The Gospel is sung into the hearts of young and old alike in the ancient psalms and canticles. It penetrates to the depths of our unconscious drives and imagery. It changes things and us in ways of which we have no conscious knowledge. -- Ernest Koenker, *Worship in Word and Sacrament* pp. 26, 27.
05 January 2010
New Lutheran Quote of the Day
The Gospel is sung into the hearts of young and old alike in the ancient psalms and canticles. It penetrates to the depths of our unconscious drives and imagery. It changes things and us in ways of which we have no conscious knowledge. -- Ernest Koenker, *Worship in Word and Sacrament* pp. 26, 27.
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18 comments:
no conscious knowledge
Well, there must be SOME conscious something, or the author wouldn't be able to write about any change.
?
I took him to mean that it changes you without your necessarily reflecting upon it - but you do indeed notice the change later if you reflect back upon your life. God's Word just has that power. And for that - glory be to God!
AMEN to the quotation!
Anastasia:
I think these are changes we see by faith, but we don't see them by sight, much like our sanctification (in fact, you could say that they are our sanctification.)
Pr. Weedon:
How important this is! I think one of the most important things here is that, if you think about the implications of Koenker's statement here, it teaches us a humility relative to the liturgy because it is something that isn't to be rationalalistically analyzed and accordingly modified.
It seems that a lot of our present-day problems involve a particular attitude toward the liturgy and toward worship, an attitude that attempts to look at the liturgy and at the Biblical data on worship and extract a short set of abstract principles, which can then be used to perform liturgical engineering (analysis, determining what the "real" purpose of liturgical actions is, and ultimately providing a rationalistic justification for changing the liturgy to remake it). Sometimes it seems that even the defenders of the liturgy want to distill this short list of propositions in order to prove that the liturgy is good (in the way of, for example, demonstrating that one can "develop" the liturgy from this short set of Biblical/Lutheran principles). I would know--I'm a mechanical engineer, and this is how engineers approach problems; yet liturgical engineering is not what we are to do as Lutherans.
The truth is that we Lutherans are neither liturgical minimalists, driven by a short set of propositions, nor are we liturgical maximalists. We are liturgical conservatives, keeping what we have received unless it contradicts the Gospel.
I see a lot of this attitude at work in the creation of LW DS II (LSB DS I/II)--saying, "Well, the Kyrie is really this or that, so now that I've grasped what it is I am free to remake it according to my newly developed principle." Yet if we are to be liturgical conservatives and not rationalistic liturgical minimalists, we are to take a humble attitude toward this tradition, so long as it does not contradict the Gospel in actuality (note the difference between whether I think it contradicts the Gospel and whether it actually does...) To recognize this difference is to be humble and to allow the liturgy to become your discipline, to be patient when you don't understand it and to seek to understand what the Church is trying to confess through it. Maybe if we come to understand this, we will see the liturgy as something that can last for 500 years instead of something that might last for 40.
Am I off base here?
Philip,
I couldn't agree more. It is the psychologizing of the liturgy which Dr. Nagel decried (and which leads to things like putting the Kyrie between the Confession and Absolution!).
That's great--I haven't read much of Nagel, and I haven't found anything of his that really touched on the liturgy except that wonderful LW preface. I suppose if he translated Sasse, though, he must have picked up some good things...
The only problem I have with what I wrote is that it basically allows for no legitimate grounds for the liturgy to come into existence in the first place or develop over time (or at least my rationalistic side thinks so). An ultimate liturgical conservative doesn't change any adiaphora, since true adiaphora don't contradict the Gospel. Again, am I wrong here?
Actually, no. To quote the preface: "the living heritage and something new." Each generation does leave its mark on the liturgy as it passes the prayer of the Church along. Sometimes lasting, sometimes not. I mean, take the Schütz Vespers:
Gregorian intonation of "Make haste, O God" and its response and Gloria.
Then a setting of a rimed paraphrase of a Psalm (I think maybe from the Becker psalter?)
Then SINGING the text of the Biblical accounts of the Nativity and the Visit of the Magi
Then the opening lines of Magnificat in German, followed with the German hymn: Christum Wir Sollen Loben Schon etc.
You see the living heritage and you see how they made that heritage their own. Krauth utterly captured it when he wrote: "possessing liturgical life without liturgical bondage." Living from the heritage and free to add what best serves in our day, and passing it all along to the next generation for them to make their own too.
By the bye, the HUGE danger in LCMS Lutheranism today is that far too many have no interest in ADDING TO the treasured heritage; they simply replace the whole thing, kit and caboodle.
Agreed.
I love the historic sacred music of the Western Church, from the Gregorian chants of anonymous composers to Tallis, Palestrina, Byrd, and the Lutherans--Praetorius, Schuetz, Buxtehude, Bach, and all the rest. In the past, I've been sad that too often this music gets performed for applause instead of sung in its home in the liturgy.
But then I realized that what should really be happening is that the Church today ought to be producing another Praetorius, another Tallis, another Bach. The real question is whether this could happen, and what it would take...
I may be wrong, but I think it would take a rebirth of "Christendom" - it takes more than the Church herself, but the Church that has permeated and transformed a culture and freed that culture to enter into her joyful dance.
I mean, it was a total thing. It wasn't just the music. Look at the Churches that were built in those days! Think of how time was organized! Think of how commerce was regulated by the Church's time! Think of how education was directed toward the Church's interests in music, arts, government and so on! And at least in Lutheran lands it was joy and delight in the Gospel itself that prompted that explosion of joy.
It definitely was amazing how much consensus existed in that society on the basis of Christian faith. Reading today about how the princes became "emergency bishops" and the duty of the temporal rulers to root out heresy is jarring to our ears today, but I think in a way it testifies to how that society was formed. Sometimes I wonder whether in our modern democracy we've forgotten what it means that Christ is our King.
Still, I think the issue of music, art, architecture, vestments, and so forth ultimately comes down to the problem of beauty, and it's a sense of beauty that comes from having met our Lord. Debating aesthetic theory, in my opinion, misses the point. So I guess I agree with you, I think...
Yes, we do agree on that. Beauty - the beauty of holiness that is the Lord Himself - there was thirst for that in Christendom; it was nurtured, developed, and sought after.
Have you ever read Russell Kirk?
No, not familiar with the name at all. I'm really horribly parochial in my reading, Phil. Tell me about him.
Russell Kirk was the author of The Conservative Mind, which might be the book responsible for establishing conservatism as a legitimate political and philosophical school (he wrote several other books, too). He was a traditionalist, but he was a Roman Catholic who wouldn't go to Mass because he didn't like the local priest, and his theology is bad (Christ came to deliver a new law, etc...). Still, on tradition and political history he's excellent to read, and he had a strong grasp of the fallibility of man, the need for restraint, and the necessity for law to be founded on God's Law.
Here's a brief intro to his thought, "Ten Conservative Principles":
http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html
(I suppose the question to ask there is whether only the Law is necessary for Christendom or whether the Gospel is, too...)
It's like reading a lot of Krauth...
Did Krauth write anything besides "Conservative Reformation"? That book alone is worth rereading ten times before I die, but I don't want to miss anything else by him.
Yes, he wrote much more, but finding it today is rather a challenge... Pr. Webber has some on his fabulous Lutheran Theology site:
http://www.angelfire.com/ny4/djw/lutherantheology.html
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