Now that the Christmas season has come and gone, we turn our focus to the next season in our church year, which is the season of Epiphany. Epiphany means a revealing or an opening (as in the opening of one’s eyes). In the season of Epiphany, the Biblical texts in our LCMS lectionary that we examine will reveal God to us and make God known to the world. Of course, God revealed Himself to us in the person of His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our season of Epiphany is when God lets us know exactly who this Jesus is.

This is a very important question for us to ponder. In fact, Jesus asked this all important question to Peter in Matthew 16:15, when, after discussing what everyone was saying about Jesus, He asked Peter: “What about you? Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered by confessing: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus was not merely a wise teacher. He wasn’t just a future telling prophet. He wasn’t just an example to us of how God wants us to live our lives. True, He was indeed all of these things, but He was much more than these. He was our sin sacrifice. He is our atoning Savior, paving the way to heaven for us by shedding His blood on the cross. He was God in flesh.

God wants us to know this truth, and so He reveals it to us in His Word. This is why Jesus performed all of the miracles and healings. Not to call attention to Himself or to randomly provide thrills and entertainment, but to show the world that He was indeed God in flesh. God sent Jesus to reveal the Kingdom of God to the world, as it is written in Luke 4:43, “I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God, because that is why I was sent.” God loves us! Our sins are forgiven in Christ! Jesus is Lord! This is the reality of truth that God reveals to us in Epiphany, and this is what He wants us to know. See John 20:30-31 – “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His Name.” Thanks be to God for revealing this truth to us in His Son!

In follow up to an earlier post on this blog, we asked Dr. Paul Grime to offer his reflections.  Dr. Grime is our Dean of Chapel and professor of liturgics.  But prior to coming to CTS, he was the chief architect for our synod’s newest hymnal.  His comments are below (Stieg).

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It’s almost ten years since work began in earnest on the Synod’s latest hymnal, Lutheran Service Book. Among the many big issues that we knew would challenge us was the matter of language. What style of language would we use? An older style? An updated style? Something in between?

Just 18 months after we began, the Roman Catholic world was rocked by the release of a new instruction on liturgical language. Liturgiam Authenticam, published in late the spring of 2001, called on translators of liturgical texts to adhere more closely to the original, Latin version. I remember very well one ecumenical gathering where some prominent Roman Catholics openly worried that the liturgical reforms of the last 30 years were about to be turned back. By the tone of their voices, you wondered whether they were headed back to the stone age.

As far as our work on LSB was concerned, we felt somewhat vindicated by the direction we were taking, which was to aim for a literal translation of texts wherever possible, yet to strive for translations that weren’t stilted or wooden. Of course, that is easier said than done. Our most difficult challenge concerned the old “Page 15” service from The Lutheran Hymnal (now Setting Three in LSB). With a full one-third of our congregations still using TLH, we knew that this service needed to be treated carefully. We actually went through three or four “test” versions that we tried out in congregations that were using TLH. We toyed with updating the language and providing dual translations, but eventually settled on a fairly conservative course. For those parts of the service where text was wedded to music, we kept the text “as is,” in other words, using the archaic language as found in TLH. But, for the spoken parts of the service, we gently updated the language, something that many pastors were already doing in their spoken parts. For the most part, reception of this service has been good.

If you’re interested in reading more about the new directions in the Roman Catholic Church, go here where you can see examples of the changes that have now been approved—seven years later.

If you want to see the language guidelines that were used in the development of LSB, go here. Take a look at the discussion on page 4 concerning “Archaic and Obsolete Language.”

Paul Grime
Dean of the Chapel, CTS
LSB Project Director (1999-2007)

Today was a busy but typical day for this pastor.  It was the first day of school for our Academy, and like so many good Lutheran schools, we have a hymn of the week.  The hymn for this week is a new one in Lutheran Service Book, entitled “O Christ, Who Shared Our Mortal Life” (LSB 552).  The text is a powerful one, and uses the three resurrections that our Lord performed as the basis for the hymn: the raising of Jairus’ daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus.  The text is by Herman Steumpfle.  The music is by Kantor Kevin Hildebrand of Concordia Theological Seminary.

There is much that could be said about the text of this hymn.  It holds up some of the best characteristics of twentieth century hymnody: powerful word painting, vivid imagery, strong biblical connections, etc.  But I mostly want to talk about the music of this text.

The music for this text, entitled “Lord of Life”, can be best described as haunting yet hopeful.  The topic of the text is death and resurrection, and following the biblical imagery, there are three stanzas that really address the grief of the bereaved.  The music beautifully holds this up.  There is a strength in classic Lutheran chorales that they don’t hide from grief.  Paul Gerhardt is perhaps best known for this.  In the same way, the music has to hold up this very real tension of grief and hope.  Hildebrand’s melody does this well.

But it’s more than that.

In the span of a day, I sang and taught this at our K-8 school chapel, sang and prayed it with a parishioner in the hospital with multiple chronic illnesses, used it to meditate on the text for the upcoming Sunday, and then sang, taught and prayed it with my own family before going to bed.  What a gift!  What a treasure!

Any music that can be taught to kindergartners and then used to comfort an eighty year old man is worth learning.

This is also a great example of why I love being a pastor.  We get to hold these great treasures of the Gospel up to God’s people, young and old.  I probably sang this hymn a dozen times today.  I’ll sing it a dozen more times tomorrow.  What could be bad about that!

-Pastor Todd Peperkorn

We will, by God’s mercy, shape and build you as a servant and laborer in God’s Kingdom and prepare you for a consecrated life of ministry in the LCMS.  Our mission statements sums it up: Concordia Theological Seminary exists to form servants in Jesus Christ who will teach the faithful, reach the lost and care for all. This is what CTS is all about, the formation of pastors, deaconesses and laity for service in the church.  I’ll extend this topic into a total of three separate posts: teach, reach and care.

Teach. If our curriculum were a tree, the roots would be Jesus Christ and the trunk would be the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Sacrament.  I’ll talk about the role of the Eucharist momentarily.

As a student at CTS, you will become immersed in the texts of the Old and New Testaments.  Every seminarian studies, in their original languages, all four Gospels, all five books of Moses (Gen-Deut), the epistles of Paul, the major OT prophets and the Psalms.  Every student takes a Greeks Readings course for six of the nine on campus quarters.  That’s the minimum.

We believe that it is extremely important for the pastors of the church to have competency in reading the Greek and Hebrew texts of God’s Word.  This is possibly more important today than it has been in over a thousand years.  The society in which our graduates will be placed is more pluralistic and religiously diverse than America has ever been.  We are also more drenched in communication technologies.  This adds up to a  very confused and confusing mess.  False teachings abound.  People need and often hunger for someone to give them good spiritual food to eat.  We must be able to speak the Truth clearly, winsomely, and with precision.  Lives depend on it.

Add an in depth examination of the Lutheran Confessions, Liturgics and hymnody, pastoral practice, preaching, etc.  Not only are there specific courses in each of these fields, but our faculty strives to bring a wholistic approach to the classroom.  In other words, it is not beneficial to teach the Gospel of Luke, for instance, without talking about how to preach these texts, how they’ve been understood by historical heros of the church, how they appear in the liturgical life of the church, their significance for counseling and outreach.  We practice an intentionally inter-disciplinary form of instruction.  So when you study the Psalms, to take another example, you will have two professors.  One will teach you the Hebrew constructions and the interpretation of the texts while the other will tie that in with the liturgical and devotional use of the psalter.

Central to everything is our chapel.  This is because we understand that our students, as their primary identity, are children of God.  They must receive the Lord’s gracious gifts in scripture, preaching, Eucharist, prayer and song.  Their own heart are nourished by the presence of Christ in our midst.  That much is fundamental.  Otherwise, we become a stagnant academy of abstract ideas and theories.  God is not a “subject” to be autopsied by our skilled technicians.  He is a living person who relates to us by His Son.

These emphases of our curriculum form a person into a well equipped teacher and preacher.

The Church gives thanks for the life and work of Rev. Jaroslav Vajda, who died in the Lord last Saturday, May 10. Vajda’s work as hymnwriter is known throughout The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (and beyond). Of his more than 200 hymns (original and translated), the following are found in Lutheran Service Book:

369 Where Shepherds Lately Knelt
371 Let Our Gladness Banish Sadness
445 When You Woke that Thursday Morning
484 Make Songs of Joy
491 Up Through Endless Ranks of Angels
593 See This Wonder in the Making
896 Now Greet the Swiftly Changing Year
910 Now the Silence
922 Go, My Children, with My Blessing
945 Your Heart, O God, Is Grieved

In most times and places, there probably isn’t much consideration about the authors of hymn texts and composers of hymn tunes and settings. And those writers probably prefer it that way, anyhow, since a good hymn points to Christ, rather than highlighting those who created the words and music. But when we do pause to consider those skilled lyricists and musicians such as Rev. Vajda, we can be thankful for their work of putting words and tunes into our mouths and lives.

Concordia Publishing House has a fitting tribute on their website HERE.