Back to the Basics by Heather Owens

Heather and her husband, Daniel, and their two sons are College Church missionaries, serving the Lord in Vietnam.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

We are embarking upon week ten of closures and social distancing here in Hanoi. In the past two weeks, I haven’t left the house at all except to walk a few hundred yards to the corner grocery to buy vegetables and eggs. We live in an up-and-down house in a row of up-and-down houses facing an apartment block, so we don’t have a yard or a place to be outdoors. We also don’t have a car, and now that public transportation is shut down, we couldn’t go out even if we wanted to risk being fined. My teenager told me he wishes he could just hibernate.

Our family is used to spending a lot of time together. We homeschool even when we don’t have to, and Daniel works part-time from our house even when the college is open. We always eat dinner as a family and often lunch as well. We like each other. We like spending time together. However, we are not immune to the irritation generated by these long days in each other’s company. Did I mention this is week ten? Our fuses are all a bit short and my threshold for annoyance is suddenly very slim. I’m wondering if I need a room to call my “growlery” like Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House.

Somehow I never seem to graduate from Kindergarten when it comes to living and loving well. I keep having to go back to the basics. Be nice. Don’t be mean. Treat others the way you want to be treated. First Corinthians 13 is famously read at weddings, but its instructions certainly don’t end at the altar. These basic reminders spoke to my conscience this week.

“Love is patient and kind” even when towels are left crumpled on the floor or there is a sticky mess around the trash can. Love is not “arrogant or rude” forgetting that I too have grating habits and personality quirks. Love “does not insist on its own way” or declare the rest of the afternoon “me time.” It is not “irritable or resentful” when expected to provide the third meal of the day for the umpteenth day in a row. Love does not “rejoice at wrongdoing” or self-justify or make excuses. It speaks hard truth to my rotten attitudes. Love bears quarantine, believes God is in control, hopes for the good that will come, and endures quietly while we wait. 

Heather first posted this on her blog, In This Meantime.

Doxology

By College Church Brass Ensemble

Doxology - Bourgeois, arr. de Filippi French composer Loys Bourgeois wrote this melody, first printed in the Genevan Psalter of 1551 (the name OLD HUNDREDTH appeared about 100 years later). Englishman Thomas Ken added the familiar text in the early 1700s:

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow,

Praise Him, all creatures here below,

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Jesus Lives and So Shall I

By Erik Dewar, pastor of worship and music

The resurrection changes everything!

Because of Christ’s resurrection, we have faith that we will also be raised with him as his followers.

Jesus is our Hope and Trust!

1 Corinthians 15:19-22

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

2 Corinthians 4:13-15

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Rejoice Ye Pure in Heart

By H. E. Singley, organist

The Lord is God, and he has made his light shine on us.

With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession

up to the horns of the altar.

Psalm 118:27, NIV 

On one of my first journeys to Latin America to participate musically in several city-wide evangelistic efforts, the first day in one location featured a parade on a bright, sunny morning with hundreds of believers joining in a festive march through the village. Many bedecked themselves with brightly hued clothing distinctive of that region. At the front of the procession were homespun but obviously carefully made banners with verses like John 3:16 and invitations to attend the evangelistic rallies which were to commence that evening. That adventure reshaped earlier recollections I had of parades (such as marching in the Tournament of Roses parade as a tuba player in my high school band). 

At College Church, we also think of the festive banners which have graced our sanctuary through the years, representing remarkable skill, a palpable labor of love and a personal sacrifice of praise by the late Marge Gieser. Those exquisite “festal banners” draw our attention to the themes of Scripture as we are gathered for holy worship.

Some of our most familiar hymns have numerous words or phrases which point us to a passage of Scripture or even a particular—and possibly quite personal—memory we associate with our Christian pilgrimage. “Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart” has a phrase which accomplishes just that, “Your festal banner wave on high.” This phrase often brings to mind the joyful procession I just mentioned in the highlands of Guatemala so many years ago. Then, those words lead me straightaway to the next phrase, “The cross of Christ your King.” We have the privilege of marching in the triumphal procession of our Lord—not ourselves as the triumphant ones—but as slaves of the One who conquered sin and death on the cross. That cross is our “festal banner!”

But thank God! He has made us his captives and continues

to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession.

II Corinthians 2:14a, NLT 

The poet who wrote “Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart” was Edward Plumptre, an English biblical and theological scholar educated at King’s College, London, and Oxford University. He became a professor of pastoral theology and Bible exegesis while serving as a pastor. He wrote sacred poetry and translated earlier hymns. Arthur Henry Messiter was born in England and composed the hymn-tune commonly associated with this text, Marion. He came to the United States while in his twenties. Here, he served in the pastoral ministry of music for over thirty years.

Rejoice, ye pure in heart,
Rejoice, give thanks, and sing;
Your festal banner wave on high,
The cross of Christ your King.

Refrain:
Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, give thanks and sing!

Bright youth and snow-crowned age,
Strong men and maidens fair,
Raise high your free, exulting song,
God's wondrous praise declare. (Refrain)

 With all the angel choirs,
With all the saints on earth,
Pour out the strains of joy and bliss,
True rapture, noblest mirth! (Refrain)

Yes, on through life's long path,
Still chanting as ye go;
From youth to age, by night and day,
In gladness and in woe. (Refrain)

Still lift your standard high,
Still march in firm array;
As warriors through the darkness toil
Till dawns the golden day. (Refrain)

Maybe one or more of these phrases will especially stand out to you when you sing this hymn on your own or as part of the singing congregation:

• “Bright youth and snow-crowned age, strong men and maidens fair . . . . God’s wondrous praise declare . . . .”

• “. . . . all the angel choirs . . . .”

• “. . . . all the saints on earth . . . .”

• “. . . . in gladness and in woe . . . .”

• “. . . . through the darkness toil till dawns the golden day.”

Christians of all ages—together with choirs of angels and every saint around the globe, whether in good spirits or deep affliction: press on to the golden day of final redemption! And, rejoice!

I press on to reach the end of the race and receive

the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

Philippians 3:14, NLT

Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice!

Philippians 4:4, NLT

IDEAS FOR LISTENING

• Listen for the melody of the hymn-tune throughout.

• The music reflects three of the five stanzas in Hymns for the Living Church, each in a different key, each with some difference in style.  

• Sing the hymn–words AND music–even if you’re by yourself!

Handwashing for All Time by Lorraine Triggs

When it comes to handwashing, the CDC has nothing on my mother.

As a child, I probably washed my hands at least 10 times a day as a matter of course. Routine handwashings included before and after meals, before reading books, (magazines were exempt), after playing with the cat or doing daily chores.

Then there were seasonal handwashings: after digging trenches in the sandbox in which to race small pet store turtles, after any game played in the street, after poking any critter—dead or alive—and after eating grape popsicles in the summer or caramel apples in the fall. My mom's one-size-fits-all advice for anything that ailed us summed up her philosophy: Wash your hands and face and you'll feel better. (She was right.)

My mother came from a long line of handwashers that began with the tabernacle priests who washed their hands at the basin before and after entering the holy place. A symbol of the need to present oneself clean in God's presence.

Over and over in the Old Testament, that simple act of handwashing and clean hands is a picture of righteousness and a pure heart. And when David sinned, he pleaded with God to "wash me throughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!" (Psalm 51:2) No amount of soap and water would do the trick. David needed to be totally disinfected from sin. As much as we are into handwashing, it takes more than these good habits to get rid of sin's infection.

People say that cleanliness is next to godliness, and maybe there is some basis for that thought in traditions like these. But what do we do with Jesus, who seemed sometimes to go out of his way to get his hands dirty in the filth of human everything.

Ironically, the One who came to cleanse us from sin didn't always remember to wash his hands. Or, if he started off with clean hands, he was always getting them dirty. Like when his writing in the dirt made accusers fall away. Think of him touching the man with leprosy or making mud from his saliva and—gasp—touching the blind man's eyes.

In a display of love so amazing, so divine, Jesus' bloody, dirty, wounded hands embraced our sins, gathered our filthy rags and washed us thoroughly from the inside out. Jesus beckoned Thomas, the one with doubts, to touch, to reach, to feel where the nails pierced into the divinely human flesh, yes, to touch his side, torn and scarred for all eternity by our self-actualized dirt that no soap but the sinless blood of our dying God would or could ever wash away. But wash it did, and does and will forevermore.

“My Lord and my God!”

Alas and Did My Savior Bleed

By Erik Dewar, pastor of worship and music

On this Saturday between Good Friday and Easter, we wait.

Our waiting feels more profound than usual this year as we sit in our homes much like the sheltering disciples.

We of course know the rest of the story so we have hope, remembering Jesus’s promise that he would rise tomorrow morning.

Until then, we wait.

And until this pandemic ends, we remember his many other precious promises to us - that he will not leave us or forsake us. He is coming again.

Whether looking ahead to promised grace or looking back at his past faithfulness, today is a good day for reflection.

Remember his sacrifice for us last night with this setting of Isaac Watts’s Alas and Did My Savior Bleed.

As you reflect, consider this interesting factor regarding the poetry and music. Some poet’s themes don’t always fit cleanly within the musical structures in which they’re later set. For instance, sometimes one poetic idea is expressed across multiple stanzas of music. An example of this can be found in verses three and four of Luther’s A Mighty Fortress:

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him.
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure.
One little word shall fell him

That word above all earthly pow'rs, no thanks to them, abideth.
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth.
Let God's and kindred go, this mortal life also.
The body they may kill: God's truth abideth still.
His kingdom is forever.

The “word” referenced at the end of verse three is the same “word” in the beginning of verse four.

Similarly, verses four and five of Alas and Did My Savior Bleed both refer to tears. These two verses are dependent on each other (so you can imagine the disappointment when verse four is left out of many hymnals)! This musical setting uses a shorter interlude and modulation after verse four to spill over into the rest of Watts’s idea in verse five:

Thus might I hide my blushing face 

While his dear cross appears

dissolve my heart in thankfulness 

and melt mine eyes to tears. 

But drops of grief can ne'er repay 

the debt of love I owe; 

Here Lord I give myself away

'Tis all that I can do.

May this be our response of worship as we consider Christ’s sacrifice for us last night.

Jesus Paid it All

By H. E. Singley, organist

Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me.  Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt. (Matthew 18:32-34, NLT)

The verses above are part of a section of the Gospel of Matthew that is entitled “Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor” in the New Living Translation. The main point of the passage is forgiveness, particularly forgiveness on the horizontal, human plane—one person to another. (I do not in any way want to detract from that emphasis in this passage, if for no other reason than its pertinence to my own reality!)

Nonetheless, I would like to think about the king who, at the outset of the story, had forgiven an incalculable debt held by the unforgiving debtor. This merciless individual’s obligation made the pittances he was owed seem infinitesimal when compared to his own unpaid account which, in the words of the NLT, was “millions of dollars.”

It is the debt which every redeemed child of God has to our heavenly Father that I wish to bring into the forefront. We can imagine that “millions of dollars” to a servant in biblical times could have seemed like trillions of dollars would appear to us in our day—a figure that no one could fathom, much less repay (probably not even the government of the United States!).

 I once heard of an admittedly insufficient approximation between a single grain of sand on any seashore in relation to all the sand on all the seashores in all the world and all of time in relation to eternity. Similarly, any parallel between a trillion-dollar debt and what forgiven sinners owe to our loving, merciful Heavenly Father only begins to reckon the measure of our indebtedness due to our condition as sinners by nature and sinners by choice.

King David understood his sin.

Because of your anger, my whole body is sick; my health is broken because of my sins.
My guilt overwhelms me—it is a burden too heavy to bear.  My wounds fester and stink    because of my foolish sins. I am bent over and racked with pain.    All day long I walk around filled with grief.

(Psalm 38:3-6) 

The apostle Paul expresses his—and our—frustration:

I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right,

I inevitably do what is wrong.  I love God’s law with all my heart.

 But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind.

This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.

 Oh, what a miserable person I am!

(Romans 7:21-24a)

There is desperation in this expression of John Donne, a 16th-century Anglican priest and poet:

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When thou hast done, thou hast not done,

For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sin their door?

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallow’d in, a score?

When thou hast done, thou hast not done,

For I have more.

I have a fear of sin, that when I have spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son

Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;

And, having done that, thou hast done;

I fear no more.

 The final stanza of Donne’s poem, “A Hymn to God the Father,” turns us toward the only hope we have for our interminable, seemingly irresolvable debt, the finished work of His resplendent Son.

I hear the Savior say, “Thy strength indeed is small,
Child of weakness, watch and pray, find in Me thine all in all.”

Refrain:
Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.

For nothing good have I whereby Thy grace to claim--
I’ll wash my garments white in the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb. (Refrain)

And when before the throne I stand in Him complete,
"Jesus died my soul to save," my lips shall still repeat. (Refrain)*

All to Him we owe!

“Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow.
Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.

(Isaiah 1:18, NLT)

IDEAS FOR LISTENING

• Listen for the melody of the hymn-tune throughout.

• The music reflects three of the original four stanzas, all in a different key, all with a different stylistic approach.

• Think of the three stanzas above as you hear the music.

•  Sing the hymn–words AND music–even if you’re by yourself!

* “Jesus Paid It All” (All to Christ). Text by Elvina M. Hall, Music by John T. Grape. Both poet and composer were from Baltimore, Maryland and were members of a local Methodist church.

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

By H. E. Singley, organist

I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there?

My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth!

(Psalm 121:1, 2, NLT)

When our family lived in Ecuador in the 1970s and 1980s while involved in missionary service, we lived in what some would call a paradise. Quito, Ecuador’s capital, is located in a valley at an altitude of 9,350 feet (2,850 meters), surrounded by enthralling, majestic mountains. Those mountains are part of the range known as the Andes which looks like a spine extending along the west coast of South America. In Ecuador, the mountains run mainly through the middle of the country with tropical rainforests to the east and indescribable coastlands to the west.

By some counts, Ecuador (which, incidentally, is about equal to the state of Colorado in size) has fourteen mountains which are perpetually snow-capped. Ten of the peaks are over 5000 meters (16,000 feet) high! From our apartment in Quito, we could see five of the snowcaps almost every day of the year. (This Texan loves snow when I can see it off in the distance.)

I’ve come to think of those imposing mountains–each quite different from the others–as another demonstration of the ineffable beauty and grandeur of God’s creation. I’ve also realized that they were a kind of metaphor when we looked out to see them at the beginning of the day and realized that they were still there. I believe we gazed at them to remind ourselves–assure ourselves–that there are at least some things that we can count on virtually every day.

Thus for our family, the words of Psalm 121 have rich significance. They drive all of us to think about what we see in any context that offers confidence and certitude. If we’ve trusted Christ–and Christ alone–for forgiveness of sin and eternal life, then, in the words of the hymn we’re exploring, we have “turned our eyes upon Jesus.”

The writer of the hymn, Helen Lemmel, was born in a pastor’s home in England and came to the United States as a child. She was a singer of some renown and taught voice at Moody Bible Institute and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola University). She wrote the words and composed the music for the hymn.

O soul, are you weary and troubled?

No light in the darkness you see?

There’s light for a look at the Savior,

And life more abundant and free!

Thro' death into life everlasting,

He passed, and we follow Him there;

O’er us sin no more hath dominion--

For more than conqu’rors we are!

His Word shall not fail you--He promised;

Believe Him, and all will be well:

Then go to a world that is dying,

His perfect salvation to tell!

Refrain:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.

As is sometimes the case, the refrain can be detached from the three stanzas (verses) and stand by itself. (Some hymnals have done that.) The stanzas, however, strengthen the refrain by:

• Asking if we might be weary and troubled (perhaps a rhetorical question?)

• Reminding us that His Word will not fail us

• Urging us to tell of His salvation to a dying world

There’s a summons here for all people, no matter where we find ourselves in our spiritual pilgrimage!

May we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, knowing He is always there!

Let all the world look to me for salvation!

    For I am God; there is no other.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses

to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down,

especially the sin that so easily trips us up.

And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus,

the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

(Isaiah 45:22; Hebrews 12:1,2a, NLT)

IDEAS FOR LISTENING

• Listen for the melody of the hymn-tune throughout.

• The music begins and ends with the refrain.

• Two different interpretations accompany the melody of the “verse part” of the hymn. (You might think of the first and final stanzas.)

• Sing the hymn–words AND music–even if you’re by yourself!