The lectionary reading yesterday was from John 8. It’s an absolutely bananas passage, but this part really stuck out to me:
Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.
-John 8:31-36 (NKJV)
“We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone!” the Jews listening to Jesus argue. But could this statement be more ridiculous? Only a few generations after Abraham they were literally slaves in Egypt for 400 years. In more recent memory they were quite literally slaves in Babylon for ~70 years. And right then, as they are speaking, they are essentially non-citizens in an occupied territory of Rome. They aren’t slaves proper, but a pretty far cry from “free”. They obviously knew all that too, but insisted on the liberty talk.
I imagine people today saying, “We’re Americans! We have never been in bondage to anyone!” (bald eagle screeches overhead). And Jesus responding with “uhhhhhhh, not exactly”.
My friend Austin posted the above. The same day, Micah Mattix wrote this in his newsletter. I think the two go together.
Scott Beauchamp writes about the German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han: “‘Every age has its signature afflictions.’ So begins Han’s The Burnout Society, his taut tract describing the psychological effects of our technological age. The signature affliction of our time isn’t viral or bacterial, he maintains. Instead, it’s neurological illnesses ‘such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder (BPD) and burnout syndrome,’ which ‘mark the landscape of pathology at the beginning of the twenty-first century.’ Today’s society ‘is no longer Foucault’s disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories,’ Han explains. ‘It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society.’ The inhabitants of this society are instructed to be ‘entrepreneurs of themselves.’”
Purgatorio, Dante, Sayer’s translation (third time)
Purgatorio, Dante, Sinclair translation
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
Wow is that all? That’s got to be a rock-bottom low for the year from the time I learned to read. Why? Because nearly every minute that I would have spent reading I was instead writing music! I completed my full-length concept album based on Dante’s Purgatorio.
16 tracks total: 6 original songs, 7 instrumentals, 2 cinematics, and 1 cover song. This is my third album and was definitely the most challenging. I’m pretty happy with how a lot of it turned out.
A friend of mine in Ethiopia has a small ministry to the blind Christian community there. He runs regular bible studies and get togethers and sometimes distributes donated materials to them. This is the third time I’ve built audio bibles in Amharic and Oromo to send to him.
Now, why build them myself? Can’t these be purchased? Yes of course. Megavoice produces high-quality rugged audio bible devices that work great. They even have models that charge with solar panels on the back for use in areas with poor electricity. They come preloaded with audio bible recordings from virtually every language available. Other groups like Faith Comes by Hearing use these same devices. The first time I went to Ethiopia, I bought several of them with me.
Unfortunately, they are are kind of expensive! The cheapest models are still about $50 a piece. You can get a large price cut if you buy hundreds of them at a time, but I can’t do that. They are also kind of small, about the size of a clamshell cell phone, which is fine for personal listening, but if you were using them in a group setting, one with larger speakers could be handy.
Fortunately, there are tons of portable rechargeable speakers being made in China and sold in America that work pretty well and cost only $10-$20. Most of them come with an SD card slot, so can effectively be preloaded with audio bible MP3 files, which are pretty easy to find online. Amazon has about 100 different ones at any given time.
So twice this year I’ve sent a batch of 10 of these kind of devices:
I use a pack of the smallest/cheapest SD cards I can find to load them with. Virtually everyone has a cell phone in Ethiopia and the vast majority of these are Indian-made clamshell phones or previous generation Androids. They pretty much all use micro-USB so that kind of charger and cable are everywhere.
When I put together 10 units this December, the total cost, with tax, was $201. So that’s basically $20 per device. The feedback I’ve gotten so far is that people like that they are loud and easy to charge. I don’t have reports of any of them breaking yet, but it’s likely some of them from 2 years ago have by now. Who knows. It’s also entirely possible they’ve been reloaded or augmented with reggae music. That’s just a risk I have to take at this point!
One trick is that these inexpensive devices have limited file navigation – usually just a forward and back button. That’s fine but you need to make extra sure your files will play in the correct order, from Genesis to Revelation (or Matthew to Revelation if only the NT recording exists), chapter by chapter. I had to use a mass renaming tool to make sure the files had the correct number or leading zeros so they could be navigated in the correct order on the device.
Here I have 5 of them charging at once before I package them up:
My wife made nice braille and print labels to apply to the devices:
At the end, all packaged up with some canes and some braille watches, it looks like this:
My friends at One Changed Life are spending 4 months there this year, so I sent the gear along in their luggage.
If you would like to put together some similar DYI audio bibles and would like some tips, feel free to contact me.
One of the prayers of the people in the Book of Common Prayer states:
We bless your holy Name for all your servants who departed this life in your faith and fear, praying you would grant us grace to follow their good examples, that with them we might partake in your heavenly kingdom.
A few weeks ago, I was asked to preach briefly at the funeral of my beloved grandmother Suzanne. As for finding ways to “follow their good examples”, this was not difficult at all and I was glad that I got to share them with those who were there to listen. I figured I might as well post the text of what I said for anyone else to read.
Sermon for Suzanne Jepsen’s Funeral Sunday, December 13, 2002
Good afternoon. My name is Matthew and I’m one of Suzanne’s grandson’s, Bill and Nancy’s son.
I want to begin by reading to you a passage of scripture you may have heard read or sung this season, as we are in the season of Advent, the time of waiting for Christ’s return, and waiting to celebrate his birth on Christmas day. These verses appear in the “Comfort Ye” portion of Handles Messiah oratorio.
Isaiah 40:1-5
“Comfort, yes, comfort My people!”
Says your God.
“Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the Lord’s hand Double for all her sins.”
The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make straight in the desert
A highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked places shall be made straight And the rough places smooth;
The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
These words from the prophet Isaiah speak of the coming of Jesus Christ to save humanity, and at this time we look for his coming again. Suzanne looked for this too, every day, and it was the source of her hope and of her character. Many of you who knew Suzanne are well aware that her life was widely characterized by love and kindness. She of course had many flaws, as all people, do but the dominant qualities of her speech and actions were gentleness, patience, understanding, and goodwill. These are the fruits of the holy spirit and they were experienced by us around her as God worked in her heart and life.
I’ll share just a few examples. We’ve had a lot of people who couldn’t attend today send letters in describing some of their own memories of Suzanne.
Anne and Dennis Doherty, who lived in Heppner for many years, wrote to say: Something I can share with you is that 44 years ago when we learned that our infant daughter was deaf, your mother was there with the doctor and me. I didn’t yet know her well, but she sensed that we were private people, trying to determine how best to deal with this. Your mother kept our secret. She started a prayer chain for us, but kept our identities a secret.
For two weeks we struggled with how to deal with this. Finally we were able to meet with experts at OHSU. The day we drove to Portland, I realized that our little girl suddenly responded to sound. The doctors there discovered her hearing to be perfect. It still is.
We didn’t know the source of this miracle until years later when I was visiting with your mother and the rest of our bridge gals one evening. After I told the women of our miracle, your mother finally revealed that she and her prayer community had been asking God for this miracle. I couldn’t stop my tears. I had doubted God for so many years after the death of our first baby, but I realized that He had heard the prayers and hadn’t given up on us. I will always thank your mother for her faith in God, in prayer, and in me.
Kelly Christman wrote in to say:
I have only fond memories of her, and one that goes way back to childhood I will never forget… When she was a nurse for Doctor Wolfe I was mesmerized by her gentle and kind personality as well as her physical beauty. I thought she was so pretty and nice but couldn’t believe she worked in such a scary place. Dr. Wolfe gave me stitches in my scalp, for the first time in my life, and it was not pleasant experience, except for Suzanne. Thereafter, when I had to return for other ailments, her calming presence helped me deal better with my fear
I remember so many of Suzanne’s kind actions toward my family, to my brothers and sisters, my cousin, and to many of the community here in Heppner. She often led the way for many of the charitable things that she and Bob did together when he was still here. I remember all her work to make the community a better place too, whether it be in getting the Willow Creek Terrace assisted living facility built, or by beautifying the neighborhood, or even cheering on the football team. She was always there in a full spectrum of positive upbuilding actions because she primarily thought of others before herself. She also had a healthy sense of humor and didn’t take herself too seriously. This kind of humility is also a fruit of the spirit.
Personally, I remember her always listening to me, even when I was an angsty teenager. She always had her cupboards stocked with my favorite cookies when I visited. She would even listen along to my silly techno music in the car. She’s also the one who taught me to say the Lord’s Prayer when I didn’t know what else to pray. She didn’t put pressure on me to perform or be a better person, but that acceptance gave me the freedom to BE better, knowing I was loved regardless. Suzanne most often exhibited love in the way that God does – in an unconditional, unilateral way – love that doesn’t have a list of prerequisites.
And so, honestly, I know God better because of Suzanne’s loving actions. We live in a world dominated by performance measurements – whether you deserve this or that, deserve that paycheck, deserve to be helped, where trust takes years to earn and just minutes to throw in the trash. But God’s love for us is one-way. He isn’t waiting for us to reach some particular threshold in being a nice person before he’ll love us back. Almost everything else on earth works that way, be He doesn’t. But that’s hard to know, even if you go to church all the time and hear is spelled out in the bible or wherever else. But Suzanne’s love showed me, and showed many of us, a bit of what it’s like to be loved by God in an unconditional, unilateral way.
St. Paul says it this way in his letter to Titus.
Titus 3:4–7
When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Suzanne put her faith in Jesus Christ, and it largely defined her life.
She knew the source of life, of real life, of eternal life.
But now she’s gone.
We are gathering here today to celebrate her and to celebrate the Lord who made her and celebrate the Lord who redeemed her.
You are going to grieve if you knew her, you are going to grieve, you’re going to feel things. You’re going to feel angry, you’re going to feel hurt, you’re going to feel sad, you’re going to feel relieved, you’re going to feel joyful, you’re going to feel nothing. And that’s OK. Grieving is part of the process. Grieving is important. It’s part of what we have to do as human beings.
But we don’t grieve as people who have no hope. There ARE people that grieve as those who have no hope, who are certain that what you see is all there is. That’s it. The end of the line is right here. Chop! But this is not the end of the line. Suzanne’s body failing on her is not the end of the line for her. And it will not be the end of the line when our bodies fail either, if we are in Christ.
Suzanne is not going to heaven because she was a nice person (most of the time). Suzanne is going to heaven because of the man who died on the cross for her, and Suzanne clung to that hope. Her soul rests not in the ground, but in Jesus Christ. If you aren’t sure if you are ever going to see Suzanne again, if you think all this talk about resurrection sounds sketchy, I would encourage you to pray to God, your maker, and ask his Holy Spirit to change your heart. If you are even listening to this right now, there is a good chance that Suzanne herself got on her knees and asked God the same thing, for YOU, just as she regularly did for herself.
1 Corinthians 15:20-23
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For since death came through one man (Adam), the resurrection of the dead comes also through one man (Jesus).
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
As Suzanne’s short-term memory failed this past year, her anxiety also faded and she began to worry less about the problems of the world and about dying. For a time now, all we have left of Suzanne are our memories of her. And that’s sad. It really is. But it’s also temporary. We will see Suzanne again because only her body is gone from us, for a little while.
But will you see Suzanne again? We can talk about the Love of God all day, but Jesus himself also gives us serious warnings and it would be disingenuous of me to not mention them. Sin and death are still at work in the world and in our own hearts, corrupting everything it touches and continuously working to make us into nasty, petty, and even violent people – filling our hearts with filth. 2020 has been a heck of a year to see that in action in our communities! Suzanne knew this too and clung to Jesus Christ as her savior to cleanse her from these things regularly, and now, finally.
Somehow, though God’s love for us in infinite and one-way, he still gives us the dignity of choosing to follow him or not. Theologians and philosophers have been debating the mechanics of that for literally thousands of years, but they are no closer to explaining exactly how it works or why. It’s a mystery. But what we are supposed to do about it, as far as we can understand, is NOT a mystery.
In Luke chapter 13, several folks came to Jesus and asked him about some current events. Listen to his reply.
Luke 13:1-5 NLT
About this time Jesus was informed that the government had murdered some people from Galilee as they were offering sacrifices at the Temple.
“Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?” Jesus asked. “Is that why they suffered?
Not at all! And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God. And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem?
No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too.”
Did you hear about those three people that died of COVID in the hospital in Hermiston last week? Were they some of the most terrible sinners in eastern Oregon? Of course not! But unless you repent from your sins and turn to God, you will perish too.
Today, if you do not follow Jesus Christ, then my word to you is simple. Turn from your sins and trust in him!
Today, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, my word to you is exactly the same. Turn from yours sins, throw them in the trash, and trust in him!
Jesus himself said,
John 11:25-26
I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord. Whosever believes in me,
though he die, yet shall he live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
“What has sin wrought in the world? Death! But, Alleluia, and thanks be to God, what happened to our Lord Jesus in His Rising from the dead will happen also to Suzanne!”
Now Suzanne was a member of the Episcopal church her whole life. Because of the virus restrictions, it didn’t work out to have this service there like we did for Bob a few years ago. But nearly every Sunday of her life, Suzanne recited this prayer before receiving communion, as is the tradition there:
“We praise you, joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, who for ever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your Name:”
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
She said that regularly to remind herself of who her Lord and savior and hope was. Now, on this Sunday, she is saying it again, only a bit closer to those angels and archangels than we are standing here.
For those of you that remember the ways in which Suzanne loved you without caring a bit about whether you loved her back or what you could do for her, remember, that is what God is like. Lay down your burdens and come to him, and he will give you rest.
So few books this year! Why? COVID? No. Rather, I’ve shifted gears almost entirely to making music, at least for now. Instead of reading, I wrote, recorded, produced, and released two full albums of original music. I will likely post some more about that later.
The Inklings, Humphrey Carpenter (2nd time)
Keep Going, Austin Kleon (twice)
Purgatorio, Dante, Dorothy Sayers translation and notes (twice)
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield (2nd time)
Blessed are the Misfits, Brant Hansen
Holy Island: A Lenten Pilgrimage to Lindisfarne, James W. Kennedy
Paul for Everyone: Romans, N.T. Wright
Who Will Deliver Us?, Paul Zahl (3rd time)
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller
Here is a cover of the classic 1991 Maranatha Christian praise song, loosely based on Psalm 42. It’s always been one of my favorites, even though more than a few renditions of it veer into cheesiness. A few days ago, I was listening to the Broken Record Podcast and I heard musician Nathaniel Rateliff and host Bruce Headlam ridiculing this song while Nathaniel recounted his fundy childhood. Well, I’m sorry but I really don’t think this song sucks as much as they say and so I decided to take a stab at producing an honest version of how I hear it. I hope you enjoy it. If you want to sing along, vanilla slides are provided.
This is my second attempt at recording a song in Logic. I’m fairly happy with how some of it turned out, but I feel like the compression and EQ on both the vocals and especially the guitar are lacking. At some point I just had to say “stop” and ship it and move on to the next thing. For the synth pads (which I’m a complete sucker for) I used Air Hybrid.
Since the start of the COVID-19 virus lockdown a little over a month ago, our local church has been recording video sermons and posting them online Sunday morning, along with some announcements and an occasional testimony or scripture reading. That has all been just fine, but for worship music a YouTube playlist has been provided. The list of 3-4 songs is picked by our usual worship team leaders so they are ones everyone knows. Unfortunately, they’ve been nigh impossible to sing along with.
These are usually the official recordings or live performances of contemporary groups like Hillsong or Bethel or Chris Tomlin. They sound great. They look cool. And they are nearly impossible to sing along with, let alone “worship” along with, whatever that means. They are highly produced and usually include no lyrics. When they do include lyrics, it’s usually accompanied by busy moving sappy stock nature video, making it hard to read and visually distracting. This stuff is just fine for what it is, but it’s not for congregational singing. It’s been driving me nuts so after the first week we didn’t even try to use the provided playlist but rather sang the same songs or similar in the house with our own piano, guitar, or whatever else was around.
This week was my turn to pick songs for the Sunday worship playlist so I decided that instead of complaining, I’d try to remedy the situation by recording some really vanilla straight-ahead versions of tunes and then putting really simple slides over them. The idea was to make them easy to sing along with in your living room. I think they turned out alright.
I sang and played guitar, my wife sang and played piano, and my oldest daughter played violin and whistle. They were recorded in one take, on one track, with a stereo mic. Assuming they are well received, we’ll hopefully do some more next time!
It’s Good Friday of Holy Week here in the disease quarantine that is spring 2020. I’m reading the Lenten meditations of James Kennedy in his book on Lindisfarne, the Holy Island. I’m going to quote from the passage today at length and add a few things.
Popular science guru Neil deGrasse Tyson appears in a new Master Class advertisement that’s playing a lot these days saying:
One of the great challenges in life is knowing enough to think you’re right but not enough to know you’re wrong.
He’s said the same in various tweets and interviews over the years. And he’s right! But this quote is pretty rich coming deGreass Tyson, a guy who’s made his entire career on doing just that – talking with faux-authority about crap he knows nothing about. He understands contemporary astrophysics really well. That’s great. But that knowledge often doesn’t translate well into other branches of science, and especially into psychology, philosophy, politics, economics, and theology, but that’s never stopped him from running his mouth non-stop to become one of the contemporary prophets of scientism. He’s easy to ignore though. I don’t need to pay $180 for his online video course.
Closer to home, it’s discouraging to me when pastors and Evangelical Thought Leaders do the same thing. Some do so while feigning modestly or even embedding literal prayers for humility in their talks or writing. Everyone needs to take their own advice on intellectual humility a bit more seriously. The fact is, the world contains a mountain of things that cannot be explained. Many of these things we can observe and know are real (in our heads or hearts/souls or both), but articulating exactly how they work is a much taller order. What the Resurrection of Christianity is, is one of those things:
Paul spends half the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians trying to answer the question, “How are the dead raised up?” But to explain how the dead are raised up is as difficult as giving exact answers to questions concerning the intricate workings of nature, the fascinating discoveries of science, or even the composing of a symphony.
It would be just as simple to ask, and equally impossible to answer, how does the heart beat or how does the eye see? We could give a word picture of the eye, for example, this unique member of the body, without which man would walk in darkness. We could liken the eye to a camera which takes pictures, colored pictures and moving pictures, without once reloading, and which focuses automatically in any light, at any distance. We could note that it also develops, prints, and files away countless pictures as mental images in a vast “morgue.” But when the description is finished we still don’t know how such a complex instrument could have been conceived and executed. But it was, for God was adequate to do it. Man’s knowledge, or lack of it, does not affect his seeing. It would be foolish of any man, wouldn’t it, to say “I don’t believe it,” just because he can’t understand how the eye can possibly see?
Or take atom smashing. It is “old stuff” now, but just ask a scientist to explain what happens when an atom is smashed. He will probably say that the atom is not smashed or split at all, that it is transmuted into radiant energy. Atom smashing, which brings to mind an infinitesimal speck disappearing into nothingness, is really a process which releases something the scientists call “radiant energy,” and the atom is not destroyed at all, but transmuted, changed from one form to another.
Man can describe such miracles as sight and nuclear fission, but he cannot explain them.
So it is with the resurrection life and the question, “How are the dead raised up?” Inconceivable as all this is to finite minds, men have clung to the faith that continued existence and growth in some form after death are part of God’s plan and in them is the fulfillment of man’s deep-seated longing for completion.
God has planted within men their longings and their needs. He has also provided the means for satisfying them. The Christian faith declares that God is sufficient to satisfy all human hunger, whether for physical food or for hope beyond the curtain of time, and that men can trust Him.
Paul’s illustration of the seed dying and bringing forth life in a new kind of body is good, and refers to the spiritual body as well as the physical. “That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.”
Men are told that physical matter is never destroyed, but only changes its form, which is its death and resurrection, and no one questions this fact. Is it any less easy to believe that Spirit, which makes fleshly matter vibrant and creative, is not wasted eternally, but changes its form, and goes through a similar death and resurrection by God’s grace? One of the famous Compton brothers, the physicist, tells us that “Science has found no cogent reason for supposing that what is of importance in a man can be buried in a grave,” and he might have added, “forever dead.”
This was written in 1957 – a little over 60 years ago. The analogy of “smashing atoms” to describe nuclear fission was dropped long ago. I think it was already pretty much out of fashion when I was a kid in the 1980s. The analogies you hear to describe it today probably won’t be kicking around a century from now as our understanding of it improves and scientists continue to ferret out the details in more recently-built large particle accelerators. Our ways of thinking and talking about theology have of course come a long way too since the first century but they still don’t get anywhere close to uncovering the mysteries of the deep things of God. And that’s OK. We don’t have to understand something all the way or even half the way for it to be very true.
