Tuesday Tunes: Josh Ritter

Four years ago Ritter was placed on Paste’s list of top 100 living songwriters.  Since then, all he has done is release two stellar albums demonstrating an impressive of musical genres and the rapid maturation of a budding songwriter.  The son of two neuroscientists Ritter exemplifies the sort of intelligence and thoughtfulness in music and songwriting that I am learning to love and appreciate.  But rather than spend this entire post gushing about him, I’ll just list five reasons you should listen to him, and no, I’m not going to just list his five albums.

5.  His eclectic sound.  Some bands develop a style and stick with it.  The albums roll on like a Kansas prairie.  It’s pretty and it may take your breath away for about an hour, but after driving through it for a day you are actually thankful for the darkness that hides the now oppressively bland landscape.  Ritter explores folk, country, rock, and in his latest albums throws in some pieces I can only call ballads because they read like poems put to music.  This leads me to my next point.

4.  Ritter’s music is full of fun.  His albums, especially Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter have songs that suck you in thanks to simple courses and catchy beats.  Ritter loves songwriting and it shows in in the way he records and in the way he performs which bring me to…

3.  Ritter puts on a heck of a show.   I mentioned last Tuesday that Pug & Ritter playing together was going to be something special and two days later I can only say, I told you so.  See them if they come near you.  Ritter played for about two and a half hours straight while Pug played for a solid 40 minutes I want to say.  It was perhaps the longest show I’ve ever been to, and possibly the best as well.

2.  Ritter weaves stories.  Some musicians are just that…musicians.  They can write a catchy tune, or even a really great sounding song.  However, when the appeal of the music wears off and you go to look up the lyrics you realize they are singing without saying anything.  It would be hard to condemn Ritter on this account.  I wonder if for Ritter it is the ideas and the songwriting that drive his music.  Maybe this is what makes Ritter a songwriter in the best sense of the word.  However, despite his impressive writing abilities (there are rumors of a novel by him coming out in 2011) Ritter’s music doesn’t suffer a lick.  He manages to wed music and story, the lyrics and the lyrical in a seamless fashion.

1.  The ideas behind Ritter’s music are worth wrestling with.  Ritter is one of those people who seems to be an incredibly genuine human being, a humanist in a good meaning of the word.  This allows for his music to have some really true things to say about love and care for one another, struggling through darkness and difficulty, searching for and hoping for some final peace.  At the same time Ritter sadly seems unwilling or perhaps to be turned off by ideas of God in his music.  In any case, listening to his music can be a pleasant reminder of the power of the imago Dei to work in any person to craft pieces of beauty, while ironically rejecting the ultimate ground for that beauty.

Just an fyi, you can listen to all of Ritter’s albums in their entirety on his website.  Enjoy!

Tuesday Tunes: Joe Pug

School’s out, blogging is in…at least for the Summer.  Check back each Tuesday for recommendations on various artists albums that have caused me to perk up my ears recently.

Joe Pug, Messenger, 4 out of 5 stars.

Joe Pug gets the inaugural blog spot in this feature for a number of reasons.  He won favorite new (to me) artist in 2009; he is from Chicago; he plays harmonica; but most of all he’s just plain good.  From his controlled picking, squealing harmonica, twanging vocals, and poetic lyrics he defines what folk/country music can be when done well.

His first full length album Messenger was released in February and adds a new dimension to his songwriting not featured in his EP. The rambling album showcases Pug’s quiet picking, but also allows him to pick up the pace with a few rockier tracks.  The album opens with the upbeat country rock song “Messenger” before settling in for some classic Joe Pug with the quiet, melodies of “How Good You Are” and “Not So Sure”.  The album takes a bit of a downturn with “The Sharpest Crown” as the quiet picking and crooning of Pug almost becomes soporific.  However, Pug responds with some of his best in the catchy, upbeat folk rock “The Door Was Always Open”.  The back half of the album includes the hauntingly sad “The First Time I Saw You” before going through some doldrums in “Unsophisticated Heart” and “Disguised as Someone Else”.  Pug picks up the pace in the final two tracks.  “Bury Me Far (from my uniform)”  sounds like a Bob Dylan tribute, but Pug’s throaty growls prove to interject some life, before the rocking finale “Speak Plainly, Diana”.  A couple of bonus tracks provide hope that Pug still has plenty of gas left in the tank.

In the end “Messenger” is a rambling album that weaves stories of love and war, disappointment and death together into a quiet contemplation that provides enough grit and noise to keep an otherwise melodiously soporific album moving along at a good tilt.

You can see a more profession and positive review of Pug’s album here.  Also, you can catch him with Josh Ritter this Saturday in Chicago.  This could be the best show of the year so shame on you if you miss it.

“Stations on the Road to Freedom – Death”

Bonhoeffer wrote this final stanza when he realized his death was immanent and unavoidable.  Since death has been a recurring reality for all of human existence a present one for me as of late it has especial importance.

DEATH

Come now, solemnest feast on the road to eternal freedom,

Death, and destroy those fetters that bow, those walls that imprison

this our transient life, these souls that linger in darkness,

so that at least we see what is here withheld from our vision.

Long did we seek you, freedom, in discipline, action and suffering.

Now that we die, in the face of God himself we behold you.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. J. B. Leishman quoted in The Cost of Discipleship, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995): 23.

Hope, the Second Coming & The Culture of Death

A Reading of Scripture from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 (ESV):

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers [and sisters], about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.  For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.  For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.  For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.  And the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.  Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Now a few rambling thoughts:

1) Grieving and hope are not exclusive categories.  Grief occurs in response to some loss.  Hope springs because of the faithful expectation of some future good.  It is possible for the Christian to grieve for what he has lost and yet hope for a future good that is far better.  However, the presence of hope for that superior future good does not diminish the present reality of loss.  And so Christian grief is a fitting sorrow over the inevitable losses that result from life in a broken and fallen world.

2) In speaking of a future hope it is odd that Paul speaks not only of Christ’s resurrection but also of his death.  We could expect v. 14 to read more like this: “For since we believe that Jesus rose again we believe that we will also rise again” or something like that.  But no that Jesus died is significant for Paul.  Perhaps for three reasons.  Both of these reasons are beyond the logical necessity that for someone to rise they must have first died.  That one seems to go without saying.  First, there is the reconciling power of Christ’s death.  Christ dies for sin, and without this we have no hope for we are still alienated from God.  Second, Jesus not only cleanses our sin on the cross but he dies our death, and suffers our damnation.  Jesus not only experiences dying on the cross, he experiences our death on the cross.  Third, Jesus death has a sort of emotive significance in that through dying Jesus experiences perhaps the greatest, most terrifying human experience, death.  When Hebrews speaks of us having a high priest who can identify with our weaknesses we must ask if there is a greater weaknesses in man than this ultimate weakness of mortality.

3) At the end it is not a servant of the Lord who comes, but the Lord himself.  The final victory is secured as our great warrior returns to vanquish death with a mighty blow.

4) Union with the Lord is our one and greatest hope and comfort in this life and the next.  Paul’s conclusion is “so we will always be with the Lord” and apparently he sees no need to expound on this final goodness.

5) Encourage one another with these words.

*It is odd to me that in what has been termed “the culture of death” due to our practices of abortion and medical assisted suicide, the reality of death is marginalized.  Death may just be the great elephant in the room of contemporary humanism.  We hide our aging (dying?) with botox injections, hair implants, hair dyes, make-up, and anything else we can use to delude ourselves and others that we are actually staying forever young.  Even the church is not immune from this “silencing of death” in that it has become increasingly unpopular to speak of eschatological hope.  Now on the one hand it’s a good thing to have matured beyond believing that “I’ll fly away, oh glory” but it’s another thing to have lapsed into some false idea that we can bring in the kingdom and make a sort of heaven on earth.  Can we represent the kingdom now?  Yes.  Can we experience a taste of the heavenly gift? Yes, we have the Spirit.  But a vast part of the blessings of our inheritance secured for us by Jesus are still future.  Maybe we should keep that in mind from time to time and reflect on the fact that there is still a final victory to be won.

P. T. Forsyth on the Greatness of the Church

Forsyth opens his book The Work of Christ with a startling claim.  It is worth quoting in full.

The statement is that the church of Christ is the greatest finest product of human history.  It is the greatest thing in the universe.  That is in complete defiance of the general view and tendency of society at the present moment.  I say the Church is the greatest and finest product of human history; because it is not really a product of human history, but the product of the Holy Spirit within history.  It stands for the new creation, the New Humanity, and it has that in trust.

Forsyth goes on to admit that the authority of the church is failing and what that means in this way:

It means that the authority of the whole Church is weakened in respect of the inward and spiritual matter which it contains and preaches, and which makes it what it is.  the Church is there as the vehicle of teh power of the Holy Ghost and of the authority of God – a God, that is, who is saving not groups here and there, but the whole of human society.

As to the cause of this weakening Forsyth hints that Protestants are to blame:

But, necessary or not, it is a matter of fact that our Protestantism has developed often into a masterless individualism which is as deadly to Christian life as an over-organized institution like Rome.

P. T. Forsyth, The Work of Christ, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910): 5-6.

How does Forsyth’s conception of a beneficent, triumphant and authoritative church contrast with today’s common representations of the church?  What do we make of Forsyth’s forthright condemnation of individualism within Protestantism?

P. T. Forsyth quoting Kierkegaard

First, Forsyth quoting Kierkegaard:

“For long the tactics have been: use every means to move as many as you can – to move everybody if possible – to enter Christianity.  Do not be too curious whether what they enter is Christianity.  My tactics have been, with God’s help, to use every means to make it clear what the demand of Christianity really is – if not one entered it.”

Now here is Forsyth responding to the above quote:

“The statement is extreme; but that way lies the Church’s salvation- in its anti-Nicene relation to the world, its pre-Constantinian, non-established, relation to the world, and devotion to the Word.  Society is hopeless except for the Church.  And the Church has nothing to live on but the Cross that faces and overcomes the world.  It cannot live on a cross which is on easy terms with the world as the apotheosis of all its aesthetic religion, or the classic of all its ethical intuition.  The work of Christ, rightly understood, is the final spiritual condition of all the work we may aspire to do in converting society to the kingdom of God.”

P. T. Forsyth, The Work of Christ, (London: Stodder & Houghton, 1910): ix.

I can’t help but think about the seeker sensitive movement and the pastoral strategies of most of our American churches and ministers.  Are we challenging people to enter into any Christianity or are we concerned with discovering what it truly means to be a disciple of Christ and then call people, including ourselves for that.  Forsyth appears to add a qualifier to what exactly true Christianity is by stating that it must be 1) opposed to the world, 2) committed to the Word, 3) Cross centered, 4) Christ proclaiming.

Do our lives and ministries measure up to such standards?

Friday Link

Dr. Michael McDuffee was one of my favorite professors throughout my undergrad.  Now he’s one of the few people whose blog I will read.   This post has some great words in it.  Hope you enjoy.

The Resurrection Eight Days Later

One can only imagine the disciples all that week.  Incessantly badgering Thomas they tell him the same story over and over only to be rebuffed by a scoff and a sigh.  Private confrontations with Peter grabbing him by the shoulders and almost shouting “He is risen,” group interventions with John leading a more balanced, reasoning attack resulting in the now too common “We have seen the Lord,” nothing worked until at last in utter exasperation Thomas blurts out, “”Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”  Hearing this response Peter turned away in some disgust muttering none too quietly about stiff necked and obstinate people.

After Thomas’ outburst the disciples saw relatively little of Thomas and when they did words were sparse.  For the disciples that week was abuzz with a confused excitement.  Jesus had been raised!  He was alive!  But what did it all mean?  Peter would at times clam up and become unusually quiet and reflective.  John, the only other disciple could only guess at Peter’s thoughts as he had helped Peter gain admittance to the courtyard of Caiaphas that fateful night.  And ever since Peter had seemed different; of course the boisterous and bullish man was still there, but now at times the bull would become an old cow.  Subdued and melancholy, as if weighed down by memories he would rather live without.

Thomas was a different case.  The refusal to believe the resurrection had forced him to retain a since of grief over Jesus’ passing.  But with the disciples seemingly ludicrous claims that Jesus had risen his grief was now mingled with a sense of anger and frustration.  For Thomas was now dealing not only with the loss of Jesus but also with the loss of the others.  At this fundamental point their roads diverged.  They were caught by a delusion, a delusion that was consuming their time and energy, a wasted pursuit that would only end in failure and disappointment a second time.  Thomas was no fool and he felt justified in his obstinate refusal.  It wasn’t that Thomas didn’t believe people could be raised.  He knew that they could.  Shoot, Lazarus was sitting across the room from him.  But who was going to raise Jesus, when Jesus was dead?

So then eight days later Thomas relented from his solitude and joined the disciples for a meal.  After the meal they sat around and talked quietly together, attempting to make small talk about the week without talking about the event of the week.  The door was locked as over the entire group remained the fear that the authorities would come again, arresting the disciples with trumped up charges of grave robbing.  Irony may make for good stories, said James but it doesn’t do when your death is the irony in the story.  The others couldn’t have agreed more.  A few candles burning from tables created islands of light in the corners of the room, and the fractured spaces between the boards of the window and the door allowed peninsulas of light of shoot into the room giving some dim light.  Suddenly, Thomas jumped because suddenly there in the midst of them He was.  Thomas jumped and looked first toward the door but it was still bolted securely.  Then turning back towards the man in the middle of the room he met the gaze of Jesus.  His eyes spoke a gentle word, a word both of reprimand and assurance.  Words of invitation, words of proof, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”  For Thomas all need for proof was gone.  The foolish, self serving claims were swept away.  Doubt gave way to faith, self- confidence relented to the force of trust, denial broke down in the presence of a risen Savior.  And with a breathless gasp all the pent up struggle of the past week burst out in one exclamation, “My Lord and my God!”

The Passion of Christ & the Family of God

Lord, you have taken our nature upon yourself, become the God-man, born our sins in your body, and through your resurrection raised us to life with you.  And so as John says, we who have received your son have become your children.  And simultaneously you have made us a part of a new people, a family that belongs to you.  And so Lord during this Passion week, we ask that we may remember the work of Jesus, our Savior.  We ask that declaring the good news that comes from His Passion would be our passion.  That the reality of new life in Christ would be the foundation and wellspring for a life lived for Christ.

Lord, you have said that your mothers and brothers are those who do the will of God, and so may we be your mother, brother and sister.  So we ask that we might do your will, oh God, in places of hurt and brokenness.  We pray for Christians from broken families, that they would be living demonstrations of your shalom. We ask that we would love, with selfless sacrifice and compassion those whom the world deems unlovable, the elderly, the ill, the handicapped.  We ask that you would heal those who have been betrayed by the hurt of divorce.  We ask that you would displace the old idols of our heart: materialism, success, pleasure; and fill us with a passion to do your will.

Lord Jesus, it is only through your work on the cross and triumph over death that we can be a part of your family.  So we ask that we who call ourselves the family of God, might do the will of God.

St. Patrick’s Day

In line with the resent surge in interest in the early church among Evangelicals here are a few links to help you unpack the life of St. Patrick today.

Russel Moore has a post on why evangelicals should be interested in Patrick.

Mark Driscoll has an easy read on Patrick and includes other helpful resources at the end of his post for further reading.

Finally, Evangel includes the text of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, which is worth the read. at the end of their post.