all angels is about the unseen forces, as important if not more important than what we do see, carrying out God's will and protetcing His people throughout history with a "charge over you" (Psalm 91), both on a mass scale (as with archangels like Michael) and on a personal level (cf. Matthew 18). ART: Public domain.

Know, beloved, You are cherished
By the Lord who lives on high.
Scarce a meadow's bloom has perished
Hidden from His watchful eye.
Tracing too the sparrow's fall,
Christ perceives your faintest call.

Know indeed that unseen spirits
Guard the chosen of His grace,
Loyal to the blood and merit
Of the Savior of our race;
Armed, they guard us fore and back,
Parrying the foe's attack.

Michael's captains stand their stations
Round those Jesus suffered for,
Though the geniuses of nations
Gird themselves for siege and war.
They hold in that hidden realm
Ground the foe would overwhelm.

Sense and reason may dissemble;
What is naught may pose as much.
Nonetheless, fret not nor tremble:
Christ is here, as close as touch,
And the guard you cannot see
Greater than your fears can be.

Lord, amid our world's upheaval,
Grant us eyes of faith to see
All You've done for our retrieval;
Fill us with such constancy
Till we, loosed from every harm,
Walk with angels arm in arm.

POSTSCRIPT: For what it's worth, this is my 550th original hymn—recalling, once again, that the numbering on this blog goes all the way down to zero. I hope someday to make it to at least 600, but I don't know how long that will take. I mean, I've already done four laps around the Church Year (one-year and three-year lectionaries), and this Heroes of the Faith section is drawing to a close in maybe three more hymns. So the momentum I've built up lately may not last. Suggestions? I'm open to them!

548. St. Matthew

Sept. 21 is the feast of St. Matthew, apostle and evangelist. Lessons for the day are from Ezekiel 2:9-3:11, Ephesians 4:7-16 and Matthew 9:9-13. Like many of the previous "Heroes of the Faith" in this current series of hymns, he is mentioned in all four lists of the 12 apostles (Mathew 10, Mark 3, Luke 6, Acts 1). Only Matthew himself specificies "Matthew the tax collector." Also, only Matthew names the tax collector Matthew whom Jesus calls to leave the tollbooth and follow him (Matthew 9), while the parallel accounts in Mark 2 and Luke 5 both name him Levi. They're clearly talking about the same guy, but the name change is never explained.

From Mark 5 we have the additional factoid about Mathew (Levi) that he is the son of Alphaeus, though none of the lists of the apostles pair him with James the son of Alphaeus. The only other biblical mention of Matthew is in the title at the top of his gospel: "According to Matthew." For a character with no spoken lines, he has a lot to say—28 chapters worth.

Matthew's gospel gives us a lot. His genealogy of Jesus (chapter 1) makes a legal argument that Jesus is the heir to the throne of David through Mary's husband Joseph. His account of Jesus' birth also focuses on Joseph, whose revelatory dreams suggest a typological connection with the Joseph of Genesis. Matthew uniquely gives us the Epiphany narrative (the visit of the Magi, chapter 2), which paints the Gentiles into the faith picture. Despite Mark and Luke's parallel accounts of Jesus' transfiguration, only Matthew gives us the exact words of the voice from the cloud ("This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased") that Peter quotes in his second epistle—which led one of my seminary profs to suggest that 2 Peter could be a preface to Matthew's gospel.

Matthew gives us several extended discourses by Jesus, including the full Sermon on the Mount (Luke's "sermon on the plain" is comparatively condensed) and several unique parables: the tares, the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, the net full of fish, the unmerciful servant, the laborers in the vineyard, the wise and foolish virgins, the talents (Luke's parable of the minas is similar), the sheep and the goats. He gives us the version of the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer more widely used than Luke's. Along with John, Matthew gives us Jesus' words establishing the Office of the Keys (Matthew 16, 18; John 20) and commissioning His disciples to make disciples by baptizing and teaching (Matthew 28). In these and other passages, Matthew's account has been much in the church's ears, on the church's lips and worked out in the church's practices.

Up, idle tongue and pen,
From thieves' and merchants' den!
Tell what God's Son for all has done
To proud, rebellious men.
Where Jesus bids you go,
Rebuke and warn of woe:
Though they refuse to heed the news,
Speak what He bids them know.

Reveal the Savior's grace
To souls of every race:
He bears the due of such as you
And suffers in your place.
He calls unworthy souls
To part with nets and tolls,
Yea, to repent, with pardon sent
To serve His kingdom's goals.

Reveal His healing will
That those not well but ill—
Not Pharisees but sinners—He
Would with His fullness fill.
See, then, with Matthew's eyes,
A calling to baptize,
A word to preach, a world to reach,
A swiftly coming prize.

Up, feeble heart and hands!
Prepare in faithless lands
To toil and die, to edify
A house that firmly stands.
Knit by the truth in love,
Grow up toward Christ above,
Till every mind in Him shall find
A pure and precious trove.

ART: Detail from the Calling of St. Matthew by Vittore Carpaccio, 1502.

Beginnings

Love, Lies & Hocus Pocus: Beginnings
by Lydia Sherrer
Recommended Ages: 12+

I was ordering some books in the Once Upon a Tim series, so I could review them as a complete set, when I decided that I had to buy one more thing to qualify for free shipping. Impulse, combined with a cheap price and an agreeable-seeming synopsis, led me to choose this book to fill out the order. And then all the other books in my order arrived, but this one didn't. I tracked the shipment and found that it had allegedly reached a distribution center in my ZIP code, but had gone no further in the two weeks since. I opted to re-order it (at no extra charge) because I had lost any confidence that the delivery would ever happen. And eventually it did arrive. And then, the moment I opened the book, a page fell out – part of the table of contents ‐ and several other pages soon followed. So, before I had even formed an opinion of this book based on its storyline, characters and style, I felt a certain sense of grievance. I'm happy (to a certain degree of happiness) to report that my complaints about this book end there. Yes, the binding is of substandard quality. But the contents thus bound are quite enjoyable.

Lily is a wizard, and her friend Sebastian is a witch. This might strike fans of a certain boy wizard with a scar on his forehead (so described by Sebastian at one point in this book) as a reversal of gender roles, but gender has nothing to do with the distinction between wizard and witch, in Sherrer's world building. Witches do transactional magic, of the "something given, something gained" persuasion, dealing with spirits, fae creatures and (in some cases) demons – though Sebastian wisely stays away from that last lot. Wizards, meanwhile, have an inherited ability to tap into an impersonal Source of power, using runes and spells in an ancient language called Enkinim to focus their intent. Lily's day job is to manage the archives at the library of a Georgia women's college, and her afterwork career seems to revolve around extricating Sebastian – the ne'er-do-well nephew of her prim and proper wizard mentor – from whatever trouble he finds himself in.

This book isn't quite a novel. It's more like two novellas, held together by a connecting interlude. Episode 1 is "Hell Hath No Fury," in which Sebastian is hired to lay the ghost that is haunting a plantation-style mansion, making it unfit to live in and impossible to sell. Sebastian finds a ghost, all right, but he isn't the problem. The problem is a curse put on the man and his house by a jilted lover, who was apparently one of Lily's lot. So, he calls her in for an assist, and figuring out how the long-dead witch cast a spell that is still wreaking havoc proves to be almost as hard as breaking it. After that comes the interlude of "Chasing Rabbits," in which Sebastian goes after a junkie friend who robbed him of a magically significant heirloom, only to get caught up in a dangerous game with an Atlanta drug gang. And that leads right into Episode 2, "Möbius Strip," set in a small Georgia town that's locked in a time loop that becomes more dangerous each time it repeats because the magic powering it is fading fast, and if it fails completely, hundreds of people could become trapped between worlds. Figuring out who has Sebastian's artifact is only the first battle in a dangerous campaign to keep terrible power out of the wrong hands. And there, to avoid spoiling it too much, I'll leave you.

Syonpsis-wise, I mean. Review-wise, I want to say that Lily and Sebastian are an odd couple in the best sense – the kind whose patter is endlessly entertaining and whose development, as characters and a relationship, promises lots of fun yet to come. Lily is a bookish, cat hair covered, tea drinking stickler for proper behavior, while Sebastian has a rakish charm, an allergy to authority, and a knack for flying by the seat of his pants and somehow making it work. You'd think they wouldn't be able to stand each other, yet there's a tenderness between them that neither of them has looked straight in the eye. And despite the comedic tone that prevails overall, there's an undercurrent of tragedy that tugs at one's heart strings: the sense that with modern technology doing what it does, there isn't much need for their kind of talent anymore – a sense that both wizardry and witchcraft, for different reasons, are on their way out, even while those practicing both arts in the present feel cut off from their own history. Could they represent the twilight of magic? Or might they be the ones to stage a brilliant comeback? I guess I'll have to keep reading their story to find out.

This is the first book of a series of books whose titles all begin with "Love, Lies & Hocus Pocus," though the series itself is billed as "The Lily Singer Adventures." The other titles in the series end, respectively, with the words Revelations, Allies, Legends, Betrayal, Identity and Kindred, plus there are a couple separately published novellas titled A Study in Mischief and Cat Magic and a spinoff "Dark Roads Trilogy" about Sebastian's origin, with one book so far, titled Accidental Witch. And for what it's worth, I've already gone back to my online bookseller of choice and ordered Love, Lies & Hocus Pocus: Revelations – at least partly so I could qualify for free shipping on a DVD box set of Columbo.

Solo Mio

I've been underwhelmed by the choices of movies to see these last several weeks, anywhere within an hour's drive of home. But I finally decided to give Solo Mio a try – an Angel Studios release featuring Kevin James of The King of Queens, whom I've decided in Christian charity to forgive for the dreadful Paul Blart: Mall Cop. In this movie, he plays a public school art teacher named Matt who asks a work colleague to marry him in Rome. Then he books an all-expenses-paid honeymoon package tour and, when his bride leaves him standing at the altar, he realizes that the package is non-refundable and non-transferrable. So, he reluctantly decides to stay in Rome and do the honeymoon experience, well, solo. Two other couples, each with their own relationship issues, take him under their wing, and he picks up a mutual attraction with a nice lady who runs a caffé, and during a road trip to the picturesque Italian countryside he discovers that Gia happens to be the niece of Andrea Bocelli (appearing as himself), and misunderstandings and outrageous coincidences ensue, and while a lot of pain is involved, the general upshot is emotional healing and a touch of sweet romance.

The cast includes well-known faces Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy) and Alyson Hannigan (American Pie) as a couple who have just married each other for the third time (after divorcing each other twice), Jonathan Roumie (Jesus in The Chosen) as a guy who (despite the ethical implications) marries his therapist, and Julie Ann Emery (Mrs. Scheisskopf in Catch-22) as Matt's vanishing fiancee. Also playing himself (again; cf. Yesterday) is Matt's favorite pop singer, Ed Sheeran. Overall, it's a lightweight movie, but it has heart to it, some laughs, some romantic tension, colorful characters and beautiful visuals. I'm not sorry I saw it.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) A man-hungry Italian woman, who in an earlier scene came on to Kevin (without success) while he was drowning his sorrows at a Roman club, pops up suddenly during a rooftop party, screams something about him breaking her heart and cold-cocks him. If I had been eating popcorn, I probably would have choked. (2) Of course the moment when Matt is looking around Gia's family villa and notices pictures of her relatives with Andrea Bocelli, and he's like, "Boy, your family really are big fans," and then he rounds the corner into the parlor and sees who's playing the piano. (3) The final, as-stipulated-in-the-Hallmark-Channel-movie-bible, 15-minutes-from-the-end misunderstanding and the big reveal of what actually happened, on which the happiness of the hero couple depends.

547. St. Bartholomew (a.k.a. Nathanael)

The feast of St. Bartholomew, one of Jesus' 12 apostles, is Aug. 24. By that name, he is mentioned exactly four times in the Bible: the four lists of the apostles in Matthew 10, Mark 3, Luke 6 and Acts 1, which come up often in this series of "Heroes of the Faith" hymns. And I mean just mentioned; he never gets any character development in the canonical Scriptures. Unless ... well, the "unless" comes up immediately when you consider the readings for his feast day are Proverbs 3:1-8, 2 Corinthians 4:7-10 and either Luke 22:24-30 or, and this may be significant, John 1:43-51.

Why is this significant? Well, because John writes of a disciple named Nathanael who is mentioned nowhere else, except in John 21 when the resurrected Jesus appears to several disciples including him by the Sea of Tiberias (i.e. Galilee). Is Nathanael one of the 12? The record is unclear. Is he Bartholomew? Maybe. The evidence in favor of that supposition, if you can call it evidence, is of the type one associates with the "Pepe Silvia Conspiracy Board" meme, pictured above regardless of copyright because, dude, it's a meme. But let's go over it briefly anyway.

So, in John 1 it's Philip of Bethsaida who brings Nathanael (also of Bethsaida) to see Jesus. And though John never gives us a list of the 12 apostles, the emphasis he places on Nathanael (who actually does get some dialogue and character development in this scene, and shows up later among other known apostles) suggests he's a disciple of some signifiance, perhaps even one of the 12. Meanwhile, John never mentions Bartholomew (whose name literally means "son of Tolmai"), so it's kind of like Clark Kent and Superman never being seen together at the same time and place; maybe they're the same guy. There are other cases of differences between the lists of apostles suggesting, or even outright stating, that someone went by two or more different names; for example, Matthew and Mark know of an apostle named Thaddaeus (perhaps also called Lebbaeus) while Luke (in both the third gospel and Acts) seems to replace him with Judas the son of James (a.k.a. "not Iscariot," John 14:22). So if John pulled a Luke and mentioned Bartholomew by his other name, that wouldn't be without precedent.

To put a bit more of a point on it, three of the four lists of the apostles (Matthew, Mark and Luke) put Bartholomew right behind Philip on the list; Matthew and Luke, who list the 12 in pairs, actually pair them with an "and" between their names, suggesting an association somewhat on the level of "Peter and Andrew" and "James and John." You know, sort of like how Philip and Nathanael were scene partners in John. To be sure, Acts pairs Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew (while the synpotics all pair Thomas and Matthew), so this coincidence may not be worth much; but it's there.

Wiki declareth that "most scholars today identify Bartholomew as Nathanael," which seems to be the opinion of whoever picked the John passage as an option for the gospel lesson for Bartholomew's day. Various traditions, dating back as far as the fourth century and up to more recent scholarship, suggest Bartholomew/Nathanael (whether one man or two) evangelized quite a few different regions, including India, Ethiopia and what are now Turkey, Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Algeria and perhaps even France. Busy guy! He supposedly died in Armenia by being flayed alive while continuing to preach until he died, and his relics seem to have ended up scattered all over the place. The legend strains credibility more tha deeper one looks into it. So let's just fall back on the readings, eh? And so I propose:

Peace and long life be yours,
Disciples of the Lord,
Forsaking not His word
Where truth and mercy pours.
Your steps to it devote;
Inscribe it on your heart,
And bind no name apart
From His upon your throat.

Entrust your heart to Him.
Lean not on your own mind:
A sure way you will find
And so gain man's esteem.
Fear God and flee from sin,
Nor with conceited eyes
Regard yourself as wise:
He is your Health within.

For stormy is the hour,
The vessels plain and frail
Whereby salvation's tale
Is borne to us with power.
Hard-pressed yet never crushed,
Struck down but not destroyed,
With hope our hearts are buoyed,
Our prayer and praise unhushed.

For our afflicted frame,
Our strained and stuttered breath
Bear marks of Jesus' death
And manifest His name;
His triumph, like His trials,
We boldly verify
And stake our prize on high
Against the devil's wiles.

In peace, Lord Jesus, keep
This last and little while
Nathanael without guile
And all who with him sleep.
At last, God's Son, our King,
The heavens open wide
And raise us to Your side,
A glad new song to sing.

546. St. Mary, Mother of Our Lord

Verily, even Lutheranism has more than one feast featuring the Virgin Mary on its Feasts and Festivals calendar, and I've long since written hymns on most of them. There's the Presentation of Our Lord (a.k.a. the Purification of Mary) on Feb. 2. There's the Annunciation of Our Lord on March 25. There's the Visitation, either on May 31 (three-year lectionary) or July 2 (one-year lectionary). But on the plain, vanilla feast of Mary herself (Aug. 15) I have not yet held forth. So the hymn below is my (at least first) effort in this regard. Readings for the day are Isaiah 61:7-11, Galatians 4:4-7 and Luke 1:39-55, with verses 39-45 marked as optional.

Before I get to that ... Scripture has a good deal to say about Mary, arguably all the way back to Genesis 3:15. Not to mention Isaiah 7:14. She's also a significant character in the gospels, most notably the narratives of Jesus' birth and childhood in Matthew 1 and Luke 1-2; the wedding at Cana in John 2; a discussion that ensues when Jesus' mother and siblings ask to see him in Matthew 12, Mark 3 and Luke 9; and her Son's crucifixion according to John 19. She is also mentioned in Matthew 13, where local knowledge of Jesus' family connections was held against Him, and in Acts 1, when she and Jesus' (half-) brothers joined with the apostles in prayer and supplication.

Tradition, pious and otherwise, is rife with rumors about Mary. Interestingly, the current pope has been walking back what seemed like Roman Catholicism's inevitable march toward establishing Mary in its dogma as co-redemptrix. Other biographical data about her, such as her mother's name and how (or whether) her earthly life ended, are strictly a matter of legend, not divine revelation. But I have some idle speculation of my own. I think, and this is just my opinion, the diverging genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 can be explained as one of them (I think Luke 3) tracing Jesus' paternity through Mary. It does mention Jesus being "as was supposed" the son of Joseph, but I would argue the next name on the list (Heli) is actually Mary's father and so the line that branches off from David via his son Nathan is His physical bloodline, via human paternity. Meanwhile, Matthew's genealogy, which runs all the way down the line of kings of Judah and ends by asserting that "Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary," can't be thus understood – but if read as a legal argument for Jesus' claim on the throne of Israel, through Joseph's recognition of Him as his Son, it would comport with Matthew's apparent purpose.

I might as well choose this point to stake out my opinion, with an appeal to Christian freedom, that those brothers mentioned in Matthew 13 and Acts 1 were related to Jesus on Joseph's side (i.e. via a wife prior to Mary) and that His mother was semper virgo. I also think the scene at the foot of the cross where Jesus declares John to be her son suggests that she had no other sons who were obligated to support her. No questions or counterarguments will be taken at this time, thank you. ART: "Christ on the Cross with the Magdalen, the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist" by Eustache Le Sueur, †1655, public domain.

Rejoice, you heirs of heaven:
The woman's Seed has come!
Pure robes to you are given,
A heritage, a home.
You eager friends and maidens,
Behold His rich array,
His Bride with jewels laden
To feast with Him today!

The earth brings forth its flower
As summoned by the Lord,
And bears fruit by the power
Of living, active word;
And so, before the nations
His righteous banner stands,
His endless adoration
Resounding from all lands.

For when the hour was urgent,
Yea, heavily with child,
And heaven's foe, insurgent,
The age's prince was styled,
God sent His Son through Mary
To bear the law's reproof:
Salvation did not tarry;
His off'ring is enough.

Now let our souls enlarge Him
And praise Him for all time,
For God saw fit to charge Him
With all our race's crime.
He who is strong and glorious
Has so stretched forth His powers
That all His work victorious
Is reckoned now as ours.

All generations, hearken:
This news of life is yours!
Now as the ages darken,
The light of mercy pours
And Christ, the tempest stilling,
His own bears on His arm,
Their hunger richly filling
And shielding them from harm.

We are the Savior's mothers,
His sisters and His Bride,
Through flesh and blood His brothers,
Bathed at His streaming side.
Hence with the maid who bore Him
And called God's Son her own,
Soon we shall rise before Him
And gaze upon His throne.

545. St. James the Elder

Back here, I disambiguated between some biblical Jameses: the son of Alphaeus, whose feast is held on May 1; the bishop of Jerusalem, epistolist and half-brother of Jesus, celebrated on Oct. 23; and on July 25, James the Elder, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, with whom we are concerned in this hymn. Readings for his feast are Acts 11:27–12:5, Romans 8:28-39 and Mark 10:35-45.

This is the James (or, really, Jacob) of the famous trio of apostles, Peter, James and John; you think you've heard them grouped together a lot. But actually, Matthew only separates them out from the 12 once, in the transfiguration narrative of Matthew 17. Mark does so in his version of the transfiguration in Mark 9, but also (with Andrew) for the healing of Peter's (Simon's) mother-in-law in Mark 1; raising the synagogue ruler's dead daughter in Mark 5; a discussion of the end times in Mark 13, again wtih Andrew; and Jesus' suffering in the garden in Mark 14. Luke mentions the trio in his version of the raising of the dead girl in Luke 8 and the transfiguration in Luke 9. It seems John never brackets the trio, even while calling himself "the other disciple" or "the disciple Jesus loved." Paul once (in Galatians 2) mentions a trio of James, Cephas (i.e. Peter) and John, but in that instance he means James of Jerusalem.

Naturally, being brothers, James and John as a pair are mentioned together a few times. Apart from the often cited lists of the 12 apostles, the two ask Jesus if he wants to command fire to consume a village that rejected Him in Luke 9. Jesus calls the brothers to follow him in Matthew 4, Mark 1 and Luke 5; he nicknames them "Sons of Thunder" according to Mark 3; they ask Him to enthrone him at his right and left hand in Mark 10, to the irritation of the other disciples; and that's about it. As an individual, apart from Peter and John, Scripture knows nothing of James except for his martyrdom in Acts 12:2, when King Herod put him to the sword, making him (I believe) the first apostle to finish the race. Already in Acts 12:17, when an angel tells Peter to bring news to James and the brethren, another James is clearly meant. So for a supposedly central apostle, James doesn't get much play as a character.

For this hymn, contrary to my usual method of operating, I started with a tune in mind: OM HIMMERIGES RIGE, from Hans Thomissøn’s den Danske Psalmebog, Copenhagen, 1569, also known by several other titles and paired in various hymnbooks with "How blest are they who hear God's word." Got that in your mind's ear? All right. Here goes.

Beloved, be it understood
That God works all things for the good
Of those on Jesus nourished:
Called by His will, by Him foreknown,
Formed to the image of His Son,
In His regard they flourish;
They shall by no means perish.

For Your sake, Lord, the faithful say,
Your lambs are slaughtered every day.
If You with us are siding,
Who can our hope of life oppose?
Come trouble, sword or peril, those
Can never come dividing
Us from Your love abiding.

As James found, when His faith was tried,
We may with You our life confide,
A cup of sorrow drinking.
Come even a baptism of blood,
We know Your plan for us is good,
From no affliction shrinking
While on Your passion thinking.

ART: by Stefan Lochner, †1451, detail of an alterpiece depicting the martyrdom of the apostles showing the manner in which St. James the Elder most likely took the sword. Public domain.

544. St. Mary Magdalene

The feast of St. Mary Magdalene (art: public domain) is July 22, with readings from Proverbs 31:10-31, Acts 13:26-31 and John 20:1-18, minus some skipped verses (3-9). She's mentioned 13 times in the gospels: in Matthew 27-28, Mark 15-16, Luke 24 and John 20 as a witness to Jesus' burial and resurrection, and in Luke 8 as one of several women who followed Jesus and served him during his ministry. Mark and Luke particularly mention that Jesus had cast seven demons out of her, and both Mark and John single out Mary as being the first person to whom Jesus appeared after He rose from the dead. John goes into the most detail about that scene, in what I take to be the inspiration for that syrupy Jesus song, "In the Garden." But let us say no more about that piece.

There are other pious (and perhaps impious) opinions about Mary Magdalene. Jesus Christ Superstar depicts her as Jesus' paramour. Despite lack of biblical evidence, some medieval authorities held her to be a reformed prostitute, perhaps the sinful woman who anointed Jesus' feet with perfume and received Jesus' absolution (Luke 7). The name "Magdalene" suggests that she came from the village of Magdala on the Sea of Galilee. There is some suggestion that she played a prominent role, among other women, as a financial supporter of Jesus' ministry, and there are various legends about whom she married and where she died. But instead of expending futher time on such idle rumors, let's try this on:

Dim were the eyes, weighed down with grief
And early morning gloom,
That with alarm and disbelief
Beheld an empty tomb.
Soon, soon those eyes would brighten with the day
And dance, the joyful tidings to convey!

The tomb is empty; where is He
Who there but lately lay?
The Magdalene put forth her plea:
Where did they take His clay?
But when her Rabbi named her tenderly
Her eyes were opened, Easter life to see.

What God is this, who woman's eyes
Uncloses to the truth,
While even Peter still denies
And John runs, seeking proof!
What Lord, who hides and suddenly appears,
Who sports and wrestles with men's hearts and ears!

What God indeed, who died and lives,
Ascended out of sight,
And still through spoken witness gives
Us joy and life and light!
Now Lord, let us believe what we proclaim
Till, waking us, You call us home by name.

'Once Upon a Tim' books 1-4

One Upon a Tim
The Labyrinth of Doom
The Sea of Terror
The Quest of Danger
by Stuart Gibbs
Recommended Ages: 8+

In the first of these four short, kid-friendly, adorably illustrated adventures, Tim and his best friend Belinda seize their one opportunity to escape being peasants – trying out for knighthood. The alternative, for Tim, is a lifetime of dawn-to-dusk drudgery with nothing to show for it but a mud hut over his head and a cup of gruel now and then. For Belinda (who disguises herself as a boy and takes the name Bull) there are two choices: housewife or witch, neither of which appeals. Joined by the Ferkle, the village idiot, they jump at the offer to become knights, signing on with Prince Ruprecht and his wizard counselor, Nerlim, to rescue the fair Princess Grace from a smelly monster (the stinx). Little do they know they all, and not just Ferkle, are being taken for fools.

Obviously, adventures will be less than straightforward when everything on the map has "of Doom" in its name. As Nerlim comments when Prince Ruprecht tells him to stop being such a scaredy-cat because everything looks perfectly fine: "That's what I'm afraid of. This is called the River of Doom. Why would it be called the River of Doom if there wasn't any doom?" Favorite quote. But at the risk of spoiling what is to come, Ruprecht and Nerlim prove to be the boss villains throughout the remaining three books of the series, which feature a quest to resecue Grace from the center of a monster-infested maze, a sea voyage past half the perils in Homer's Odyssey, and another sea chase from the edge of the world to Atlantis, featuring the other half of those perils. Cyclopes! Krakens! Whirlpools! Sirens! And of course, a kingdom under the waves – but not the one you think! It's all there, arranged in loopy harmony with a tale of a non-traditional princess, a secretly intelligent idiot and two knights-in-training who have more spirit than the whole Knight Brigade of the Kingdom of Merryland.

I've enjoyed many of Stuart Gibbs' books for younger readers – usually not so young as the target audience of this series, though. And it wasn't just because of the age target that I didn't enjoy this set quite as much. To start, there is less of them to enjoy. The stories are humorous; the illustrations by Chris Choi are delightful; but even at the speed of Gibbs' typical offerings, these books go by awful fast and leave a lightweight impression behind. The vocab-building "IQ boosters" are a nice touch, and there's a certain whimsical quality to the narrator's way of addressing modern-day kids as if he understands exactly how different his world is from theirs. But the anachronisms don't stop there, building up to a gender politics-tinged finish that wouldn't leave any disciple of Wokism unsatisfied. But it left me less than fully satsified, and there I'll leave it.

Gibbs is also the author of now 10 FunJungle books, the Last Musketeer and Moon Base Alpha trilogies, the Charlie Thorne quartet and 13 Spy Camp novels, each of which I'm somewhere in the midst of reading and would (so far) recommend to anyone with a funnybone to tickle and a taste for adventure.

543. Heart Hymn

I felt this hymn coming on today, so by way of taking a break from my Heroes of the Faith hymn cycle, here's an unplanned volunteer for my next collection of hymns. I reckon the "Faith and Justification" section of the book needs a little more material; I've never been particularly attentive to that topic area, apart from touching on it in hymns planned for other sections such as Sundays of the Church Year, etc. With a nod toward Ezekiel 36:26 and 2 Corinthians 3:3, here goes:

Take, Lord, from me this heart of stone,
Cold, darkened, dead and past correction;
Graft in its place a living one,
Alive to You at Your election:
A heart that sorrows for my sins
And on its crossward crawl begins.

Put, Lord, into my heart Your word,
Which shaped a world once void and formless.
Where it is sprinkled, tasted, heard,
The desert blooms and seas fall stormless,
And every part of me, remade,
In Jesus' image is arrayed.

Give me a heart, Lord, to receive
What You at Jesus' cost committed.
Draw me from doubting to believe
That, with His spotless garment fitted,
I may at last approach Your throne,
Made for Your house a living stone.

ART: By Peter van der Sluijs, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

542. SS. Peter & Paul

I have already written hymns for the feasts of the Confession of St. Peter (Jan. 18) and the Conversion of St. Paul (Jan. 25). And yet there remains a joint feast of the two apostles, slated for June 29, for which the readings are Acts 15:1-12 (verses 13-21 optional), Galatians 2:1-10 and Matthew 16:13-19. So, with a grim sense of going back over ground that I've covered before, and with no further ado, I propose the following hymn. The art is by Jusepe de Ribera, †1652, public domain.

Jesus is the Christ, God's Son!
On the rock of this confession
Stands the Church, against which run
Hordes of hell and man's aggression,
All their rage and force in vain:
Christ His faithful will sustain.

Jesus gives His kingdom's keys
Even to that great confessor,
Peter, who with equal ease
Turns denier and transgressor;
Yet, to loose on earth our sins,
Jesus' word of pardon wins.

On the road, He blasts His call
At His persecutor, breathing
Faith and ministry in Paul,
Who with hate was lately seething.
Such a sinner Christ sets free
His bondslave and saint to be.

Let the child of Israël
Unto Peter's witness hearken,
And His great confession swell
Though this generation darken
Counsel with vain words galore;
Open yet stands Jesus' door.

Let the heirs of heathendom
Hear the gospel Paul delivers
And to saving knowledge come,
Which the house of bondage shivers;
Come, with Jesus' name engraved
On your hearts, from Hades saved.

541. St. Barnabas Hymn

The feast of St. Barnabas is June 11. Readings appointed for it are Isaiah 45:5-12, Acts 11:19-30 and 13:1-3, and Mark 6:7-13. Barnabas is he whom Luke, in Acts 11, described as "a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith," and whom the church of Antioch – where followers of the Way were first called Christians – sent with Saul (i.e., Paul) to do mission work. As I'm currently shagged out following my prolonged squawk about SS. Philip & James yesterday, I won't detain you further before proposing the following hymn. The art is an icon of St. Barnabas from the museum in his honor in Salamis, Cyprus, image by Gerhard Haubold under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license, which represents more hyperlinks than I feel like creating right now so if you're interested, look them up here.

The Father uttered, "Though you know me not,
I give you light and peace and gird for labor."
Though we, His handiwork, had never sought
To know Him, every man and child and neighbor
Must learn His promises and His commands
From Zion's pile unto the farthest lands.

The Spirit uttered, "Consecrate to Me
These men to do the work for which I call them,"
Then Barnabas and Saul He named to be
Such that nor chains nor shipwreck need appall them.
Through prayer and fasting and the church's hands
He sent them to preach Christ in heathen lands.

The Savior uttered, "Go and preach the word;
I give you power o'er the unclean spirit.
Then blessed be the house where it is heard;
It will go hard for those who will not hear it."
O Lord, with all humility and fear
We pray, bend to Your word our heart and ear!

With fear indeed, yea, with glad acclamation
Your word we now speak back in prayer and praise:
For You have spread the message of salvation
Through good and faithful men, from early days
Down to our time. Still consecrate and call
Such heralds, till Your gospel reaches all.

540. SS. Philip & James

The feast of St. Philip and St. James, apostles, is May 1 in Lutheranism. Readings appointed for the feast are Isaiah 30:18-21, Ephesians 2:19-22 and John 14:1-14, in which Philip actually gets a line!

Disambiguation time! Philip the Apostle is not to be confused with a couple of other Philips in the New Testament. Matthew 14, Mark 6 and Luke 3 all mention a brother of Herod named Philip, the first husband of Herodias and father of Salome (she of the seven veils). He's not the saint in question. Also not him is Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven deacons appointed in Acts 6 along with Stephen. This Philip preached to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 and played host to Paul and his companions in Acts 21. But again, he's not this saint.

The other times a man named Philip is named in the N.T., it's the Philip named in lists of the 12 apostles in Matthew 10, Mark 3, Luke 6 and Acts 1. He's one of the first half-dozen or so disciples of Jesus, present to witness the first of Jesus' miracles at the wedding at Cana. Only John's gospel presents him as a speaking character and reveals that he comes from the city of Bethsaida in Galilee, also the hometown of Andrew, Peter and Nathanael. It is Philip who tells Nathanael, in John 1:45, "We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." It is Philip who reports to Jesus, in John 6, that feeding the 5,000 will exceed the disciples' financial resources. It is Philip, in John 12, who brings word to Andrew that the Greeks want to see Jesus, which Andrew passes on to the Lord. And Philip, Thomas and "Judas (not Iscariot)" enter the dialog in John 14, each feeding Jesus a prompt during his after-the-Last-Supper sermon. Philip's comment is, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us," to which Jesus replies, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known me, Philip?"

Aaand Philip is never heard of again. I mean, he has some apocryphal writings named after him, and there's an early-church tradition about him that claims he was executed in Hierapolis, a city in what is now Turkey, by being either crucified upside-down or beheaded. The crucifixion version is a little silly in its details (look it up for yourself), but that's hagiography for you.

Then there's James, literally Jacob(!!), one of two apostles by that name. The one who shares May 1 with Philip is not to be confused with James the Elder, the son of Zebedee and brother of John the Evangelist, whose feast is held on July 25. The James we're concerned with is the son of Alphaeus, listed among the 12 apostles in Matthew 10, Mark 3, Luke 6 and Acts 1. Scripture says no more of him, unless he's the same guy as "James the Less" (or "the Younger") mentioned in Mark 15 along with his mother Mary and brother Joses; see also Matthew 27, Mark 16 and Luke 24. Then there's James of Jerusalem, or James the Just, celebrated on Oct. 23 on the Lutheran sanctoral calendar. Assuming, as Lutheranism does, that he's a separate James, he was technically not an apostle, but an early bishop of Jerusalem (Acts 12, 15, 21; 1 Corinthians 15) who wrote the N.T. epistle of James, and is known as a (half-)brother of Jesus (Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3, Galatians 1:19), along with Jude (Jude 1).

Of James the son of Alphaeus / James the Less (assuming they're one and the same), Scripture only records his name and those of some immediate family members. He doesn't get any lines, even in John's gospel. Tradition mentions him preaching in Jerusalem, where he was thrown to his death and/or stoned and/or clubbed to death. But since, again, Scripture is silent, he gets to wear the rear half of the two-man saint costume on May 1. And now, at long last, the hymn:

O Christ, who armed the church for strife
The night before You died,
You are the Way, the Truth, the Life
And there is none beside.
Where hearts are troubled, let the grace
Poured from Your ruptured side
Flow with assurance that a place
In heaven You provide.

When to the cross for all You went,
You bore sin's darts and slings,
Then rose—and great was Your ascent—
To fill and rule all things.
At God's right hand, and One with Him,
To us His face You show;
Though we be weak, our eyesight dim,
In You God's way we know.

On You, the Cornerstone, now stands
A living house whose parts
We are, with saints from many lands,
A temple built of hearts.
Knit us as one, so that therein
The Holy Ghost may dwell—
A shrine of life, made hard from sin
And from the gates of hell.

By word and sacrament, from youth
Your love has held us fast.
By men like James and Philip, truth
Shall keep us to the last.
Wait, Lord! Have mercy, though our feet
May stumble on the way;
Restore our steps, until we greet
That glad reunion day.

ART: SS James and Philip, 12th century painting, public domain.

Every Day Is a Gift

I've been going through some medical stuff. Here's what's up.

In the first couple days of December 2025, I was under the weather. I took some hours off work due to fatigue, acid reflux, headache and occasional nausea. On Wednesday, Dec. 3, at 2 a.m. and again at 8 a.m., I vomited – something that I had done rarely (maybe two or three times) since I was a small child. I also experienced some muscle weakness and odd vision distortions. I took a day off and went to the local Essentia Health walk-in clinic, where I was nasally swabbed (for viruses) and had blood drawn for a metabolic panel, hereafter described as "labs." The walk-in doc called me later to say my blood calcium was way high, my creatinine (an indicator of kidney function) ditto, and I should get a ride – not drive myself ‐ to the emergency room forthwith. I did that.

In the ER at CHI St. Joseph's Health – the hospital in Park Rapids, Minn. – I spent several hours reclining on an uncomfortable gurney while docs and nurses bustled around me. They x-rayed my chest. They gave me an abdominal CT-scan. They probably drew more blood (I'm losing track now of how many donations I've made). Eventually they decided to admit me, and stuck me in a tiny room on the second floor of the hospital, where they started me on IV fluids and certain other meds, such as Protonix (an acid reducer), Zofran (for nausea), magnesium and potassium supplements and, later on, some laxatives to get my bowels moving. A couple times, I was given Lasix (a diuretic) because my hands and feet were swelling up. Good times.

I spent several days there, mostly peeing into a plastic urinal because the cramped room, the bedside tray table and the IV cart made it next to impossible for me to get to the toilet without wetting myself. Eventually I was moved to a bigger room, which resolved this issue. I grew used to a routine of nurses and techs popping in every few hours to test my blood sugar, draw blood for labs, jab me with an insulin pen (if needed), take my vitals, etc. I went from having almost no appetite – sometimes taking just a couple bites of a meal before clapping the lid over the dish and turning away – to, finally, cleaning the plate and even (on my last night inpatient) asking for a late-night snack. I took increasingly long walks in the corridors as I gained strength. I received a pastoral visit and communion in my hospital room.

A doctor came by once or twice a day to advise me of what condition my condition was in. Apparently my calcium, which shouldn't go higher than about 1.2 and could be doing serious damage above 1.5, was around 3.5 when I showed up, and it climbed to 5.0 and finally to 5.7 before plateauing and starting to come down. Meanwhile my creatinine was also concerningly high, maybe (I later learned, during a follow-up with a specialist) to the point where kidney failure was imminent. But this also started to come down. The hospital doc was of the opinion that a drug I was on for blood pressure was promoting this hypercalcemia, so he changed my prescription. He also advised me to stop chewing Tums, which I had been taking heavily during that horrendous bout with acid reflux (which, I take it, is a symptom of hypercalcemia, so we have a chicken-egg problem there). And with my numbers starting to dial back in the right direction, the hospital let me go, scheduling me for follow-up labs (combined with my regular, semiannual labs to monitor my diabetes and other issues) and a consult with my primary care doc the following week.

Well, I had the labs drawn at my primary care clinic (Sanford in Park Rapids, making a clean sweep of all three health care systems in town). The night before my scheduled appointment there, my nurse practitioner called to voice grave concern about my kidney numbers (including BUN and eGFR) as well as my calcium levels, among other numbers that were all over the place and whose ups and downs on my routine labs had never quite made sense. And now, she observed, something seemed to be pulling calcium out of my bones. She proposed that I was either looking at hyperparathyroidism – a gland condition that could explain pretty much all the symptoms I'd had before going into the hospital – or maybe some kind of cancer. And my kidneys were angry, too. She advised me to hydrate like my life depended on it, and to follow the orders of the physicians assistant who would be seeing me the following day in her absence.

Well, the P.A. told me to stop taking metformin for my diabetes (because it's hard on the kidneys), referred me to an endocrinologist (gland doctor) and a nephrologist (kidney doctor), and then told me to go straight to the Sanford emergency room in Bemidji, which I did. Apparently the P.A. thought Sanford was going to admit me, but they didn't. They drew blood for more labs. The ER doc told me my calcium was actually low and gave me a calcium supplement, and they sent me home with a sheaf of instructions, including symptoms of hypo- and hypercalcemia to watch for.

None of this advice did favors for my ability to sleep at night. I was a nervous wreck. It seemed like my blood chemistry could pull any trick on me at any time, on no notice whatsoever, and every twinge or pang or tingle could be a sign of something that could put me back in the hospital. I was really scared.

As December progressed, I went back to Bemidji to see the nephrologist, with another round of labs being drawn the day before so he could discuss them with me. The nephrologist told me about a phenomenon he called the parathyroid-kidney axis, where a parathyroid gland goes haywire and starts pulling calcium from the bones while instructing the kidneys to leave it be in the blood, rather than filtering and peeing it out. He noted that my kidney numbers were moving back toward the normal range with each round of labs, and my calcium was currently in the normal range, so he scheduled me for a six-week follow-up and sent me on my way. He also advised me that in all likelihood, having one of my parathyroid glands cut out would set everything right again – pending advice from an endocrinologist. He also let me go back on a very low dose of metformin, meaning my diabetes isn't going entirely untreated.

Somewhere in this period, an ear-nose-and-throat doc's office at Sanford in Fargo set me up for a CAT scan and consult there, which was scheduled for Jan. 22 – this week, as I write this.

At the very end of December, I had (by the way) a medical eye exam in Wadena, an annual thing due to my diabetes. The news wasn't too bad, other than a concern about high ocular pressure. Then I saw the endocrinologist in Bemidji. He was the one who told me how close my calcium spike had brought me to kidney failure (thanks, dude). He also ordered some tests – a nuclear medicine scan of my thyroid area and kidney ultrasounds, followed by more labs – and cheered me up with the choice of three scenarios based on the results: (1) Everything looks normal (unlikely) and so no action needs to be taken. (2) A hyperactive parathyroid pops out in the scans (likely) and, by the way, I probably also have kidney stones; in which case he would refer me to an endocrine surgeon at the Mayo Clinic to have the bad gland removed. (3) The calcium spike is back (possible) and if so, I should go back to the hospital and have them do to me what they did before.

I slept on this advice until last week, when I went back to Bemidji for the tests the endocrinologist had ordered. I won't go into a lot of detail for now but I will mention that I had a rare, radioactive element – Technetium 99 – injected intravenously, then I had to lie very still while a huge camera took very long exposures of me. The second of two photo shoots that day, lasting about an hour, featured a 30-minute-plus scan in which the camera rotated 360 degrees around me, very slowly, followed by the same three stills (about 7 minutes each) they had taken earlier, meaning I could, and did, actually listen to all of Beethoven's 9th Symphony during the time I lay in that uncomfortable, claustrophobic machine. And then I got quickie ultrasounds of my kidneys and bladder and was sent home.

The results came in and were as encouraging as they could be, given the technical jargon they came packed in. The impression of my kidneys and bladder was described as "grossly unremarkable," which I chose to take as a compliment. The nuclear imaging didn't see any signs of hyperactivity, either. And in the labs drawn last Thursday, all my numbers were (at last) in the normal range, except sodium and chlorides being just a bit low and sugars (sigh) rather high. I actually took enough courage from these results to text the ENT doc in Fargo and ask if it's really necessary for me to have a CT this week and see him afterward; and to his credit, he canceled those appointments.

So, with a sense that, aside from not really knowing why all my innards went haywire last month, everything was settling back into normalcy, I sat down on the couch this past Friday night to enjoy a Saturday Night Live sketch on YouTube. And that's when I became suddenly and violently ill.

I mean, I went from feeling totally fine to being so dizzy and lightheaded that I could only sit up with difficulty. I found myself bathed in sweat. I thought I was going to lose consciousness. I had difficulty switching from YouTube to the dialer on my phone so I could call my friend (the one who drove me to the hospital last month) and have her come over. I had to support myself on the walls and furniture to get across the room, and down the hall, to put on shoes, sweatpants and a coat. By the time my friend arrived, I was barfing heartily into the kitchen sink. It took me quite a while to reach a point where I could stand up and take a few steps without either staggering or having to puke again. I finally pulled myself together enough to accept a ride to the ER.

The nurses and doctor at the CHI emergency room were nice. They tested me for the flu and other viruses that are going around these days; the results were negative. The ER doc explained something about vasovagal syncope, a fainting spell caused by a reflex that slows the heart and lowers blood pressure due to some kind of trigger, perhaps something I ate that disagreed with me. The sweats and vomiting are part of the package. The doc reassured me that so soon after my labs came back normal, I probably wasn't experiencing blood-chemistry wackiness. And since I was no longer sweaty, dizzy or nauseous, he sent me home.

It was spooky. It was discouraging for this to happen, so soon after everything seemed back to normal after my previous illness, which had also peaked with a barfing jag. I felt a bit of self-pity, like "I thought I was over all this, now ..." But it wasn't unprecedented. I said I had rarely puked in my adult life before last month, but the previous time was pretty much exactly like what happened on Friday night. After a meal at my parents' house, I came over all pale and sweaty, had a dizzy spell, ran to the bathroom and yakked, and felt much better afterward. I suspected then, as the ER doc suggested Friday night, that I may have eaten something that my body rejected. The first instance has made me leery of venison-based entrees; the latest installment might give me pause the next time I'm considering ordering Szechuan shrimp. I definitely threw out the leftovers from that night's dinner, I'll tell you.

UPDATE: Minutes after first publishing this, the endocrinologist's office called me and told me to go straight to the ER to have my low sodium level evaluated and if necessary corrected with IV fluids. The local ER personnel reran my labs but didn't think any urgent treatment was needed, so they let me go. Hmph, so much for saving money (for example, by not having that unnecessary CT scan).

All this medical melodrama has taken a lot out of me. I've lost a lot of time at work; my PTO bank is pretty much dried up. I haven't gotten a lot of the projects done that I meant to work on at home. A week without having blood drawn or having to travel to a doctor's appointment has become a rare treat. I can hardly entertain the idea of traveling any great distance for any length of time (like, a week's vacation to visit my folks, now living in another state – which was what I had planned for the five days I spent in the hospital last month). And if you want me to tie it all up in a bow, I've realized that every day of life, every day of full strength and free activity, every night in the comfort of my own home, is a gift.

ART: A nuclear imaging "ironing board," like the one I lay on for a good hour-and-a-half last week, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

539. St. Mark Hymn

The feast of St. Mark the evangelist – author of the Gospel According to Mark, you know – is April 25. The Lutheran Service Book calendar of Feasts and Festivals appoints readings for the day from Isaiah 52:7-10, 2 Timothy 4:5-18 and Mark 16:14-20.

Besides his name at the top of the second gospel, Scripture doesn't tell us a whole lot about Mark. He is first named in Acts 12, when an angel busts Peter out of prison and he (Peter) goes to the home of Mary, identified as the mother of a certain John Mark. Later, Saul and Barnabas depart on the first of their missionary journeys, and they take John Mark along. Apparently, Mark bailed during the trip, and in Acts 15 as Paul and Barnabas are planning their next journey, they have a "sharp contention" over whether to take Mark along again. This results in a split; Barnabas leaves with Mark, and Paul with Silas.

It seems that by the time Paul is in captivity in Rome (the period in which Martin Franzmann places his letter to the Colossians), Paul has reconciled with Mark, identifying him in Colossians 4:10 as a cousin of Barnabas (which explains a thing or two). He says Mark is with him in his prison and urges the Colossians to welcome him if he comes to them. Again writing from prison, Paul sends greetings to Philemon from Mark and others whom he calls "my fellow laborers." Even later, in his second letter to Timothy, Paul urges Timothy to come to him and bring Mark as well, "for he is useful to me for ministry."

Peter also writes from Rome, in 1 Peter 5, calling it Babylon and extending greetings from the church there as well as "Mark my son." This Mark, the Mark of whom Paul writes, the John Mark of whom Luke writes (in Acts) and the Mark who wrote the second gospel are widely, but not universally, believed to be the same person. If so, Mark seems to have been a close associate of both Peter and Paul, and one often hears his gospel described as a summary of Peter's preaching. Other than that, we have only church tradition to go on. Symbolized by a winged lion, Mark is said to have become the first Christian bishop of Alexandria, where he was dragged to death by his neck on a stormy Easter Day in A.D. 68.

As far as where Mark might lurk between the lines of Scripture, I've picked up on a few tidbits of idle speculation. One rumor has it that Mark was the rich young ruler who sought Jesus' advice in Mark 10:17-22, and who was sorry he asked after Jesus told him to sell everything and give it to the poor. The story is also in Luke 18, but (the rumor argues) only Mark supplies the detail that "Jesus, looking at him, loved him." The other rumor, again based on something that only Mark's gospel says, has it that Mark is the young man who witnessed Jesus' arrest in Mark 14 while wearing nothing but a linen cloth, and who fled naked when the soldiers grabbed at him. The possibility that both rumors could be true is entertaiing to think about, from a character-development viewpoint – but again, it's just speculation.

It almost goes without saying anymore, but I wrote this hymn with no particular tune in mind. If it seems I stray from the source texts in stanza 4, my excuse is that I was thinking about the idea of lions sleeping with their eyes open.

Hark, the watchmen lift their voices,
Singing that the Lord has come!
And with them the church rejoices:
Christ redeems Jerusalem!
God sheds comfort on the land,
Saving us with mighty hand;
Merciful and free His choice is,
On which stands all Christendom!

Just such watchmen, apt for serving,
Grant, Lord, in these latter days.
Make their footsteps sure, unswerving,
Bearing witness to Your ways.
Give them, like Your lion, Mark,
Eyes to pierce this Babel dark,
From this age a stump preserving
That shall bud with fruitful praise.

Send them preaching, that the hardened
May Your good news take to heart;
Send baptizing, that Your pardon
Trickle to our inmost parts.
Armor them against all pangs
From the devil's venomed fangs,
That they never tire of guarding
Us from Satan's fiery darts.

Meanwhile, Lord, set guardians watching
From Your throne at God's right hand,
With a wakeful spirit touching
Us who weary watch yet stand.
Leaving cares of earth behind,
Let us higher treasures find
Where, a blood-washed garment clutching,
We'll keep vigil with that band.

ART: From St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, ©2010 by Marie-Lan Nguyen under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.

538. St. Joseph Hymn

The feast day for the upright man who claimed the Virgin's Son as his own, Jesus' earthly father Joseph, falls on March 19 according to on Lutheran Service Book's calendar of Feasts and Festivals. For what it's worth, the appointed lessons are 2 Samuel 7:4-16, Romans 4:13-18 and Matthew 2:13-23, minus a handful of verses (16-18) regarding the slaughter of the innocents. However, I'm going against my usual procedure on this hymn and just freestyling it. Why? Mainly because this hymn has been writing itself in my head and I just have to let it out. Here goes:

Naked You came, Lord, to our flesh;
In rags dear Joseph bound You,
That You in garments pure and fresh
Might clothe the race around You,
Though our filth must astound You!

That night, all jealousy aside,
The Virgin's husband claimed You,
Who might their union have denied
And by men's custom shamed You;
As David's Heir he named You.

A workman with hard hands and skilled,
Stout arms he might have wielded.
When Herod sought to have You killed,
To dreams he softly yielded;
Your precious life he shielded.

Departing country, kin and hearth
And into Egypt fleeing,
He served a father's selfless part,
Fulfillment guaranteeing
Of ancient scribes' foreseeing.

In what God's word of him reveals,
We see sincerely burning
A love that but a father feels,
His pride and profit spurning,
With higher things concerning.

On You, King David's Heir and Lord,
Who after Joseph toddled—
Incarnate God and living Word,
In grave-clothes briefly swaddled—
Our hope of life is modeled.

Let men the office now embrace
That Joseph wore with lightness,
And every child the Father's face
Reflect with Christlike brightness,
Draped freely in Your rightness.

ART: St. Joseph and the boy Jesus by Jusepe de Ribera, public domain.

537. St. Matthias Hymn

Continuing my planned set of "Heroes of the Faith" hymns based on the Feast and Festivals schedule of Lutheran Service Book, the next up would be the Purification of Mary and Presentation of Our Lord (Feb. 2), on which I've already delivered a hymn. So let's skip to Feb. 24, the feast of St. Matthias, the guy who was chosen by lot to replace Judas Iscariot in the original 12 apostles. Post-Vatican II, the Roman church celebrates his feast day on May 14. Lessons for the service are Isaiah 66:1-2, Acts 1:15-26 and Matthew 11:25-30.

I can dispose of what Scripture reveals about Matthias in less time than even Thomas and Titus. It's all in that pericope from Acts 1, which only mentions his name twice. Early Christian writers variously identified Matthias as one Tolmai (father of Bartholomew?), Zacchaeus (the wee little man from Jericho, Luke 19), Barnabas (who accompanied Paul on his early travels, Acts 4-15), and that Nathanael who came and went from the company of disciples in John 1 and 21. Traditions about where Matthias went and what he did as an apostle are equally contradictory, mentioning such far-flung mission fields as Ethiopia and modern-day Turkey and Georgia and alternately claiming he was stoned and beheaded or that he died of old age in Jerusalem.

The procedure of casting lots for a decision (like, "Justus Joseph-a.k.a.-Barsabas or Matthias?") is interesting and brings to mind two charming stories. One is how my dad recently decided whether to accept or return a call to serve as pastor in a dual parish in Montana. He put multiple copies of the numbers 1, 2 and 3 in a hat – 1 meaning "no," 2 "yes" and 3 "draw again" – and drew pieces until he had an answer. A 2 fell on the floor and was put back in the hat. After praying for God's guidance, he then drew a 3, threw that slip away and drew again – a 2. Well, he's in Montana now.

The other story comes from my vicarage, where my supervising pastor opened a voters' meeting with a devotion based on this Acts 1 lesson. He then waxed poetic about how it might be for the church to make choices by lot rather than a popular vote. Someone raised his hand and said, "But Pastor, then we wouldn't be in control," and the pastor shot back, "Exactly!"

According to Apostle Peter (speaking in Acts 1), both Matthias and Justus Joseph were among the disciples who had accompanied the apostles throughout Jesus' ministry, from the time of His baptism by John until His ascension. He was required, Peter says, to complete the complement of witnesses to Jesus' resurrection. Oddly, Luke (author of the book of Acts) concludes that Matthias was numbered with the eleven apostles, which kind of sounds like their attempt to restore the twelve didn't quite take. Perhaps it could be argued that the 12th spot really went to Paul. But one has to respect the concept of prayerfully leaving the choice up to God via a lottery-type drawing. Like the guy said, we're not in control! And God calls whom He will!

So ... how does one write a Christ-centered hymn about this mess? Well, let's try this:

To God, whose throne is heaven,
Whose footstool is the land,
What temple can be given
But what He shaped by hand?
The poor and contrite heart
That trembles at God's roaring,
That cries out for restoring—
Thereon rests God's regard.

Christ from the wise and prudent
His holy secret hides,
And yet the infant student
Thereto He gladly guides.
Christ—meekest, gentlest, best—
To those both sorely harried
And who His light yoke carried
Has pledged eternal rest.

Let those by God elected
Trust, and in no wise doubt,
That they will be perfected
And greet Him with a shout.
Our lot with Him is cast;
And as He chose Matthias,
He will do justice by us
And call us home at last.

Zootopia 2

I generally try not to make a practice of seeing the sequel to a movie I haven't seen, but I made an exception this weekend because I genuinely needed to go to the movies and I couldn't think of any other movie playing within an hour's driving radius of home that I wanted to see. For context, this beat out Marty Supreme, Anaconda, Avatar: Fire and Ash, The Housemaid, David (which I'd already seen) and the runner-up (by an inch), Song Sung Blue. The Spongebob movie had been playing last week and I refrained from seeing it as well. I feel bad about my reluctance to see Z2 now. I actually had a pretty good time. There's a lot more to this animated movie about a city of more-or-less anthropomorphic animals than you would expect, including jokes (and dramatic beats) that parents and film buffs in general will enjoy. Like Auntie Trunchbull's chocolates, it's too good for children. And though I wouldn't know, I heard from a dad who was seated in the row behind me with his wife and kids that this movie is actually better than the original.

The cast is a blast. And it goes on and on. Headlining it as a rabbit-fox pair of buddy cops, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, are Ginnifer Goodwin (previously Snow White on TV's Once Upon a Time) and Jason Bateman (Michael Bluth on Arrested Development). Joining them are recent Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan (The Goonies, Everything Everywhere All At Once) as Gary De'Snake, Andy Samberg (Hotel Transylvania, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) as Pawbert, the misfit runt of a powerful family of lynxes, David Straithairn (Delores Claiborne, Good Night and Good Luck) as Pawbert's villainous dad, Macaulay Culkin and his partner Brenda Song as a couple of Pawbert's lynx siblings, Shakira as a pop-singer gazelle, Idris Elba as a Cape buffalo police chief, Michelle Gomez (Missy on Doctor Who) as a razorback cop, an outrageous Patrick Warburton (The Tick, The Emperor's New Groove) as Zootopia's horsey mayor, Danny Trejo (Machete) as a reptile, Bonnie Hunt (Return to Me, Jumanji) as Judy's rabbit mum, June Squib (Nebraska) as her grandma, Wilmer Valderrama (NCIS, That 70s Show) as a zebra cop, Jean Reno (Leon: The Professional) as a pair of goat cops, Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Resident Alien) in multiple roles, John Leguizamo as an anteater, Maurice LaMarche (voice of The Brain, the lab rat that kept trying to take over the world) as a shrew mobster ironically known as Mr. Big, Josh Dallas (Prince Charming on Once Upon a Time) as a pig, Tommy Chong as a yak, TV chef Nick DiGiovanni as an iguana barback, Tig Notaro (Star Trek: Discovery) as a grizzly bear, Ed Sheeran as a sheep who (funnily enough) is seen getting sheered at a barbershop, Michael J. Fox as (duh) a fox, Josh Gad (Olaf in Frozen) as a mole, Mario Lopez (Saved by the Bell) as a wolf, Robert Irwin (the late Steve Irwin's son) as a koala, Jenny Slate (SNL, Bob's Burgers) as a villainous sheep from the previous installment, Mark Smith (Rhino on Gladiators) as (like, duh) a rhino, archival recordings of the late Tiny Lister (president of Earth in The Fifth Element) as a fox who goes undercover as a baby bunny, Dwayne Johnson as a dik-dik (snort) whose only audible line to my recollection is a brief scream when he gets blasted out of a tuba (don't ask), and among several animation studio honchos making cameos, Disney CEO Bob Iger as a tiger weatherman. Whew!

So, it's a movie with a lot of speaking characters in it. Obviously, being open to diversity is a not very subtle theme. The hero bunny and fox have to overcome differences of personality and culture to work together and solve a case involving a forbidden reptile in the all-mammal city, who seems to be trying to steal a precious artifact of one of the city's founding lynxes. But there's more to the maguffin than meets the eye. I mean that literally. And the outcome is two rookie cops having to go on the run, framed for crimes they didn't commit, trying to get to the bottom of things and clear their own names while being chased by other cops as well as fiendish bad guys. There are perilous pursuits and escapes, a potentially deadly betrayal, lots of close calls and some therapeutic work on the central relationship, which a well-timed movment of levity just barely saves from being too on-the-nose. There are film buff Easter eggs, satirical gags (nothing is spared) and downright breathtaking scenery, art, animation and animated-character acting. It has a good story, good dialogue, good voice acting, the whole works. I fully endorse this movie.

And now, to the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Danger, division and structural collapse in a crumbling, mountaintop chateau. Or whatever that was. (2) Judy and Nick are warned not to refuse an offer of food when they visit the reptiles' speakeasy ... and are immediately put to the test with a bowl of squirming grubs. (3) The climactic crisis in which snake venom and antivenom play key roles. Actually there are so many scenes that I could have put on this list, including everything surrounding the Marsh Market as well as a thrill ride in a sloth's hot rod. Here I am, a well-known (?) hater of sequels, wondering where this franchise will go next.