The Bride!

Last night I traveled an hour in each direction to see either this movie or EPiC (Baz Luhrman's documentary/concert film about Elvis) and at the moment of stepping up to the cashier, I plumped for this movie, primarily because it had an earlier showtime. Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote and directed this loose adaptation of Bride of Frankenstein, featuring presumptive soon-to-be Oscar winner for best actress Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) in the title role and Christian Bale as a Frankenstein's Monster who comes to Chicago sometime in the 1930s to ask a reanimator, played by Annette Bening, to jump-start a dead woman for him because he is perishing of loneliness. The corpse they happen to dig up is that of Ida, a mobster's moll who was possessed by the ghost of Mary Shelley when she took a fatal tumble down a flight of stairs, but the Bride doesn't remember any of that. She comes to vivid, shocking life, engaging in scandalous behavior, leading "Frank" on an interstate crime spree, and you know, trying to live out Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's dictum that "well-behaved women seldom make history."

It's a take on Bride of Frankenstein that takes its departure from the idea of Shelley as a woman of revolutionary talent who was robbed of her opportunity to push her mother's feminist ideology by her own early death from brain cancer. The ghost, manifesting through Ida/the Bride (sometimes going as Penny) in fits of British-accented literary wordplay, wants to get the story out so badly that it costs the girl her life. Kind of. She was also, kind of, rubbed out by the gangsters she ran with, including a revolting fellow named Lupino who collects the tongues of people he had silenced and who, in one scene, blithely shoots one of his stooges between the eyes, wipes a splash of blood off his cheek, and carries on eating lunch entirely undisturbed. But now, as the Bride, she has become the more flamboyant half of a cross-country murder spree duo, trailed by a none-too-diligent detective (Peter Sarsgaard) and his sharp-as-a-tack secretary (Penélope Cruz), who have spotted a pattern: The killings go wherever movies starring a certain smiling crooner and dancer (played in a bunch of movies-within-the-movie by Jake Gyllenhaal) are playing. Because, as you know, Frankenstein's monster is a big fan of musical comedy. Joking aside, there's a tender spot here that furnishes one of the film's tragic themes.

So, enough synopsis. Trust me, the paragraphs above don't come close to doing justice to this movie's storyline. It's just a taster of an astoundingly weird movie. It's definitely an original, if you'll pardon the contradiction with the plain fact that it's adapted from previous work. It's so unlike what I am accustomed to seeing at the movies that I frankly couldn't tell while I was seeing it, and still don't know, whether I liked it or not. It's either a brilliant movie despite significant flaws or a disaster with flashes of brilliance in it. Frank and the Bride each reveal facets of themesleves that touch me deeply, striking right to the heart. They also do some awful things and get involved in some icky scenes, at both ends of the high-low class spectrum. They can't seem to stop making horrific mistakes, bringing to mind the proverb, "No matter where you go, there you are." But they keep doing surprising things, too, like ... well, let's get to that in ...

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The monster couple crashes a tuxedos-and-champagne affair while dodging cops in New York City. Frank finds himself standing before Ronnie Reed, the movie star he is not very ambiguously in love with, declaring his feelings and experiencing soul-crushing rejection. In one scene, the movie shows its full range of tone, from the monster's heartbreaking vulnerability to an outrageous "brain attack" dance in which the reanimated couple leads a ballroom full of unwilling participants before concluding in a tense, armed standoff with police and a violent escape. (2) Frank tells the Bride the story of how he proposed to her. He's lying, of course. But it's the lie she desperately wants to hear because she has no memory of her life before "the accident." Her need is so touching, and his lies are so clever and entertaining, that you can almost but not quite dismiss the niggling note of doom that buzzes through the scene. (3) In a later scene that forms a matching pair with No. 2, Frank admits the truth to the Bride and actually proposes marriage to her in a moment that brings the tragedy of their romance to a shattering height.

It's a strange, strange movie. A lot of it is improbable to the point of absurdity. Some of it comes close to feeling like a hallucination. It has a fat streak of revolutionary feminist wish-fulfillment running through it (the "brain attack" spreads, you know), turning the corner into an alternate history where anything can happen and you just have to live with it. The monsters become the latest rage. The movies become a lifeline for a creature who, on one hand, has apparently lived for over a century and, on the other hand, really seems capable of dying of loneliness. It has Annette Bening playing a genius who can only be talked into violating every covenant of scientific ethics by the appeal, "I thought you were a mad scientist." It has Jake G. as an actor who, upon hearing that his cheerful screen persona saved a man from oblivion, laughs it off with a cruel put-down. It has a heavily accented Penélope Cruz as a character whose name, Myrna Malloy, is perhaps the most preposterous thing said aloud during the entire film. And all kinds of other stuff the surprise of which I wouldn't spoil for all the world. Still not sure whether I think it's a good movie or a bad movie, it's definitely a movie I'll be thinking about for some time to come.

Hoppers

Last night I broke a three-week streak of not seeing any movies because nothing was playing that interested me. I went to see this new Disney-Pixar animated feature, and despite coming away feeling as if clubbed over the head by environmentalist propaganda, I really enjoyed the movie. Everyone I've mentioned it to assumes, from the title, that it's about bunnies. Actually, it's called "Hoppers" because of a hand-wavy gadget that allows a group of scientists to "hop" their minds into a robot designed to fool wildlife into carrying on with their business, the better to study said business. They've got one that looks like a bird, a bunny one to be sure, but the one that main character Mabel hijacks resembles a beaver.

Mabel, an undergrad at Beaverton University, has grown up taking solace from the diverse wildlife that inhabits the glade near her late grandma's house. Now the town's greedy Mayor Jerry wants to route a ring road right through the glade, and nobody seems to care enough to help Mabel stop him. Apparently the only option left is to get the animals, that have mysteriously moved away from the glade, to move back before the bulldozers arrive. So, Mabel takes drastic measures, running off in robot beaver form to infiltrate the animal community and try to sway the mammal king, also a beaver, to help her save the glade. Her meddling in animal politics leads to one disaster after another, and despite her lofty ends, her means are pretty questionable. Pretty soon, Mabel, King George and a handful of his most faithful followers are on the run, with other classes of animals out to get them and, particularly, to "squish" Jerry in order to stop the bypass being built. Ironically, Mabel finds herself having to protect humans from rampaging wildlife, all to restore the balance that she (and Jerry, don't forget) have knocked akilter.

It's a fun thrill ride, with lots of laughs, some emotional beats that hit hard, and flawed characters who make mistakes and grow from them, get knocked down and pick themselves up again, lose battles and keep fighting, hurt each other and forgive each other, and engage in meaningful discussion about such beliefs as whether or not everyone is basically good. It's got lots of action and outrageous imagery, including a gigantic shark that goes aerial – if you have to ask, just see the movie – as well as an evil insect that "hops" its mind into a robotic human body as part of a dastardly plan to turn the tables on mankind. There are triumphs and defeats and an ascending sequence of gosh-wow spectacle. Friendships overcoming communication barriers and differences of worldview. Chases. Rescues. And never a dull moment.

The voice cast includes Saturday Night Live alums Bobby Moynihan as George the beaver, Melissa Villaseñor as Ellen the bear, Vanessa Bayer as Diane the shark and Ego Nwodim as the fish queen, Jon Hamm (Mad Men) as Mayor Jerry, Kathy Najimy (Sister Act) as Professor "Sam," the brains behind hopping; Dave Franco (Now You See Me) as Titus the insect king, the unrelated Eduardo Franco (Stranger Things) as a stoner beaver named Loaf, Meryl Streep as the insect queen (Titus's mother), and Joe Spano (Hill Street Blues) as the old man Mabel spends a day with while trying to get signatures on a petition.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Mabel (in beaver form) and friends ride along with a terrified Mayor Jerry during a car chase with Dr. Sam and her grad students, who are trying to get their robot back, while Diane the shark attacks from overhead. "You will feel a biting sensation, followed by death..." (2) The council of the animal monarchs meets, and Mabel does not do as George instructs and let him do the talking. The disaster is terrifying and hilarious! (3) Mabel befriends Ellen and Loaf – actually by offending them when she prevents the bear from eating the beaver. Naturally, this violates the pond rules, particularly "If you have to eat, eat." Mabel: "Sorry. Go ahead and eat him, then." Ellen: "I can't now. You've made it weird."

Revelations

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

In this second book of "The Lily Singer Adventures," Atlanta, Georgia-based wizard Lily performs the ultimate act of rebellion against her mother and her mentor, who have both withheld knowledge from her – knowledge about her magical heritage. How? By going and finding out for herself, to her great cost. Were it not for a cat familiar who has suddenly picked up the ability to speak (or rather, Lily has learned to understand his meows), and a certain ne'er-do-well male witch (not that witches e'er do well, generally speaking), Lily might lose her very self.

So, once again, wizards in Lily's world have an inherited connection to a Source of power, manipulated with runes, charms and incantations in an ancient tongue, while witches like her friend Sebastian have no such ability. Instead, they achieve magical power by making deals with powerful beings like the fae (Sebastian's specialty) or, gulp, demons. One of the demon-summoning kind goes up against the duo in the first part of this novel, which is (once again) structured as two novellas connected by an "interlude." Lily and her wizard mentor have been tasked with protecting an ancient clay tablet on display at a local museum when it's rumored that someone plans to steal it. The rumor comes true when a hired witch summons a greater demon to break through the wizards' protective wards. Luckily, a mysterious Someone has forged a link between Lily and her protective cat, Sir Kipling, and plugged both of them into a supply of power beyond anything she's been prepared to understand.

The interlude finds Sebastian doing some witchy detective work to find out who hired the witch who attempted the museum heist. Unfortunately, Lily isn't ready to hear him when he tells her that he thinks it's the wizard they encountered back in Book 1, who has extended an invitation to learn more about where she (and they) come from. She's so tempted by the possibilities of what she may learn that she won't even listen to her cat's advice, and hares off to the stately home of John Faust LeFay – a name that ought to set off alarm bells in any scholarly mind. Of course he turns out to be the father she hardly remembers, whose very name her mother always refused to speak. Of course he and his social-climbing mother, Ursula, have plans for Lily's future representing a level of control she isn't keen on submitting to. Of course John turns out to be a monster, and falling into his clutches may be a mistake Lily won't be able to unmake. Not without help, at least.

Once again, this adventure points up the dangers of power and the desire for it, of meddling in little-understood forces, of opening pathways to evil and of withholding information that may do good. Lily and Sebastian face some chilling adversaries in this book, and their odds of survival are never lower than when there are misunderstandings between them. Petty jealousies – her over a cute witch he dallies with, him over a handsome FBI agent who takes her on a date. The secrets and silences of Lily's mother and her mentor, who happens to be Sebastian's highly disapproving aunt, don't help. And of course, her hard-headedness becomes a danger of its own, when even her cat is talking sense at her and she won't listen. What it leads to is a threat that isn't resolved at the end of this book, but only postponed – a threat that hangs over not only Lily but the entire world of "mundanes," or unmagical muggles like you and me. It's a thought to make one shiver, and perhaps hasten to curl up with a cozy cup of tea and the third book in this series, Allies.

Besides about eight books in this series (plus novellas, short stories and whatnot), Lydia Sherrer is the Kentucky-based, cat-loving author of the novel Accidental Witch and the short story Ashes of Hope and co-author with John Ringo of the "TransDimensional Hunter" quartet.

554. Exhortation to Parents of the Baptized

Bring your babes to Christ, believers,
Nor withhold them from His face:
For they are the prime receivers
Of His sorely needed grace.

To be saved, dear sisters, brothers,
We must be just such as they:
Helpless, needy, nursed on others
Hour by hour and day by day.

See! Our sin, a death-shroud weaving,
Threads its way back to the womb;
While baptism, to Jesus cleaving,
Plaits new life upon our loom.

In Christ's death your child is resting;
Death becomes a holy sleep,
And Christ's Easter life comes, wresting
Them from hell and Satan's keep.

Now you have your dear child given
Unto God, His own to be,
Heir with Christ of earth and heaven,
From sin's sovereignty set free.

You receive them back as stewards,
Henceforth only yours in trust.
Nurse them therefore on His true words
And return a yield robust.

Oh, take care! Be wise and humble,
Guiding them upon their way.
Woe if any make them stumble,
Leading Jesus' lambs astray!

Oh, take care! The way is narrow
Where their steps the Lord would train;
Satan meanwhile nocks his arrow,
Menacing with might and main.

Watch and pray with love unsparing,
Parents of the Lord's baptized,
Every hour and day preparing
To commend them back to Christ:

Arming them from love of sinning,
Nurturing them on His word,
Their baptism but beginning
Life eternal with the Lord.

Tune: FREUEN WIR UNS ALL IN EIN, Michael Weisse, †1534. It was a tune for "Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding" in Lutheran Book of Worship and Lutheran Worship. Art: Baptismal font in the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston, Texas, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

553. Hymn for Help in Spiritual Battle

The tune I have in mind for this hymn is OLD 124TH – not the "abbr." version that we Lutherans often pair with the hymn "Draw near and take the body of the Lord," but the original, unexpurgated version with five melodic phrases; see Service Book & Hymnal 348 ("Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways") and 601 ("Praise ye the Lord, ye servants of the Lord") and Lutheran Book of Worship 376 ("Your kingdom come! O Father, hear our prayer").

Send help, O Lord! Lend me Your angel guard!
Dark are the days; the battle presses hard.
See what weak knees, what furrowed brow and pale
I bring to bear; what lies in me must fail,
My camp encircled and my forces frail.

Guard, Lord, my mind, so often led astray
With thoughts that reason's harlotry betray!
For what seems right unto my mortal eye
So often Your clear precept would deny—
Yet Your word lives, gives life, and cannot lie.

Guard, Lord, my heart, that with the world conspires
To see me seared by vain and rash desires!
Lest in this life and after I should burn,
Take out this cold, dead stone, that in return,
For that which pleases You I warmly yearn.

Guard, Lord, my feet that feel Your way's sharp stones;
My hands, against which earth its thistle hones;
My eyes, grown weak from watching in this night;
My ears from voices rather loud than right;
My tongue from telling tales against Your light.

Send holy angels, Lord, to guard with speed
From unseen foes more numerous indeed,
More deadly than my mind and sense perceive!
Oh, help my unbelief! Let me believe
That of Your strength, O Christ, I may receive!

552. SS. Simon & Jude

The feast of Saints Simon and Jude is Oct. 28, with readings from Jeremiah 26:1-16, 1 Peter 1:3-9 and John 15:12-21 (verses 12-16 optional). As characters in the Bible, they're good candidates for being relegated to half a saint's day each. Scipture doesn't say much about them.

Luke twice calls Simon Zēlōtēs or "the zealot" (Luke 6 and Acts 1). Matthew 10 and Mark 3 instead use the term Kananitēs, which the King James Bible mistranslates as "Canaanite" (which is a completely unrelated word, Hananaios, in Greek). The New King James Version corrects this to Cananite (with one less a), meaning he's from the town of Cana in Galilee. Other translations vary betwee Canaanite, Canaanean and "the zealot." However, Liddell & Scott say Kananitēs is the Syriac equivalent of the Greek Zēlōtēs (there's a related Hebrew word), so apparently "zealot" is correct. As for Zēlōtēs, they give "a rival, zealous imitator" as the first definition, and "a zealot" as the second. So either he's a famously zealous disciple of Christ, or a member of a certain political party known as the Zealots (possibly an anachronism), or just a local guy and that's what Scripture remembers about him. Scholarly opinions vary. Also, some say he may have been Simon the brother of Jesus (it would be odd if the gospels never mentioned this), or perhaps Simon of Jerusalem, the bishop who succeeded James. The only Simons he obviously isn't are Simon Peter, Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7) and Simon the sorcerer (Acts 9).

Then there's the matter of Jude, which is even more confusing. The apostle celebrated here is clearly not Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus and suicided. He is probably the "Judas, not Iscariot," mentioned as one of the 12 during Jesus' valedictory sermon in John 14, who actually gets a line: "Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?" (Jesus' answer: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.") Also, Luke (in Luke 6 and Acts 1) enumerates a "Judas the son of James," in addition to Judas Iscariot (the son of Simon), in his lists of the apostles. Instead of Jude or Judas, the apostolic list in Mark 3 mentions a Thaddaeus, and Matthew 10 inserts a Lebbaeus whose surname is Thaddaeus (shortened to just Thaddaeus in the Alexandrian textual tradition), so an obvious hypothesis is that the Jude celebrated in this feast is also known as (Lebbaeus) Thaddeus. Also, he could be the Judas, or Jude, listed as one of Jesus' brothers along with James, Joses and Simon in Matthew 13 and Mark 6, and the author of the epistle of Jude who styles himself the brother (not son) of James.

There are various traditions about what these apostles did after the Pentecost of Acts 2 and how, where and when they were martyred, but let's stay out of the weeds and get right to the hymn – the last in this planned series of "Heroes of the Faith" hymns. I do have a tune in mind this time: the Swedish melody GAA NU HEN OG GRAV MIN GRAV. ART: SS. Simon and Jude, detail from the 14th-century Santa Croce altarpiece by Ugolino di Nerio, public domain.

Blest are they whom men revile;
So the world despised their Master.
Lord, Your church, this little while,
Pines for a prophetic pastor
Who, in season wet or dry,
Pours Your counsel from on high.

Send, Lord, send them to reprove
When on error's road we stumble,
Rising early, lest You move
All our vanities to humble!
May we hear their voice! For why
Shall we curse Your name and die?

Having warned, let them convey
Your abundant, free forgiveness!
Bend our stiff necks to obey,
Lord, their cross-imprinted witness!
Let their zeal on us impress
Your desire to heal and bless!

Send a Simon or a Jude,
Though we might prefer a Peter
As our fleshly aims intrude
And o'er pride's abyss we teeter.
An imperishable prize
Set before our fickle eyes!

Send to us, and through us call,
Men to lead Your dearly boughten
To the joy reserved for all
Whom You have again begotten
Since You raised up Christ, our Head,
As the Firstborn from the dead.

551. St. James of Jerusalem

This is the third St. James on the Lutheran Service Book's calendar of Feasts and Festivals, scheduled for Oct. 23 with lessons from Acts 15:12-22a (just love that "a"), James 1:1-12 and Matthew 13:54-58. Yes, this is the James who wrote the Epistle of James, and while various Bible interpreters are not in full agreement on this, our saints' days calendar seems to support the notion that James the Less (a.k.a. James the son of Alphaeus) and James the Great (a.k.a. James the son of Zebedee) are distinct invidividuals from this James, whom Paul calls "the Lord's brother" in Galatians 1. A James is also listed along with Joses (or Joseph), Simon and Judas as brothers of Jesus in Matthew 13 and Mark 6. Jude, author of the epistle by that name, identifies himself as the "brother of James."

Without naming James in particular, John 2 tells us Jesus' mother and brothers traveled with Him and His disciples from Cana to Capernaum. (I've often wondered whether the wedding at Cana was a family affair.) Matthew 12, Mark 3 and Luke 8 all describe a scene in which Jesus' mother and brothers ask to see Him. Matthew 13 and Mark 6 both relate an occasion when the people of Nazareth rejected Jesus' teaching because they knew his parents, brothers and sisters. John 7 tells us that at that point, Jesus' brothers did not believe in Him. However, by Acts 1, Jesus' brothers and His mother are among the disciples united in prayer and supplication after Jesus' ascension into heaven.

I think James the Lord's brother is the James to whom the angel sent Peter after springing him from prison ("Go and tell these things to James and the brethren," Acts 12:17 – 15 verses after James the brother of John was reported as killed). This was the James who pronounced the opinion of the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 in response to Peter's appeal for Gentile Christians. This James is the one named as chief among the elders, to whom Paul reported about his ministry in Acts 21. James is here shown exerting authority over Paul and being deeply engaged with the concerns of Jewish Christians.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus, after His resurrection, appeared to James, and I think that's a reference to this James. In Galatians 1, Paul also reports meeting with James shortly after his conversion; while this was still in James-the-brother-of-John's lifetime, the way he's singled out suggests to me that he's this other James. In Galatians 2, Paul describes "James, Cephas (i.e. Peter) and John" as pillars of the church in a way that suggests that James (not John's brother, who would be dead before the scene here described) had priority over the other two. Writing of himself, James only describes himself as "a bondservant of Jesus Christ."

Early Christian writers give this James the sobriquet "the Just" and claim he was the first bishop of Jerusalem. Eusebius notes that the hero trio of Peter, James and John submitted to this James rather than contend for primacy, seemingly taking to heart Jesus' admonition against jockeying for headship. Another surname for him is Adelphotheos, or "brother of God" – cf. the Byzantine Liturgy of St. James. As I've mentioned before, my speculation on this (and while I'm not alone on it, that's what it is) makes James, Jude and the others Jesus' half-siblings on Joseph's side, i.e. from a wife before Mary. Without proof either way, it's as likely as the notion that Mary had more babies after Jesus but with the advantage that it's consistent with many pious Christians' belief that Mary was "ever virgin." And also, it explains the whole "woman, behold your son" thing at the foot of Jesus' cross (John 19): since, if she had four sons of her own besides Jesus, Mary would have no need for John to provide for her.

So far, my introductory yak about the hymn below, which after all, and like most of these "Heroes of the Faith" hymns, is more textual than topical. Still, it doesn't hurt to set the atmosphere and spotlight some potential themes. And now, for the next-to-last hymn in this section. ART: A Russian icon of James the Just, public domain.

Count it as joy, dear brethren, when your faith is tried;
For we know by such testing patience is supplied,
And when its work is finished, you will be complete;
Your God will freely furnish all that you entreat.

Ask what you will, believing, and in no wise doubt,
Lest like the storm-blown breakers you be tossed about.
Exult not in your riches but in lowliness;
Endure temptation, and the crown of life possess.

Now in Christ's holy body God has made you one,
Blood kin and co-heirs with His dear, incarnate Son;
And whether Jew or Gentile, as His brother said,
You live in Him, both slain and risen from the dead.

Live, therefore, as befits the brethren of the Lord,
Though not by works or rituals are we restored:
Our only righteousness pours forth from Him who died,
The glory His whereby we shall be glorified.

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.