Here’s my project.

Here’s the pdf chord sheetpraise-to-the-lord-the-almighty

There are three reasons I love (and therefore chose) this song.  First, I encountered this song while planting a youth church in Berlin, Germany.  The original German hymn is a classic and just has some fabulously memorable lines stuck to a simple melody.  The version I initially heard, however, was not the traditional one, but rather a lively slighty syncopated rock version by Tengerin Doo with front lady Stephanie Kleinen. 

We then began using this song in our worship times and several others written by Stephanie.  These songs resonated with our Youth, in part, because they were authentically German songs: written in German, by Germans for Germans.  Even many of the songs which came out of the Jesus Freak movement (whose leadership has ties with the Vineyard, by the way) were written by Germans in English.  At our own little church we sang several songs in English and several more written in English translated into German.  We were often hard pressed finding original German material.

All this is to say that this song holds a special place in my missionary past…

The second reason why I love this song is that not only do some of those fabulously memorable lines survive the translation, still packing a punch in English, but Catherine Winkworth added some great lines herself by replacing some untraslatable or weak lines in the orignal.  For example, the opening line in German: Lobe den Herren, den maechtige Koenig der Ehren, litterally translates: “Praise the Lord, the powerful King of Honors.” 

Winkworth ups the adjective to the superlative with some alitteration and sight adjustments for meter: “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation,” which changes also the focus of who the Lord is king of…Creation, no less.  It amazes me, as a linguist, how a carfully creative translator can benefit a song.

This theme of creator (along with many others which I will have to leave out, i.e. savior, trinity…) continues often subtley throught the hymn.  The second verse, for example, speaks of how God sustains through what he has ordained, which aludes to his foreknowledge in creating the world as it is and having set things in motion which would take thousands of years to come to fruition at just the right moment (like the messiah culmintion in Jesus whose promise comes with the curse.)

I think my favorite line which reads identically in German, “Ponder anew, what the Almighty can do” What hope!

Finaly, I love the musical possibilities Neander, Winkworth, and Heinen have left open.  This song has so much room for incredible rhythyms, inovative harmonies, and the like.  I would love to hear where someone else takes it…

-Marcus

P.S. My apologies about the clipping….

I did for the record make many changes of my own.  It took the liberty of updating some of the words to this millenia. If you like the sustaineths and the e’res then you can always use the original.  I also spruced up the E E A E E B interludes with the “Praise to the Lord” melody and I added the second interlude after the 3rd verse.

I was just trucking along in my morning devotional minding my own business when this text in Exodus 14 just nailed me in its description of the Trinity. It seems every member of the Trinity is present yet taking part in the story independently.

Let me set the scene. The Israelites have fled Egypt upon Pharaoh’s request due to the 10 plagues. Meanwhile, Pharaoh changed his mind yet again and has caught up with to his former slaves with his enormous elite army of calvary and chariots. The Lord responds to the Israelites complaining that he will deliver them and win glory for himself from the Egyptians by allowing them to pass through the Red Sea. Then in vs. 19 we have the following description:

19 Then the angel of God, who had been travelling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, 20 coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other; so neither went near the other all night long.

19 Then the angel of God, who had been travelling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, 20 coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other; so neither went near the other all night long(1).

and after the Isralites advance though the walls of water with the Egyptians trailing we read that

24 During the last watch of the night the LORD looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion(1).

In these passages, arguably one of the most important founding narratives for the Israelites, we see three pictures of God. First we find the Angel of the Lord who was physically traveling with the Israelites who moves from the front of the army to the back. The Angel or messenger of the Lord is Christ(2). The Pillar of Cloud/Fire, who is the Spirit also moves with the to the back of the camp. Together they separate the Israelites from the Egyptians throughout the night. Finally, we see the Lord, the Father, who casts confusion on the Egyptians in their pursuit of the Israelites.

Who are these three characters? The Lord is God:YHWH. He is soverign, in control of the Israelites escape and who hardens Pharaoh’s heart and confuses his seemingly invincible army. Pharaoh, we should remember, claims to be devine himself, thereby setting himself up as a rival god over and against the YHWH.

The Angel is God’s human agent for his people, who protects and leads God’s people.

The Pillar protects and leads as well but he is much more ethereal in nature (fire and smoke are about as ethereal as you can get) certainly not human like the Angel.

This would seem to at least anticipate in form the coming Christ and the Spirit he gives to his followers.

1. NIV

2. Talbert, Charles. Reading John. New York: Crossroad, 1992.

I’ve been thinking about the Trinity quite a bit, largely because I hope to write a song on the subject as my final project but also because it is just something that deserves more of my thought. Anyway, I have a few thoughts I’d like to share. The one is something I picked up from this grad school class on Christian/Sacramental Marriage I took this summer from Dr. Mark Lowery at the University of Dallas (a small, private, catholic, liberal arts school) this last summer.

One way the Trinitarian nature of God is reflected in his human image bearers is family. A family, in the sense of two believers who have fully entered into a sacramental and covenant marriage, consists of a man who becomes one flesh with a woman. They are still two distinct persons yet they are one in that they permanently belong together. Out of this permanent, exclusive, heterosexual love a child may be born who is also part of this family. This child is distinctly independent of its parents yet it permanently belongs to them by nature.

So perhaps it could be helpful (so it was suggested) to understand specifically the Holy Spirit with this analogy of the family and children. Children emanate from parents in a similar way to the Spirit emanating from the Father and the Son. And when Christ ascended he then left us his Spirit, also his Father’s, to empower, teach and dwell in his people.

I think I’ll leave my other thought on the Trinity for another post…

Until I read Wright’s Simply Christian (1), I had thought that role of the scriptures in worship was mostly relegated to being a foundation from which songs/liturgy are written. In other words, worship leaders were using the scriptures in worship properly if they were choosing songs with texts that either matched up with scriptural theology or were scripture themselves.

I am not yet quite sure what I think of his idea–although it is at least many centuries if not closer to two mellennia older than Wright himself (and now that I think of it I must have heard this idea before, but dismissed it as from a differing tradition. The idea is this, that scripture itself, specifically its public reading, is worship: it reliably declares God’s character and works in history.

Contentions?

What about the earliest Christians who did not yet possess written scripture? Well, they did have the Old Testament, i.e. Jesus’ Bible, most practically the Psalms much of their perhaps original melodies. They had the oral traditions and the apostles, disciples and other eye witnesses of Christ’s life and teaching as well.

Would it be worship to God to retell these stories? Why not!

Well it’s not directed to God for one thing? So are thousands of hymns and songs: God is in third person.

But it’s so passive? One must just sit and listen. Not if everyone brings a story!

Nevertheless, it does seem especially that the church should sing to God together in worship. Brian Doerksen puts it well:

Why do we sing songs in the first place? We do it because it is something that we can do together. There are probably other things that we could do to express our love and our worship to God that would be, in one sense, just as valid. But they’re not easy for us to do together. Yet we can get ten people, or a hundred people, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand – whatever number we choose – and we can all get together and sing a song. That song reflects what is going on in our hearts and our minds, together. There is truth that we’re affirming, but there’s also affection that we’re expressing. That’s why I think that singing as an expression of worship has stood the test of time (2).

Yet there is something simple, eternal and universal about reading scripture in the context of worship. But can it really be the central activity? I just can’t imagine it.

I’d love to hear some thoughts on this one.

(1) N.T. Wright, Simply Christian. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.

(2) Dan Wilt, “Exploring Our Roots: The Contemporary Worship Movement.” Perspectives On Christian Worhsip: Five Views, Ed. J. Matthew Pinston. B&B Publishing Group. 2008.

Ok, the Trinity.  God is one but three.  Weird.  Who can blame our fellow Jewish and Muslim monotheists for misunderstanding Christian theology as polytheistic.  I have to admit, I follow pretty well with the Father and the Son but the Spirit gets a little, well. . . , ethereal.   

I think this difficulty is nothing new.  In fact, as I understood it from my last church history class, the theology of the Trinity evolved as the church and its councils began sorting out the divinity of Christ and his relationship with his Father.  The Holy Spirit was then understood as a part of that relationship but much less defined. 

Perhaps brushing up on my church history could lead to a later post, but for now I just want to ask some of the questions in respect to the Trinity.

First, we start with the Creator.  Obviously the Father, right? But then he didn’t just speak his fiat by himself, rather the Spirit was brooding on the waters, and later we learn in the eighth chapter of Proverbs that Wisdom was not only with God (v.27) but was his craftsman (v.30.) Before I get accused for trying to add a fourth member of the Trinity we find the statement at the outset of John’s Gospel that the Word (clearly a personification of Christ here, which becomes flesh in v. 14) was with God in the beginning and through whom all things were made. 

My point, or rather the understanding of many biblical scholars [1 & 2] is that the traditions of Word and Wisdom combine in the Logos, the second Person of the Trinity: the Son–although Wright seems to put these traditions into the Holy Spirit [3].

But regardless whether the Son or the Holy Spirit culminate the Word and Wisdom traditions of the Old Testament, we are left with the fact that the Father was not alone at or in creation.  

In light of this, one might ask the question whether any member of the Trinity acts independently of the other members.  Well, Christ did seem to die on the cross independently.  That is, in the moment he took on the sin of the world the Father turned his face on him, right?  Certainly, the Spirit led him there.

On the other hand, all persons were present and active even in this most terrible execution. Perhaps that’s it: if God is one being with different persons, perhaps those persons always act together in one accord, as it were, but with different roles.  

Hmmm, food for thought…

[1] Brown, Ramond E., The Gospel According to John (i-xii) Vol.29. The Anchor Bible. Doubleday & Company, Inc: Garden City, New York, 1966.

[2] Talbert, Charles.  Reading John. New York: Crossroad, 1992.

[3]N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006)

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

I think the first experience with worship I can remember–there were surely others before–was at a youth conference in Anaheim in the early 90′s.

One of the theme songs for the conference was a then hot off the presses “Arms of Love” by Craig Musseau. Singing that simple songs somehow penetrated my 14 year old heart and ruined me forever for encountering God through simple powerful worship songs.

It was the same year I began learning guitar and drums. I loved rock. I learned Beatles songs from my dad and Nirvana from my friends. From playing drums in my closet to crowd surfing at rock shows, the power of music intrigued me.

It still does.

I’ve been leading worship for 14 years. I’ve been involved in different forms of music evangelism for 10. I spent 5 years in Berlin, Germany planting a youth church, during which time I played in 4 bands. I’ve been back in the US for nearly 2 years now and I feel like I’m having music withdrawal.

But I can’t wait to learn more…