ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN WORSHIP 2 67.LW2 Captioning provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 ******** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ******** >> DAVID: I'm enjoying this conversation about music. My question may seem overly obvious, but still I want to ask: How are hymns useful in our services? >> DR. JAMES BRAUER: David, hymns can be a wonderful tool. We're building here on what Luther said. But it is actually Paul's view of it as well. Let me turn your attention to Colossians Chapter 3 beginning at Verse 15. And there's a similar passage in Ephesians. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Teach and admonish one another in all wisdom." So here Paul is centering on word, word from Christ. And he's saying teach and admonish. Now, we already made the point in the last question around what Luther thought music was valuable for. That the message is the key thing, and the artistic expression helps the emotional connection. Paul is saying here that the teaching of the word is a primary thing that happens in worship and even admonishing -- I want to connect this to the hymns and the psalms in a moment. But think about admonishing. Imagine a five-year-old about to go out the door. It's quite cold out there. He has no jacket on. His mother sees this from the other room and says, John, stop where you are. You can't go outside unless you put a coat on. Remember last time, you went and played for two hours in the cold? You got an awful cold. We had to take you to the doctor, and I'm not doing that again. So put your coat on, or you can't go outside. Now, that's admonishing. I think that's rather interesting to be in this context. Now watch how this continues. �Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Teach and admonish one another in all wisdom and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, spirituals songs to God.� So singing psalms, hymns -- we know what psalms are. We've encountered hymns in the book. What are spirituals songs as opposed to hymns? Well, the Greek words there would be for a spiritual song *(Inaudible), spiritual oaths, and *hymnoi is the other word from which we get the word hymn. Now, what are those categories? I'm sure Paul had something in mind, but we don't know the exact distinctions between the two. So we don't make a great distinction in our practice between those two. But in other words, he's saying there's things that could come right out of scripture, and then there's things that are invented by Christians for use in worship, hymns and spiritual songs. These can be employed. And it is part of the word, and you're singing with gratitude to God. Now, think about that. So that word which is, in a sense, part of the gift-giving also becomes part of the thank you when you say it and sing with gratitude to God. And as another person hears you do this, and you repeat what God did and what is the glory of God, his own son Jesus Christ, you encourage the other person, not only by whatever enthusiasm you have for this or your singing of it, but the word itself, the Holy Spirit may use. Now, that's a way to look at it I think is built into this passage. And then after mentioning the psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, he goes on. "And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through Him." So this brings us back to this is an act of faith because it's done in Christ. So to summarize now, it is always the word that we sing, not what falls outside of it as false doctrine or any of our own thoughts, but what God reveals about Himself especially about his son Jesus Christ who died on the cross for us and in whom we place our whole hope for salvation and eternal life.