Somewhere along the musical pathway that leads up to a splendid, blue-skied Autumn day in America’s midwest, I may have stumbled upon an album that contained more pure joy than Juan Luís Guerra’s Ni es lo mismo ni es igual.
But I can’t for the life of me think what that might have been. Continue Reading »
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My friend Tim Laniak, who knows the sound and smell of battle, sends me Messianic music to accompany me in mine. Zipporah Bennett’s Kuma Adonai (‘Arise, O Lord’) helps Hebrew language students at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s Charlotte, North Carolina, campus refine their aural comprehension.
Here in Indianapolis, on a clear Autumn day, it opens an angle of sight by which a man can just about glimpse heaven. Continue Reading »
Posted in reseña | Tagged Christian music, music, reseña, worship music, Yad Hashmona Singers, Zipporah Bennett | 16 Comments »
When the Bible traffics in unconditional promises and everlasting guarantees, the modern reader easily loses the thread. This is in part because our view of history is less dramatic than that assumed by large portions of the biblical narrative.
We read such promise as verbal guarantee of an uninterrupted status quo. On the contrary, the narrative itself posits a dilemma that YHWH cannot or will not leave unresolved. Its point of reference is not the each-minute-of-all-minutes status of a promise, but rather the final outcome of history or of some large segment of history. YHWH is presumed to rule sovereignly over the story and to promise that a certain outcome will stand. It is understood that interruption and hiatus will from time to time be the experience of the people, a matter that creates both tension and expectation. Continue Reading »
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With an unusual dramatic touch, Jeremiah faces off against a YHWH-prophet whose message of good news and spectacular deliverance from the Babylonian besieger must have sounded with a welcome ring in encircled Jerusalem. Hananiah’s symbolic and verbal artistry can be understood in a manner that aligns them with the more lyric moments of the book of Isaiah or even the consoling passages within the book of Jeremiah itself. Continue Reading »
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For a man who occasionally becomes quite difficult to comprehend, Paul and his tradition have only the most modest tolerance for people who complicate straight-forward things. Continue Reading »
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Jeremiah comes down to us not only as the weeping prophet. He is also a most realistic seer.
The text allows us to intuit the presence of many prophetic good-timers, making their rounds in the streets of besieged Jerusalem and claiming against the evidence of the Babylonian troops just over the wall that YHWH would never allow his prime-time city to be destroyed. They proclaimed an imminent miracle, an inviolable city, and an unconditional divine choice. Continue Reading »
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For ears like the one attached to both sides of this writer’s head, ‘sound doctrine’ has an unpleasant ring.
The baggage is heavy. It seems the pious moniker of a narrow orthodoxy’s obsession with reigning in any inquisitive soul who might dare to follow the evidence where it leads. To a biblical scholar it hints at the wished-for sovereignty that is credited to more ‘systematic’ theologians over the messiness of the biblical text and its stubborn resistance to being reduced to, well, ‘doctrine’. Let alone sound doctrine, which suggests an even finer sieve. Continue Reading »
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Twila Paris did not develop one of the most loyal fan bases in Christian music by blowing their ears off. If smoke is found on any stage on which Paris performs, it’s evidence of a short circuit rather than choreographed dry ice.
Ms. Paris is not spectacular. She is merely very, very good, song after song, one well-considered, hope-mongering tune after another. Continue Reading »
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‘Where is YHWH?’
It seems an obvious question to be heard on the lips of a people whose recent past YHWH has permeated with redemptive actions on their behalf. When it is not heard, the prophet suggests, the silence is not only deafening but accusing as well. Continue Reading »
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On balance, it’s probably a good thing that the Historical Guy who decided we should be clean shaven was handed that decision. Otherwise, he might have got himself up to some even more lethal project.
As things stand now, a man’s face is one of life’s great hostile environments, what with the scraping we do every morning and the stressing throughout the day. The surface of Mars beats us out only by a few toxic gases and we’re occasionally capable of giving even that one a run for its money. Continue Reading »
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Canter Bridge 