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Super Bowl XLVI: America’s Holy Day

Portrait of J.S. Bach by Haussmann (1748)

The Bach at the Sem concert series will return for two concerts in spring 2012. The series had been put on hold due to the passing of its beloved conductor and music director, Rev. Robert Bergt.

The first concert will be held on February 12, 2012, at 3:00 p.m. It will feature organist Dennis Bergin playing works by J.S. Bach and his own composition “The Last Enemy.” The American Kantorei will perform Bach’s Motet III, Jesu Meine Freude, and motets by Heinrich Schütz.

The second concert will be held on April 22, 2012, at 3:00 p.m. The American Kantorei will present three cantatas by J.S. Bach: Der Himmel lacht!, Die Erde jubilieret; and Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend warden. They will also perform Lobe den Herren den maechtigen Koenigen der Ehren.

Jeral Becker will serve as interim conductor and music director. Becker previously served as assistant conductor under Bergt.

Both concerts will be held in the Chapel of St. Timothy and St. Titus on the Concordia Seminary campus. They are open to the public and free of charge. Free will offerings will be taken in support of the concert series.

The American Kantorei is a choral and orchestral ensemble dedicated to the performance of church music from the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Neoclassical periods. The works of J.S. Bach form the core of its repertoire.

Future concerts will be determined and announced at a later date. For more information, please contact Marla Brewer, senior administrative assistant to the dean of the chapel, at 314-505-7009 or brewerm@csl.edu.

That’s what I began to do, assisted by a number of wonderful folks in districts (we trained church worker health advocates for each district), parish nurses, counselors, and other health professionals. There was a certain eagerness to attend to health issues. Who could not be “for” the strengthening of the workers of the church, their spouses (if they were married), and their families (if there were children)?

At the beginning, the primary audience was the church worker him/herself. The principle question: how to help workers of the church take their health (and that of their spouses and families) more seriously in preventive and wellness ways and then to implement actions that would support their health. Who could not be “for” doing this? So also the pressure was on the worker to be healthier.

What I initially failed to realize was that there was an important additional variable, not as easily directly addressed: congregational, school, and institutional personnel policies and attitudes.

For instance, we could encourage the worker of the church to be a life-long learner and participate in continuing education, but if the school or congregation had neither money nor non-vacation time for such education, the worker was placed in quite a pickle. The pressure was on to do continuing education, but the resources were not provided to do so. Teachers were in a bit of a stronger position than pastors, DCEs, DCOs and deaconesses because they were required to do continuing education to keep their license.

In short, without institutional support our health advocacy was putting more expectation on the worker without corresponding support available. Clearly more was needed than simply understanding the need of the worker and holding up to the worker pictures of what a healthy worker should be doing.

Thus emerged the book Holding Up the Prophet’s Hand (CPH 2011). The target audience: the lay leaders of our congregations, schools, and other institutions. While I hope workers of the church also read it, I really hope our lay leaders read it, discuss it, and use it to strategize and implement church worker health and wellbeing. As a short-term goal, I hope our district presidents will have all call committees that want one of our seminaries’ graduates in 2012 read the book and then begin, even before their new graduate arrives, to plan for and implement the support of their new worker (and others if there is a larger staff).

There are no one-time cure-alls for church worker wellness. It is an ongoing process. This is the next step.

The journey from text to pulpit can be a long and winding road, filled with false starts, surprising discoveries, and hard choices along the way. On a semi-regular basis, the homiletics faculty of Concordia Seminary invites you to walk the road with the preacher in the

Preacher: Francis “Rev” Rossow, Professor emeritus of homiletics in the department of practical theology. (Text: 2 Samuel 12:13-23)

Moderator: David Schmitt, Gregg H. Benidt Chair in Homiletics and Literature, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.

Chapel Sermon:

Preacher’s Studio Video:

The audio and video files can also be downloaded at Concordia Seminary’s iTunes U site.

This morning’s (1/26/12) New York Times contains a disturbing article on working conditions in Chinese suppliers of Apple components and products. The article mentions other tech product companies, but the salient episode is an explosion at the plant of an Apple supplier; so the focus on Apple is not surprising in view of its recent report of highest-ever profits. The article contains a lot of “A said-B said” and a fair number of those who speak “on condition of anonymity.” Even so, the article raises concerns about more than its own accuracy or fairness.

There are considerable forces at work, which urge “us” to think globally in terms of opportunity. I wonder, though, where is an appropriate force, which will urge us to think globally also in terms of responsibility? In other words, we cannot reduce questions about global thinking to the question “technology—yes or no?” There is, rather, a complex web of questions concerning technology, availability of jobs, workplace safety, health, and others.

Nor are these simply economic or, in an election year, political questions. For a Christian, at least, they are also theological questions. Here are some of the questions that have occurred to me:

• “Where does the church (and its theological institutions) fit in?”
• “What kind of theology is needed to respond to the concerns of “levels of community” (global, national, state, “local”)?”
• “What is involved in constructing and teaching “theologies” of technology and of the workplace (including safety, health, and working conditions)?”

Apple’s announced “iBooks 2 e-textbooks” program has produced a lot of excitement. It certainly sounds like it will offer significant opportunities to educators and textbook writers, including theological educators and writers. How does one assess, however, what seems to be a serious human cost in manufacturing the necessary equipment?

The last line of the article, a quote from an Apple exec, says a lot about “us”: “… right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”

How ought we to think about that?

The Old Testament reading for Epiphany 5 (2/5/12) will be Isaiah 40:21-31. Verse 26 describes a creator who is global: he “brings out the host [of heaven and earth] in number.” And yet he is eminently “local”: he “calls them all by name . . . and not one is missing.” God can handle the complexities of global and local scale. We, I think, need to be considerably more circumspect about just how global we can be and not miss the local.

A few recent examples stand out. In 2009, a volume of the Oxyrhynchus Payri published the remains of a 5th century manuscript containing portions Acts 10-12 and 15-17. The images are available online. This particular find is significant because its text of Acts is not like the standard text used as the basis of our modern translations (similar to that of Codex Vaticanus), but neither is it like the text of Codex Bezae, which has a text of Acts that is about 10% longer. The place of this manuscript’s text within the history of the transmission of Acts is a puzzle yet to be solved. This manuscript has been labelled “P127″ — if you check in your edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, it will include (depending on when yours was printed) only up to P116 (new finds are simply labelled by order of discovery). So eleven — and now, as noted below, at least twelve — additional papyrus witnesses are available for reconstruction of the text and its history, and scholars continue the work of assessing these finds and adjusting the text and our understanding of its transmission.

This past week, the Green Collection announced another newly identified fragment, this from Romans chapters 9 and 10. The video below contains the first images, and unfortunately they are too small to allow identification of any letters or words. It looks like the fragment contains about five lines of text; the reverse side would contain an additional five lines.

Soon, I would expect, this text will be edited, a transcription produced, and an editio princeps published. A word of caution — the obviously excited (and justly so) owner suggests that the manuscript fragment dates to the middle of the second century, which would indeed make it the earliest fragment of Paul’s letters (perhaps 50 years older the P46). I’d encourage a some tempered optimism here, though. The dating of papyrus manuscripts is very difficult, particularly with such small portions of text and the lack of sufficient remaining material to give information about the binding, layout, page format, and complete contents. I wouldn’t be surprised if further analysis by a wider range of scholars dated the text to around 200, or the third century. In any case, it is exciting to hear that more and more pieces of the puzzle needed to reconstruct the early history of the NT text are being identified.

The Green Collection is a private collection of ancient and medieval manuscripts collected by Steve Green, president of the Hobby Lobby group of retail stores. Here is some video describing the collection.

Private collectors who amass holdings of impressive biblical manuscripts is not new; the Rylands Papri, the Beatty Papyri and the Bodmer Papyri were all named for the wealthy 19th and 20th century collectors who found such documents fascinating. The Green collection has been purchasing large holdings of papyrus documents. I certainly wish Mr. Green and his team continued “good luck” in identifying more NT manuscripts!

If you are near Atlanta, an exhibition of the Green Collection is on display until April 30. If you get to the show and they have this piece out for display, bring your Nestle text and a pencil and paper, make a transcription, and send it over to me — I can’t wait to see if this gives us something new on the text of Romans.

The symposium will begin with worship in the Seminary’s chapel at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 30 and conclude at 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 31.

The keynote introduction on theology and culture will be given by Dr. Leopoldo Sánchez, director of the Center For Hispanic Studies, with reaction and further presentation from the perspective of the social sciences by Dr. Jack Schulz (Concordia University-Irvine) and from a missiological perspective by Dr. Douglas Rutt (Lutheran Hour Ministries).

Reflections from cultural backgrounds will include: Rev. William and Mrs. Patricia Main, co-directors of the Haskell Lighthouse Campus Ministry; Rev. John Deang, Missionary-at-Large to African immigrants for the Nebraska District; Ms. Melissa Salomon, mission planting team of Concordia Lutheran Church, Chula Vista, Calif.; and Rev. Andrew Okai, Rev. Kou Seying, and Rev. Andy Wu, among others.

The symposium will be followed on Tuesday evening by the 7th Annual Lecture in Hispanic/Latino Theology and Missions. The topic will be “Dealing with Culture in Theological Formation,” led by Rev. Gregory Klotz, associate professor at Taylor University. This lecture is open to the public and will be held at 7:00 p.m. in Werner Auditorium on the Seminary campus.

Rev. Klotz lived as a missionary in Latin America from 1980-2000 with the mission board of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. He served as a church planter in Panama, then as coordinator of theological studies in Caracas, Venezuela, and Antigua, Guatemala. Upon his return from Latin America, Klotz taught courses at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind. He is pursuing a Ph.D. at Indiana University in Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Klotz is currently in candidate status working on a phenomenological study of funeral music of Guatemalan Holy Week processions. He joined the Taylor faculty in 2007 teaching first and second-year Spanish classes.

Congregations and church leaders are encouraged to attend. To register, please visit www.csl.edu and fill out the registration form found under “Continuing Education.” For more information, contact the office of continuing education and parish services at 314-505-7486, or ce@csl.edu.

Editor’s Note: David Berger offers additional reflections on worship music in light of a recent service at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Des Peres, MO, where a choir and orchestra performed one of Bach’s Christmas Oratorios. Berger is Professor Emeritus of Concordia Seminary, former director of the library, and a well-respected bass soloist who regularly performs Bach’s music with the American Kantorei.

I second Kent Burreson’s comments and observations, especially regarding the place of music of such quality in God-pleasing worship, and offer a few comments of my own.  Regarding Bach’s consummate artistry, he has no peer in relating the music to the text. But he also provides opportunity for musicians to make their own “remarks” in the context. The sixteenth notes that trailed away in a downward fourth on the word “vanish,” were an ornament that I thought fit the context. Bach simply wrote the C to G interval as two notes on the German word “vertreiben” (to drive away or banish). And so the “vanishing” 16th notes in a downward scale would work just as well in German: Death is driven away, banished, by Christ.

Will there be another Bach?  Well, you can’t duplicate the unduplicatable. Here is my (probably controversial) hypothesis: The Reformation was an electric shock to church music. The foundation of church music in Gregorian chant is well known, and there was / is much great music in that tradition, e.g., that of Palestrina, to cite but one example. But the music of the people (folk music, in the best sense of the word) was also present, operating on a plane parallel to chant and early polyphony in the (Roman Catholic) worship context. During and after the Reformation, as the people took a more active role in worship, most notably in the singing of hymns (chorales, if you will), the melodic content of folk music blended its way into church music. In the following centuries, Lutheran composers used the changing musical language and the rapidly emerging Lutheran chorale tradition to marvelous effect: the three Ss – Schütz, Schein, Scheidt – Praetorius, Buxtehude, the Bach family both before and succeeding J. S., and, of course, Johann Sebastian, himself. J. S. Bach was the culmination of a musical form, polyphonic music (every voice equally interesting – Bach “thought” in fugues), as well as the fount and source of all music that was to come. Even today, no composer or musician worth his salt can ignore Bach.

If a more spiritual “spin” is to be put on it, it must be said that Bach was / is indeed, literally, the “Fifth Evangelist” – the composer who grew out of the Reformation (he most certainly was a Luther scholar) and became its never-to-be-surpassed musical peak, preaching the Gospel in music and reaching far beyond his time and place. (Today, one of the best series of recordings of Bach’s works is coming out of Japan, performed by the Bach Collegium Japan. What would Bach think of that?!)

That Bach and Handel were born in the same year (1685) is truly an embarrassment of Lutheran riches. Had Handel written only his Messiah and Bach his Mass in B Minor and his two best-known Passions (John and Matthew), we would have the sum of all great church music.  Everything we need to know and believe is in those works.  But, of course, both wrote much more, making the first half of the 18th century the pinnacle of music of the church.  That is not to belittle such composers as Gabrieli and Monteverdi or (much later) Mozart and Haydn, Mendelssohn and Brahms, but merely to recognize a marriage of biblical text and great music that can never be equaled, certainly not at that level and that quantity.

Lest we romanticize Bach’s life and work, we must recognize that Bach “kicked against the pricks” (a good biblical expression) for almost all his time in Leipzig.  He rarely had the resources to perform the music the way he knew it should be done and, it could be said, was constantly rebelling against the authorities. He was also over-worked and under-valued.  One might well ask, Would Bach find kindred spirits in the music directors in some of our congregations, that is, in those that still have directors of music trained in one of our synodical church work programs? How many congregations (let’s limit it to those that regularly have 500 or more in worship services) are willing to support not only an organist and choir director, but even pay a modest stipend to a quartet of reliable vocalists and to the occasional instrumentalist(s) to assure that the music of worship is maintained at a high level?  Surely, there is nothing wrong with volunteers, but even in the church we must recognize that we are likely to get what we pay for. In worship music, as in other aspects of the life of the church, the level of quality will reflect the resources – time, talent, and treasure – that we are willing to devote to it.

Note that the “Bach at the Sem” series of concerts resumes at Concordia Seminary on Sunday, Feb. 12. 

Editor’s note: This morning, Leopoldo Sánchez delivered the following homily in the Chapel of St. Timothy and St. Titus at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. It includes a brief reflection on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the context of the Epiphany theme of the identity of Christians as temples of the Holy Spirit living in an unholy world.

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Monday of the Week of Epiphany 2 (January 16, 2012)

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Temple talk in Scripture points us to a living temple that never dies. That is Jesus. He is God’s holy temple on earth. God’s own presence in the flesh, among sinners, to make us a holy people. Epiphany! God most holy manifested in the flesh to sanctify the flesh. The temple is not a lifeless building. He has flesh and bones. The temple walks among us, it moves, it is full of life, and gives his life to us.

Jesus is God’s temple. The Father raised him from the dead. Otherwise, his body would be lifeless, just like any building or temple. But Jesus is alive, raised in the body, to give his brethren resurrection life. And so he is the firstfruits of the coming harvest, of your resurrection.

But the only way Jesus can give us resurrection life is by giving us the Holy Spirit. The only-begotten Son is raised by God according to the Spirit of holiness—to use Paul’s language—so that you, who are made adopted sons and daughters by the same Spirit in baptism, may also be raised to life. And so the Spirit is the down payment and firstfruits of your resurrection. No Spirit, no resurrection, for Jesus or for us.

Before the coming of Jesus, some Jewish tradition taught that the Holy Spirit had departed from the temple. How can the Holy be among the unholy? But when Jesus, God’s holy temple among us, comes to make us holy, the Gospel writers tell us that the Spirit descends, rests, remains upon him. And so the Holy Spirit has returned to the temple. Once again, the Spirit lives in a living temple: Jesus. And the one who bears that Spirit gives it to you.

So now you get to be temples in the world. You are temples of the Holy Spirit, of the living God, of the risen Christ. Once again, the temple moves, has flesh and bones, arms and legs. It’s you!

The Holy Spirit chooses the most unlikely places to rest and dwell, in the lowly child of Bethlehem, in the Jesus from Galilee where nothing good comes from. But even more amazingly, the Holy Spirit chooses to dwell in sinners like us. The Holy One dwells in the unholy to make us holy and bring holiness to an unholy world.

What does it mean to be temples of the Holy Spirit? Paul teaches about what temples do in the church. We honor our bodies, where the Spirit dwells, by fighting against sexual immorality, divisions in the church, and false teachers.

But this apostolic teaching also has application for Christians as they live in the Spirit in the world. You are the living temples of the Holy Spirit to bear witness to God’s holiness in an unholy world. You are the ones who carry the Word and all manners of holy living to a world where immorality, division, and wrong teaching happens. You are God’s living temples in a world where other temples claim the devotion of people. You are temples of the Spirit where other spirits capture and bind the thoughts, affections, and actions of people.

And there is an Epiphany lesson in all this: You are the little epiphanies of God’s mercy and care for the lost, the poor, and all sorts of neighbors. You are Christ’s presence in the world.

Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday is celebrated today, was one such temple. He acted quite consciously as a Christian in society and, from his own vocational place, dramatized through peaceful demonstrations and speeches an unholy state of affairs. He wanted to make life, in this less than perfect world, better for his people and for all people. Before the era of globalization and Internet, of Madonnas and Lady Gagas, there were really only two Americans that almost anyone outside of the U.S. knew: Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. And both because of their public moral stand on the question of human dignity. Martin Luther King Jr. honored his body by fighting against the sin of racism.

What are the unholy places that need the light of Christ today? The unholy places where the Spirit of holiness must give witness to Christ through God’s holy people?

Temples of the Holy Spirit move around in the world where real neighbors with real needs live. We can argue about who deserves a holiday and who doesn’t. Or about who is more morally upright than another. Or whether this or that Christian always has his theology right when he applies it to some difficult situation. But that misses the point entirely.

Temples of the Holy Spirit are not perfect. They are sinners. That God dwells at all in any of us is a miracle. Still the Spirit uses us to bring the Gospel and charity to all kinds of neighbors, to bring the light of Christ to the world. And for those little epiphanies we are most thankful to our Father.

The Spirit of resurrection helps us to attend to concrete needs in the world while setting our eyes on the world that is yet to come. The Spirit does not seek to make unholy society heaven or paradise, but he does work through God’s holy people to make it more humane for our neighbors through our various vocations where holiness actually happens.

It’s amazing. The Spirit of the living Christ even makes us bold to dare to do things for the sake of a neighbor even when that might cost us our own lives. Jesus, full of the Spirit, dies on the cross. Like Jesus, Stephen is full of the Holy Spirit, and gets stoned to death. Life in the Spirit has the shape of a cross.

The Spirit allows even normal, ordinary Christians to take bold stands for the sake of some neighbor. People like Bonhoeffer, King, or Romero. If life in the Spirit means life in the shape of the cross, they experienced it alright. We may not all die the kind of death they died. That’s the Spirit’s business, not ours. That cross is for God alone to give.

But like them, we are temples of the Holy One in an unholy world. That could be scary, but fear not. The Spirit will raise us from the dead. The disciples of Jesus actually believed this stuff. This is why they rejoiced in the Spirit even after the beatings that the name of Christ brought upon their bodies.

In this less than holy world, the Spirit who dwells in you will give you the strength and boldness to offer your body as a living sacrifice to the Lord, to honor your body in a sinful world as a witness to Christ and for the sake of your neighbor, whatever that might bring to your life.

Holy Spirit, through the Word, make us ever holy to be Christ’s little epiphanies in an unholy world.

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