Our Liturgy - 6 (Jubilee Bulletin)

Our Liturgy – 6

The Ten Words of the Covenant

After we sing the first song, a song of praise to our great God and Saviour, we listen to the Ten Commandments, also known as, the Ten Words of the Covenant or, the Law. Why do we do that every Sunday again?

   The law of God has a two-fold function for us as Christians. The Heidelberg Catechism points that out in a very clear way. In Lord's Day 2, under the heading of Our Sin and Misery, we are asked, “From where do you know your sins and misery?” We answer, “From the law of God.” God’s law is given there in the summary form the Lord Jesus taught, love the Lord your God and love your neighbour as yourself. The catechism could have, at that point, given the Ten Commandments, but since these are spelled out in detail later in the catechism, the law is given here in summary form. The law of love sets a high standard, one we could not, would not and did not keep. Hence, we needed, and were given, the Saviour Jesus Christ.

   The second way the law of God functions for us is as a rule for thankful living. This is spelled out extensively in the third part of the Heidelberg Catechism, the part dealing with our thankfulness. The second part of the catechism proclaims the gospel of salvation through Christ, and then the third part teaches us how to live in thankfulness for that salvation. Over a dozen Lord's Days (32-44) each commandment is treated separately and held up as solid teaching on how to live according to the specific commandments out of thankfulness and in a way in which we indeed show that we love God and neighbour.

   When we gather for worship and hear the Ten Commandments, it’s good to keep these two functions of the law in mind. It is not the case that we gather as unforgiven people who yet need to have their sins forgiven. We need to understand that well. We gather as the people of God who have been set free from guilt and sin by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. When we, as the forgiven covenant people of God, hear the law read, we are reminded of what Christ has saved us from. We are reminded of our great and continuing need of Jesus Christ. As we hear the law, we are reminded of God’s high demand for obedience, our sin against the holy law of God, and we remember that the Lord Jesus came to give himself as a sacrifice for our sins. Then the second function of the law comes into view. It is set forth as a rule for thankful living, a standard for gratitude.

   After the reading of the law, I usually refer to a text of scripture that speaks about one of these blessed truths–either a text that underlines what Jesus has done to cleanse us of our sins, or a text that encourages us to live thankful lives.

   Because of these two functions, there has been discussion in the past as to where in the service the law should be read. Abraham Kuyper, for example, wrote in Our Worship that the law should be read after the sermon. God’s people should be sent back into the world after having heard and been reminded of this rule for thankful living. Interesting.

   Wherever it fits best liturgically, let us always remember who we are, the people called by God and cleansed with the blood of Christ. Let us go forward with the law of God on our lips knowing that the law no longer condemns us but teaches us to live obedient lives out of thankfulness for the mercy God has shown us in Christ our Lord.    

 ~gvp

Carl and Ellie

This will break your heart.

Calvin, Henry, and Benedict

(As published in Clarion 59:03)

Ecumena 

By George van Popta

Calvin, Henry, and Benedict

In AD 1509, two significant church-historical events took place. In France, John Calvin, the great Reformer and church ecumenist, was born. Across the channel, in England, Henry VIII, the man who would tear the Church of England away from the Roman Church, ascended to the throne.

Since no male heir was forthcoming from Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which put the dynastic legitimacy of the House of Tudor at stake, Henry sought an annulment from the pope in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Pope Clement VII, beholden to the Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and nephew of Catherine, refused to grant it. Henry divorced the Church of England from the Church of Rome in order to divorce Catherine. He summoned the British Parliament to declare the Act of Supremacy, 1534, by which Henry became the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

Last year, in AD 2009, five-hundred years after the birth of Calvin and five-hundred years after Henry’s accession to the throne, again two significant church-historical events took place–events related to those of a half millennium earlier: Across the world, Reformed Christians celebrated the quincentennial of the birth of John Calvin; and, from the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI invited the Church of England to re-enter the Roman fold.

The Anglican Church has always been a big-tent church from “High Church” to “Low Church.” “High Church” parishes are those Anglican churches that use a number of ritual practices associated in the popular mind with Roman Catholicism. “Low Church” Anglicans have been influenced by Reformed thought, are evangelical in their beliefs and practices, reject the doctrine that the sacraments confer grace ex opere operato (e.g. baptismal regeneration) and lay stress on the Bible as the sole source of authority in matters of faith. They usually hold dear the Reformed Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England as their official doctrinal statement.

The Anglican Church (“Episcopalian” in the USA) has gone from being a big-tent church to a church in crisis. It is losing members by the thousands. Any growth is among conservatives in Asia and Africa. The faithful are outraged by the liberalism, secularism, and slide to relativism by the leadership of the church. The liberal trends culminated in the election of an openly homosexual wife-abandoning bishop, the blessing of same-sex “marriages”, and the questioning of basic Christian dogma.

Two conservative movements have emerged within the Anglican Church. The split generally falls along the old High Church / Low Church divide.

The one wants to hold on to the Anglo-Catholic teachings, practices and liturgy. It rejects  same-sex marriage and the ordination of women. The other is evangelical. It rejects same-sex “marriage,” is divided on the ordination of women, and wants to hold on to fundamental Reformed doctrine. In Canada, this conservative movement is represented by the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC). It is part of the worldwide Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

Benedict thought that five centuries of separation are long enough. He has invited the Anglican Church back into the fold. Not wanting to make it difficult, and in the typical Roman Catholic fashion of accommodating local practices, he has told the Anglicans the Roman Catholic practice of a celibate priesthood need not apply to them and they may keep their prayer books and liturgy. The only real demand is that they acknowledge him as the head of the Church.

Benedict’s offer will not appeal to the Low Church parishes, but it will be attractive to the conservative High Church, Anglo-Catholic, parishes. The liberal, mainstream Anglican Church will continue to lose members and swirl into irrelevance. One almost feels sorry for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the supreme religious leader of the Anglican Church. His comment on the pope’s invitation was that he did not think it was a “commentary on Anglican problems.” Such a response beggars belief.

Did Benedict intentionally wait until the quincentenary of Henry’s accession to the throne? One can hardly believe he did not. The irony is too delicious. Did Benedict notice his invitation was made in the quincentenary of Calvin’s birth? As Joseph Ratzinger (the pope’s birth name) was born and bred among the Protestants of Germany, and is known to have read Calvin’s Institutes, one can hardly imagine he did not.

Where does John Calvin fit into all of this? From Geneva, Calvin wrote Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury of his time. In that letter, Calvin showed himself to be a true ecumenist. Among other things, he wrote:

I wish it might be effected, that learned and stable men, from the principal churches, might assemble in some place, and, after discussing with care each article of faith, deliver to posterity, from their general opinion of them all, the clear doctrines of the Scriptures. It is to be numbered among the evils of our day, that the churches are so divided one from another…. Respecting myself, if it should appear that I could render any service, I should with pleasure cross ten seas, if necessary, to accomplish that object.

We see here two streams of ecumenical thought and methods of church consolidation: Benedict’s which is opportunistic; Calvin’s which is principled. Benedict’s way is one of merely overturing disaffected Anglican’s; Calvin’s overture to the Anglicans was based upon reaching consensus upon the articles of the Christian faith and the clear doctrines of Scripture.

We prefer Calvin.

Our Liturgy - 5 (Jubilee Bulletin)

We Sing!

A very important part of our liturgy (public worship) is our singing, which is a form of corporate prayer. The scriptures command us to sing: Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord (Eph 5:19). “Singing” does not have one special place in the liturgy; rather, we sing throughout the worship service in response to the greeting, the law, the ministry of the word, etc.

   We sing psalms, canticles, and hymns.

   The psalms are the inspired 150 psalms of the book of Psalms. This is God’s first gift of song given to the church. Lately, we have been busy revising them. It is good to have them in contemporary English. When the Holy Spirit inspired them, they were written in the Hebrew of the day. We should sing them in the English of the day. There is a consistency to the Psalter since they were all written in the same language in the same era. Furthermore, at least exactly half have the same human author, King David. Seventy-three of the Psalms are identified as “of David” while we know from the New Testament that Psalms 2 and 95 were also penned by the “sweet psalmist of Israel.”

   We sing the psalms to tunes written mostly in Geneva during the Reformation, hence they are called “Genevan tunes.” John Calvin was pivotal in this. By 1562, in just twenty-five years, all 150 psalms had been versified in French and set to these tunes. The tunes are catholic in the true sense of the word. The psalms are sung to these tunes in many languages throughout the world, in French, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Indonesian, English, Afrikaans, Czech, and Italian. Calvin also taught us to sing in unison–not to say that there is anything wrong with harmonizing. But Calvin said it was good for God’s people to praise the Lord with one voice.

   Our hymn section contains canticles and hymns. Canticles are versifications of parts of scripture that are not Psalms. Famous canticles are the Ten Commandments and the Songs of Mary, Zechariah and Simeon. Our hymnary contains many other canticles as well (though we call them “hymns”).

   Then we also have what are more properly called “hymns.” They are not so much based on a specific passage of scripture as a song based on a theme or someone’s reflections upon an aspect of the gospel. The Canadian Reformed Churches have always said that such hymns are appropriate to sing in the worship service, providing they meet certain criteria. If you are interested in following this up, you can read the Principles and Guidelines as you will find them in the front of the Augment.

   Sometimes people observe that we seem to be a bit inconsistent in that while we are modernizing the language of the psalms, we are leaving many archaic expressions in the hymn section. There is a reason for that. As noted above, there should be a uniformity and modern tone to the psalms reflecting the modern and uniform qualities they had when first composed. The hymns, however, span both a millennium in time and the globe in space in their composition. A collection of hymns, by its very nature, will be eclectic. One cannot get around that. Just as the uniformity of the Psalter is part of its particular beauty, so the eclecticism of a hymnary is part of its peculiar charm. Furthermore, it would be inappropriate to alter well-known classic English hymns sung by Christians throughout the world. We do not want our own Canadian Reformed version of the classic English hymns. Also, some hymns are protected by copyright, and they may not be changed. For example, “Great is Thy Faithfulness” may not be published as “Great is Your Faithfulness” as it is copyrighted.

   And so we sing! May the Lord bless us as we sing to Him our songs of praise. "Praise the Lord … and sing praises to him, all you peoples" (Rom 15:11 NIV).

~gvp

January 25

Three years ago, yesterday, our mother passed on into glory.