Sing A New Song

The church has an ancient tradition of choosing certain lessons to read and meditate upon for each Sunday of the worship year. Consequently, as I prepare my sermon for the second to the last Sunday of that year it is important that you and I look at those lessons. They were chosen for a reason and have been reviewed again and again.

The first of those four lessons for this Sunday is Psalm 98:1-9. The Psalm begins with worshippers inviting one another to sing a new song.

I do and I don't like new songs. I don't because then I have to learn a new melody and new words and it is much easier to keep on singing the old songs. They can be so nostalgic, bringing back old memories of good—and sad—times, places and people. That's true with hymns. For instance, singing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," the Lutheran hymn of the Reformation, always brings back memories of my years at both Concordia College, St. Paul and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. On cold Reformation Day mornings, October 31, we would gather at 6:30 a.m. before a statue of Martin Luther to sing that hymn, listen to a meditation and pray. That's a fine tradition, but in northern climates in can also bring memories of shivering in the cold when you are barely awake.

Psalm 98 says, "Oh sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him." 

Undoubtedly this is a song to celebrate God's new work of salvation. There was an old, familiar song that celebrated God's acts in former days. That song was the Song of Moses in Exodus 15:1-8.

"I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea."

The LORD kept his promises to his people. He brought them out of slavery and put them into a new land of prosperity, a land flowing with milk and honey. Psalm 98 invites us, however, to sing a new song. There was another time in Israel's history when they were enslaved by the Babylonians for 70 years. For those who returned to the Promised Land, there was good reason to sing a new song. Thus when the exiles returned and finished the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem their musicians led them in singing a new song with gladness and thanksgiving (Nehemiah 12:27-30).

For us, however, that's an old song, like the hymn of the Reformation, familiar, good to sing, filled with many memories of our LORD's mighty acts, but an old song nevertheless. What new song shall we sing? What new wonders working salvation and revealing his righteousness have we to sing about? At this point we remember who this LORD is. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the long awaited Messiah who revealed his righteousness in the sight of all nations of the world. That righteousness revealed is his holy life and his bitter suffering upon the cross of Calvary. By those wonders the Son of God removed the righteous judgment of God upon the children of men. He offered his life for ours. He was forsaken that we might never be. In this way "he has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel" and "the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God" (Psalm 98:3).

But wait, the song is not yet ended. He who came once is coming again. Now there is something to get worked up and excited about. As we think about it, we realize that the entire creation is waiting on tip toes for this to happen (Romans 8:18-25). Everything in creation is in bondage, just like old Israel was. We who are part of that old creation see it all around. Corruption, decay and death abound on all sides. We ourselves are wasting away, day by day. With God's people of old we cry, "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2-11).

What new song have we to sing? Will it always be this way, the same old same old? Oh no! Our LORD has done a new thing. Christ is risen! Say it with me. He is risen indeed! That's the seal of our salvation. The Father has accepted the sacrifice. His death is our death. His life is no our life and we too shall rise with him. His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him AND for us.

"Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity."

In these last days of the church's year of worship we remember that Christ is coming again—soon! And so our hearts are filled with a new song.

 

Spiritual Warfare Research

I'm part of a group of Lutheran pastors that meet monthly to share personal research and do Bible study together. For February, 2011, I volunteered to prepare a paper on the following topic:

Spiritual Warfare: Lessons for Lutherans from the Rise of the Third Reich

I have five months to complete the paper and have only a vague idea of where it will end up. Some of you at least have borne with me these past several years as I developed my three novels, based upon events of the Great Depression decade leading up to the frightening events of World War II. In the process I have had to look again and again at National Socialism and life in Germany during the 1930s. As a result those events, we Americans were drawn into the most deadly war in the history of mankind, a war that led to the deaths of over 60 million! 

 As I move through the research I will share some observations with you. I'm especially concerned about this topic because I'm both a Lutheran and have Germanic genealogy on my father's side. My mother traced her lineage back to Great Britain. In any event that makes me an Anglo-Saxon. But what concerns me more is my Lutheran heritage. I've asked myself again and again how the home of the Reformation led by Dr. Martin Luther could become also the home of Nazism? I believe my answers will be found in the Scriptural teachings that there is a spiritual war being waged between God and the forces of darkness.

My research today took me to a book by A R Victor Raj, The HinduConnection:Roots of the New Age, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1995, reviewed in Logia, Vol. V:1 by Pastor Larry Nichols, of  Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Greenville, Rhode Island. Dr. Raj was raised in India in a Lutheran household and ordained into the holy ministry in 1975. He has taught at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis since 2008.

Dr. Raj tells us that Hinduism is the foundation for the New Age movement. In turn, the New Age movement is the New Testament of Hinduism. He discusses how the philosophy and theology of religion, the study of psychology and sociology all paved the way for a thoroughgoing secularism that was so much a part of the twentieth century and still is in the twenty-first. What interests me is Raj's reference to Madame Helena Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy and seen by many New Agers as the precursor the that movement today.

The New Age movement is gnosticism revived. The church of the fourth century challenged gnosticism by emphasizing the clear teaching of the New Testament that Christ is both God and man, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the heavenly Father. And yet this same Christ came down to be one with us in the person of Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary.

What happened to nineteenth century Lutheranism in Germany that she lost her connection with this historic Christian faith?

Nazism, Theosophy, Gnosticism and the Occult

I've been exploring some of the many roots of the Nazi movement—and there are many. One of these is Theosophy, a movement related to Madame H.P. Blavatsky and her book The Secret Doctrine. Thanks to Google, one can now read the entire 500 plus pages of this work online—if you're so inclined.

In her book Blavatsky claims to provide a synthesis of science, religion and philosophy. In the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel and others, human knowledge unfolds by a process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. A thesis is a proposal such as that the world is flat. The antithesis is an objection. No, it cannot be. Take a look at the horizon falling away. So how do we bring these two together in some kind of synthesis? Since ancient times there were many methods, but please do not ask me to go into them.

By the way, there is a publisher that seeks to bring free digitalized textbooks into university learning systems. They call this Flat World Knowledge. No need any longer to keep knowledge from textbooks beyond the students' horizons. It can all be available on their desktops. Applause for the modern, digitalized world. But I'm off topic.

Back to Blavatsky and those who followed her lead. She claimed to take human knowledge to a new level. In New York City in 1875  Helena P. Blavatsky, Henry S. Olcott, William Q. Judge, and others founded the Theosophical Society. Blavatsky (1831-1891) is the primary force behind the modern theosophical movement. In October, 1879 she founded the journal The Theosophist.

What is theosophy? Below is an accurate definition provided by way of Our Lady's Warriors, a Roman Catholic organization.

Theosophy is essentially a modern version of Gnosticism. Within it one can find clear Gnostic, Pantheistic and occult influences, including Sophia. The new twist is the "space alien like," but clearly demonic connection whereby Theosophy was "delivered to the first human protoplasts, the first thinking human beings on Earth by highly intelligent spiritual entities from superior spheres." Some actually claim that various of these "ascended masters" have been living on Venus for some 18,000 years and will shortly return.

Theosophy made its way into Lutheran circles through Frederick Rittelmeyer. Rittelmeyer was a Lutheran pastor of a congregation in Berlin, who studied under Adolph von Harnack. Harnack was a history professor and a prominent leader of the higher critical movement that undermined confidence in the Bible as the revealed Word of God. He did not believe in the supernatural or in Biblical miracles.

In 1910 Pastor Rittelmeyer met Rudolf Steiner, a theosophist and founder of anthroposophy. Rittelmeyer wanted to modernize Christianity, bring it up to date with the new, synthesized knowledge. With Steiner's help, in 1922 he founded a renewal movement called the Christian Community, a kind of new age denomination active to the present day in the United States and other parts of the world.

When the Nazis took charge of Germany in the early 1930s, Rittelmeyer was able to perform a kind of balancing act that enabled his Christengemeinschaft (Christian Community) to survive. But then, both his movement and Nazism had its roots in the work of Blavatsky, so that was entirely possible.

There were other things going on in Germany, of course. I'll wander into them with you on another day.