With One Voice: Jesus's Lament of Abandonment

See earlier posts in this ongoing interaction with Reggie Kidd's With One Voice.

With One Voice: The Singing Savior

With One Voice: The Psalms

With One Voice: David

With One Voice: Reggie Kidd on Psalm 22

In chapter 5, he picks up with Jesus' use of Psalm 22 as his lament of abandonment from the cross. Reggie hits this chapter of the book out of the park. He brackets the chapter with gut wrenching stories from his own experience -- stories of faithful saints who in the midst of the mess of life, persist in singing songs of praise to the God who is there.

Using these stories, he shapes our understanding of Jesus' suffering on the cross. Many times in evangelical circles, we focus on the magnitude of the cosmic suffering -- or we gallop right ahead to resurrection. But it is in the suffering that Jesus comes and meets with us. Jesus' lament on the cross is the full expression of human suffering, Reggie tells us. “To know the God who is, is to look to him even when he won’t make eye contact. To know the God who keeps covenant is to sing to him, even, perhaps especially, when you fear he may not be listening.” (92) Wow -- again, it is this kind of writing that makes the book worth the cover price.

Reggie then delivers a bomb in the midst of self-help Christianity: “Many of us with stoicism seek simply to cope with life. We paint our canvas in safe, if bland, grays. But real Christianity surrounds us with the reddest reds and the bluest blues, the bleakest blacks and the most radiant whites. It is not about mere resignation and coping mechanisms. It is about resurrection and crucifixion, triumph and failure, redemption and sin.” (93) In the middle of motivational speeches masquerading as sermons, Reggie reminds us that our pain and lonliness and shame are but shadowy reminders that God has not left us alone. We don't have to bootstrap ourselves out of our mess -- rather we're called to sing to our God in the midst of our mess. “The cross brings God into deep places in our lives – places where artists, poets, and musicians go.” (93) The cross confronts us in our own anguish. It reminds us of our own fragility and enables us to worship in the midst of the pain.

Here's another winner quote: “Christ’s death song makes reality more real. It squashes fears, pulls us out of our self-absorbtion, and connects us to others. Songs that keep Christ’s death before us help us in another way: they help us acknowledge how messed up we are. That’s a good thing. It’s the cross that frees Rouault, in another panel from the Miserere, to do a self-portrait as a sad clown and to inscribe beneath it: ‘Do we not all paint our faces?’ We know we are base, but we cannot name our baseness until we see it borne for us. Once we see Christ as bearer of our foolishness, though, we gain the freedom to let go of our pretense – self-made happiness, self-painted beauty, self-generated dignity, self-defined rightness.” (97).

Reggie also makes a well needed detour into the realm of excellence, particularly as it applies to church worship. I believe that we ought to bring our best gifts to God -- we ought to do the very best we can in our music, preaching, and worship design. However, we dare not give in to the idolatry of excellence. That's the idolatry that measures worship as a performance - did we hit all the notes just right; did everything flow well. Such idolotry (and this is Russ, not Reggie speaking) manifests itself in the person who is put out that the organ is just too slow, or put off by the off key singing somewhere in the choir. It's the typo in the worship bulletin that makes their face sour -- whatever it is. There are a zillion other manifestations, depending upon what type of church you attend -- but it all amounts to the same thing: focusing on the show rather than upon the Christ that the worship service is for. It lies in the illusion that in worship we're the audience to be entertained, rather than in the reality that we're the performers before a celestial throne.

"Perhaps we will lament as oprhans or, perhaps worse, as spoiled whiners. But we can choose to lament as sons and daughters who know they are loved and are therefore being disciplined and shaped. The difference will lie largely in learning to suffer to the tune of the Savior's song." (102)

Soli Deo Gloria

Russell

PS -- Reggie indicates on his blog that With One Voice has gone into a second printing. Congratulations! If you've been enjoying reading about this book, you might want to get a copy for yourself -- and you might want to check out Reggie's latest post on Common Grounds online: Athanasius and the Incarnation: Why hope and history do rhyme -- he speaks of suffering and tells the story of speaking in class on the topic: "I made a passing comment about the martyrdom that is a mere theoretical possibility for Western Christians but a daily possibility for Christians elsewhere, when a student’s hand went up. Raised in North Africa, she recounted with proud tears how her father had been killed — after six attempts on his life — for not renouncing his faith in Christ. So much for theoretical possibilities. " And this is his intro to how the theology of Athanasius helps us in these trying times -- a great complement to this chapter we reviewed today.

RS

With One Voice: Reggie Kidd on Psalm 22

As we continue digesting Reggie Kidd's With One Voice, we come to his exposition of Psalm 22. Reggie covers some familiar territory here -- this is, after all, one of my favorite psalms to use during the Holy Week observances. It eerily prefigures what would happen to Christ on the cross. It is also a Psalm I use for comfort -- when I'm in deep distress, it helps me greatly to know that David was quite free in crying out to God "My God, My God why have you forsaken me". We have liberty to bring our anguish and disappointment and confusion to God. And strangely what happens for David, and what often happens for me, is that God uses the very act of crying out to bring healing and comfort -- thus the second half of the Psalm dealing with the feast celebrating God's deliverance.

Reggie does bring up one very important factor that I hadn't considered before about this Psalm: the people who are invited to the celebration. He points out the counterbalancing sets: Israelites and the nations, the poor and the rich, the dead and the not yet born.

With the first set of Israelites and the nations, Reggie brings up the old Biblical truth of God's design to bless the nations and have them all come under the banner of Christ. He describes this theme as a "whisper" in the Old Testament, and this instance being one of the whispers.

The second set caught my attention -- the poor and the rich will be at the feast. I'm so used to churchly criticisms of the rich, that it's almost startling to hear that yes, there are indeed some God fearing rich folk who will be welcomed at the feast. Reggie is quick to remind us that there are other plenty of scriptures that warn against "satedness" and self satisfaction in wealth and riches. However, this little picture shows us that grace will indeed be extended to the wealthy as well.

Then the third set started ringing my bell. I've spent the better half of 2006 making a case for our covenant responsibilities to one another across the generations, and here Reggie takes it even further. Both the dead and the not yet born also have a place at the table. “In Christ, the dead and the living make up one community of praise....David understood that whenever any of us comes along in the timeline, and from whatever angle, we are there to serve those who come after us. The yet-to-be are part of our song as well as those who have died in God.” (83) This thought alone could fill up a whole series of blog posts -- in what ways do we truly give our antecedents a place at the table -- do we truly honor the faith of the saints of the past, or do we pay it lip service so that we can inhabit their house and plunder their riches for our own gain. In like manner, do we truly think ahead for the next generation, or do we concern ourselves with sating our present needs, with no heed for the long term viability of culture or the church. How much do we really see ourselves in continuity with the saints of the past and future-- and more importantly, is our continuity based in our shared song of praise? Good stuff here, Reggie!

“In a sense Psalm 22 is the theological center of the book of Psalms. Like Israel’s pilgrimage it begins in lonliness and dejection and ends, on the far side of God’s miraculous intervention in comradeship and elation.” (86) Reggie sums up here by turning to the heart once again -- I would have liked stories of how David's (and Christ's) song have tangibly brought comfort to some beloved saint -- but that's not a serious flaw, just a stylistic preference. All told, this chapter presents us solid material, continuing on his Worship Theology of the Heart.

Soli Deo Gloria
Russell




With One Voice: The Singing Savior
With One Voice: The Psalms
With One Voice: David -- Israel's Sweet Singer and Architect of Praise

With One Voice: David -- Israel's sweet singer and architect of praise

As Reggie Kidd works through his theology of the heart, he comes to a chapter where he focuses on King David. Reggie characterizes David with these two roles -- the sweet singer and the architect of praise. He uses the various portraits provided by Samuel and the Chronicler to sketch these different roles.

Samuel, according to Reggie, was likely composed in rough form during the reign of Solomon -- but reached it's final form (along with 1 and 2 Kings) during the Babylonian exile many years later. The stories of David's suffering, wrestling, repenting, and aching all would have struck a chord deep in the experience of Israel in exile. Characteristic of this narrative is the story of David playing for Saul to ease his suffering (Reggie points us to Rembrandt's painting as a fine portrayal of the human drama involved). We turn to the Psalms to find that there are 13 that are identified as coming from the experiences of David as a servant of Saul..

For instance Psalm 56 was written while David fled to Gath and pretended madness as a means of preserving his life. Even in the midst of such humiliation and degradation, David is able to sing of confidence in the Lord and His trustworthy word. Reggie writes “Within the exercise of crafting words to articulate his situation and express his feelings, David arrives at a deeper sense of the veracity of God himself. He can pretend to be confused – even mad – because he knows God’s Word is true; and what is happening outside himself does not threaten what is true within himself.” (55) Yet another instance where I wish I could write like that. Reggie also looks to Psalm 57 as an example of David's resiliency rooted in the Lord's provision, even in the midst of the adversity of being on the run, hiding in caves. "In a logic comprehensible only to a person who has learned that praise precedes understanding, David says he knows that Saul will fall into a trap of his own making." (56). Praise precedes understanding. I've been meditating on that phrase for a couple of days now. It brings into light the whole compass of Reggie's book -- we don't understand worship and then dispassionately engage it as an activity on par with attending a civic club or an interesting lecture. Rather, we give ourselves to heartfelt praise in trust that the Living One will shape our understanding.

"In the twists and turns of his fortunes -- embraced and then eschewed by Saul, shunted from Moab to Philistia -- David's singing has kept him anchored to a Rock who shows himself 'faithful to the faithful, blameless to the blameless, pure to the pure, and shrewd to the crooked' (Ps 18:25-26). He has been sustained by a vision of a God who saves the humble but brings low the haughty (v 27). Counter to the gloom that progressively consumed Saul and to the impotence that had Saul falling on his own sword (I Sam 31:1-7), David knows a God of light and power." (58) And therein was the difference between David and Saul -- Saul heard the songs of Zion as a refuge for a season in the midst of the pressures of administration and kingship. He looked to David's songs as a distraction to allieve for a time the inner angiush. David on the other hand, put his trust in the subject of the songs -- the singing wasn't totally an end in of itself -- rather it was David's instrument to express his trust and confidence in the midst of adversity. Singing wasn't escape, it was sanctifying.

Reggie shows this not just in his songs of confidence in suffering, but in his songs of penitence in the midst of sin (Ps 51 being the crown jewel of this theme -- but Reggie points out a slew of other songs of confession -- 6, 32, 38, 39, 40, 41, 51, 69. "This is blues of the deepest sort, blues sad enough to find redemption." (60). If David is the sweet singer of the soul, and he spends so much time in confession in his songs, then that in itself ought to train our hearts to greater self-examination and confession. David's songs become a mirror to our own hearts to dare us to look within and see our need for redemption. "In a way that is without precedent in the ancient world, David shows how we can come before our Maker and admit that at our core we are not right. All we have to offer is a song from a broken spirit and a contrite heart, and we can know that if we come in this fashion we will not be torn to shreds. David the singer introduces us to the notion that there is a blessedness that awaits those -- and only those -- who admit that rightness is nowhere within them, who look to God alone to account it to them for no motive besides God's own loving kindness (see Ps 32:1-5, 10-11)" (61).

As we turn from Samuel to Chronicles, the singer role recedes and the architect role comes to the fore. Chronicles was compiled during the restoration of Israel to the land and the rebuilding of the temple. The Chronicler focused on stories of David as a builder. Here we see music all over the place. Reggie shows how the account of the bringing the ark to the temple (I chron 15) is saturated with music (in contrast to the Samuel account where the musical component is played down). Reggie shows how David institutes a special assignment of Asaph and his family for leading the people in songs of praise (I chron 16:7-36) -- including a special song of commissioning. Now David has moved from being a singer to being a patron -- to establishing psalmody and singing as a part of the institutional structure. "David's commissioning of Asaph is the beginning of a whole new epoch of corporate worship. Beyond this particular occasion, David aggressively works to leave Israel with a tradition of praise, organizing the Levites...and setting in place commandments for music-making that would be appealed to in future generations." (67) Like the great patrons of art in the Renaissance, David was not only a sophisticated artist himself, but he understood how to weave it as a part of the institution -- he understood the power of song to shape souls, and paid special attention to keep song before his people.

"As no one before him, David realized that the atmosphere of God's presence -- and it is God's presence that the ark exists to symbolize -- should be made up of song" (68) "The Psalms themselves are as much a part of the building of God's house as anything else is." (68) This shows that togetherness and connnectedness are vital to David -- Reggie shows how the corporate singing of God's praise shows the high value of God's people together and connected in a symphony of praise, rather than a cacophany of solo voices each singing their own tune of self-expression.

The personal and the corporate -- blended together so nicely by Reggie's chapter here. David's songs and stories instruct us in both.

Soli Deo Gloria

Russell

With One Voice -- The Psalms

Reading Reggie's With One Voice is something like eating a well made pound cake -- the prose is rich and sweet with hints of subtle flavors (citrus, almond -- pick your recipie), but it's not so heavy as to leave you feeling fat and bloated and your head swimming in a sugar fog. He's got moments of prose that are so apt and right, that I had to copy whole paragraphs into my notes. I keep finding myself teetering on the tightrope between "Wow!!" and "Man, I wish I could write like that"

This second chapter introduces us to the book of Psalms as God's way of working on our hearts (just as the law works on our minds and the prophets work on our actions). He begins with the broad sweep of the book of psalms -- a slow movement from lament and struggle to ending with triumphant praise.

Then Reggie zeros in on Psalms 1 and 2, confessing that he's using them not only to introduce us to the purpose of the Psalms, but also to show us the personal soulcraft that has worked on him through the songs of Zion: “We are all inveterate idolators, little Pinocchios trying to work our way from puppethood to independent personhood. In this chapter, I want to confess my own false gods, because my passion for the importance of a snug theology lies in the way God has used music and song to carry out his campaign against my pet idols. Others may worship elsewhere, but I worship at the twin altars of Reason and Action – also known as Knowing and Doing.” (35)

Reggie tells the story of his coming to faith -- how he had started as a hard nosed intellectual who lusted for a clean and tidy intellectual system overseen by an aged-english actor type God (imagine John Geilgud portraying a Great Unmoved Mover). However, in college, he met Mort, a Presbyterian Pastor who challenged him with a vision of a God who intervened and meddled in the universe -- and by so doing, this God suffered wounds and hurt and bled:

“One night Mort heard me sing and play on the guitar one of the many love songs I knew. ‘From the way you seemed to feel that song, it sounds like you’re going to need a bigger God than just Someone who can explain why E=mc2 works,” he mused ‘Okay, but what did you think of the song?’ was my rejoinder, but some other voice inside of me muttered, ‘So he knows.’ Finally, there was the night Mort, frustrated after an extended conversation about whether God existed, blurted, ‘Reggie, I thinkyou worship your doubts. Could it be you just enjoy being the aloof inquirer?’ While part of me looked for a clever repartee, a deeper part confessed ‘He’s right.’ My intellectual curiosity was a smoke screen for a psyche that wanted to stay untethered. I wanted a God I could manage, not a God who would meddle. I was having a hard time admitting that I needed a God who would do a lot more than meddle – that I needed the God who had scarred himself to heal the broken and out of control places I hid from everybody else. Within a few days, I succumbed to Christ, figuring that any remaining riddles needed to be worked out from inside
of the faith. I sensed it was wiser to accept faith’s mystery than continue in unfaith’s befuddlement. I was starved for what Mort’s intrusive God offered.” (36)

Then Reggie talks about how he began to experience this overwhelming intrusive God through music, particularly a performance of the Messiah:

“I was completely unprepared for the experience. It’s not that I had never
heard any of the music before. But I had never heard it in context, all at
once, or more importantly, from the inside, from a posture of faith.
Minutes into the program I was weeping. I was overwhelmed by the beauty,
the majesty, the poetry, the melding of passion and thoughtfulness, of lovliness
and truth – the things that make Handel’s Messiah the special phenomenon it
is. I felt bathed in a new existential awareness: what Christ
brought was more than truths to learn or disciplines to master. It was
more like his coming made me – made all of us – the object of a passionate
courtship.” (37)

I've talked about having a similar kind of experience in seeing Les Miserables on Broadway. I've always taken this as being touched with an experience of glory -- yet Reggie here sounds the experience out in more detail than I've ever been able to. It's that experience of leaving the performance and feeling better, cleaner, brighter than you were before. I'm not sure if this is what Aristotle meant by catharsis in his poetics -- maybe it is catharsis viewed through redeemed eyes. And the book of Psalms points us toward having this experience on a regular basis through the songs of Zion. “Psalm 1 tells us that God simply does not care to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of coolly aloof inquirers: his passion is for dragging ugly wallflowers onto the dance floor. When we come to him looking merely for a respectable philosophical system, he not so subtly reshapes the question: ‘So it’s truth you think you want? Come sing in my choir, then we’ll talk’ In other words, learn to praise. Understanding will follow.” (49)

Reggie moves from there to talk about Psalm 2 -- how are we to understand God's interaction with the world -- particularly in the face of injustice. He retells his early passion for social justice, particularly in combatting the rascism that he saw so evidently in the 1970s South. He was desperate to show that Evangelicals cared for social justice and were thinking Christians.

“My zeal over race left me with little energy for other spiritual practices, whether personal holiness or individual evangelism.” (44) In a class on modern theology, he was studying liberation theology. He reports how the class was almost monolithically angry because of the inequities revealed in the book – how the haves oppress the have nots. Finally, one class member spoke up “The thing that troubles me about this book and the approach to God it represents is that, well, there’s no joy in it. There doesn’t seem to be anything to celebrate.” (44) Reggie at first internally objected, but then realized that the theologian they were studying had indeed abridged the gospel to a political platform. He instantly had an inner memory of sitting with this student and others singing songs of praise and realizing that one of the ways we build the city of God – and just as necessary as social action – was the worship of the people of God. Being shaped and formed by singing the songs of Zion. He saw that there wasn't a dicotomy between "worship Christians" and "social justice Christians" -- joyful worship should send us forth to be salt and light in a watching world so that they may see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven.

“I realized then that our outlook on history and society is anchored in the conviction that above us stands a God who laughs. He mocks the arrogance of the exploiters who misperceive the kind restraint of his wrath and refuse to repent. He laughs at the folly of sin’s residium in a redeemed person’s rascism. He scoffs at the demons who mock my redemption, as though the besetting sins I have yet to shake in thirty years of following Christ could lessen my Father’s commitment to see my salvation through.” (46) The laughter of God is a key component of Psalm 2 (and 37 and 59). Reggie wrestles with the discomfort of this concept, but finally finds peace in it -- for we are included in the objects of God's laughter.

In many ways, Reggie hits on the theory of literary comedy -- Think of Shakespeares comedies -- they are all about wandering pilgrims faced with various tight lipped naysayers and villans. But in the end, even the rogues are reconciled, so long as they learn that the joke is on everyone -- as long as they stop taking themselves so seriously. I think Reggie's point here is that we need to stop idolizing our own actions, thinking that in our hustle and bustle and planning and conferences and efforts we save the world. We need to rest in the laughter of God who is sovereign and has called us according to his purpose -- we are called to be pilgrims with a song on our lips and blessings from our hands.

Heavy thoughts -- More to come next week.

Soli Deo Gloria
Russell

With One Voice -- the Singing Savior

I've had the book for about 6 months, but I've just not gotten around to it. This week I finally treated myself to starting through Reggie Kidd's With One Voice. Reggie was one of my profs at RTS. He teaches Pauline Epistles and Worship. On top of that he is the dean of the chapel, designing all the chapel worship services. I found his leading worship to be rich, thoughtful and Christ centered. His classes were a melange of art, music, scholarship, and spiritual exhortation. He came out with his work on worship last year, and so I'd like to process it together with you all.

One of the great things about Reggie is his lyrical writing style -- the man is a theologian with a poet's sensibilities. He begins with a quote from a sermon he heard once: "A theology that can't be preached is not worth having." and as he interacts with the quote he quickly tosses out the addition "A theology that can't be sung is not worth having either." Thus he begins what might aptly be called a theology of the heart. Before digging too deep into application, Reggie traces the Redemptive Historical line of singing through scripture and into the early church on to the Reformation and beyond.

In this first chapter, Reggie lays out this vision that our singing functions as a spiritual discipline to help us draw closer to God, it functions as a comfort in times of darkness (in this section he relates his own wrestling with melanoma and the experience of Eva Cassidy who died of melanoma -- a powerful tale of spiritual comfort in the valley of hte shadow of death), and it functions to help us hear the ongoing song of God (he gives the illustration of the barbershop quartet, which when they hit their notes just right, they hear a fifth voice -- “That aural illusion created by harmonics is, I believe, a divine whisper of something that is absolutely true of our singing when we gather in worship.” (citing Jesus leading us in worship as spelled out in Hebrews 8:2 and 2:12).

Then Reggie hits his stride as he lays out the missional purpose to our song. He asserts “disbelief today is not a function of logic; it stems from a loss of imagination.” (22) Reggie states that many students who hear faith assaulted in college acquiesce quickly because they have not seen the faith lived out in a community -- they haven't experienced a full-orbed, enfleshed living out of the faith that gives what thinkers call a "plausibility structure" to help concretely understand the ideas of faith. “…God’s people, gathered in life, in belief, and in worship, are his ‘plausibility structure,’ God’s people – loving one another, submitting to a common life, praising his name, and telling his story – are the case God makes to a watching world, both visible and invisible.” (23)

Reggie keeps pressing: “in the face of the deconstruction of the Christian view of reality, the great cultural task of Christians is the reclamation of the imagination. This needs to be worked out across a broad front – from the way Christians conduct themselves in the marketplace and in politics to the way they educate the next generations and shape their churches. As vital as anything is the way they engage the arts: painting, sculpture, literature, poetry, cinema, dance, architecture, and, of course, music.” (23)

And again: “Music opens the imagination to the possibility that what we see is not all there is. Felix Mendelssohn composed no religious works until he encountered Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew – after that, his work was God-soaked. Our singing says clearly that all other loves are idolatries without the love of God.” (24)

Finally, he lays out the plan of the rest of the book -- not a theology of worship in terms of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. But rather a theology of worship that focuses on a Biblical picture of what the Holy Spirit does to us through worship.

I'm going to take this one slowly and savor it like fine Belgian chocolate -- likely doing a chapter a week. Hope you'll pick up the book and join the conversation.

Soli Deo gloria
Russell