The Law Within the Heart

Sixteen hymns in our new hymnal by Timothy Dudley-Smith, several mentioning God's sovereignty.  Overall there's not really anything wrong with them, but there are so many richer options.  And I tend to get cranky over the line that says Christ's sacrifice for sin begins "the covenant of grace, the law within the heart."  When the line flies past during a church service, it always strikes me as equating grace and law.

Now, if we understand "the law within the heart" not to be a new law, new rules, new demands, maybe this turn-of-phrase could be okay.  Between Hebrews (10 and 8) and Jeremiah (31), the "law within the heart" appears to be freedom from the written code of the law, the mercy of God poured out on you so that you are made new, and so that you joyfully and freely do what is good and right and of service to the neighbor.

Is that what the hymn indicates?  I don't know.  But this is what I'm trying to convince myself it's saying.

Freedom to Sing

Munchkin has learned his phonics. B is for bear; buh, buh, buh. F is for fox; fph, fph, fph. He looks at the sentence: The dog ran after the cat. He painstakingly sounds out the d and the o and the g. He slowly and carefully smooshes the letters together into something that an adult recognizes as the word "dog." But the kid is focused on the sounds of the letters and struggles to find a recognizable word in the connection of the letter-sounds. Then he figures it out: he said "dog"! Woof woof, four legs and a tail, slobbery kisses, fur -- a DOG. Then he reads "ran" the same, slow way. Then "after." Then "cat."

And now we want him to remember that d-o-g is "dog," after all that mental exercise? We expect him to put the whole sentence together? That's some hard work!


In May, our hymn of the week for Rogate was "A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing." I blundered through the LSB wording. If I sang at the kitchen sink or in the car, the TLH words kept coming out of my mouth. That is hard for the kids; I mess up what they're learning by heart. I try to keep my old-fashioned words under wraps, hidden, kept just for me, not confusing the kids' minds. But that means I can't sing the hymns as I used to.

However, that week there was one stanza that I could sing. "Oh, grant us thitherward to tend and with unwearied hearts ascend unto Thy kingdom's throne where Thou, as is our faith, art seated now. Alleluia!" And because it's a metrical form of the Ascension collect, I was relishing the words all week.

But Andrew caught me: "Mommmmmmm! Don't sing the old words! Keep working on learning the new words!" I told him that, on this one, I was allowed -- because this stanza isn't in LSB and there are no new words to learn. So there! Ha! I am free to sing this the way I know it.


And I thought about that. Free to sing. Free to pray the words of the hymn.

I am still the 5-yr-old, struggling through the phonics of LSB. I have to pay so much attention to getting each word out of my mouth that I can't grasp what the sentences in the hymn are saying. I know the situation will improve with time and practice, as does the reading ability of the 5-yr-old who is fluent by the time he's 10. But right now, I'm running really short of hymns. The songs are still there, but I'm at an in-between place where I am no longer free to pray the ones where the text has been altered. And I really really miss them.

Ascension Collect

Our hymn of the week is "A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing." I've been missing terribly the stanza left out of LSB, verse 5 in TLH:

Oh, grant us thitherward to tend
and with unwearied hearts ascend
unto Thy kingdom's throne, where Thou,
as is our faith, art seated now. Alleluia!

Through the week we have been praying --as normal-- Sunday's collect. Last night and this morning we switched to the Ascension collect:

Almighty God, as Your only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, has ascended into the heavens, grant that we also in heart & mind ascend and with Him there continually dwell.

Hey!
Hey, wait a minute!

Those two are the same thing! (If you doubt whether they're the same, take a peek at the TLH version of the collect.)

No wonder I've been missing that stanza of the hymn.

A Benefit of Being a "First-Career" Pastor

Subtitled: Why We Should Not Change the Words in the Hymnal and Agenda

Also subtitled: Another Plus for the Historic One-Year Series



When his eyesight starts to fail,
it's awfully good when the pastor is very familiar with the words.

He may not have the book memorized, but if he's used those words year after year for about twenty years before the eyes start playing tricks on him, and the bifocals don't quite have the solution to his problem, his memory in combination with his aging eyes will be enough for him to rightly see the words on the page.

Certain Hymns

When Lutheran Service Book was put together, there were two sections of TLH that were nearly entirely left out of the new hymnal. One was the section on the ministry, with prayers for our pastors and missionaries and that God would send out faithful pastors to do His work. And the other section was the "death and burial" part. I realize that those parts were seldom used because too many people saw them as useful only for ordinations/installations and funerals. And honestly, if that's all we use those sections for, there's plenty of great stuff in LSB that will do nicely. But there is a lot in those sections to guide us in our prayers for our pastors, and in our prayers that God would keep us faithful unto death.

I think we don't realize what a gift our pastors are to us, and we don't realize the assaults of Satan upon them and their ministries, and take it for granted that we will always have our pastors. They need our prayers. I mean, look at some of these:

The servants Thou hast called
and to Thy Church art giving
preserve in doctrine pure
and holiness of living.
Thy Spirit fill their hearts,
endue their tongues with power;
what they should boldly speak,
oh, give them in that hour!
Yea, bless Thy Word alway,
our souls forever freeding;
and may we never lack
a faithful shepherd's leading! (TLH 485)

Oh, may Thy pastors faithful be,
not laboring for themselves, but Thee!
Give grace to feed with wholesome food
the sheep and lambs bought by Thy blood,
to tend Thy flock, and thus to prove
how dearly they the Shepherd love. (TLH 493)


And then there's the section on death that barely got touched in TLH. After all, how many of us face death? It's not often. We sequester death away in the hospitals and the nursing homes. We have modern medicine that cures many things --and quickly-- so that we seldom must endure illnesses as happened in the past. And when we must face our own death or the death of those we care for, how many of us spend our time singing to them things like:

With peace and joy I now depart.
God's child I am with all my heart.
I thank thee, Death, thou leadest me
to that true life where I would be.
So cleansed by Christ, I fear not death.
Lord Jesus, strengthen Thou my faith. (TLH 585)

God's Son to our graves then takes His way,
His voice hear all tribes and nations;
the portals are rent that guard our clay,
and moved are the sea's foundations.
He calls out aloud, "Ye dead, come forth!"
In glory we rise to meet Him.

O Jesus, draw near my dying bed
and take me into Thy keeping
and say when my spirit hence is fled,
"This child is not dead, but sleeping."
And leave me not, Savior, till I rise
to praise Thee in life eternal. (TLH 592)

My sins, dear Lord, disturb me sore,
my conscience cannot slumber;
but though as sands upon the shore
my sins may be in number,
I will not quail, but think of Thee;
Thy death, Thy sorrow, borne for me,
Thy sufferings, shall uphold me. (TLH 594)

Do we yearn for people to be singing us such things upon our deathbeds? I think we are often too worried about causing the dying person to fret about dying, and so we avoid the providing comfort that can be found in such hymns.

But what started all my ruminations on this is current events. I think the day is coming in LSB's lifetime where our country will have changed so drastically that we will be facing death in a pervasive way that we're not used to: hunger and homelessness and war and devastation. And certain legislation is brewing that will threaten our pastors if they are to continue to preach God's word instead of the politically-correct word, and so they will need our prayers even more. These two sections of TLH are reason enough to hang onto that old book alongside my new hymnal, because the days are coming when those hymns will have the words we need to pray.

Changes

In the midst of difficulties and anfechtung, it would be a whole lot easier to endure if they hadn't changed the pericopes, if they hadn't changed the words to the hymns that are a person's sustenance, if they hadn't changed the psalms to a new translation. As if there weren't enough struggles in life, a person can't even count on the Word that has been learned by heart to sustain her ... because it's all been changed with LSB to "improve" things.

Remission

The new hymnal has changed some references that were in TLH. "Remission of sins" is a phrase that we are no longer very fond of: "forgiveness of sins" is the preferred way to say it. The reason given was that "remission" is a word that people associate with cancer, a word that indicates the disease is gone, beaten back, but may return. We want to talk about forgiveness of sins so that we know the sins are defeated and fully paid for.

Okay, I see that point. I agree.

But isn't there a place for talking about remission of sins too?

In this life, we are weighed down by the Old Adam. The sinful nature continues with us until we assume room temperature. Sins do go into remission. They are beaten back. But sometimes they return. Sometimes they return overwhelmingly. Sometimes the doctor (the Seelsorger) must apply massive doses of medicine (the word and sacraments) to heal us again.

The word "remission" has fallen into disfavor because of the recognition that sin is not fully defeated. Maybe it's the distinction between justification and sanctification? We dare not think that keeping the sin in remission is something we do, something to which we contribute. But yet it seems very real that "remission" is a picture of how we struggle with the sinful nature until he is fully defeated in our death.

Boy, I think we need both words: forgiveness and remission.

Carols and Hymns

At our church, the Christmas Eve service is full of carols and has a few of the good, solid, sturdy, Lutheran hymns mixed in. Christmas Day service is mostly hymns with a few carols mixed in.

The hymnody committee for LSB showed great wisdom in not changing nor updating nor tweaking the words to the Christmas carols. The committee recognized the importance of not changing the words. But they didn't treat the hymns the same way. Stanzas got left out, words got changed, whole lines got changed. I used to love the hymndoy of Christmas Day so much! And this year I stumbled through it. It's hard to pray a hymn when your focus is entirely on Say 'precious' and not 'cherished' or Say 'proclaim the Savior's birth' instead of 'repeat the hymn again'. And even when you're willing yourself to sing the words on the page, they just won't come out your mouth because the old words that you've cherished so long are too deeply ingrained in you.

I hope, in decades to come, when somebody somewhere decides LSB needs to be replaced, that the hymnody committee will recognize that words to hymns should not be changed and "improved" yet again.

House Blessing

There were two house blessings on Thursday. Pastor forgot to make handouts for us to follow along. So theoretically we weren't supposed to be speaking the psalm. But when he said, "I lift up my eyes to the hills," we forgot that we weren't praying the psalm responsively. But the second half of the verse came out in a variety of Bible translations. That was a shame, because it seemed like most of us had memorized Psalm 121.

Same thing happened with the hymn. We knew "O Blest the House." But in the Pastoral Care Companion it was the LSB version instead of the TLH version. About a month ago, that hymn was the hymn-of-the-week (to go with the catechism portion for the Fourth Commandment). So for the hymn too, Pastor had to cut it off early (only two stanzas) because we no longer all know the same words and can no longer sing our hymns together without our noses in the book.

I find this very sad.

TLH 144

Much of "Jesus, Grant That Balm and Healing" is about avoiding temptation or overcoming temptation by meditation upon His cross and suffering and the love that motivated Him to rescue us. But recently I was struck by the second stanza.

Should some lust or sharp temptation
Prove too strong for flesh and blood,
Let me think upon Thy Passion,
And the breach is soon made good.

I always thought that meant that we could think about what Jesus has done for us and avoid falling into sin. And it is true that other spots in the song allude to such things. (At least, in English that's how it comes out.)

But I think this part of the hymn isn't talking about avoiding it. Like it says, the temptation proved "too strong." So even then, even when we succumb to the temptation, the solution is still to "think upon Thy Passion." The breach between what God demands and what we actually perform, that breach is made good by hearing the forgiveness of sins.

New Words in the Hymnal

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

As I've continued to struggle with the changes to the hymns I've memorized, Pastor has continued to remind me that the truth of the absolution is always the same. He has continued to remind me that it's okay if the words presenting that truth change, much like the sermon changes from week to week.

There is a need for keeping the words the same so that we can hang onto them and learn them by heart. Every time I hear pastors and church musicians extol Christians of past generations for the vast number of hymns they sang by heart, I can't help but think that we can't do that today because the powers-that-be keep changing the words on us! But I am trying to focus on what Pastor says about having a balance between keeping the words the same (learning them by heart) and having the fresh explanations that fit the times (just as Pastor's words in Bible class change each week, even though the message stays the same).

Gary and I are reading Christopher Boyd Brown's Singing the Gospel. On page 11 is an interesting statement. Though the CONTENTS of 16th-century hymnals were related to the public use of the hymns in worship, the BOOKS themselves were for the most part not intended for such use, either by professional musicians and clergy or by the laity. So what is that all about? In context, it sounds to me like people learned their hymns at home, sang them in family worship, and then those hymns were also used during the Divine Service. But maybe that's just what I imagine, as I keep stumbling over the hymns during church, and can no longer sing my way through the dishes-washing and the laundry-folding and veggie-chopping.

Which Stanza Are We On?

How ingrained is that old hymnal, in ways that I don't even realize?

In LSB, some of the hymns have five stanzas in the music score. Whenever we get to verse 4, I skip to verse 5. I finally figured out why. Without even realizing it, my brain counts how many stanzas we're on. Number 4 means I sing the bottom line of words, right above the bass clef. That's what's been ingrained in me all my life. But now stanza #4 often isn't the bottom line, but the next-to-bottom line.

Even after I figured out the problem, I still keep making the mistake. I even will make the same mistake 3-4 times in the same hymn. I wonder how long it's going to take to drive that out of me.

CoW and Woodmans

The women are mad.

Changes are being made to my beloved grocery store. They expanded the produce section, moved some aisles, did a little rearranging. Nobody can find anything. Every trip to the grocery store results in commiserating with total strangers (or overhearing others commiserating with other total strangers) about where the brown rice went, or where the salad dressing went, or where the spices went. I can no longer tell Child-A to run down a certain aisle and fetch the peanut butter while Child-B runs down another aisle to fetch the lemon juice while I head down a third aisle to pick up pasta. We must hunt for our food.

I. am. not. a. lioness.
It is not right to have to hunt for food in Woodmans.

It takes twice as long to do the grocery shopping now.
(One of those Total Strangers told me it's taking her three times as long to buy her groceries now.)

A month or so ago, when the renovations were just beginning, I was searching for sunflower nuts. They weren't where they belonged. I found a complete mess in the next aisle over. Carts in aisle 3 were full of what had been pulled off the shelves in aisle 4. Employees jam-packed aisle 3, putting items back on the shelf. No customer cart would fit through that aisle. Abandoning my cart at the end of the aisle, I managed to squeeze my way through, hunting for my sunflower seeds. A manager asked if he could help. I teased about their moving things all around. Then he made the mistake.

He told me that they weren't "moving things all around." They were only taking the contents of each aisle and moving them one aisle to the north. Ha! I started rattling off for him which things were in different places, and how things had been on the top shelf on the south side of the aisle, but were now on a middle shelf on the north side of the aisle, and further west. After hearing a mere START on list of items that had been hidden (NOT "just moved over an aisle"), he halted me and admitted that, yes indeed, maaaybe some things had been "moved" a little more than he'd realized.

The women who are hunting the aisles for spaghetti sauce and apple sauce and cheese sauce all understand this! But the ones making the changes don't think it's any big deal. They're making improvements! They're giving us a better store! It's all to serve us better! The women are mad.




The Commission on Worship was given the unenviable task of combining two old hymnals into one new hymnal. Changes had to be made, due to choosing either the TLH version or the LW version. Like at my grocery store, the changes are noticeable. Every little spot in the new hymnal where there's something like "He imparteth consolation" changed to "There He sends true consolation," I notice. Every place where a half note and then a quarter note is switched around to a quarter then a half, I notice. When they left out a stanza or two (say, for instance, in "The Church's One Foundation" or "Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to Me") I stumble.

Circumstances will force me to get used to the grocery store, whether or not I like the changes. If I make a mistake in the renovated grocery store, if I can't find the cat food, I have to search and search and search until I conquer. That's not how it is with the renovated hymnal though. If I stumble over words, if I am distracted by the changes to the point that I cannot pray the hymns and the psalms, there's no "natural consequence" to remedy that. Those hymns and psalms aren't likely to show up again for months, or even until next year.

Now that we're suffering through the growing pains of getting ourselves back into one hymnal shared amongst all the synod, I hope that next time there's a new hymnal, the changes really will be so minor that it does not cause pain. Ot (like at my grocery store) will some people think "new and improved" is more important than sticking with what people know? The store has a vested interest in shuffling things around; it's a ploy to get people to see more items and thus spend more money. The Church, however, has a vested interest in not changing; the saints need to have the liturgy and hymns ingrained deeply into their beings.

Some Links

Had a hard time at church today, and I'm finding my joy and comfort in vegging at the computer. Not good. But, hey, it's what I'm doing. (I HATE it when they change the words of the creed on me. Why, oh why, did we have to start using LSB on Trinity Sunday? The day we used the vastly changed Athanasian Creed? Couldn't we have started next week? Ah, but then it would've been during the short dark days of December when I would've had to face a muchly-changed creed for the first time.)

Anyway...
I bumped into Tina's article on being angry at God, struggling with an anxiety disorder, feeling abandoned by God, and finding some relief even though things are not yet peachy.

I also want to point out Pr Stuckwisch's article on dating and matchmaking and romance. I think he covered a lot, said it clearly, and gave wise counsel to both teens and parents.

I remember in fall of 2004 when Pastor was unhappy with me for calling the President a socialist. He thought maybe I was going to vote for the bigger socialist. That wasn't the point; I was just very very disappointed in the acceptance speech at the Republican Convention and the "chicken in every pot" attitude. Cheryl pointed out an article by Peggy Noonan called "Too Bad." Next time around, I want a conservative president committed to smaller government.

Pastoral Care Companion

Thursday morning I walked into the Bible class room and saw a little book in Pastor's hands and exclaimed, "THAT is what I want to look at!" He immediately offered me his copy of Pastoral Care Companion, but first I had to attend to duties, putting away bunches of groceries for the wedding and other preparation for the reception. Eventually I got my hands on the book, and I had 30 minutes to soak it up before class started.

This book is awesome! I mean, it is almost unbelievable in the tools provided for spiritual warfare.

One of the things I have achingly been missing in LSB is the collects and the proper prefaces. Both of those -- plus the Beichtafel (questions designed to show one's sin in preparation for private confession or going to the Supper) -- are included in the Pastoral Care Companion. So I'm thinking that it may not be an inappropriate book for laymen. For pastors, the book is also a portable agenda, with the funeral rites, the wedding rites, and other Services he may need to have handy when away from church.

But the reason I couldn't put the book down on Thursday was the section with resources for various situations. (Phooey -- that sounds so vague.) For each situation it's got appropriate Bible passages, psalms, prayers, and hymns. Situations are as varied as rejoicing at the birth of a child, struggling with infertility, a run-away child, persistent grief at the loss of a loved one, difficulty dealing with changes in life, considering suicide or abortion, periods of anxiety or depression, and so much more. This book will be a tremendous reference for pastors who think, "Now what am I supposed to do? How can I bring God's word to bear on this situation for my troubled sheep? How do I help them???"

When Pastor finally managed to pry the book free from my hands, he spent the first half of Bible class bubbling over to the group about the book. He said he wished for two things with regard to this book.

First, he hopes pastors will begin using the book for their own personal prayers. There is so much in the book about family life and one's daily work and about struggles with doubts & worries & fears. If the pastor is using this in his daily prayer life, he himself will be edified. But there will also be the resultant benefit that the pastor will know what's available in the book, and he will begin to learn how to use it to minister to his people's needs.

Second, Pastor said he hopes that the Pastoral Care Companion will be something used in the confessional. In the private confession rite in the hymnal, it says after the absolution that the pastor will know additional passages with which to comfort the troubled conscience. Well, what happens when the pastor doesn't know what to say? What happens if he knows which Law to apply, but knows it's time for him to shut up with regard to speaking the Law, and needs to speak Gospel? The Pastoral Care Companion will put God's Word into the mouth of the pastor so that those sweet words from Jesus will go into the ear of the penitent.

Introducing New Hymns

A lot of ideas have been introduced with LSB as to how to teach congregations new hymns and new liturgies. The choir can sing new hymns as anthems a few times. The organist can play new hymn-tunes during the offering and as preservice music, so that the melody subliminally slips into people's minds.

But I've seen one thing that really helps. When there's a new hymn, the choir or kantor sings ONE stanza, and then the congregation sings stanza 2. That way the people have heard it and get to try it. Then whatever they flub up, they hear again correctly when the choir/kantor sings stanza 3. Then it's easier for them to correct their own mistakes. It works pretty well.

Make Up Your Mind

There was one thing last week at the Gerhardt symposium that made a bigger impression on me than anything else.

Two presenters mentioned their grandmothers, singing and singing and singing as they went about their chores. They each mentioned how Grandma had learned many Gerhardt hymns by heart, and that she knew all the verses. Another presenter commented about how his parents had taught the brood of kids many hymns. Several other presenters commented on how important it was that our people get to know Gerhardt hymns, learn them by heart, have those hymns on their lips, and grow to love these treasures.

However, I also heard throughout the week that we need new translations. We heard that so many of Gerhardt's hymns are lacking in the sacramental references that are clear in the original German. We heard that some of the hymns are in language that is too theological and that it needs to be simplified.

The preface of the catechism says about the words that are learned by heart: "Young and inexperienced people must be instructed on the basis of a uniform, fixed text and form. They are easily confused if a teacher employs one form now and another form -- perhaps with the intentions of making improvements -- later on. In this way all time and labor will be lost." Granted, these words were written about the Commandments, Creed, and Lord's Prayer. But there's wisdom there: people cannot be expected to remember words if those words keep changing from one decade to the next.

So which do we want? Do we want new and improved translations? Or do we want to have people hang onto those words they have memorized and prayed and sung and loved? If we want to go for "new and improved," what will the laymen think when the pastors urge us to learn hymns by heart, knowing that they'll just change the words on us again pretty soon, so that whatever we learned will be fuzzed and muddied and lost because of the word-changes?