Lent and Its Music

Here is the pastoral letter I wrote for the Immanuel Reformed Church newsletter this week:

When I was a little Lutheran, Lent was my favorite season of the church calendar. Partly, I suppose, because of a naturally melancholic streak. Partly for the rich minor-keyed hymns.

Partly because it was the only time of year when we had Wednesday evening services. I loved the gloom of the sanctuary at night. Melancholic, as I said.

Partly too because Lent focused our attention each year on the final drama of Jesus’ dramatic life – His last confrontations in the temple, His betrayal, arrest, and trial, His death.

Every year, we heard long sections of the Gospels’ Passion narratives, especially John. I have big chunks of the Gospel nearly memorized, simply because I heard them over and over.

This is the primary reason to keep Lent: For forty days every year, it forces our attention on the cross.

Yes, the cross should be on our hearts and minds all the time. But we’re creatures of time and can’t do everything at once. We need to organize our lives in times and seasons.

And we need time to focus on the cross. Otherwise, our faith becomes glib and superficially gleeful. Without Lent, we’re apt either to underestimate the evils of the world or to resign to them.

The cross unveils Satanic powers in high places (including the church!), and demonstrates God’s power in weakness, by which He overthrows principalities and powers.

We don’t overcome the world by force or violence. Lent reminds us that we share the victory of Jesus only when we share also in His sufferings.

Lent is also an annual season of house-cleaning. Yes again: We should clean house regularly. But Lent forces us to inspect our lives, shatter our idols, and repent.

Spend the next forty days confessing unconfessed sin, repenting of your sins toward your husband or wife, seeking reconciliation with estranged friends.

Read and meditate on the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) or Paul’s list of the works of the flesh (Gal 5:16-21) or the exhortations of Ephesians 4-6.

Ask the Spirit to strip through delusions and self-justifications, to cut you to the marrow with the sword of the Word (Heb 4:12-13).

And an excerpt from the Theopolis e-newsletter, In Medias Res.

When Evangelical Protestants talk about the “great old hymns of the faith,” they’re usually talking about nineteenth-century revival hymns.

More historically-minded Protestants want to revive the Genevan Psalms or the great Lutheran Chorales or Anglican chant.

Of course, the church existed for a millennium and a half before Luther was born. We shouldn’t neglect the musical treasures of the early and medieval church.

Consider Lenten hymns. Many focus on Jesus’ agony on the cross: “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted” (1804) or “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed” (1707) or “Ah, Holy Jesus, How Hast Thou Offended” (1630).

High medieval Lenten hymns have the same focus, like the thirteenth-century “O Sacred Head,” now thought to be the work of Arnulf of Leuven.

But the Lenten poetry of the patristic and early medieval church portrayed the cross as the battle of the ages, when the Son achieved a paradoxical victory through weakness.

In “Sing, My Tongue,” the sixth-century poet Fortunatus writes:

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle;
sing the ending of the fray.
Now above the cross, the trophy,
sound the loud triumphant lay:
tell how Christ, the world's Redeemer,
as a victim won the day.

Fortunatus’s “The Royal Banners Forward Go” includes this stanza:

Fulfilled is all that Da­vid told
In true pro­phet­ic song of old,
That He the nations’ king should be

For God is reigning from the tree.

When we reach back to the past for liturgical music, we shouldn’t stop at the 19th or 16th centuries. We need to learn some of the really old hymns of the faith.

To understand the specific purpose of Ash Wednesday, take a look at Pastor Rich Lusk’s article here, and my essay here. For more general Lenten meditations, see here, here, and here.