Ash Wednesday - Psalm 51 - Leslie F. Brandt paraphrase

Today is Ash Wednesday. Most Baptist churches (the one I grew up in included) only observe certain parts of the liturgical calendar. Lent was not included in the rhythm of worship in my home church, but I am growing in my appreciation for this spiritual discipline. My Lenten fast this year includes desserts, between meal snacks of any kind, and soft drinks.

From Psalms / Now here is Leslie F. Brandt’s paraphrase of Psalm 51, an important passage of scripture for Lent. Unfortunately, blogspot's limitations make it difficult to render the printed structure the way it is in the book. The content is the most important thing. It works OK as prose.

O God, may the measure of Your eternal love be the measure of Your mercy. And may the measure of Your mercy be sufficient to blot out my great sins and cancel out the guilt of my wrongdoing.

I have failed, O Lord, and my failures weigh heavily upon my heart. I cannot share them with my brother lest they weigh too heavily upon him and may even threaten my relationship with him. But You know what they are, O God, and how far I have fallen short of Your standards and expectations.

I am only human, Lord. It was not by my choice that I was propelled into this fractured world. The weaknesses that plague me are not all of my doing, nor can I handle them by my strength alone.

I know that nothing can be hidden from You. I can only acknowledge my indictment and accept Your loving forgiveness. Purge me of my guilt, O Lord; heal the hurts of those who have been afflicted by my failures.

Revive my flagging spirit, O God. Restore to me the joy and assurance of a right relationship with You. Reinstate me in You purposes and help me to avoid the snares and pitfalls along the way.

It is only then that my tongue will be set free to sing Your praises and my hands to perform the tasks You have set before me. It is only then that I can relate deeply and meaningfully to my brother and communicate to him the message of reconciling love.

I bring You no oblation or sacrifice, my God, only a foolish and self-centered heart. I do come to You with a sincere desire to be Your servant, to walk in Your course for my life, to receive Your love and channel it to my fellowmen about me.

I thank You, God, that this is acceptable to You and that I will remain Your son forever.

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Giving Up Fancy for Authentic

I don’t remember what we were watching when I heard it, but it was last week and it had to have been on the Food Network or the Travel Channel. During the course of the program, someone mentioned an interesting fact about food and hospitality in Asian cultures. When I heard it, my mind immediately went back to my experience traveling in South Korea with the Samford A Cappella Choir some 25 years ago. It was a fascinating trip and one that forever sealed South Korea in my mind as a place to which I would love to return some day. Dr. Billy Kim, pastor of Central Baptist Church in Suwon, and president of the Far East Broadcasting Company, helped organize the trip for us. His daughter, Mary Kay, was a graduate student at Samford at the time, and a member of the choir.

On several occasions during the trip, we were hosted for meals at which were served what we had been coached to call “very interesting” food. Among others, our hosts for these various occasions included the president of Korean Airlines (who helped us with our air travel expenses), the chancellor of Hanyang University (who I think also owned the hotel we stayed at in Seoul), the governor of Incheon province. I can’t remember everything, but at more than one of these the fare included such things as octopus, squid, and jelly fish. Mary Kay tried to explain to us that this was not normal Korean food, and that all this fancy, strange food was a Korean way of showing honor to the guest. When toward the end of the trip we finally had a real authentic Korean meal, there was a good bit of it (kimchi NOT included) that I found to be quite good.

I’m not criticizing our Korean hosts. What I heard explained on television last week reminded me of a wonderful trip and deepened my appreciation for their hospitality. It seems that, the fancier and more exotic the food, the greater honor to the guest. I understand it better now, but I really wonder what it would have been like if we had had more “normal” Korean food at those occasions. Not knowing our culture, they honored us in the way that was most meaningful to them. Not knowing their culture, we honored them by being appreciative guests. But what we experienced was not as authentic as it might have been. No, we wouldn’t have been served dog. According to Mary Kay, only Korean “rednecks” ate dog.

So what does this all mean? I’m not really sure, but I think it says something about the importance of remembering to be authentic when we’re tempted to try to be impressive … about the importance of being personal rather than profound (some of us can do both … I’m not sure I’m one of them) … of seeking more to be real than “relevant” … and of giving one another the grace that says, “You are more important that I.”

[Here's where I usually end ... but ... ]

More food for thought: After I had written the above (yesterday), I was reading again this afternoon in Harold Best's Music Through the Eyes of Faith (big surprise) and encountered a sympathetic vibration in the section on personal excellence. Best starts with an amplified list of what excellence is NOT (here are the unamplified points):

1. Excellence is not perfection.
2. Excellence is not being better than somebody else, nor is it even being like him, her, or them.
3. Excellence is not winning, although it may include it.
4. Excellence is not on-again-off-againism.
5. Excellence is not assuming that my way of doing things is automatically excellent simply because I intellectually agree that I need excellence.
6. Excellence is not just practicality and favorable results.
   

After a lengthy, itemized and amplified description of what excellence is not, Best answers the obvious question. If excellence is not all of those things, then what is it?

Excellence is authenticity. Excellence is temperance in all things. It is servanthood. It is loving-kindness. It is sojourn. It is esteeming another better than oneself. It is meekness, brokenness, personal holiness, greatness of soul. It is peaceableness, gentleness, perseverance, hunger and thirst. Wherever we are in the quest of these, there is more. Excellence is for everybody. It is commanded and we must pursue it. it is a process, not an event. And, in the final analysis, there are no earthly measurements for it. The pursuit of it is entirely personal and the final judge as to its validity will be a God whose wise creatorhood, sustenance, and expectations are worth far more than blue ribbons, accolades, recording contracts, or Grammys.

Now that's really enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

The Law and Sin (applied to Music)

The Toothpick (freshman English major at Messiah College in Grantham, PA) just finished a class called From Script to Screen, which (as I understand it) examined how screenwriters adapt stage plays for film. Now he says it’s hard to watch a movie without focusing on critical details. Every college music major experiences something similar in regard to listening to musical performances and recordings, but I’m happy to say that enjoyment returns. Harold Best likens it to what Paul wrote in Romans 7 concerning the law and sin.

Everybody loves music in one way or another. Everybody has a sense of quality, even though it may not always be that finely tuned. And music is everywhere. In some way, everybody makes and receives music. The few who do not are to be pitied.

So here are all these music makers, enjoying what they like and liking what they enjoy. …

Suddenly all of this is interrupted with the law, the aesthetic law, the laws of those with refined taste and musical etiquette, the laws of the specialist, the connoisseur, the intellectual informer. And the people who have been alive all along, making music without knowing these laws, are confronted with the lawgivers who point up their ineptitude, their omissions and commissions, and the life goes out of the riot and celebration. To paraphrase [Ro. 7:10-13] these aesthetic laws, which were designed to result in aesthetic life, turn around and take life away.

And yet these aesthetic laws are good. The aesthetic standards themselves do not lead to our aesthetic downfall. Instead, our aesthetic weaknesses have to be revealed in order that they can be seen for what they are. But the aesthetic laws cannot be applied from the outside. Well-meaning but legalistic aesthetes cannot try to raise musical standards by applying aesthetic canons [rules] or assuming that people “ought to have enough common sense” to change once they hear the aesthetic canons [rules]. The result of this is that people may stay defeated, even though they keep trying to work things out; or they may assume that the whole exercise is silly, turn their backs on it, and go their way.
…
In our spiritual lives we do not immediately attain maturity. We stumble, we fall, and we confess. We get up and continue to press on. So with music and art; there is no immediate leap into aesthetic finesse. We make music only to discover that it is not as well done as it could be; we choose a composition only to discover that there is a much better one. There is no aesthetic lapse that is too low or too grievous. Only those who do not want to change will not change. [emphasis mine] It is that simple. Great music is for everybody, not just the elitists, just as the gospel is for everybody, not just the righteous. The discernment of it comes gradually. It is learned, and everybody can learn if they want to.

(~ Music through the Eyes of Faith, pp. 87ff)

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.