Ancient Truth | Modern Sound

After the flood in Genesis God told Noah to look to the sky for the rainbow.   “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth “

So, after hurricane Ike, we need to look to the sky for the rainbow.  The promise that life will go on is there if we will look. 

It is easy for me to say this I am in Moscow (again).  I did not feel the wind or the rain instead I only watched it on CNN.  Yet I do look to the sky and thank God for the rainbows in my life.  The number one is my wife Karen, who stares down a hurricane and says “make my day”.  “Stoic” could have been invented for her in these circumstances and her faith and unending practicality make my life easy.  I mean, honestly, I got a text message from her today (the power was down and phone out at this point in our home in Katy) wondering how I was coping in Moscow.  As I was ordering room service at that point I decided not to reply at precisiely that moment.  She is my rainbow. 

I know that there may be some who will experience only tragedy from hurricane Ike.  I understand that.  But the story of the rainbow after the flood is the story of all life after the fall of man.  Tragedy befalls us but God in his providence has guaranteed that there will always be a way back to him and a way bak to a whole life.   The picture in the post is hurricane Ike take from the space station.  How could something so beautiful bring such pain and tragedy.  Only God could explain this. 

DEVIL MUSIC?
What’s the deal with CrossPoint?  On most Sunday mornings the band fires up some ungodly, un-spiritual, secular radio song right before the preaching of God’s Word.  Why on earth is that a good idea?  Shouldn’t God’s Word be set up with the most sacred, religious, pure and holy music that we can imagine?  Isn’t listening to secular music a sin?  I mean, I smashed or burned all of my Ted Nugent records at youth retreat in 1982.  Don’t you guys know that God’s House is not the place for that kind of nonsense?  Does Bob Larson need to play more records backwards for you?

It occurred to me that some people may be asking these kind of questions when they see that we often play songs by all sorts of pagans during our Sunday service.  Since I have been the worship leader at CrossPoint we have played songs by  Kansas, Eric Clapton, Green Day, Good Charlotte, Coldplay, KISS, Linkin Park, Talking Heads, The Who, Madonna, Rare Earth, Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel, Sevendust, Beatles, David Matthews, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Lenny Kravitz, Bob Marley, Kool & The Gang, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Tom Waits, Don Henley, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Blind Faith, Seal, The Cure, and honestly, we’re are likely to play a song by just about anyone.  I’m certainly not saying that all of those artists are rank pagans, because I don’t know any of them, but I am saying that their music is not usually thought of as sacred (or church music).  We tend to play these songs just before the sermon.  It sets the tone, introduces the topic, and gives an emotional and cultural touch-point for what is going to be talked about.

THAT’S NOT RIGHT!
There have certainly been people who are critical of this practice, but I believe their criticism is contrary to biblical teaching.  They would say that entertainment has no place in worship, and the music/lyrics of the  ungodly should not be used in holy worship.  One Christmas I received an Email from a very angry member of the congregation because we played John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas.”  She reminded me that John Lennon was an outspoken atheist, so his music was “not at all” fitting for a church service.  Imagine that.

WESTERN SOUNDTRACK
In the Western culture there are many works of music that “most of us” are familiar with.  We have heard them on the radio, on T.V., at the mall, in the grocery store, during football games, at the park, in movies, etc.  The soundtrack of Western Civilization includes many pagan artists that have become part of our cultural make-up.  I pull from this lexicon of popular music to find common ground with our audience.  If we are teaching on grace, I will search for a song that illustrates grace in either a positive or negative way.  Sometimes music can reach deep into us, places that logic can’t touch, places of deep memories and nostalgia.  Maybe the song will open our hearts in a way that some other sermon illustration wouldn’t.  Maybe it will open the door for a conversation at work during the next week, “You’ll never believe what song they played at my church this week!”

I’M GONNA NEED A VERSE!
St Paul certainly knew the value of using popular artists of his day to teach and preach.  He must have been a fan of Greek and Roman pagan poetry and philosophy (the secular rock stars of his day), because he used direct quotes from Hymns to Zeus in his sermons and in his epistles that make up the New Testament.  There are three famous quotes of pagan poets in the New Testament by St Paul, first the pagan philosopher/poet/mystic Epimenides in Titus 1: 12 when he says “Even one of their own prophets has said, “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.”  The second is when Paul is speaking at the Areopagus (in Acts) and quotes Cleanthes (from The Phoenomena of Aratus) saying that their native poets had said, “For we are also his offspring.” And, the third is in his writing to the Corinthians where he writes, “Evil communications corrupt good manners” or “Evil associations destroy excellent characters” from a tragedy of Euripides.  These quotations were from popular hymns to Zeus that would have been as common to a Greek audience as the Beatles would be to us today.  These are not the only times in the Bible that the words of pagans were used by God to teach something true.  Evil men speaking evil words (untrue words)  and then God’s people using those words to say something right and true.  God is constantly doing this.  He is doing it right now, to a much lessor extent, through me.  (ahem)

KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!
You may be wondering why I put the word secular in quotes (up there, in the title).  The reason is because I don’t think anything is truly secular.  St Paul was pretty fond of quoting another popular poet, too, his name was David, and David said “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” in Psalm 24:1 (Paul quoted this in 1 Corinthians 10:26).  I take this to mean that some things might not be specifically “sacred” but that doesn’t mean that they are evil.  There is not a good team (God, the angels and the church) and a bad team (the Devil, his demons, rock stars and politicians) with secular things belonging to the bad team.  Next week at CrossPoint we going to be talking about how we must teach our children to honor their bodies and maintain sexual purity as part of a series on Biblical parenting.  So my job is to find a song that will remind us of this and set up the tone for the sermon.  Do you remember the Georgia Satellites?  “No huggie, no kissie, until I get a wedding ring!”  (See how this works?)

This is my last week as a Brit.  On Wednesday I go through the swearing in ceremony and become a citizen of the United States.  Growing up in the seventies my view of America and what it was all about was defined by TV shows like “Starsky & Hutch” and “Dallas”.  It is a sobering thought to think that these are the prisms through which the world looks into America.  My dad, big Tam, liked America too.  But it was the land of Western stories of Louis L’Amour that he liked.  My dad was born too late – he would have been Rooster Cogburn in another life – he was born to be an upright man who would bring order from chaos, sixgun in hand.  Because of him, to this day, I can’t resist (who can) a good Western.  Despite being brought up in a Scottish mining village, me becoming an American seems more like predestination than a cosmic fluke.

 Even so, this has been a good last week to be a Brit.  The Brits had their best Olympics for 100 years.  Actually, exactly 100 years, because it was in 1908 in London the last time Great Britain was this great at the Olympics.  Even that is a bit of a cheat however.  In London in 1908 the British team fielded over a third of all competitors and there were a few Olympic events that year where the entire field was British.  So, I think it is fair to say that 2008 Beijing is the greatest ever Olympics as far as Great Britain is concerned.  On reading the stories of the athletes in the newspapers I am struck with a change in the athletes which I think represents a change in the culture.  We in Britain, especially Scotland, have been famous for the plucky effort which comes up famously short of success.  As a nation, we flatter to deceive.  It seems that these are not the Brits of 2008 however.  These current Olympians have a decidedly different outlook.  One cyclist was described as an athlete who “doesn’t do silver”.  Another went all out on the last corner and fell going for gold rather than settling for silver.  Getting nothing was better than just settling for second best.  I like them.  They are winners and they have a lot to teach us.  Just this week I was in a meeting at work where one of my colleagues suggested that the bid for work we had submitted was “competitive”.  Trying to emulate the British Olympians I told him being competitive wasn’t good enough I wanted to win.   On Wednesday all this will change in a way I am not sure of.  I will in some way stop being British and start being an American.   Since 1991 it has been like being a stranger in a strange land as I wander around trying to figure out the customs of another place and another culture.  I have lived in Houston and I still have not worked it out – maybe that is the point of course.  Maybe you only figure it all out at the end like the crime novels I like so much.  When I think about it becoming an American is a bit like becoming a Christian was for me.  I was close enough to the church as a kid to kind of know what it was about in a peripheral way but there was still a lot that I wasn’t familiar with.  I had to learn (am learning of course) to be a Christian.  I couldn’t count on those vaguely remembered stories from Sunday school; I had to make them my own.  I had watched the church in action and admired it but I only understood it when I became involved in it.  I didn’t know what forgiveness was until my wife forgave me.  I didn’t know what righteousness was until I saw it in the life of my mother in law.  And so, in living and working amongst other Christian people I gradually came to know what it means to be a Christian.  No Damascus moment for me.  Instead more like Pilgrims Progress, a journey yet to be finished. So, over my years living in here my view of Americathrough the lenses of “Dallas” and “Starsky & Hutch” has obviously changed.  I have learned to deeply appreciate Jefferson and Washington and the constitution.  The constitution, for example, applies to all who set foot in these lands, not just citizens.  That seems to me to point to how the framers of the constitution knew that this would be a special place that would offer unique solace to those who arrived here.  It did then and still does.  Do you know of another document like this – I don’t.   

A long time ago - in fact before there was a Great Britain - Jon Donne the English Elizabethan poet and Bishop wrote a poem to commemorate his marriage to Ann, the love of his life.  He called her a “new found land” which was the phrase of course that was used to describe the new continent across the sea.  He, a Brit, found in Ann what I found in Karen, a place of beauty, mystery, and danger, untamed by any man.  Like America.  So, this week I move from alien to citizen, Brit to American.  Thanks for the open arms.